Orrin Hatch

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I see two of my colleagues who are here, and I want to ask unanimous consent that Senator Barrasso be given 10 minutes, then Senator Sessions be given 3 minutes, and then the remainder of the time be turned over to me.

Mr. HATCH. Did the Chair rule?

Mr. HATCH. Madam President----

Mr. HATCH. I was supposed to speak here at 2:15 p.m.

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I understand there will be 3 minutes for the Senator from Alabama and then I will be able to deliver my full remarks.

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, in recent days I have twice spoken here on the floor--not about a particular issue, bill, or nomination pending before the Senate, but about the Senate itself. While issues, bills, nominations, and even partisan majorities come and go, the Senate as an institution must remain--and remain not only in some tattered form, some distorted shadow of its former self, but, rather, the Senate must remain as it was designed to be. The political winds may blow, but the institution must stand strong. Unfortunately, in my 38 years of service in this body I have never seen it weaker than it is today. There once was a consensus here not only about the need to keep this institution strong but also about how to do it. That consensus evolved from how the Framers designed this body so that it could play its unique role in the system of government they inspirationally crafted. James Madison, for example, remarked at the 1787 Constitutional Convention that the Senate's proceedings could have more coolness, more system, and more wisdom than the House of Representatives. He was not talking about coolness in the way our teenagers talk about it today. The House is designed for more or less direct expression of the popular will and operates by simple majority. By contrast, the Senate is designed for deliberation. For more than two centuries it has operated by a supermajority and even unanimous consent. This fundamental difference between the House and the Senate is by express design and not historical accident. It is the conjunction of the two that makes the legislative branch work in the manner the Framers intended. This basic principle of bicameralism is above politics and above party. This longstanding consensus about the importance of the Senate's unique design and how it must operate to fulfill its constitutional role has all but fallen apart over the last few years. I began addressing this problem in earnest last week and will continue to do so in the weeks ahead and, I might add, in the months to come, urging my colleagues to heed history's wisdom and change course. I am not alone in this endeavor. My friend the senior Senator from Tennessee has also spoken with great passion on this issue and developed a thoughtful assessment of the Senate's institutional decay. Two longtime colleagues in this body--one Democrat and one Republican-- offered similar critiques when leaving the Senate in the last few years. For 30 years I served in this body with my friend from Connecticut, Senator Christopher Dodd. In his final speech on the Senate floor on November 30, 2010, he observed that the Senate was established as a place where every Member's voice could be heard and where a deliberation and even dissent would be valued and respected. Senator Dodd explained that ``our Founders were concerned not only with what was legislated, but, just as importantly, with how we legislated.'' He urged Senators to resist the temptation to abandon the Senate's longstanding traditions to make it ``more like the House of Representatives, where the majority can essentially bend the minority to its will.'' Two years later Senator Olympia Snowe concluded her three terms in the Senate representing the State of Maine in this body with a reflection on the state of the Senate. She observed that a commitment to the rights of the minority helped ensure that the Senate would be a body where all voices are heard. Senator Snowe concluded, however, that ``the Senate is not living up to what the Founding Fathers envisioned,'' in large part by ignoring the minority's rights. Senator Dodd concluded his Senate service in the majority while Senator Snowe concluded hers in the minority, but their assessment was the same--a leading Democrat and a leading Republican. That is what a consensus looks like. They shared an understanding of the unique role the Senate was designed to play in our system of government, and they knew from experience that the Senate is not operating by that design today. Diagnosing our current institutional ills and prescribing a path back to health must begin by recognizing the primacy of the Senate's purpose, design, and place in our system of government. Without the anchor of these principles, which have throughout the Senate's history been shared throughout this body, across all partisan and ideological lines, the gamesmanship of politics and the quest for power will decimate our deliberate contribution to the legislative process. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening today. In my previous remarks, I noted that many of the sage students of the Senate--from Vice President Adlai Stevenson in the 19th century to Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia in our time--all identified the same two features as critical to the Senate's proper functioning: the right of amendment and the right to debate. It is not difficult to see how they serve the critical function of setting the Senate apart from the House. These rights temper majority rule. They emphasize individuals over parties and factions. They ensure that all voices can be heard. They encourage deliberation and, yes, even beneficial compromise. These rights secure a substantive role for all Senators--even those in the minority--in how the Senate legislates, a feature that does not exist in how the House operates. During my service throughout the past four decades, the Senate has often lived up to these ideals. For example, I worked with the junior Senator from Iowa on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which the Senate in 1989 passed by a vote of 76 to 8. At that time Democrats held 55 Senate seats, just as they do today. This body addressed amendments on the floor offered by both Democrats and Republicans on issues ranging from tax credits for small businesses to accessibility of buses. On a single day in September of 1989, the Senate adopted nearly twice as many minority amendments to this single bill than the Senate today has adopted in more than a year. Today the majority leader uses his right to priority recognition to eliminate virtually all opportunities for amendments unless he agrees to them, and even then he generally stops amendments. He has used this procedural maneuver--called filling the amendment tree--more than twice as often as the previous six majority leaders combined. There is a time when you can fill the amendment tree, and that is after there has been a full and fair debate on all the reasonable amendments Members have brought to the floor and it is when a reasonable time has been given to a bill and there have been a number of votes. Yet, when he was in the minority, even he condemned this tactic as ``a very bad practice.'' He explained that ``it runs against the basic nature of the Senate.'' He was right then, but he is wrong now. Perhaps the majority leader has reconsidered what he believes to be the basic nature of the Senate. Perhaps he now believes that denying the minority's right to offer amendments is a very good rather than a very bad practice. If he does, then I think he, of all people, owes the Senate an explanation. I don't think he believes that; otherwise, such an about-face is nothing more than a desire to rig the rules so he can win all the games, and in the process he is destroying the Senate itself. When I say games, I don't really mean games. It is so he can win all the votes. He can put the Senate on any motion he wants to without any real rights for the minority, and in the process he is destroying the Senate itself, destroying the institutional characteristics the Founders thought critical to our government's design, and destroying precisely those practices and traditions that have enabled the Senate to serve the common good throughout our Nation's history. The other defining feature of this body--the right to unlimited debate--is also under attack. By empowering the minority, that right has always annoyed the majority whether we have been in the minority or whether we have been in the majority and vice versa. But a little history can provide a lot of perspective for us today. For more than a century, ending debate on anything required unanimous consent. A single Senator could prevent a final vote on a matter by preventing an end to debate. The Senate adopted a rule in 1917 that lowered the threshold to two-thirds. Not until 1975 was the threshold lowered to three-fifths, where it stands today. It is easier to end debate today than ever before in the Senate's history, but that is not enough for the current majority. Urged on by many of the 34 Senators who have not yet ever served in the minority, the majority apparently does not want any obstacle whatsoever to stand in its way--not even full and fair debate. Last November the majority leader used a parliamentary maneuver to lower the threshold for any debate on most nominations from a supermajority to a simple majority. It took him only a few short minutes to end more than 200 years of Senate practice and effectively eliminate the minority's role in the confirmation process. As I have detailed here on the Senate floor and in print, the minority leader's reasons for this revolution amounted to filibuster fraud. At the time he invoked the so-called nuclear option, the Senate had confirmed 98 percent of President Obama's nominations, and filibusters, of course, were on the decline. But 98 percent was not good enough for the majority. I noted the current majority leader's about-face regarding the right to offer amendments. He defended that right when in the minority and actively suppressed it when in the majority. Similarly, when he was in the minority, he voted more than two dozen times for filibusters of Republican judicial nominees. The Democrats were the ones who started that. Then, last November, once in the majority, he abolished the right to debate nominations. While the majority leader effectively neutralized the Senate cloture rule to stop the minority from debating nominations, he has also used that rule to stop the minority from debating legislation. He again uses his right of priority recognition to bring up a bill and, at the very same time, file a motion to end debate. But it makes no sense to speak of ending debate--ending what he wrongly characterizes as a Republican filibuster--when such debate had no chance to begin with. The majority leader uses this cloture rule not to end debate but to prevent it altogether. Just like the practice of filling the amendment tree, the majority leader is using his position to prevent debate far more often than any of his predecessors. Unlike the current majority leader, most Senators on the other side of the aisle have never served in the minority. Most Senators in both parties--56, to be exact--have served here only under the current leadership. Unfortunately, this means that most Senators serving today have only witnessed leadership that prefers power to principle and is rapidly dismantling the longstanding practices and traditions of an institution that took centuries to build. The only leadership that most Senators serving today have experienced uses parliamentary maneuvers to deny senatorial rights so that the partisan ends justify the procedural means. The current Senate leadership is wrong. The road we are on today leads only to one destination. Just as maintaining the integrity and foundation of the Senate's design and operation is essential to its proper role in our system of government, attacking that integrity and dismantling that foundation can only destroy that proper role. Since the Senate's proper role is essential for protecting the liberties of the American people, destroying those longstanding practices and traditions puts our liberties at risk. The minority leader spoke here in January about the state of the Senate and noted that what many call partisanship today is nothing new. But what I have been addressing in recent days is not the result of that ideological competition but how that competition is conducted. At the beginning of my first term, there were only 38 Republican Senators--not even enough to end debate under Senate rules. Democrats have not been in such a small minority in nearly 60 years. According to the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute, 42 percent of all rollcall votes during my first 2 years here were so-called party unity votes, in which a majority of each party sticks together and votes in opposite ways. That means a majority of votes involve Senators reaching across the aisle. In the last several years under the current leadership, however, even though the margin between the parties is narrower, the percentage of such party unity votes has risen to 62 percent. This trend of retreating to partisan corners is yet another indication that this body is becoming like the House and, therefore, abandoning the tradition of unlimited debate and amendment at the core of the Senate's identity. The way Senator Snowe described it, the great challenge is to create and maintain a system ``that gives our elected officials reasons to look past their differences and find common ground if their initial party positions fail to garner sufficient support.'' The Senate's design provided those reasons and those incentives, and undermining that design destroys them. Building is much harder and takes much longer than destroying. The current leadership's recklessness in choosing power over principle is dismantling what took centuries to establish. That does not, however, mean it cannot be changed. Senator Dodd suggested a formula for a better course when he distinguished what we legislate from how we legislate. Restoring the Senate as the world's greatest deliberative body requires recommitting ourselves to the principles of how we legislate so that we can properly discuss and debate what we should legislate. We must first restore the longstanding consensus about the rules, procedures, and traditions governing how the Senate is run. Only on that firm footing can we discuss, deliberate, and legislate in a constructive manner. In addition to restoring many of this body's fundamental rights for amendment and debate, the minority leader spoke in January about restoring a vigorous and meaningful committee process. These elements of our legislative process are related and they are complementary. Increasingly, bills are drafted in the leader's office and taken directly to the full Senate for consideration where the majority leader will immediately fill the amendment tree and file a motion to end debate. In my 38 years in this body, I have never seen a consolidation of so much power in so few hands. America's Founders were right in the principles of government they laid out and in the institutional design they built on those principles. But they did so at the beginning of this journey, creating the blueprint before anything had been built. I fear that returning to the right path may be even harder than embarking on it. The majority today has engaged in a hostile takeover of the Senate for one simple reason: aggrandizing power. But remember the axiom that power tends to corrupt. It makes principle harder to see, fainter to hear, and tougher to grasp, and it makes principle very difficult to restore. Restoration will require believing in something greater than power, something more important than the bill or nomination on the calendar, something more significant than the latest polling numbers. It will require holding fast to a system that can provide power today but take that power away tomorrow. Winston Churchill famously said, ``Democracy is the worst form of government except for those other forms that have been tried from time to time.'' There is certainly wisdom in that, but consider when Churchill said it. He was speaking on the floor of the British House of Commons on November 11, 1947, 2 years after his party lost half its seats in Parliament and the Labor Party led its first majority government. Churchill expressed his faith in the very form of government that had turned his party into a small minority. We continue on the path the current Senate leadership has charted at our peril, not just the peril of this institution but the peril of our system of government and the liberties it makes possible for the American people. This may sound like a grand statement, but remember what Senator Byrd repeatedly told us--remember what he said: ``So long as the Senate's defining features such as the rights of amendments and debate remain intact, the liberties of the people are secure.'' There is perhaps no greater statement of principle regarding this Nation than our Declaration of Independence, which asserts that the government exists to secure the inalienable rights of the people. That is why we are here, and that should be our reason to change course--not simply partisan advantage or ideological superiority but liberty. The liberty we enjoy in America did not occur by chance. It will not survive by neglect, and it cannot thrive by preferring power over principle. My staff and I recently visited the National Archives and saw the words engraved beneath in one of the statues at the entrance: ``Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.'' I hope we can turn this around. I hope the leadership of the majority will wake up and realize that some day they may be in the minority. I don't know when, but some day they will be. If they were treated as we are being treated, I can just hear the fulminations up and down in the Senate. All I can say is that these principles are more important than either party. They are more important than either party, and whether Democrats or Republicans like them or not, the fact is, this is the greatest deliberative body in the world that is no longer the greatest deliberative body in the world, and that is because of what is going on. I hope we can end that and begin anew. I think everybody enjoyed the debate over the highway bill. For once, we were able to have at least four amendments--on both sides, by the way. And I have to say it was kind of a thrill to vote again on amendments. It was kind of a thrill to pass a piece of legislation the right way. Whether a person likes or doesn't like the legislation, it was thrilling to be here. I would like to see more of that happening so that everybody here will feel that not only are they a part of the Senate but they are helping to keep the Senate the vibrant place it always has been up until now. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH. I thank my dear friend for his kind remarks, and I understand how much zeal he has for the things he does here on the floor. He is a fine man, and I really appreciate it. Madam President, earlier today--just a little while ago, in fact--the House of Representatives once again passed legislation extending funding for the Federal highway trust fund. This is the latest step in the process for which the final outcome has been known for some time. The bill the House passed today is virtually identical to the one they passed last week. It is basically the very same bill. Earlier this week the Senate passed its own version of the highway bill and sent it to the House. Of course, we did so knowing full well the House would not accept the Senate bill. I don't think there was ever any real doubt in this Chamber as to what was going to happen, but in my view it is good that the Senate acted. I was particularly pleased to see that the version of the highway bill reported by the Senate Finance Committee received such strong bipartisan support when it came up for a vote. Senator Wyden and I worked hard on that bill. The effort was bipartisan from the outset, and in the end we produced a product that both parties could support. Of course, I was a little less pleased that the Senate on the very next vote opted to strike the Finance Committee's language and replace it with what is, in my view, a less viable vehicle for funding the highway trust fund, but in the end that is the direction a majority of the Senators decided to go, and I accepted it and am proud of everybody who participated. As I said, it is good that the Senate acted. But now the House has acted again. It is good that the Senate had some amendments for a change, and I think we all felt good about that. I felt a renewed spirit in the Senate because of this since it had been a year without having real amendments in a real process. Of course there were only four of them, but compared to what we have had over the last year, that still was an amazing occurrence. But now the House has acted again, and although there are likely to be a number of Senators who do not like the House bill, there doesn't appear to be enough time for the Senate to try once again to go in a different direction. As we all know, we are on the verge of a crisis with regard to funding for the highway trust fund. Congress needs to act immediately to prevent a shortfall in the trust fund and to ensure that the States can continue to plan and implement their highway projects. Thousands of jobs are at stake. If Congress doesn't pass a bill and get it to the President before we leave for recess, we will be doing a great disservice to a lot of people. We all know this. It is not a secret. It is not a surprise. As far as I can see, the only viable solution before the Senate today is to take up the House bill and pass it as is. Once again, we have all known this was the most likely outcome for some time now. It is time we accept it and move on. That is not to say that I am disappointed that we have to pass the House bill. As I said a number of times, if you compare the House bill with the one reported by the Senate Finance Committee--which, once again, received broad bipartisan support when it was voted on in the Senate earlier this week--you will see that the bills are not all that far apart in terms of policy. The core funding mechanisms are the same. The principal difference is that the Senate bill raises some revenue through some tax compliance provisions that are not in the House bill. The House bill goes a little further on pension smoothing than the Finance Committee bill does, and this has brought heartburn to a number of us in both bodies. These are not fundamental differences. Any Senator who supported the Finance Committee's bill should be able to support the House bill, which is a good thing, because as I said we don't have many other options if we want to get this done before the recess. I plan to support the House-passed highway bill. I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to do the same. Finally, I wish to take a moment to address a major setback we encountered with regard to the temporary highway extension that passed in the Senate earlier this week. As we learned yesterday, the Senate- passed bill has a shortfall of about $2.4 billion due to a drafting error. Some have suggested that this error originated in the Finance Committee's version of the legislation. However, anyone who takes the time to compare our language with that of the subsequently passed substitute amendment will find this is not the case. I am not here to point fingers or try to embarrass anyone, but I will say these are the types of mistakes that happen when tax policy is written outside of the tax-writing committee, and we should all be careful of that. The Finance Committee has an open and transparent process that allows for all of our numbers to be scrutinized well in advance. The committee has all the necessary expertise at its disposal to prevent these types of mishaps. I am well aware that mistakes happen. I would just like to suggest that fewer of these types of mistakes will happen in the future if the Finance Committee is allowed to do its work when it comes to writing tax policy. That is all I have to say on that matter. Once again, we are at a critical juncture. We need to get a temporary highway bill over the finish line. As far as I can see, the only way to do that is for us to take up and pass the House bill. As I stated earlier, this should not be a difficult lift. I think we can get this done in short order. It was a lot of fun to be on the floor--for the first time in about a year--where anybody who wanted to at least had a shot at being able to bring up an amendment for a vote. Four of our colleagues did get amendments up, and they were thrilled. Isn't it amazing we were thrilled about something the Senate ought to be doing every time we bring up a bill? We can get both sides together on a limited number of amendments, but we should not have either side demanding to approve or disapprove the amendments in advance, and that has been happening all too often in the Senate with the way it is being run. I love all of my colleagues. I love my friends on the other side. There is no use trying to kid about it, I care for everybody in this body, and I cared for everybody I have served with. I admit that occasionally there have been Members whom I cared a little less for than most of the others, but the fact is this is a great body. We have had some great people on both sides of the aisle over the 38 years I have been in the Senate. We need to allow our committees to work. Let's allow our individual Senators to work too. Let's understand that we don't all come from the same State or the same jurisdiction. Each of us has a desire to represent his or her jurisdiction in the best possible manner. Frankly, we need to get this Senate back to where it is the greatest deliberative body in the world rather than just something that is run for the benefit of the majority. I don't want it to run for the benefit of the minority either. We can get together--just as we did on this bill--and do much better around here than we have been doing. I hope that as we go into the future, everybody in this body will want to work better together and quit playing politics with everything. We understand this is a political body, and we understand there will be politics played from time to time. It is kind of fun sometimes but not on everything, and especially not when it prevents what the Senate is truly all about, which is wide-open debates and wide-open amendments, and we certainly need to find a bipartisan way of working together. I particularly enjoyed working with Senator Wyden. He has made a distinguished effort to try to make things as bipartisan as he can, and that is hard to do around here anymore in both the House and Senate. The House is supposed to be a body that fights over everything, I guess, because it is a majoritarian body. But even then the House has had many Democratic amendments they could have stopped. While they have had many amendments, we have basically been stopped from being able to act as the Senate should act, which is to allow people the right to bring up their amendments and try to make points that maybe all of us would do well to consider from time to time. I am grateful I am a Member of this body, and I am grateful for the people I have served with all these years on both sides of the aisle. In all the time I have been here, there were only two people whom I thought had no redeeming value. I should not have said that, I guess, but there were two people whom I thought truly didn't have the Senate at heart and truly didn't do what I thought they should do. I have loved all the rest and appreciated them very much. I appreciate the leadership on both sides, but I just hope we can get past all of this bickering and start running the Senate as it has always been run. A lot of it started when you break the rules to change the rules, and this is what happens. It was a real mistake on the part of the majority to do that. They might not think so because they are packing the Federal courts with judges--most of whom would have gotten through. About 98 percent of the President's nominees were getting through and very few were even contested. The fact is that some have gotten through and others should never have gotten through to the Federal bench, and it is because of breaking the rules to change the rules. It is not right for either side to do that, but it has been done. Let's overcome it, and let's be the most deliberative body in the world today, and I think we can do it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I was told 6 p.m.

Mr. HATCH. How long will the Senator from Rhode Island take?

Mr. HATCH. I thank my gracious colleague. He is one of the better people here, and I have a great friendship with him as well. I appreciate it. Patent Trolls Mr. President, I rise to speak about the importance of our patent system and how it continues to be abused by patent trolls. Most Members in this body are fully aware of the crippling effect patent trolls are having on innovation and growth upon all areas of our economy--ranging from Main Street businesses to America's largest technology companies. Through abusive and meritless litigation, patent trolls--often shell companies that do not make or sell anything--extort settlements from innovators throughout the country. How do they do it? Take, for example, the small coffee shop down the street that provides Wi-Fi service to its customers. The shop owners are using a technology exactly as it is intended to be used, but thousands of miles away a patent troll purchases broad patents previously issued to someone else. Next, the patent troll sends vague and hostile demand letters to the coffee shop, and thousands of similar businesses, accusing them, often improperly, of infringing their questionable patents. Many trolls target small businesses that they hope will agree to settle even though they have done nothing wrong simply because they do not have the resources to defend themselves in court. These settlements divert capital that could otherwise be used for research and development or to create jobs. In many cases, it costs around $2 million to fight one of these cases. So they are forced into settling with whatever they can pay rather than doing what they would hope to do; that is, prove that there was an unmeritorious claim. The sad reality is that many businesses often have little choice other than to settle rather than to expend the far greater resources required to fight them in court. Those who do fight back are forced to spend millions in litigation costs, often with no chance of enforcing a court-ordered award against a judgment-proof plaintiff. How big of a problem is this? Mr. James Bessen, writing in the Harvard Business Review, confirms that ``the economic burden of today's patent lawsuits is, in fact, historically unprecedented. Research shows that patent trolls cost defendant firms $29 billion per year in direct out-of-pocket costs; in aggregate, patent litigation destroys over $60 billion in firm wealth each year.'' Mr. Bessen further cites three studies on patent lawsuits currently in the works by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers, Harvard, and the University of Texas. Based upon preliminary findings, Mr. Bessen states: A consistent picture is emerging about the effects of patent litigation: it costs innovators money; many innovators and venture capitalists report that it significantly impacts their businesses; innovators respond by investing less in R&D; and venture capitalists respond by investing less in startups. I agree with Mr. Bessen. The evidence from these studies cannot be ignored. Patent trolls do hurt innovation, and it is past time for Congress to do something about it. For the better part of a year, Congress worked toward a legislative solution to combat patent trolls. In December we overcame the first legislative hurdle when the House of Representatives passed the Innovation Act by a vote of 325 to 91. The White House endorsed the bipartisan legislation by stating: ``The bill would improve incentives for future innovation while protecting the overall integrity of the patent system.'' Here in the Senate, I worked closely with a bipartisan group of Senators to craft a compromise bill that could pass the Senate. Countless hours of negotiation yielded encouraging results on key litigation reform provisions, including fee shifting, heightened pleading and discovery standards, and a mechanism to ensure that recovery of fees will be possible against shell companies. In the spirit of bipartisanship, my Republican colleagues and I were willing--albeit very reluctantly--to lower the bar on fee shifting if we maintained strong litigation reforms elsewhere. I continue to believe mandatory fee shifting is the best way to discourage patent litigation in cases where a plaintiff's or defendant's case is so weak it should never have been brought or defended in the first instance. That is why I included mandatory fee shifting in the Hatch-Leahy Patent Reform Act of 2006 and why I will insist on its inclusion in future legislation. Fee shifting alone gives a prevailing party little relief against patent trolls who litigate in the name of shell companies while their financial backers or interested parties purposefully remain beyond the court's jurisdiction. Thus, there must be a mechanism to ensure that recovery of fees will be possible even against judgment-proof shell companies. The recovery of award provision I drafted is intended to ensure that shell companies primarily in the business of asserting and enforcing patents and litigation cannot escape potential liability for attorneys fees if they are found to have pursued an unreasonable case. Those deemed interested parties may either voluntarily submit to the court's jurisdiction and become liable for any unsatisfied fees awarded in the case or opt out by renouncing sufficient interest related to the litigation or do nothing. In my view fee shifting without such a recovery provision is akin to writing a check on an empty account. You are purporting to convey something that is not there. Fee shifting, coupled with this recovery provision, would stop patent trolls from litigating and dashing-- dashing away, I might say. There is no question that America's ingenuity fuels our economy. We must ensure that our patent system is as strong and vibrant as possible, not only to protect our country's premier position as a world leader in innovation but also to secure our own economic future. Patents encourage technological advancement by providing incentives to invent, invest in, and of course develop new technology. It bears repeating that the governance of patents and copyrights is one of the essential, specifically enumerated powers given to the Federal Government and our Nation's founding. In my view it is one of the most visionary, forward-looking provisions in the entire U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, at least in the 113th Congress, it is unlikely that this body will act to end the abuses by patent trolls. It is shameful that even intellectual property bills are now among the latest casualties of our current partisan gridlock. As Senators prepare to return to their home States for the August recess, I hope they will hear from people who represent the hotel, restaurant, retail, real estate, financial services, and high-tech industries--just to mention a few--about the urgent need to pass patent troll legislation. I hope Senators will be reminded about the opportunity the Senate abandoned to pass important bipartisan, bicameral legislation that was supported by the White House but pulled from the Senate's agenda by the majority leader. I hope Senators will recognize we must end the multibillion-dollar assault on American businesses and workers--because that is what it is. Through commonsense reforms to our patent laws, we can ensure that American resources are used to innovate and create jobs and not wasted to settle or litigate frivolous claims. I am disappointed that during the 113th Congress the Senate has failed to act to address this critical challenge. Legislation to combat abusive patent litigation will be among my top priorities in the next Congress. I intend to do everything in my power to get such legislation passed for the good of the economy and the good of this country. Israel Mr. President, I rise to speak out in strong support of Israel's right to self-defense. This is not a partisan issue. Whether Republican or Democrat, we should all stand behind America's loyal ally as it faces Hamas's cowardly terrorism. In this time of frequent domestic political division, it is encouraging to witness the remarkable degree of unanimity among my colleagues on this issue. The wide support for Israel's self-defense here in Congress reflects the unique bond between the United States and Israel. It is an interest we share for many reasons, including our kinship with Israel as a free society and a democracy, our close economic and cultural ties, especially for those of us who consider support for Israel a deeply spiritual matter, our respect for the many virtues of the Israeli society--from its industriousness to its tolerance--our appreciation for Israel's unique stability in an unstable region full of failed and stressed states, and our recognition that Israel wants nothing more than to live in peace with its neighbors. When Hamas fires constant rocket barrages indiscriminately at Israel's cities and seeks to infiltrate Israel with teams of murderers and kidnappers, Israel has every right to defend itself against this terrorist threat. In the realities of urban warfare against a guerrilla opponent, some civilian casualties are unavoidable. But in its military actions, Israel has acted with admirable and unprecedented concern for Palestinian civilians--making phone calls, sending text messages, dropping leaflets to warn of impending attacks against military targets, aborting critical airstrips to avoid civilian casualties, and undertaking numerous other measures to protect Palestinian civilians, even at the expense of Israeli military objectives. While the Israeli Defense Forces act with great courage not only to protect Israeli civilians but also to avoid harming Palestinian civilians, what does Hamas do? Similar to all terrorists, they hide behind civilians--building bunkers and tunnels to protect its fighters but refusing to shelter civilians; using civilian buildings, including schools, hospitals, and places of worship, to launch rockets and hide other weapons; and even ordering civilians to ignore Israeli warnings and instead turning them into human shields. In the face of this barbarism, Israel deserves our strongest support as it seeks to root out the infrastructure of terror Hamas has built in and around Gaza. The Israeli people have a right to live free from fear of constant rocket attack. While we should applaud the success of the Iron Dome system in protecting Israeli citizens from the Hamas rocket threat, Israel is acting responsibly by seeking to eliminate the means by which Hamas perpetuates that threat. Above all else, we must recognize that supporting Israel is truly about supporting peace in the Middle East. Israel wants peace--not peace at any price but a just, secure, and enduring peace. As long as Hamas terrorists hate Israel more than they love their own children--to paraphrase Golda Meir--Israel must occasionally resort to force of arms in self-defense. In this endeavor our ally deserves our strongest support. I thank my dear colleague from Rhode Island for allowing me to proceed on these two short but very important sets of remarks. I appreciate that and wish him well in every way. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH. I wish to thank my colleague for those comments. Global Warming

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I would be happy to allow Senator Boxer to go first.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my distinguished colleague, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Today the Senate will vote on a short-term extension of funding for the highway trust fund. While it remains to be seen what shape that extension will take, Congress appears to be poised to pass legislation that will ensure that the trust fund will not face a shortfall and that States will be able to continue to plan and implement their transportation projects. This is important. As many have noted, passing this extension will preserve thousands of jobs and prevent disruption of a number of different highway projects that are currently in existence. It has taken a lot of work to get to this point. It has required the collective good will of Members of both parties and it has meant compromise on both sides. In the Senate Finance Committee, both Chairman Wyden and I worked together for weeks on a bipartisan Federal highway funding extension. At the outset of these negotiations, I stated that I hoped any agreement to extend the solvency of the highway trust fund would contain spending cuts and reforms to go along with any revenues. I fought hard on that point, but in the end that particular goal of mine, with one exception, had to be set aside in order for an agreement to be reached. Of course that is how we pass legislation. If everyone got everything they wanted out of a deal, it would not be a compromise. While I maintain that a deal to extend funding for the highway bill should include reductions in spending, I am willing to continue that particular fight on another day. After weeks of negotiations--some of which were very hard fought--we were able to come to an agreement on a funding bill that I believe both parties can support. That, in my view, is more important than any individual demand I may have had going into the discussions. I wish to take a few minutes to speak about the specifics of our proposal. Overall, our bill would provide nearly $11 billion in funding for the highway trust fund, which is enough to extend its life until the middle of next year. Of that total, $2.7 billion would be provided by pension smoothing. I do have to say I am not a fan of using pension smoothing as a pay-for on the highway bill or in any other context for that matter. We stated as much on the record numerous times. However, we do face a funding emergency with regard to the highway trust fund. That being the case, I was willing to compromise on that point. Next, the bill provides an additional $2.9 billion by extending Customs user fees. Once again, in other contexts, I have been skeptical of using this tactic as a pay-for, mostly because it diverts necessary funding away from national trade priorities. However, we drafted the bill to ensure that enough money was left in future extensions to pay for things such as the Generalized System of Preferences, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and the miscellaneous tariff bill, all of which are important to our Nation's trade agenda. Our compromise bill also transfers $1 billion from the leaking underground storage tank trust fund--called LUST--to the highway trust fund. The remaining funds would be raised through a variety of tax compliance measures, all designed not to raise taxes but to realize revenues already owed to the Treasury. The Finance Committee bill does include a provision designed to claw back orphan earmarks. The provision deals with earmarks included in previous highway bills. I wish to thank Senator Coburn for the idea that was the basis of this provision, though in the end we didn't go as far as he or I would have liked. As I said, all told, our bill will provide nearly $11 billion in funding for the highway trust fund and prevent the funding crisis that is on the horizon if Congress does not act. Once again, this legislation represents a bipartisan agreement between Chairman Wyden and myself. It was reported out of the Finance Committee by a voice vote, so it is an agreement by both sides. I wish to thank Chairman Wyden for his willingness to reach across the aisle in this effort. He has been a particularly good partner with whom to work. The Finance Committee has a long tradition of working on a bipartisan basis to provide funding for the highway trust fund, and I am glad we have been able to continue that tradition with this legislation. My only regret is that we were not able to reach an agreement with Chairman Camp of the House Ways and Means Committee, whom both the chairman and I highly respect. He has a tough job over there, and we have nothing but great respect for him. The two committees met over the July 4 recess, and I believe both Chairman Camp and Chairman Wyden acted in good faith to try to reach an agreement, but in the end, it did not end up happening. In my view, this is unfortunate. Had we been able to reach a bipartisan, bicameral solution on this issue at the outset, it would have helped to speed this process along. Still, if we take a look at the bill the House passed earlier this month, we will find it is similar in many respects to the legislation Chairman Wyden and I have put together. They provide virtually the same level of funding, so there is not a substantive difference in the amount of time they would extend the trust fund. The major funding pieces--pension smoothing, Customs user fees, and the LUST transfer--are all the same. The primary difference is that the House bill does not include the tax compliance provisions. Neither the House bill nor our bill is perfect, in my opinion, but they both accomplish the same goal and they do so in a way that under the circumstances I think both Democrats and Republicans can and should support. So while some would say we failed to reach an agreement on the highway bill, I think it is pretty clear there is a lot of agreement on these matters and that one way or another we are going to get a solution soon. In the end Chairman Camp produced what I think is a good bill. I think Chairman Wyden and I have done the same. I would vote for either approach because, as I said, they aren't all that different from one another. I reiterate that the funding levels in the House bill and the Finance Committee bill--and therefore the length of the two extensions--are virtually the same. That point is important, as there is an effort, as evidenced by another amendment we will be voting on today, to put an artificial deadline on the extension. I gather from the statements made by proponents of this approach that they hope this amendment will somehow force Congress to reach an agreement on a long- term extension before the end of this year. This effort is, in my view, misguided, and I would hope, given the fact that both the House of Representatives and the Senate Finance Committee have reached virtually the same conclusion on the length of the extension, Senators will think twice before voting to shorten it. Ultimately, we all want to get to a long-term deal when it comes to the highway trust fund. That desire is shared across both Chambers and both parties. I think we can get there. I don't think we need to impose an artificial timeline or deadline--one that would create a similar crisis to the one we are facing now just a few months down the road--in order to do it. There are other efforts out there that would seriously alter the trajectory of this bill. I wish to stress that what we are working on is a short-term extension. Once the highway trust fund has been funded by this bill, we will need to start working on a long-term bill that will give the transportation community stability and predictability, and I believe both the chairman of the committee and myself truly mean we will do so. We will need to be thoughtful in our approach and must consider every option to ensure that our Nation's infrastructure will be safe, efficient, and reliable well into the future. But before we discuss any fundamental changes to the structure of the highway trust fund, we need to get this step out of the way first. As I conclude, I wish to take a moment to once again commend our chairman, Chairman Wyden, for his efforts on this legislation. From the outset he was willing to reach across the aisle on this bill and as a result the Finance Committee produced a viable, bipartisan product. His leadership in getting us to this point has been essential. We are very close to solving this problem and avoiding a crisis. We just need to get a bill over the finish line, and I hope we can do that in short order. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise to speak about a subject that troubles me greatly: the state of affairs in this body, the U.S. Senate. I spoke on the floor last week about how the Senate has historically lived up to its unique and essential role in our constitutional order. Today, I am compelled to offer an account of this institution as it operates today. I believe this message is important both for the American people, whom we all serve, and for my colleagues in this body. When I spoke on the floor last week, I noted the widespread perception that the Senate has fallen into dysfunction. The pervasiveness of this view is striking among the public, in the media, and even among current and former Senators of all political and ideological stripes. And it is true. The Senate is in worse shape now than ever before in my 38 years of service here. We must properly locate the source of the problem if we are to have any hope of correcting it. Political discourse about the state of the Senate is so often dominated by those who call for the Senate to be more productive, more efficient. To these critics, the Senate's rules are anachronisms, historical accidents, relics of a bygone era that must be swept away for the Senate to race through more legislation and nominations, not the least of which we just heard Senator Grassley speak about. As I laid out on the floor last week, the purpose of the Senate is not to duplicate the work of the majoritarian House of Representatives. Our work is of a different sort. The Senate was designed to refine the unbridled passions of popular will, to apply considered judgment to produce thoughtful legislation aimed at the common good. Structuring a body of such a unique character occupied much of the Framers' time during that hot summer in Philadelphia in 1787. Beyond the Senate's constitutional architecture, the body's rules, traditions, and precedents have developed over more than two centuries, not as flukes but as means of reinforcing and facilitating its purpose. During the past 227 years, the right to debate and the right to amend have become the twin pillars that upheld the Senate's lofty purpose as a body of considered judgment. As Senator Robert C. Byrd wisely observed, ``As long as the Senate retains the power to amend and the power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the people will remain secure.'' Many of the greatest legislative achievements of this body during my 38 years as a Senator were only possible because of our open methods of deliberation and amendment. I think of my many partnerships with the late Ted Kennedy, and others--Senator Harkin, Senator Dodd, Henry Waxman. I can name quite a few. Senator Kennedy and I fought like brothers but became the best of friends. This unique environment of the Senate allowed us to find areas of mutual interest and ultimate agreement for the public good. Last week I named just a few of these landmark accomplishments: the 1981 budget, the blueprint of how we turned the economy around in the Reagan years; the 1997 budget deal in which we cut taxes, balanced the budget for the first time in decades, and created the State Children's Health Insurance Program; the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a vital criminal law that curtailed the abuse of our courts; and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a landmark piece of legislation sadly attacked by many of my Democratic colleagues to gin up a phantom war on women to save their lagging electoral fortunes, but in reality a bipartisan agreement that Teddy Kennedy and I championed and that passed almost unanimously. These are just a handful of our legislative achievements throughout the past four decades. Like so many others, the roots of these successes lay in the Senate's characteristic deliberation, including unlimited debate and an open amendment process. Guaranteeing each individual Senator the full right of participation enhanced the quality of the final product and crowdsourcing good ideas rather than limiting input to a small gathering in backroom Capitol offices. Giving each Senator the opportunity to have his ideas discussed and debated gave us all confidence that the final product represented the best, most considered judgment of the whole body, encouraging Senators to support sometimes imperfect but decisively beneficial legislation. Allowing modifications to the initial iteration of a bill--while often frustrating for partisans and purists--often created a broad base of support for lasting reforms. Emphasizing an open and inclusive process encouraged partnerships even among ideological opposites, such as Ted Kennedy and myself, to find areas of mutual agreement and reach broad consensus. And respecting the limits of the majority party's power established confidence that when the positions of the parties switched, the rights of the minority would remain protected. The atmosphere facilitated by our longstanding rules and traditions represents the Senate at its best. The Senate, functioning as it should, and so often has over much of my time here, demonstrates that these procedures and traditions are not flukes of history meant to be swept away as soon as they are politically inconvenient or frustrate a majority party. Rather, they are vital to the Senate's ability to serve the American people. This is why the first Adlai Stevenson in his farewell address to the Senate as Vice President warned: It must not be forgotten that the rules governing this body are founded deep in human experience; that they are the result of centuries of tireless effort in legislative halls, to conserve, to render stable and secure, the rights and liberties which have been achieved by conflict. By its rules the Senate wisely fixes the limits to its own power. Of those who clamor against the Senate, and its methods of procedure, it may be truly said: They know not what they do. Sadly, these critical and defining practices are under attack. Some who once defended the right to amend when in the minority have acted consistently to deny that right now that they are in the majority. On February 28, 2006, the senior Senator from Nevada, then serving as minority leader, condemned a procedural maneuver that denied the minority the opportunity to offer amendments. He stated unequivocally: This is a very bad practice. It runs against the basic nature of the Senate. That maneuver, referred to as filling the amendment tree, allows the majority leader to use his right to be recognized before any other Members as a means to block any and all other amendments by filling all amendment slots with his own amendments and thus prohibiting anybody else from having any rights of amendment. Less than a year after condemning the maneuver of filling the amendment tree as a very bad practice, inconsistent with the very nature of the Senate, the senior Senator from Nevada became the majority leader. Rather than take his own wise counsel from months before, he instead began a consistent pattern of procedural abuse by using that very same destructive practice. The majority leader employed that tactic 21 times during the 110th Congress and 23 times during the 111th Congress. As the 112th Congress opened, the majority leader pledged to use this tactic only ``infrequently,'' but went on to employ it a record 26 times in the following 2 years. The Congressional Research Service confirms that the current majority leader has used his position to deny amendments to the minority more than twice as often as the previous six majority leaders combined. He has used his position to deny amendments to the minority more than twice as often as the previous six majority leaders combined. Six Senators led this body as majority leader between the 99th and 109th Congresses, three Republicans and three Democrats. I served here under all of them. Together they denied amendments to the minority 40 times in those 22 years. No individual leader used this tactic more than 15 times. As of this month, in less than 8 years, the current majority leader has denied amendments to the minority a staggering 87 times. The right to amend is indeed a part of the basic nature of the Senate, a defining feature of this body that allows us to conduct legislative business differently than in the majoritarian House. The right to amend allows different voices to be heard, different issues to be raised, and different decisions to be made. Denying that right changes the basic nature of the Senate and prefers power over liberty. Hardly a day goes by without the current majority confirming my point. Earlier this month the majority leader discussed the possibility of allowing amendments to a bill. The minority, he said, want amendments ``because they want to kill the bill.'' But he pledged to consider amendments that, in his view, would ``lead to passage of the bill.'' In other words, the minority has only those opportunities to participate in the legislative process that the majority leader says they do. He was right back in 2006: This is a very bad practice, and he is only making it worse. Consider another way of looking at this problem. Recently, almost a year went by during which the majority leader allowed votes on only 11 Republican amendments. Think about that--only 11 amendments in nearly a year. All 45 Republican Senators together got fewer votes on amendments than, for example, one House Democrat, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Indeed, the Republican House majority allowed votes on 174 Democratic amendments during the same period that the majority leader here allowed votes on only 11 Republican amendments. There are Senators who have been here 6 years and have never had an amendment of theirs voted upon--that is pathetic--on both sides. The other defining feature of the Senate, the right to debate, is also fast becoming a thing of the past. This practice has been a central characteristic of the Senate for more than 200 years and, like the right to amend, allows voices to be part of the legislative process who would otherwise be shut out. When I was first elected, this body included only 38 of us Republicans, even fewer than the threshold in our Senate rules to prevent cutting off debate. I know from long experience that the right to debate can often annoy the majority by empowering the minority. But fulsome debate and thorough deliberation far more than expediency or efficiency is essential to the nature of the Senate. Both sides have been annoyed from time to time, but nothing like this. Senate practice and rules have, for more than two centuries, required a supermajority of Senators to end debate before the Senate can vote on a pending legislative matter or a nomination. The current majority leader has compromised the minority's ability to debate in both areas. Under the rule adopted in 1917, ending debate begins with a motion to invoke cloture to end debate. The current majority leader often files a cloture motion on a bill at the very same time he brings it up for consideration. He has used this tactic far more often than previous majority leaders, and its effect is not to end debate on legislation but to prevent it altogether. Whenever those of us in the minority have resisted his demand that we end debate as soon as we begin consideration, the majority leader wrongly labels it a filibuster. Last November the majority leader claimed there had been 168 filibusters on executive and judicial nominations. The majority leader used this supposedly unprecedented level of confirmation obstruction to take the drastic step of abolishing extended debate altogether using the so-called nuclear option. But the majority leader was counting cloture motions, not filibusters. A cloture motion is simply a request to end debate. A filibuster occurs when the debate cannot be ended because the cloture vote fails. In fact, most of those were not filibusters; they were falsely called that. There have been only 14 filibusters of President Obama's nominees, and that practice was on a decline. The Senate, in fact, confirmed 98 percent of President Obama's nominees. There was never a problem there. The majority leader's current opposition to filibustering Democratic nominees is simply impossible to reconcile with the 26 times he voted to filibuster Republican nominees. But even as destructive as the nuclear option has been, some of the less visible changes to the management of this Chamber have proven just as damaging to the functioning of the Senate. Take the committee process--the primary forum for both deliberation and amendment. The majority leader has set a record for completely bypassing the committee process, bringing most of the bills we have considered lately up in essentially final form, shielding them from deliberation and amendment on both the floor and in committee. In each Congress since he became majority leader, the senior Senator from Nevada has set a record for bypassing the committee process. In fact, with 6 months remaining in this Congress, he has already used this tactic more in one Congress than any other majority leader. What are these matters the majority leader brings to the floor? An unschooled observer might imagine that after the negotiation of the Ryan-Murray budget agreement--an imperfect bargain but a breakthrough for cooperation nonetheless--we would join the House in pursuing the appropriations process through the regular order; that we would use the opportunity to exert our influence as legislators on how our constituents' hard-earned dollars are spent. Instead, the majority leader brings up bills that have no chance of becoming law in order to score political points to reinforce disingenuous narratives about a supposed war on women or so-called economic patriotism. The current majority leader's abuse of the Senate amounts to a national travesty. He has broken down so much of what makes this institution serve the Nation's interests in order to advance his own party's temporary political gain. Such a betrayal of trust is nothing short of tragic. To my 56 colleagues who have never served in the Senate when this body lived up to its potential greatness, we can indeed restore the Senate's rightful place in our constitutional order. This body can again be a source of great legislative achievement borne out of thoughtful deliberation and inclusive consideration. But this majority leader's slash-and-burn tactics are not the path to achieve these worthy ends. They are a dead end, leading only to the destruction of this institution that has served our Nation so well for so long. Instead, restoring the Senate will require us all--Republicans and Democrats alike--to stand for the institution's rules, traditions, precedents, and for our individual prerogatives as Senators. The majority leader is my friend, but I have to say these criticisms are valid, they are honorable, and it is about time that people on both sides of the floor start to realize we can't keep going this way and still call this the greatest deliberative body in the world. It is pathetic. I think people on both sides know it is pathetic, and it is time for it to stop. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am saddened to report to my Senate colleagues the passing of a true American hero and defender of our great Nation, Lt. Gen. Marc C. Reynolds, Retired, who passed away with his family by his side on Monday, July 21, 2014. Marc was born in Chamberlain, a small town in south central South Dakota, to the late Morris and Ione Reynolds, in 1928, and graduated from Chamberlain High School in 1946. After high school, he moved on to Colorado where he worked at Estes Park, Montgomery Wards, and attended the University of Denver before entering the Air Force as an aviation cadet in January 1951. He was commissioned upon graduation from pilot training in February 1952. Marc flew F-94B, F-94C, and F-101B air defense assignments between 1952 and 1961 that included rotations to Air Force bases in California, Washington, Okinawa, and Massachusetts. He transitioned to reconnaissance missions in 1961 with an assignment to the Royal Air Force Station in Bruntingthorpe, England, flying RB-66s. After completing Air Command and Staff College in 1966, Marc moved to the 460th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Republic of Vietnam, and flew 230 combat missions in RF-4C's over North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam. Following his Southeast Asia tour of duty, Marc continued with air reconnaissance assignments in Japan and South Carolina. He graduated from the Naval War College in August 1973 and transitioned out of flying assignments and into logistics, where he was assigned to the Ogden Air Logistics Center, UT, initially as the director of distribution and later as director of maintenance. In July 1976, he transferred to McClellan Air Force Base, CA, as the director of materiel management, Sacramento Air Logistics Center. In March 1978, he became the center's vice commander. Marc moved to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, in May 1980 as vice commander of the Air Force Acquisition Logistics Division and took command of the division in October 1981. In July 1983, he was appointed commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center, UT. In Marc's last assignment, he served as the vice commander, Air Force Logistics Command, with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH. In this assignment, he provided worldwide technical logistics support to all Air Force active and reserve force activities, military assistance program countries and designated U.S. government agencies. Marc was a command pilot with more than 5,200 flying hours, including 475 combat hours. His military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Meritorious Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Air Medal with 15 oak leaf clusters and the Air Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters. Marc's passion for aviation continued after his Air Force retirement when he accepted a position on the Utah Aerospace Heritage Foundation board, which helped fund projects for the Hill Aerospace Museum located near Hill Air Force Base. He eventually became its chairman and served a total of 26 years on the board. Marc worked tirelessly in the community to raise funds and searched around the world to obtain aircraft displays to enhance Utah's great Air Force museum. Through Marc's efforts, the museum added two additional hangars and it continued as one of Utah's top visitor attractions. Marc was also a regular fixture at the local Ogden Airport where he kept his airplanes and loved swapping flying stories with his fellow ``airport bums.'' He enjoyed flying friends and family around the local area and never missed the annual flight back to Oshkosh, WI for the aviation celebration at Oshkosh. Marc was the consummate gentleman and servant/leader who was loved by everyone who knew and worked with him. His gift was his extraordinary generosity and natural ability to make people feel important. Marc is survived by his loving wife of 30 years, Ellie, six children: Pam Chatelain, Barbara Reynolds, Scott Reynolds, Lisa Oelke, Kristan Ingebretsen, and Karine Kucej, 15 grandchildren, and 12 great grandchildren. The family wishes to pass on a hearty thanks to the caregivers at Gentiva Hospice Health Care, McKay-Dee Hospital, and the George E. Wahlen Ogden Veterans Home, who took very good care of Marc in his time of need. I wanted to personally highlight this great man's achievements, his service to our country and our freedoms, and his devotion to his family and his community. It was my honor to have known Marc and to make tribute to yet another remarkable patriot that we are so proud of.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I wish to compliment the distinguished Senator from Nevada for his very cogent remarks. They are true, and I appreciate his leadership on this matter. Bring Jobs Home Act Madam President, the Senate is currently debating the so-called Bring Jobs Home Act--a bill supposedly aimed at preserving and creating jobs in the United States. However, as I noted here on the floor yesterday, the Bring Jobs Home Act is little more than political posturing and election-year messaging. It really does get old. We have gone through that over and over while we do not do what we ought to do for this country. The Senate Democrats want to portray the Republicans as the party of outsourcing, which is a joke. So they have crafted a bill that will do nothing to actually address the problem of outsourcing but will provide them with a few days' worth of talking points on the subject. We went through precisely this same exercise in 2012. We voted on the exact same bill during the last election cycle. It was meaningless then, and it is meaningless now. As I said, I went over this yesterday. I talked at some length about the shortcomings of this bill, and I do not want to rehash all of that again today. Instead, I would like to take a few minutes to talk about some things we could be doing to create and protect American jobs. I have filed some amendments to this bill that I think would actually do something along those lines. If we get a chance to offer amendments to this bill--which is, of course, doubtful under the way the Senate is currently being run--I think these are the types of amendments we should consider. One of my amendments is a four-part tax amendment that would help businesses create jobs in the United States. If enacted, it would provide additional cash flow for businesses that would allow them to hire workers, increase wages, and invest in plant and equipment in the United States, among other things. It would do so by making four separate temporary tax provisions permanent. The first of these provisions relates to section 179, small business expensing. My amendment would permanently increase the amount of equipment, certain real property, and software a business can deduct in a year to $500,000 and index that amount to inflation. That makes sense. The second provision would make bonus depreciation permanent, allowing businesses to permanently deduct 50 percent of the cost of qualified property in the first year that property is placed in service. My amendment would also make the research and development tax credit permanent, increasing the alternative simplified credit to 20 percent and eliminating the traditional research and development credit test. Finally, the amendment would permanently provide for a full exclusion of capital gains income derived from the sale of stock of certain small subchapter C corporations held on a long-term basis. All of these would be tremendous amendments and would really create jobs. They ought to be allowed on this bill. Together, these four provisions would provide much needed certainty for job-creating businesses and allow companies to more effectively plan for the future. If we are going to amend the Tax Code in the name of creating jobs, this is a far better approach, as it removes uncertainty and simplifies elements of the code. The Bring Jobs Home Act would actually do the opposite. I have also filed two health-related amendments to this bill. The first of these amendments would repeal the medical device tax that was included as part of the so-called Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare's $24 billion tax on lifesaving and life-improving medical devices is reducing U.S. employment. A recent study by industry group AdvaMed estimated that the tax has cost as many as 165,000 jobs. That is 165,000 American jobs eliminated by this misguided tax. Ten percent of respondents to that survey have relocated manufacturing outside of the country or expanded manufacturing abroad rather than in the United States. This would help solve the inversion problem, but our colleagues on the other side will not do anything about it. Yet they are trying to blame the Republicans for the inversion? Give me a break. The tax is also curbing American innovation. Thirty percent of AdvaMed survey respondents have reduced their investments in research and development--30 percent. If we really want to keep companies from moving American jobs offshore, this is a far better approach. It is far more substantial, and, as the survey data shows, it will have an immediate, real-world impact on jobs in the United States. It is bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats support repeal of the medical device tax. Last year 79 Senators on this floor--including 34 Democrats--voted to repeal the tax. It really is a no-brainer. I hope we can finally get a vote on it. But sooner or later, we are going to get a vote on it, and it is going to be on a bill that will pass both Houses. My other health care amendment would repeal ObamaCare's job-killing employer mandate. As we all know, the so-called Affordable Care Act requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide health coverage to their workers or pay a $2,000 tax per employee. This deters business growth as it discourages small businesses from hiring more than 50 employees and has led many employers to cut workers' hours to keep from going over the mandate's threshold. How stupid can we be? Even the administration has acknowledged that the employer mandate is harmful. They have already delayed it several times in hopes of delaying its harmful impact during an election year. Isn't that nice? If we really want to keep people in their jobs and encourage businesses to hire more American workers, repealing the employer mandate would go a long way. My last amendment would advance U.S. trade policy by renewing trade promotion authority. Specifically, the amendment contains the text of the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014, a bill I introduced in January along with Chairman Camp of the House Ways and Means Committee and former chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus of Montana. This bill establishes 21st-century congressional negotiating objectives and rules for the administration to follow when engaged in trade talks, including strict requirements for congressional consultations and access to information. If the administration follows these rules, the bill provides special procedures to more quickly move a negotiated deal through Congress. Renewing TPA, which expired in 2007, is necessary to successfully conclude ongoing trade negotiations, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, negotiations as well as free-trade agreement talks with the European Union, often referred as T-TIP, involving 28 nations, including ours. These are two landmark trade deals with the potential to greatly boost U.S. exports and create jobs here. The TPP countries--which represent many of the fastest growing economies in the world--accounted for 40 percent of total U.S. goods exports in 2012. Think of the jobs that would be created. Another, the EU, the European Union, purchased close to $460 billion--with a ``b''--in U.S. goods and services that same year, supporting 2.4 million American jobs. In addition, the United States is negotiating the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, with 50 countries, covering about 50 percent of global GDP and over 70 percent of global services trade. This agreement would create many opportunities for U.S. jobs in this critical sector. It is vital that we get these trade agreements over the finish line, and the only way we are going to be able to do that is to renew trade promotion authority. My amendment provides a reasonable, bipartisan path forward on renewing TPA and would do far more to create jobs and grow our economy than the legislation before us today, which is minuscule in effort. As with other amendments, I hope we can vote on this TPA amendment. Of course, I am not the only Senator who has offered reasonable job- creating amendments to the Bring Jobs Home Act. Numerous amendments have already been offered, and I am sure more are on the way--or should I say filed because we have been prohibited from really offering amendments on these bills and really having a robust debate for a long time now because of the actions of the current leadership of the Senate. The Senate is hardly operating as the Senate always has in the past; that is, in an effective, let's-be-positive way. Sadly, if the recent past is any indication, there will not be any votes on amendments to this bill. The Bring Jobs Home Act is not designed to create jobs. It is not even designed to pass the Senate. Once again, the entire purpose of this bill is to give Democrats some political talking points as the August recess approaches. Having an open and fair debate on amendments would distract from this partisan goal. We understand that everything is partisan around here. Everything is political right now. But my gosh, when are we going to start acting as the Senate? That being the case, it is doubtful that any amendments are going to be considered on this legislation, which is, of course, a crying shame. The stated purpose of this bill is to create and protect American jobs. The Republicans have amendments that would do just that and more. I mentioned a few such amendments that would have a far greater impact on American workers and businesses than the bill before us today--most of which are bipartisan amendments. That is what is amazing to me. This is just a game that is being played. It is really an irritating game to me. If we are serious about the idea of creating jobs in the United States, let's have a real debate about it. Let's discuss some alternative approaches. I know my friends on the other side will have great ideas on some of these, if they would be allowed to act like legislators for a change. Let's talk about the real problems that are hampering job growth. Let's set votes on some of the ideas we have proposed. I hope we can do that this time around. But of course I am not under any illusions that the Democratic leadership here in the Senate is about to change course and let this body function the way it is supposed to. They are not about to let the Senate be the Senate. They are not about to let both sides have a full-fledged opportunity to improve these bills. They are not about to allow full and fair debate on both sides. To me, it is mind-boggling in the case of this bill. I hope I am wrong. I hope we can get amendments up that would make this bill a real bill about jobs, instead of just politics. But, sadly, I do not think I am wrong. My experience has been that politics is triumphant around here and getting the people's work done is secondary. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren.) The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak immediately following the remarks of the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am pleased to be in the same Senate with this wonderful Senator from Pennsylvania who does a very good job on the Senate Finance Committee and is, frankly, one of the brighter lights in the Senate. I appreciate him. I appreciate his efforts. I appreciate his leadership. I appreciate what he just got through saying. Mr. President, soon we will begin debate on the so-called Bring Jobs Home Act. There are a number of serious problems facing our country. For example, our national debt currently exceeds $17.5 trillion. That is trillion with a T. Our economy continues to struggle. In fact, the economy shrunk last quarter. We have an entitlement crisis that threatens to swallow our government and take the country down with it. Of course, as has been widely discussed, we are seeing a parade of U.S. multinationals opting to move their legal domiciles to countries outside of our country, outside of the United States. During these difficult times what we are hearing from my friends on the other side of the aisle is not very good. What are we hearing from these friends on the other side of the aisle? We are hearing talk about ``economic patriotism.'' I did not make up that term. It is the latest catchphrase coming from the Obama administration as they try to malign business models and investments they do not like during an election year. Last week I received a letter from the Treasury Secretary calling for ``a new sense of economic patriotism'' as the administration pushed for legislation that would punitively and retroactively seek to limit corporate inversions. The President has repeated the line in some of his recent speeches. Of course, ``economic patriotism'' is not a new catchphrase. It was trotted out by the President during the 2012 election campaign. Now it appears to be making a comeback. Not surprisingly, this comeback is taking place in the midst of another election year. Apparently, as part of this recycled campaign, we are going to have to once again debate and vote on the Bring Jobs Home Act, the same bill the Senate rejected during the last election cycle. If enacted, this legislation would deny the deduction for ordinary and necessary business expenses to the extent that such expenses were incurred for offshore outsourcing. That is, to the extent an employer incurred costs in relocating a business unit from somewhere inside the United States to somewhere outside the United States, the employer would be disallowed a deduction for any of the associated business expenses. Wow. How antibusiness can you be? There are other ways of solving this problem. The bill would also create a new tax credit for insourcing. That is, if a company relocated a business unit from outside the United States to inside the United States, the business would be allowed a tax credit equal to 20 percent of the costs associated with that relocation. As I said, this is a recycled bill. The political talking points surrounding the bill are also recycled. This bill and the related talking points are based on the oft-repeated lie that there are special incentives or loopholes in the Tax Code that encourage businesses to move jobs overseas. No such loopholes exist. As the Joint Committee on Taxation noted in its recent analysis of this bill: Under present law, there are no targeted tax credits or disallowances of deductions related to relocating business units inside or outside the United States. Deductions generally are allowed for all ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred by the taxpayer during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business. These ordinary and necessary expenses may include expenditures for the relocation of a business unit. The truth could not be plainer. Yet the supporters of this bill still talk as though this legislation will end some kind of special tax treatment or deduction for companies that outsource. There is no special treatment. Under our Tax Code, relocation expenses are treated the same whether a company is relocating from a high-tax State in the United States to a lower tax State or if a company relocates some operations offshore. As the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper has made clear, there are no targeted tax benefits related to relocating business units outside of the United States. No credits. None. Zero. As the Joint Committee on Taxation said: There has always been a deduction allowed for a business's ordinary and necessary expenses. Expenses associated with moving have always been regarded as deductible business expenses. That being the case, allowing a deduction for these expenses is not all that remarkable. It is the general rule. Disallowing or putting exceptions on this deduction, on the other hand, would be an extraordinary deviation from long-standing tax policy and would needlessly add yet another level of complexity to our already overly complex Tax Code. Still, let's pretend for a moment this deviation is, in terms of tax policy, justified. It is not, but there is no harm in pretending, I guess. Even if we were justified, in terms of policy, the revenue generated by this proposal is minuscule. According to JCT, the Joint Committee on Taxation, preventing businesses from deducting expenses relating to outsourcing would raise about $140 million over 10 years. That is about $14 million a year--not $14 billion with a ``b,'' but $14 million with an ``m.'' To put the puny amount of this proposal in context, we should compare this revenue number against the volume of business U.S. companies conduct overseas. According to the latest available IRS statistics of income, in 2010 U.S. companies conducted about $1.085 trillion in business abroad, and that is probably low, given the sluggishness of the economy at that time. On an annualized basis, the Bring Jobs Home Act would curtail deductions representing about $40 million in expenses. That represents four-thousandths of 1 percent of all overseas business conducted by American companies. Let me repeat that, four- thousandths of 1 percent--hardly perceptible. As I said, we are talking about minuscule sums here. We are also talking about politics as usual in the Senate. Instead of facing these problems and facing them realistically, some prefer to play politics with it, and it is total BS. Yet over the last few years we have heard countless claims from my friends on the other side of the aisle that ``closing loopholes for businesses that move jobs overseas'' will pay for all kinds of things. Earlier this month, for example, President Obama claimed that part of his infrastructure plan could be paid for by making sure corporations shipping jobs overseas ``pay their fair share of taxes.'' Well, if this bill is representative of this particular effort, the President doesn't plan on paying for very much. I would bet the $14 million wouldn't even be enough to pay for a single high-speed rail car or a round of IRS bonuses. It is amazing to me what people will do for political advantage that is shameless. They should be ashamed. Of course, all of this discussion only focuses on one section of the bill. When you add in the other part of the bill--the 20 percent credit for expenses associated with insourcing--the Bring Jobs Home Act actually loses revenue--loses revenue--adding $214 million to the deficit over 10 years. So why are we debating this bill? It is obviously not about raising revenue to pay for anything. It is clearly not about impacting business economic decisionmaking, and it is not about improving or simplifying our Tax Code. Instead, this bill is about politics, pure and simple. It was all about politics the last time we debated this bill in 2012, and it is about politics this time around. I, for one, am getting sick of it. I am so sick of this body not doing its job. The Democrats, both in the Senate and the White House, think they gain some traction by talking about ``economic patriotism'' and trying to paint Republicans as the party of outsourcing. Give me a break. The bill is yet another election-year gimmick, pure and simple, and they ought to be ashamed. Quite frankly, the American people are tired of gimmicks. What they want are serious solutions to the problems ailing our country. Sadly, they are not getting that from the Senate majority leadership these days. If we are serious about bringing jobs home, we should try working on legislation that will actually make the United States a better place to do business. Let's make our country more attractive to do business. We should try working on legislation that will actually grow our economy. But we don't do much of that in the Senate these days. In fact, we don't do much of anything in the Senate these days other than to continue to overbalance the Federal courts with this administration's suggestions. Yes, we don't do much of that in the Senate these days. Instead, what we are seeing is an endless series of showboats designed to highlight whatever Democratic campaign theme is popular that week. We have seen votes designed to highlight the supposed ``war on women.'' We have seen votes designed to make it appear the Republicans are indifferent to the plight of the middle class. Give me a break. Now we are seeing votes designed to demonize Republicans for their supposed lack of ``economic patriotism.'' What a fraud. When does it end? From the looks of things, not any time soon. I suspect as we debate the so-called Bring Jobs Home Act, the Republicans will offer a number of amendments that, unlike this bill, will actually create jobs in the United States. I plan to offer some amendments along those lines, and I am sure many of my colleagues will do the same. This will be an opportunity to show whether the Senate Democratic leadership is serious about creating jobs and helping American workers and businesses as they claim to be. If, in fact, that is the aim of this legislation, then we should have a full and fair debate on it, including an open amendment process that will allow the Senate to explore alternative approaches and to discuss different ideas and how best to create jobs in this country. But I wouldn't hold my breath, watching how this Senate is being run these days. Let's talk about actually fixing our Tax Code. Let's talk about growing our economy. Let's talk about real solutions to the real problems facing our Nation. I hope that is the kind of conversation we will have on this bill. Of course, I am not naive. I know how the Senate operates these days. I have come to the floor numerous times--only yesterday, in fact--to lament the deterioration of this body under the current leadership. I am not under any illusions that things are simply going to change overnight. I might add that the Senate leadership--these are friends of mine. I am just disappointed in the way they are running the place, and I think my disappointments are correct and accurate. But make no mistake, things need to change. For the good of our country, things need to be done differently around here. Like I said, the American people are tired of political gimmicks. They are tired of the endless campaign. They want to see the Senate act in a way that will produce results. Sadly, with this legislation before us this week, it looks as if we are in for yet another round of partisan gamesmanship. We can do things differently and, once again, I hope we will. But as I have said many times before, I am not going to hold my breath. I just wish we could get together and work in the best interests of not only this body but our country. I don't see the leadership at the White House either, nor do I think Secretary Lew's letter on this issue was a justifiable letter. In fact, I think it was pathetic, and I am very disappointed in him as a person and as a leader in this country for that letter. Of course, I wrote one back to him, certainly, expressing my viewpoint. U.N. Disability Treaty Yesterday the Foreign Relations Committee voted 12 to 6 again to report the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This was similar to the committee vote 2 years ago. On December 4, 2012, the Senate voted 61 to 38 on the treaty, less than the two-thirds the Constitution requires for ratification. I expect a similar result if the Senate takes up the treaty again. Yesterday afternoon the senior Senator from Iowa--a friend of mine, and a person for whom I have a lot of regard--spoke on the floor about the treaty, and as he has done many times, urged its ratification. I don't doubt his sincerity at all, and I admire him personally for the long service he has given to this country. He called the concern that this treaty would undermine American sovereignty and self-government imaginary, hypothetical, and unreal. In fact he said: Anyone who is hiding behind that issue does not want to vote for this treaty for some other reason. But it can't be the reason of sovereignty. I will not speculate about what the Senator from Iowa meant by some other reason. He and I have worked hard together to promote the rights and opportunities of all persons with disabilities. I feel deeply about that issue. I feel as deeply as he does. We were partners in the development and passage of both the original Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and the ADA Amendments Act in 2008. I take a back seat to no one when it comes to legislation to help persons with disabilities. But since I gave a speech on the floor 1 year ago explaining my concerns about this treaty's effect on American sovereignty and self- government, I have to respond to the charges by my friend from Iowa. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I am not hiding behind anything, including the sovereignty issue. That issue is neither imaginary nor hypothetical, and it is certainly not cover for some hidden, unexpressed reason for opposing this treaty. As I explained on July 10, 2013, this is a treaty not with other nations but instead with the United Nations itself. Ratifying it would create obligations across at least 25 different areas of social, economic, cultural and even political life. Article 8, for example, would even regulate the United States to ``raise awareness throughout society, including at the family level, regarding persons with disabilities.'' If this is all the treaty did, if it simply stated obligations, I might support it. It would then be generally similar to the treaty regarding child labor the Senate ratified in 1999. That treaty states that ratifying nations shall ``take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor.'' But these two treaties are radically different and the difference is the very reason why the disability treaty threatens American sovereignty and self-government and the child labor treaty does not. The difference between these treaties is who has authority to determine whether ratifying nations are in compliance. The child labor treaty leaves that up to the ratifying nations themselves. The disability treaty, however, gives authority to determine whether ratifying nations were meeting their treaty obligations to the United Nations. That is considerably different and very dangerous. Each nation must submit compliance reports to a U.N. committee of experts which uses its own criteria and standards to determine compliance and makes whatever recommendations it chooses. Treaty advocates say this U.N. committee will not have actual legal authority to require changes to domestic laws and that even if it did, we would not have to change a thing. I have three responses to that. First, as I explained in my speech last year, American sovereignty and self-government are not so narrow they can only be undermined by the United Nations literally assuming legal and political control of our country. America is a republic under a written constitution, and in this system of government the people must have the last word on everything because the people are sovereign over everything. The American people and their elected representatives, not a U.N. committee, must have the last word not only on our laws and regulations but also on our priorities, our values, and our standards. Ratifying this treaty would endorse a formal, ongoing role for the United Nations in evaluating virtually every aspect of American life. It would say that the U.N.--not the American people--has the last word about whether the United States is meeting its obligations in these many areas. That undermines American sovereignty and self-government. The United Nations hardly needs a legally binding treaty to opine on aspects of American life and public policy. It does so all the time. Ratifying this treaty, however, would formally endorse the right of the United Nations to do so and, even worse, subject ourselves to their evaluation. That is serious. We should think twice before we allow something like that to happen. Second, we may already have the world's most expansive disability laws and regulations--and I know because I helped bring them about--but this treaty goes far beyond that. The U.N. Web site says this treaty legally binds any nation ratifying it to adhere to its principles, and the treaty spells out what that adherence will require. Ratifying nations agree to enact, modify, or abolish laws and regulations at all levels of government--federal, state, and local--that are inconsistent with the treaty's principles, but the treaty also requires evaluating and changing any social customs and cultural practices that are inconsistent with those principles. Anyone who has followed the United Nations knows that a U.N. committee is not likely to look as favorably on American customs and practices as it might on our laws and regulations. Third, even though the U.N. disability treaty appears to have been modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act, it utilizes a very different concept of disability. For more than four decades, American laws in this area have defined a disability as an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. The disability treaty, however, states that ``disability is an evolving concept'' involving barriers that hinder ``full and effective participation on an equal basis with others.'' In other words, the U.N. committee would use a subjective fluid concept of disability to evaluate compliance with the treaty of U.S. laws that utilize an objective, functional definition of ``disability.'' I am pleased to note that, even without U.S. ratification, no less than 34 nations have ratified the U.N. disability treaty since it was sent to the Senate on May 17, 2012--15 of them since I last spoke here on the treaty a year ago. Yesterday the senior Senator from Iowa asked for someone to explain to him why the disability treaty before us today raises concerns about sovereignty but the 1999 child labor treaty did not. Well, I think I have done that here today. The disability treaty gives the last word on whether a nation is in compliance to the U.N.; the child labor treaty leaves that entirely up to each nation. I understand Senators have different understandings or concepts about such things as American sovereignty and self-government, but it is wrong to say that if I take a different view on that than the senior Senator from Iowa, I must somehow be hiding my real reason for opposing this treaty. In our system of government, legislation and treaties are profoundly different ways of addressing public policy issues with profoundly different effects on sovereignty and self-government. I will continue to be a champion for disability legislation, but I cannot support this disability treaty. I will support those who have disabilities, who have difficult times, as I did back then. Frankly, I still remember my great friend from Iowa and myself walking off the floor to a whole reception room filled with persons with disabilities, all of whom were crying and happy that we had done this in America. America leads the world in our quest toward disabilities issues. In all honesty, I don't want to lose our sovereignty in this issue, nor do I want to turn over our rights and our own self-interests to the United Nations, as good as it may be from time to time. But I have also seen where it hasn't been so good from time to time as well. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to make my statement.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the unique and essential role of the Senate in our constitutional system of government. In doing so, I am of course addressing the American people whom we all serve, but my message today is intended especially for my colleagues in this body. I had the honor of serving here for more than three decades with one of my closest and dearest friends, the late Ted Kennedy. Our friendship inevitably invited others to describe us as the Senate's odd couple given the vast differences in our backgrounds and our outlooks and because of the many fights we had on the floor as well as the many successes we had together. But my friendship with Teddy flourished, as did our legislative partnerships. Even with polar-opposite political philosophies, we were able to find significant areas of mutual agreement, and we both maintained a great affection for the Senate--an institution to which we had each devoted most of our adult lives. Toward the end of his life, as Teddy suffered through the terrible affliction that eventually took him from us, he watched his beloved Senate with growing concern. He observed a growing dysfunction beginning to overcome this body. He believed this institution, which he loved so dearly, was breaking down. The man rightly described as the liberal lion of the Senate concluded that this body was no longer working as it must. My friend Teddy was right, and the Senate has only gotten worse since he diagnosed its ills several years ago. The Senate is more dysfunctional today than at any other point during my nearly four decades as a Member of this body. I am not alone in this assessment. Former colleagues from both political parties--from Chris Dodd to Olympia Snowe--have spoken out with great passion about the breakdown of the Senate as an institution. It would be hard to find a current Member of this body who, in moments of honest reflection, did not feel as if the Senate is in many respects broken. Most importantly, the American public has lost faith in this body and largely views the Senate as an institution characterized by dysfunction. To say that today Congress is held in low esteem is an understatement. Our approval rating ranges from the teens to the single digits. One survey found that the public has a higher opinion of brussel sprouts, root canals, and used car salesmen than of Congress. In many respects, this popular assessment is justified. Throughout my 38 years of service in this body, I have never seen it this bad. For the sake of our country and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we must restore order and function to the Senate so we can fulfill our constitutional responsibilities and once again conduct the people's business. In reflecting on the past four decades in the Senate, I have come to realize that I possess an increasingly unique perspective. I have been in the majority for a total of 16 years and in the minority for a total of 22 years. I have served in this body with eight different majority leaders, four Republicans and four Democrats. By contrast, the majority of my colleagues--56, to be precise--have served in the Senate only during the tenure of the current majority leader. Nearly as many have served alongside only the current President. These numbers will increase in the coming months with the retirement of six of our senior colleagues and the potential electoral defeat of others. To my colleagues who as a matter of firsthand experience don't know anything different, let me say this: The Senate has not always been as dysfunctional as it is today. Quite the opposite. Until recently, this Chamber often lived up to its reputation as the world's greatest deliberative body. We regularly worked together in an orderly and constructive fashion to advance the common good, and we routinely defended our institutional prerogatives against executive encroachment. Unfortunately, none of that is true of the Senate today. I intend to speak in greater detail later this week about what I believe ails the Senate and how we can restore the health and dignity of this venerable institution. But to understand where we have come from and just how far we have strayed, we must begin at the beginning. Remarking on the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison wisely observed that in determining the form the Senate should take, it was necessary to consider the purposes it would serve. The Framers were clear about these objectives. The Senate was to serve as a necessary fence against what they described as the fickleness and passion that drives popular pressure for hasty and ill-considered lawmaking--what Edward Randolph called ``the turbulence and follies of democracy.'' In fulfilling this purpose, the Senate was to be a place of thoughtful deliberation, an assembly dedicated to careful scrutiny, and a body with great concern for the sovereign States and the individual liberties of all Americans. These were to be the purpose of the Senate. Its institutional design followed directly from these principles. The relatively small membership of the Senate would amplify the importance of each individual Senator as opposed to Chamber leaders or large voting blocs. Unlike in the House of Representatives, where robust participation by individual Members would be impossibly cumbersome, in this body each Senator could become intimately involved in all aspects of the Chamber's deliberation and debate. Longer terms would allow Senators to resist initially popular but ultimately unwise legislation and allow for vindication of this more measured approach prior to facing reelection. Staggered terms would create a continuing body that could temper unwieldy swings of public passion. Statewide constituencies would require appealing to a broader set of interests than more narrow and homogenous House districts. In addition, the Senate's authority to determine its own rules would allow the gradual development of traditions and precedents unique to this body and essential to its ends. Building upon the Constitution's defining institutional contours, these historic rules and traditions have shaped the Senate into a body that Gladstone called ``the most remarkable of all of the inventions of modern politics.'' The Senate's most characteristic operating procedure became unanimous consent, which requires the agreement of not just a majority or even a supermajority but of all Senators. As Senate Parliamentarian emeritus Robert Dove testified before the Rules Committee in April of 2010, the two key features that have come to define to Senate through its history are ``the right of its members to unlimited debate and the right to offer amendments practically without limit.'' With these historic rules and defining modes of operation--unlimited debate and amendments--the Senate rightfully earned the title of the world's greatest deliberative body. In his 1897 farewell address, the first Adlai Stevenson, then Vice President, captured the essence of the Senate: In this Chamber alone are preserved without restraint two essentials of wise legislation and good government: the right of amendment and of debate. Great evils often result from hasty legislation; [but] rarely from the delay which follows full discussion and deliberation. Stevenson went on to locate in the Senate's time-honored rules and traditions the very foundation of our Republic: The historic Senate--preserving the unrestricted right of amendment and debate, maintaining intact the time-honored parliamentary methods and amenities which unfailingly secure action after deliberation--possesses in our scheme of government a value which cannot be measured by words. In keeping with its institutional design and longstanding traditions throughout most of its history, the Senate has engaged in robust discussion and meaningful debate rather than being dominated by partisan grandstanding and cheap political theater; the Senate has sought to chart a path toward the common good rather than simply messaging to particular interests or serving narrow constituencies; the Senate has acted to cultivate common cause and has enabled constructive compromises and accommodations to advance national priorities even during times of great ideological division; and throughout the Senate's history, individual Members have worked to develop meaningful and enduring partnerships with colleagues on both sides of the aisle rather than marching lockstep with their respective parties and simply heightening the divisions in society. This institution has served the Nation well when adhering to its enduring principles and characteristic practices. Indeed, for most of the last four decades, as I have witnessed firsthand, the Senate's robust deliberation and open amendment process has facilitated and enabled some of the greatest legislative achievements of the modern era. One of the most historic of such debates in which I took part occurred in my fifth year as a Senator. President Reagan took office in 1981 facing enormous challenges--stagflation, out-of-control spending, a crushing tax burden, and an underfunded military. His first legislative priority was to cut marginal tax rates, restrain Federal spending, and bolster our national defense. As part of the vanguard of the Reagan revolution in the Senate, I steadfastly supported these policies and campaigned tirelessly to enact these landmark reforms. In the Democrat-controlled House, the drama unfolded predictably between party leadership and various voting blocs, with conservative Democrats eventually joining Republicans to support what became the Gramm-Latta budget. But in the Republican-majority Senate, while debate was equally passionate, our deliberation was of a very different sort. We discussed many of the legislative provisions at length and voted on dozens of amendments from Senators of both parties covering a wide range of subjects. Many were tough votes on heart-wrenching issues-- from child nutrition to cost-of-living adjustments for seniors--but we took those tough votes and ultimately made the difficult choices necessary to usher in unprecedented economic growth. By allowing numerous votes on minority amendments, Democrats received the hearing they deserved on the issues about which they cared most, and having had the opportunity to fight for their causes, many of these Senators rightly felt they had done everything possible to improve the underlying bill. So when it came to final passage, the Senate's budget passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 88 to 10. Given the nature of the reforms, that margin was striking. It demonstrates that the opportunity for extended deliberation and an open amendment process tends to yield a final product that can win broad support by giving Members confidence that the ultimate result represents the considered judgment of the whole Senate. From the perspective of committed conservatives such as President Reagan and myself, the final amended Senate bill was far from ideal. In the end, while we won support for the tax cuts that spurred growth and for the defense buildup that helped win the Cold War, we could not convince Congress to make meaningful cuts to Federal spending or even to restrain the growth of Federal spending. But to have opposed the final package because it wasn't perfect, because it only achieved some of our goals, would have been madness. Absent passage of the final bill's reforms, the central accomplishments of the Reagan years would never have come to fruition. In reflecting on how the Senate can and should work, let me also commend the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. I am struck by the similarities between the 1996 election and the 2012 election when voters reelected a Democrat to the White House and a Republican majority to the House. Back then, both sides understood the voters' mandate to seek areas of agreement and develop consensus wherever possible--in short, to set aside partisanship and work together for the common good on the critical issues of the day. Republicans wanted significant tax cuts and spending controls that many Democrats opposed. Democrats--led by my friend Senator Kennedy-- had for years sought an expansion of health care to uninsured children who neither qualified for Medicaid nor had families who could afford health coverage. The debate that transpired over these measures seems almost foreign in today's Senate. Rather than being presented with a final bill as a fait accompli, we had a truly deliberative committee process, a meaningful floor debate, and the opportunity to vote on numerous amendments. Ted Kennedy and I used the opportunity of an open process to make a key step toward consensus. Teddy was wise enough to realize that I shared his desire to provide health care for uninsured kids who were in need, and I recognized that he was open to innovative means of delivering that care and did not insist on an inflexible, big government bureaucracy to control it. Together, we crafted an amendment that created the State Children's Health Insurance Program--fully paid for, with flexible means of delivery and true State authority over the program. SCHIP is not beloved by ideological purists, especially on the right. But I believe its approach is fully compatible with my conservative principles and a model for a basic, efficient social safety net run by the States. More importantly, our partnership on this issue demonstrates how the Senate ought to work. This Chamber provides a unique environment--its constructive character, its respect for individual Senators' participation in the legislative process, its forum for thoughtful deliberation, and its open amendment process. Without these, we could never have passed SCHIP and the larger 1997 budget--that was a budget compromise--of which it was a part. The same is true of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has since served to safeguard fundamental individual liberties, and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which is arguably the most important law enforcement measure of the last half century, and so many other landmark accomplishments of the Senate during my time here. I am proud to have played a role in shaping each of these laws--as part of a constructive legislative process that was possible only as a direct result of the Senate's longstanding rules and traditions. Without this body's characteristic structure and mode of operation, which facilitates meaningful deliberation and ultimate cooperation between diverse viewpoints, such legislative achievements could never have occurred. Throughout its history, the Senate has advanced the common good--not simply through refining public opinion and translating it into well- considered legislation but also because this body has defended its institutional prerogatives and essential role in our system of constitutional government. Senators of both political parties have often stood up to executive encroachment--not for partisan gain or political grandstanding but in defense of Congress as a coordinate and coequal branch of government with its own essential authorities and responsibilities. Implicit in the constitutional design of separating the Federal Government's powers is the idea that each branch would have the incentive and authority to resist encroachments from the other branches, ensuring that unfettered power is not concentrated in any one set of hands. The Founders recognized this as indispensable to preserving the individual liberty of all citizens. For as Madison counseled in Federalist 51: ``[T]he greatest security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.'' Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia embodied this institutional ideal as much as anyone with whom I have served. Although he helped lead this body for more than a half century and left us just 4 short years ago, I was surprised and dismayed to learn that a full third of current Members never served alongside him. Senator Byrd fiercely defended this body's prerogatives and independence against the encroachments of the executive branch. And he neither censored his criticisms nor weakened his defenses based on the President's political party. Even in his twilight years, when President Obama took office with extraordinarily high approval ratings, Senator Byrd was willing to hold the new President's feet to the fire to defend the Senate's right to give advice and consent to nominees. He publicly chastised the new White House for its excessive reliance on czars, observing that unconfirmed policy chieftains ``can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.'' In addition to defending the Senate against executive encroachments, Senator Byrd was a stalwart defender of the Senate's most characteristic and historic features. He regularly spoke to newly elected Senators, admonishing each of us before we even took office to learn about the body to which we had been elected and in which we would serve. Senator Byrd was as good as anyone I have ever known at explaining the direct connection between the design of the Senate and the liberty that all Americans cherish. In November 1996, for example, when speaking to the incoming freshman Senators, he stressed the two most critical and distinguishing features of the Senate's operation. Like so many other students of the Senate, he steadfastly maintained that ``as long as the Senate retains the power to amend and the power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the people will remain secure.'' That was Robert C. Byrd, one of the leading Democrats of all time. Throughout his time in this body, Senator Byrd never abandoned this message. He stood up for the Senate's defining characteristics, no matter which party was in the majority and no matter who occupied the Oval Office. He even took on his own President from time to time. A few months before his death in 2010, he wrote to his colleagues identifying the right to amend and the right to debate as ``essential to the protection of the liberties of a free people.'' We need a renewed dedication to the special role of the Senate and its institutional prerogatives that Senator Byrd exemplified so well. He was right to counsel incoming colleagues to ``study the Senate in its institutional context, because that is the best way to understand your personal role as a United States Senator . . . [Y]ou must find the time to reflect, to study, to read, and, especially, to understand the absolutely critically important institutional role of the Senate.'' Many of my colleagues--even those with whom I rarely agree--have the potential to be great Senators and statesmen: worthy stewards of this institution, zealous guardians of its prerogatives, and true defenders of its role in our constitutional system of government. But, sadly, whether blinded by partisan loyalty to the President or too inexperienced to understand the Senate from any other perspective than having a like-minded Senate majority and President, too many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have allowed--even facilitated--the breakdown of the Senate's vital institutions and role. From our right to debate and amend through regular order, to our role giving advice and consent to the President's nominees, the Senate has emasculated itself. By doing so, we only abandon our responsibilities, discard our authorities, and lay ourselves prostrate before a politically destructive President. It is past time to restore the Senate's rightful place in our constitutional order. I urge my colleagues--both Democrats and Republicans--to join me, to stand and fight for the greatness of this body and start standing for the rights and the powers of the legislative branch. That is what we are here to do, in addition to enacting good laws. But you cannot enact really great laws without full and fair debate, without full and fair right to amendments. This is a great body, but it has gone downhill a long way over the last number of years. No President deserves total fealty by this body or by his or her party Members in this body. All I can say is, it is time for us to start acting like the Senate. It is time for us to have full and fair debate. It is time for us to have open amendments. And that goes for Democrats and Republicans. I thank the Presiding Officer. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to finish my remarks.