Angus King

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, this is a looming financial crisis that everyone in this room knows is happening, and it is one that we can prevent, but every day we delay it gets harder. This is a very reasonable approach, putting a bipartisan group together to bring us solutions. I urge my colleagues to support this and hope we can pass this amendment by voice vote.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that upon the conclusion of morning business on Tuesday, February 2, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Calendar No. 5, Peter Buttigieg, of Indiana, to be Secretary of Transportation; further, that the time until 12 noon be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and that at 12 noon, the Senate vote without intervening action or debate on the nomination; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, if you ask 100 Americans what qualities they want in a public servant, I would bet there are a few common words that would come up. Smart. Dedicated. Bipartisan. Honest. Trustworthy. Humble. Simply put, they will describe Chad Metzler--my legislative director for the past 8 years and one of the finest public servants I have ever met. That is why today I rise with a heavy heart to wish Chad well as he prepares to embark on a new adventure . Each of us in this body understands that the Senate's work is not entrusted solely to Senators. Our names may be on the door, but we can't claim successes on our own. Our staffs play a critical role in our efforts to navigate the complex challenges facing the Nation and serve the American people. That is why hiring the right people is one of the most important decisions any Senator makes. If a Senator is lucky, they will find staffers who have extensive experience and knowledge of the legislative process; who aren't afraid to challenge their boss's preconceived notions in the pursuit of better policy; who are kind, level-headed public servants; who are generous colleagues; who understand the importance of the faith placed in us by the American people and work ever day to live up to this enormous responsibility. If a Senator is lucky, they will find staffers who check a few of those boxes. If they find someone who can do all of the above, they have hit the jackpot. When Chad Metzler joined my team as legislative director in 2013, I and the people of Maine hit the jackpot because he is all of those things and more. Over the past 8 years, I have had the privilege to have Chad lead my legislative team. Sadly, good fortune only lasts for so long. As Chad transitions into a new, exciting opportunity, I am confident that he will continue to make vital contributions to the American people in his new role, but before he leaves us, I want to take a moment to reflect on all his contributions to the Senate and the country. From my early days in the Senate, Chad's experience was invaluable. Prior to joining my office, he spent 17 years working for Senator Herb Kohl, from his home State of Wisconsin. Throughout that tenure, Chad spearheaded a number of important, varied responsibilities--from serving as the Senator's legislative director, to holding the position of staff director on the Senate Special Committee on Aging, to managing Senator Kohl's portfolio on the Appropriations Committee. That combination of skills made Chad a rare breed--an experienced Senate staffer who possessed both a generalist's understanding of the big picture and a specialist's ability to get into the weeds of thorny policy issues. Chad's background was invaluable in helping to bring me up to speed on the Senate's parliamentary procedures and the body's unique, frustrating quirks. As a former Governor, I faced the unenviable task of shifting from the executive role to being just 1 of 100. As an Independent used to relying on bipartisan coalitions, the Senate's often rigid partisanship presented its own challenges. Chad responded with creative thinking and dogged persistence, and the results were quickly apparent. Just a few short months after I came to Washington, Chad helped me lead a bipartisan compromise on student loan rates that is projected to save taxpayers $715 million over the next 10 years and an estimated $30 billion for students over the following 4 years. That legislation set the tone for our office--a focus on rolling up our sleeves, bipartisan work, coalition building, and commonsense solutions to the problems that plague the American people. In the years that followed, Chad and his legislative team helped to build on that mission through level-headed, analytical thinking. Among other successes, we have worked across the aisle to pass legislation that confronts the opioid epidemic sweeping our communities; improves America's insufficient cyber defenses; helps more working families access childcare; and addresses the $12 billion maintenance backlog at America's national parks. Each of these legislative successes came about through hard work and bipartisan discussions. More importantly, each made life better for our constituents. Obviously, Chad is a talented legislative craftsman, but somehow, he was an even better leader and person. For the past 8 years, Chad has guided my legislative team with a steady hand, helping dozens of young public servants in my office grow and thrive. He treats everyone he meets with respect and kindness, never once talking down to someone with less experience or a different perspective. Just as important, his sense of humor has remained intact through a quarter century of Senate service, ensuring that even in the midst of serious work, we don't take ourselves too seriously. When I was Governor, I said I always was looking for staff who demonstrate both competence and kindness. You can have some with one trait, some with the other, a few with neither, but when you find folks with both, you invite them onboard immediately. Chad doesn't just have those qualities; he personifies them. As you can gather from my remarks, Chad is an irreplaceable part of my team, and the Senate is poorer for losing him. But, as Chad always does, I feel the need to take a step back and analyze the entire situation. In doing so, I find a few key reasons for gratitude. I am grateful that even though Chad is moving on, he leaves behind a team that is well-educated in the Metzler School of Public Service. His years of mentorship have crafted our team into one of the sharpest, most dedicated staffs on Capitol Hill, and I know his influence and example will be felt in our office for years to come. I am grateful that although our body is losing a dedicated public servant, the country is not. In the days ahead, Chad will begin a new opportunity that will put his skills to good use. This new role will allow him to continue fighting for pragmatic, principled solutions that move our country forward. Now more than ever, we need folks like him working on tough problems. Finally, I am grateful that even though Chad will no longer be on my staff, he will forever remain a trusted adviser and friend. Chad's intellect, professionalism, and warmth are rare attributes; to possess all of these qualities, while still remaining humble and even-keeled, is even rarer. I consider myself extremely fortunate to know him and look forward to continuing that association. Mr. President, I have a simple philosophy of leadership that has guided me throughout my life: Hire good people, and take credit for what they do. When I hired Chad Metzler, I made one of the smartest leadership decisions of my life--bringing on the ideal partner to break bipartisan logjams and make life better for the people of Maine. I am saddened to say goodbye to my adviser and friend today, but I know that his best is yet to come. I can't wait to see what is next.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, Winston Churchill once said that he could do a 2-hour speech extemporaneously, but a 10-minute speech took immense preparation. I don't know what he would have said about a 4-minute speech. We are a 240-year anomaly in world history. We think that what we have here in this country is the way it has always been. It is a very unusual form of government. The normal form of government throughout world history is dictators, kings, czars, pharaohs, warlords, tyrants. And we thought 20 years ago the march of history was toward democracy, but it is in retreat in Hungary and Turkey--goodness knows, in Russia. Democracy as we have practiced it is fragile. It is fragile, and it rests upon trust. It rests upon trust in facts. It rests upon trust in courts, in public officials, and, yes, in elections. I don't sympathize or justify or in any way--in any way--support-- that is putting it mildly--what happened here today, but I understand it. I understand it because I saw those people interviewed today, and they said: We are here because this election has been stolen. And the reason they said that is that their leader has been telling them that every day for 2 months. We cannot afford to pull bricks out from the foundation of trust that underlies our entire system. And I agree with Governor Romney that the answer to this problem is to tell people the truth--is to tell them what happened. It is easy to confront your opponents. It is hard to confront your friends. It is hard to tell your supporters something they don't want to hear, but that is our obligation. That is why the word ``leader'' is applied to people in jobs like ours. It is not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be something that we take on as a sacred obligation, and if people believe something that isn't true, it is our obligation to tell them: No, I am sorry, it isn't, just as Senator Portman just said, as Mike Lee just said: I am sorry we can't do this here. We don't want to do this here. This is a power reserved to the States, not to the Congress. And I agree with the majority leader. I think this is one of the most important votes any of us will ever take. On December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln came to this building. He came to this building in the darkest days of the Civil War. He was trying to awaken the Congress to the crisis that we were facing, and he didn't feel that they were fully and effectively engaged. He ended his speech that day with words that I think have an eerie relevance tonight. Here is what Abraham Lincoln said: Fellow-[Americans], we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. And here are his final words: The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, ``The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President''--Senator Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2016. I don't always agree with Senator McConnell, but I agree with him on that one. This is a violation of our rules, of our history. There have been 13 vacancies within the last 10 months of a Presidential election year in American history. Nine of them were before July 1. Of those nine, seven were confirmed by the Senate, two were not: one under President John Tyler and the other was Merrick Garland. There have been only four vacancies in the Supreme Court that have occurred after July 1 of an election year; zero of them have been confirmed: three in three cases, including Abraham Lincoln. They weren't even nominees; the President waited until after the election. In one, there was a nominee; the Senate tabled the nomination. So all of this talk that we have had about history and precedent, those are the facts: 13 in the last 10 months, 9 of them before July 1--all were confirmed except one 150 years ago and Merrick Garland. I agree with Mitch McConnell on the 13th of February 2016: ``The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.'' He said that 8 months before the election. This confirmation, if it takes place tomorrow, will be 8 days before the election. It doesn't pass the straight-face test. If there is a concern about the will of the American people, about one-third of the voters have already voted. This election is already one-third over, and yet we are barrelling forward with this nomination. We shouldn't even be here. We shouldn't even be having this discussion. One of the reasons we shouldn't be here is that the Judiciary Committee broke its own rules in order to vote this nomination out. Here is rule 1 under ``Quorums,'' section III, of the Judiciary Committee rules: ``Seven Members of the Committee, actually present, shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of discussing business. Nine Members of the Committee, including at least two Members of the minority, shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting business.'' What an inconvenient rule. But I have to presume that that rule, which has been there for years, was put there for a reason: in order to preserve the tradition of comity and respect for the minority that this body has often stood for. ``Nine Members of the Committee, including at least two Members of the minority, shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting business.'' That quorum wasn't there when this nomination was reported out. So we have trampled precedent. We have trampled history. We have even trampled the rules. And I know that my colleagues say: But it is in good cause. We need to get this conservative Justice on the Court. It is for a good cause. I am reminded of that wonderful play: ``A Man for All Seasons,'' about the ends justifying the means. Roper says: ``So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law''--the rules? Sir Thomas More said: ``Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road the law to get after the Devil?'' Roper said: ``I'd cut down every law in England to do that!'' Then here is the point. This is what More responds: Oh? And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws for coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and, if you cut them down-- and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright with the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake. That is why we have rules, for all of our safety's sake. But we are going to violate those rules. We are in the process of violating those rules. I have heard a great deal of pearl clutching around here about packing the Court. Oh, no, somebody is talking about breaking the rules and packing the Court. Well, of course, article III of the Constitution doesn't establish how many members of the Supreme Court there should be. The number of the Supreme Court has been changed seven times in our history. It has ranged from 4 to 10. I don't want to pack the Court. I don't want to change the number. I don't want to have to do that, but if all of this rule-breaking is taking place, what does the majority expect? What do they expect? They expect that they are going to be able to break the rules with impunity, and when the shoe, maybe, is on the other foot, nothing is going to happen, that the people over here are just going to say: Oh, well, we can't change these rules One of the things that has amazed me since I have come here is how people feel that they can do things to one another and never have it have any consequences, never have it come back on them. The shoe may be on the other foot. We don't know what is going to happen next week. The other piece of this nomination that bothers me in this process is that there has been all this talk about qualifications. I would argue that qualifications isn't the question; it is what kind of judge they will be. There are thousands of people in this country who are qualified to be a judge. There are 1,700 Federal judges--almost 2,000. There are 30,000 State judges. There are lots of people who are qualified, who have been to law school, who have been judges, who are smart, who can write opinions. That is not the issue here. The issue is, what kind of judge will this person make? That is what is important. What is their philosophy? This is a lifetime appointment. How are they going to decide important cases? These are important decisions. One week after the election, on November 10, we are going to have an argument in the Supreme Court about the future of the Affordable Care Act. Literally, tens of millions of people's insurances depend upon that, not to mention the requirement in the Affordable Care Act, which is the only legal requirement in the country to protect people with preexisting conditions. I am tired of people around here saying, ``I am for protecting preexisting conditions,'' when they voted to gut the Affordable Care Act 35, 40, 50 times. The President of the United States signs an Executive order saying, ``We are going to protect preexisting conditions.'' It means nothing. It is not worth the paper it is printed on. The only way you can protect people with preexisting conditions is to pass a law that you can do that, and we did it with the Affordable Care Act. If that law is struck down, 130 million Americans are at risk. They are at risk. So I want to know what kind of decisions is this person going to make? The Affordable Care Act is on the chopping block. A woman's right to choose is on the chopping block. The scope of government action, what can we do here in this body, in this Congress, in this government, that is on the chopping block. Election disputes are on the chopping block. I am going to talk a little about that later. But we have this bizarre current practice, where we have a so-called hearing and there are all these questions, and the witness, the prospective Justice, says: Well, I can't answer that because that might come up when I am on the Court. I can't tell you what I think about any of these things. It is as if you were courting someone, you are thinking about getting married--a lifetime commitment, just like a lifetime appointment to the Court--and in the middle of one of your dates, you say: Well, I really like to travel. Do you like traveling? And she says: Well, I don't know. I can't tell you until after we are married. I am not sure. I couldn't give you a definitive answer to that. And then you say: Well, I love opera. Now, my favorite thing is to go to opera. How about you? Well, I can't answer that question. I can't tell you because that is hypothetical, and I will tell you when you invite me to an opera after we are married. Then you say: Well, how about kids? I really want to have a big family. No, I am sorry. I can't answer that question. That is exactly what is going on in these hearings. Judge Barrett didn't answer much of anything. ``I can't answer that.'' I think that is nonsense. She can say: Here is how I think about that issue now, but I reserve my right to change my mind in a particular case with particular facts after I have read the briefs and heard the argument, but here is how I think about that now. But no. These hearings are a waste of time. We learned whether or not she did her laundry, but we didn't learn anything about how she is going to decide these cases for the next 30 years. This isn't something abstract. This is going to affect individual Americans' lives; yet we are not allowed to find out what she really believes. But do you know what? For these last three nominees, the dark money folks have spent about $250 million to put them over the finish line; a quarter of $1 billion have been spent by people--we don't know who they are--to push these nominations. These folks aren't investing that money on spec. They know what they are getting. We may not know what they are getting, but they damn well know what they are getting. They didn't spend a quarter of $1 billion in the hopes that they knew what the results were going to be; they know. They know, but we don't. They are investing; they are not contributing. We do have some indication of what her philosophy is in the abstract of she won't answer questions about particular cases, but in the abstract, we know that she says she is an originalist. She says Antonin Scalia was her mentor. She was his clerk, so she is an originalist. What does that mean? Well, it means if you have a provision of the Constitution, in order to interpret what it means, you look at two places: You look at the text, what does it say, and then you look at the intent, the understanding of the text of those 55 men in Philadelphia in 1787. That is it, period. That is the analysis. Well, there are a couple of problems with that. Article I, section 8, authorizes the Congress to raise and support an Army and a Navy. What about the Air Force? What about the Air Force? It doesn't say Armed Services; it says Army and Navy. So we look to the text, Army, Navy--doesn't mention the Air Force--so let's look at the intent. Do we think that those guys in Philadelphia looked ahead 115 years to the Wright brothers? Of course not. That is ridiculous. That is a ridiculous interpretation. Well, so how do you decide that the Air Force and, more recently, the Space Force is constitutional? Well, you do a reasonable interpretation. What was the broad intent? To protect the country. And, therefore, the Air Force and the Space Force are constitutional. But by an originalist's standard, neither one passed the test--not in the text, not in the intent. That is supposed to be the test. It is nonsense. It is a nonsense theory. The provision of the Air Force is pretty easy. The President has to be 35. That is easy. There are two Senators from every State--not three, not one--two. Those are easy. But what about a term like ``due process''? What about due process and the Fifth Amendment? What does that mean in a real case? Can you be thrown in jail for life and not have access to a lawyer? Is that due process? It was for about 150 years. It wasn't until the sixties that right to counsel in the Gideon case became a constitutional right. Did the courts invent that? No. They were trying to put some life into this concept of due process. There is no way to determine exactly what a broad term like ``due process'' meant in 1787 or in 1868 or in 2021. It takes a court to think about it and to apply some growth in morality, ethics, law, politics, culture, to put life into a provision like that. There are other ones. Let's see: Due process, equal protection of the laws. It took about 100 years to get from the 14th Amendment to Brown v. Board of Education. So the fact that segregated schools were a violation of equal protection of the law wasn't very obvious in 1868. It took 100 years for us to get to the place where, yes, everybody realizes that that was wrong. This is one of the fallacies in the originalist theory, and Judge Barrett was asked about this: What about Brown v. Board of Education? What about Loving v. Virginia? I was in law school when Loving was decided. It was illegal in Virginia to have an interracial marriage. It was illegal in a lot of States. I venture to say it was probably illegal everywhere in 1868. But the Court, in 1967, decided that marriage was a fundamental right, that it was part of the equal protection of the laws, and that it was wrong to tell people of different races that they couldn't marry one another. So how does the originalist handle that case? They don't dare say that Brown was wrongly decided or Loving was wrongly decided. Do you know what they say? Do you know what she said? It is a superprecedent. Well, come on. That is a label. It doesn't mean anything. That is a dodge. That is intellectual dishonesty. If your theory works, it works. If you have to say that Brown or Loving or dozens of other cases--Miranda, Gideon--are all superprecedents, it doesn't speak very well for your theory. It is a copout. Now, if Antonin Scalia were here--whom I knew in law school, by the way. I knew him as Nino. If he were here, he would say: Well, Angus, if the Constitution needs amending and changing, you don't do it by the courts; you do it through the amendment process. That is why they wrote it. Well, the problem with that is we would be amending the Constitution about every 2 weeks around here. Can you imagine, if we had to do an amendment to the Constitution, going through Congress by two-thirds and three-quarters of the States to legalize the Air Force or to say that due process means that you don't have to give evidence against yourself; that you have a right to a lawyer; that you have a right to be told what your rights are, as is the case in the Miranda decision? The Space Force. We passed the Space Force last year. We would have had to also do a constitutional amendment. No. If that were the case, if we had to do a constitutional amendment every time there is a change in something in the Constitution, in the meaning of a term in the Constitution, the Constitution would be as long as the United States Code. It just doesn't make sense. The real problem with the originalist theory--and this is Judge Barrett, and I know she is intelligent, capable, law professor, judge-- for only 3 years, by the way, but 3 years. The real problem is, the originalist theory to which she subscribes--and she says she subscribes to it--allows no room for moral or ethical growth. Everything is frozen in 1787--or 1868 if you are talking about the 14th Amendment. Jefferson got this. Jefferson wasn't one of the Framers. He was in France at the time the Constitution was written, but he certainly is one of the Founders of the country, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and a successful President. He wrote an interesting letter in 1816 on exactly this point, exactly this point. Here is what Jefferson said: I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions That is the way I feel. But . . . laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions-- That means us. --must advance also to keep pace with the times. Listen to this. He concludes this: We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. Now, I don't think our ancestors, the Framers, were barbarous, but they hadn't really thought about things like right to counsel, right to be aware of what your rights were under the Constitution as a criminal defendant. They certainly weren't aware of the awful, awful impacts of racial segregation and racial segregation in the schools. They weren't aware of those things. Jefferson is right. We have to be able to allow our institutions to change as we become more developed, more enlightened. As new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. Now, I understand the problem with judicial legislation. I don't want to convert the Supreme Court into an unelected third branch of the Congress that has lifetime tenure. I get that. The Supreme Court, in its interpretation of the Constitution, can't be totally unmoored from the text of the Constitution or the intent of the Framers, but it has got to take a broader view of what these vague terms like ``due process,'' ``equal protection of the laws,'' ``privilege and immunities''--what those things meant and what they mean today as we have grown and learned--as we have grown and learned. The other piece of this originalist philosophy and the one that I think may have the greatest effect as it takes root on the current Supreme Court is not necessarily in the cases that we are talking about like Roe v. Wade. It is more cases like the Affordable Care Act or the Environmental Protection Agency or the FDA or any effort whatsoever around here to do something about climate change. This is a straightjacket for the powers of the Federal Government. That is really what it is all about. That is why those guys invested $250 million. They want to cripple, strangle, and squeeze the Federal Government so that it can't act on behalf of the American people. That is what is going on here. They don't like the regulatory state. They want to repeal the new deal. Some originalists even question Social Security and Medicare, beyond the powers of the Federal Government. That is what is going on here. Yet, they have a narrow, crabbed view of the powers of the Federal Government, but these originalist folks have a broad view of the powers of the State government to impose on your personal rights. I have always thought of the Constitution as being an elaborate Vegematic which slices up power so that it isn't concentrated in any one place. That is what the Constitution is all about. The fundamental issue of all political science is quis custodes ipsos custodiet, an ancient Roman question: Who will guard the guardians? We create a Constitution to give power to people over our lives, and then how do we control them from abusing us? History tells us it will always happen. Lord Acton, in the 19th century, said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the Framers knew this. They were geniuses in terms of understanding human nature, so they created this elaborate Rube Goldberg scheme to make it hard to make laws. And, boy, did they succeed, as we well know. But even after they created this scheme with two houses and vetoes and conference committees and two-thirds and treaties and all of this complex institution to make laws, they were still scared. They were still afraid of the powers of a rampant majority. They were still afraid of what their government would do to them. So they passed the Bill of Rights--the Bill of Rights. I have always thought of the Bill of Rights as a kind of force field around us as individuals, things that they can't do to us. They can't take away our freedom of religion. They can't take away our freedom of speech. They can't go after the press. The government can't do these things. The originalists have a narrow view of what the Federal Government can do to help us, but they have a broad view of what the States can do to trample on those individual rights. They want to throw us back to a time when every State has its own rules on these fundamental rights. I don't think individual Americans' rights should depend on geography. They shouldn't depend on where they live. Fundamental human rights that are in the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court over the last 150, 200 years should not be kicked back to the States to be compromised or minimized. Finally, what is going on here is an undermining of confidence. We take this whole thing for granted--these magnificent halls, the marble columns, the speeches, the votes. It has always happened; therefore, it always will. No. We are an experiment. We are an experiment that has been going on for a little over 200 years. In human history, we are a blip. We are an anomaly. Democracy is very unusual and very hard, and it depends on trust. If you stop and think about it, it depends on trust. When my town clerk in Brunswick, ME, says ``Here are the votes--Trump 87, Biden 104,'' I trust that those are the right numbers. I trust. If I don't, then that way lies chaos. What this Senate is doing right now is one more drip in the undermining of confidence in this institution. It is no secret that confidence in Congress has plummeted over the last 25 or 30 years, and we are doing it. We are adding one more brick to that wall of lack of confidence in this process by violating our history and our rules to barrel through to a confirmation that I think is inconsistent with the rules and principles of this body and our own personal obligations. This is a blow to the Senate. What this process says is that anything goes as long as you have the votes. We don't care about the rules of the Judiciary Committee. We don't care about the history and traditions of the Senate. If you have the votes, ram it through. This body is built on some restraint, on some rules of comity and restraint and responsibility and thinking of what happens next. You are going to win this. You have the votes. You are going to put this judge through--but at the cost of just pulling one more support out from underneath the edifice of this magnificent government. It is not only a blow to this institution; it is a blow to the Court. It is a blow to the Court, and here is why. Of all the things that Judge Barrett said and didn't say in her hearing, the one that disturbed me the most was her failure to commit to recusing herself if a matter comes before the Court shortly after her confirmation involving this election of her patron, Donald J. Trump. That is a gimme. Do you know why? Because all the Court has is its credibility. The Court doesn't have an army. It doesn't have the power of the purse. All it has is its integrity, its reputation for fairness. If you go out that door and look up, it says ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' That is what it is all about. The judicial canons speak to this issue very directly. Often in our lives we all want to avoid impropriety, but the judicial canons go even further: 2A of the judicial canon says that a judge must avoid the appearance of impropriety. What could appear to be more improper than a judge appointed by a President of the United States, and 10 days later she votes on a matter that will involve his election? He has already told us he wants this election to go to the Supreme Court, and he has already told us he wants his Justice there. That is corruption in realtime. That is impropriety right in front of our eyes. That answer alone should have disqualified her if she didn't have the integrity to say: Of course I won't vote on an election matter involving this President. Of course I won't. But she didn't. As far as I'm concerned, that is a disqualification. Now, I am not a Supreme Court Justice. I wasn't on the law review. I am an old country lawyer from Brunswick, ME. But I know impropriety when I see it, and this is it. This is it. The Constitution is a wonderful document. It has served this country well. The evolution of jurisprudence through the U.S. Supreme Court, with fits and starts, has generally served this country well. But to put a Justice on this Court under these procedures, under these circumstances, who we are pretty sure is going to take positions antithetical to those of the majority of Americans and could take positions that will be profoundly damaging to a majority of Americans is an abdication of our responsibility. I understand that the majority has the votes. I deeply hope that, tonight or tomorrow morning, some Members of the majority will wake up and have an attack of conscience and say: I can't do this. It is not right. It is not right. I can't sacrifice the reputation of the Senate, compromise the reputation of the Supreme Court, undermine the procedures and history of this body. I can't do it. I hope four Members of the majority will find it in their hearts and minds to take that position. I am not optimistic, but I think we all need to go into this decision, and I think all those who vote tomorrow have to understand what they are doing and what it means and what it will mean to the people of this country. We could have done better. We should have done better. We owe it to the American people to do better than this. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I am sure you and I and all the Members of this body remember that night in late March. It was late at night. I remember standing in the back of the Chamber to see one of the truly historic votes. It was a unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate to pass the CARES Act. It was an amazing achievement to see the Senate and the Congress come together in that way with the White House, with the President, to help meet the needs of the American people. When we passed that bill back in March, September seemed a long way away. We thought we had provided enough aid for small businesses. It turns out we didn't. We thought we had provided enough aid for people, unfortunately, who have fallen into unemployment through no fault of their own but the fault of this dreaded COVID, but we didn't provide enough. We hoped that we had provided enough for first responders, for schools, for healthcare professionals, for testing, and for all the things that were necessary to get us out of this terrible pandemic. It turns out that wasn't the case. Here we are in September facing a renewed version of this virus that is now spreading in parts of the country that weren't affected back in March. I want to address, No. 1, that we must do something. We have to respond to the needs of the American people just as we did in March. I don't understand why this time it seems to be a partisan issue; why this time we can't have the same spirit that we had then of negotiation, of give and take, of compromise to reach a bill that all realize now was a really significant accomplishment. For some reason, now it just seems to be much harder. I understand the concern about the debt and the deficit. I used to be a Governor. I know about balancing budgets. States have to balance their budgets, but now is not the time. If we don't take further action to shore up the economy and protect the people who are being impacted by this, the fiscal cost in the long run will be worse. The revival of the economy will take longer. The cost to the Treasury will be greater than what we are proposing to spend now. I believe and I hope that we are moving slowly toward some kind of agreement that will allow us to provide the support to the American people and the American economy that will make such a difference in how we are able to cope with this terrible disease over the next several months--at least through the end of the year. That is really the mission that is before us. The Democrats made a proposal back in May. They passed the Heroes Act of over $3 trillion. They have moved. The Speaker and the minority leader here have moved $1 trillion. They made a counteroffer a few weeks ago of about $2 trillion. The White House apparently, over the last couple of days, has said we are now talking about something at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion as a solution. The parties are moving, and I hope today that they will continue to discuss and that the table will have people sitting at it trying to find a solution. I think there is hope that we can do that. I deeply hope that we can come to an agreement. Schools across the country are seeing, unbelievably, additional expenditures in all areas to try to get back to normal, to try to get back into the classroom. If they are going to do that, they need more buses. They are going to need more teachers. They are going to need more people. They are going to need more cleaning materials. They are going to need all kinds of additional expenditures they weren't anticipating. Small businesses are continuing to teeter. I hear awful stories about small businesses that between now and the end of the year are in danger of closing their doors forever. That would be a tragedy for our country. We are continuing to see people lose their jobs. We are continuing to see people on unemployment. We are continuing to see people who can't put food on the table because the aid that we provided in the CARES Act in March ran out at the end of July I am urging, No. 1, discussions. That is pretty obvious. I hope that the representatives of the two parties and representatives of the White House can come together and reach an agreement. Part of this agreement has to contain within it support for States, towns, and cities. They are suffering, too, and they are providing the very services that the people need in this pandemic. States can't borrow money the way we can. They have to balance their budget on a year-to-year basis. If they are being clobbered by the effects of this disease, not only in expenditures but in loss of revenues, they only have two choices. I have been there. They only have two choices. One is drastic cuts, and the other is raising taxes, neither of which is an acceptable alternative in the midst of a recession, and neither of which makes any sense for the American people. They have either to cut or raise taxes. Those aren't good options. By the way, I can only speak for the Maine budget. I don't know how other State budgets work. But in Maine about one-third of our budget-- between 25 percent and 35 percent of our State budget--goes back to our communities. It goes to the capital city of Augusta, makes a U-turn, and goes back into the towns and cities across Maine, mostly in the form of general-purpose aid to education, also in the form of revenue sharing, and in other kinds of grants and contracts. When we talk about the State, it sounds like we are talking about these big, impersonal entities, but we are really talking about towns-- small towns--and school districts. That is where a lot of this impact is going to fall. It is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. It is hurting people--the people who are being laid off, the people who are going to have to be laid off, whether they are in a town or city, a county or the State. That hurts the economy. Those are people who are buying things in the stores, going to restaurants, and going to grocery stores. They are going to places to buy clothes, and if they can't do that, then, the entire economy is pulled down. If we don't help the States and the cities and towns in this situation, the estimates are that it is going to hit GDP by 2 to 3 percent. That is huge. That is a huge economic loss that is going to translate into a fiscal loss for us and a tragic loss for the American people. The estimate in Maine is a $1.4 billion shortfall of our State budget over the next 3 years--a half-billion dollars in this fiscal year that we are in right now. Towns and cities across Maine are already starting to furlough first responders. Who is it that works for the towns? Who is it that works for the cities? Police and fire are the biggest components. They are not hiring people. I think we need to face the fact that those who are opposing aid to our cities and towns are the people who are defunding the police. That is who is defunding the police because their budgets are going to be cut if they don't get some assistance from this body and this government. Let's be real. Let's talk about facts. Let's talk about the real impact of our lack of attention to this issue. This is a personal tragedy for these families, and it is one more blow to the economy. By the way, this is not a blue State issue. Here are some States whose budgets have been hit by more than 10 percent by the loss of revenues caused by the COVID: Alaska, which is not much of a blue State; Indiana; Kansas; Kentucky; Montana; Oklahoma; and Iowa. Those States are hurting, too. This blue State-red State stuff bothers me. I don't know how many emergency appropriations for natural disasters, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes I have voted for. It never occurred to me to ask what color the State was. It never occurred to me. We are a community. This is one country. I don't ask how Florida voted if there is a hurricane that strikes that State or Georgia or Alabama, which is being hit right now. If they need help, we should provide it. But what we are seeing now is a slow-motion fiscal hurricane that is hitting many, if not all, of the States of the United States. We should come together and help them. As for this business about that, well, we don't want to bail out somebody's pension program, look, this is an easy calculation. The Treasury Department is capable of making the calculation. What were your revenues last year? What were your projections before COVID? What is the difference? That is what we are talking about. Make no mistake, we are talking about real, concrete, on-the-ground losses of jobs and losses of the services that those jobs provide. Whether they are public health workers, first responders, firefighters, or police--yes, police--they are who are being impacted here, and it is we as citizens who are the customers of those services who need the protection and who need the services they provide. They are who are being hurt. I hope that we can come to an agreement and that we can get over this nonsense that this is somehow a blue State-red State thing and that we are bailing out States that were not prudent. I am tired of hearing that. We are talking about people's lives here. We are talking about the protection of public services. We are talking about teaching our kids. We are talking about people who are providing the basic protections that we all take for granted in our daily lives. Really, I have two simple messages: One, let's make a deal. Two, that deal should include support for those people and institutions in our States, in our cities, and in our smallest towns so that they will have the wherewithal to be able to help us all get through this thing together. That is what this is all about, and those are the people on the ground who are helping us get through this together. We can do this. We proved in March that we could do it. I think we must and can and will do it again. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, we are talking about the National Defense Authorization Act. We are talking about preventing and dealing with threats to our country. I want to describe a hypothetical threat--a threat that throws millions of people out of work almost overnight. It causes the stock market to collapse. It cripples the airline industry. It has people afraid to leave their homes and States scrambling for materials to prepare and cope with the attack. The attack comes in waves. Just as it seems to be receding, it comes back. It is difficult to know the sources of the attack. The country is divided. There are conspiracy theories and polarization and politicization of this awful situation. I am not describing the pandemic. That is what we have experienced. I am describing a potential, catastrophic cyber attack on this country. Everything that I listed would be part of what would happen in the case of such an attack, plus our networks would likely be down--no more working from home, no Zoom, no meetings. The effect on the economy would be twice, at least, the effect of the coronavirus. The electric grid could likely be compromised. The electric grid-- people think about the lights, but in the South, electricity is necessary for air-conditioning. In the North, electricity is necessary for firing oil and gas-fired furnaces. We are talking about no air- conditioning and no heat. It could be in the dead of winter. We are talking about airports closed. We are talking about the financial system potentially in tatters. Peoples' lives and livelihoods--their life savings could dissipate at the stroke of a key. We are talking about thousands of water systems across the country that could be compromised by a cyber attack, making people afraid to drink the tap water in their homes. We would have uncertainty, economic catastrophe, and an enormous challenge to this country By the way, what I just talked about is not entirely hypothetical; it is happening now. Our financial system is under attack. I talked to a utility executive recently whose system is being cyber attacked 3 million times a day--today. I have talked to small banks in Maine that are being attacked thousands of times a day. We have had ransomware attacks on our towns and cities across the country. They have hacked our OPM--the Office of Personnel Management--and gotten the personal data of millions of American citizens. And, of course, we know about the attacks on our election infrastructure and the dangers of those attacks continuing and escalating. The financial system is at risk. The energy grid is at risk. The transportation sector is at risk. This is a very serious and immediate challenge. One of the important lessons from the pandemic--I think one of the overall lessons from the pandemic is that the unthinkable can happen. If you had told any of us a year ago that we wouldn't be leaving our homes, that we would be wearing masks when we went out, and that our restaurants and social gatherings would be closed, nobody would believe that. Well, it has happened. And a catastrophic cyber attack can happen. That is why, in the National Defense Act last year, the Congress passed and the President signed the creation of something called the Cyberspace Solarium Commission--a 16-member Commission; 4 Members of Congress; totally bipartisan; 4 members from the executive and 6 members from the private sector--to take an in-depth look at this threat and to try to come up with a national strategy and set of plans to cope with it now before it happens. That was the mission of our Commission. We met over 30 times. We had hundreds of hours of consideration. We had hundreds of witnesses and submissions of information from around the country, thousands of pages of documents, and came up with a report. Ironically, our report was released on March 11. It was probably the last significant large meeting in these buildings before the shutdown occasioned by the pandemic. We had dozens of recommendations. I am proud to say that 11 of our most important recommendations are in the Defense bill that is going to be considered this week. They have been included in the bill that has been reported out by the committee on a totally bipartisan basis. That is an important first step in implementing this project. The main point I want to make, though, is how urgent this is. Just as the pandemic was unthinkable, nobody can conceive of an attack that would bring down the electric system or the financial system or the transportation system or the internet, but it can happen. The technology is there. We all think in terms of World War II and conventional forces. I believe the next Pearl Harbor will be cyber. That is going to be the attack that attempts to bring this country to its knees. As we have learned in the pandemic, we have vulnerability, and we have to prepare for it. We have amendments in the Defense bill that relate to the Department of Defense. That is good, but one of the issues with this subject matter is that it is spread across the government, both in the executive sector and here. We have 18 or 20 amendments that are pending that we hope we are going to be able to improve and get into this bill with the clearance of other committees, but getting 20 amendments cleared--because of the multiplicity of jurisdictions that cover cyber, we had to get 180 clearances from committees across the Congress, in both Houses. That indicates how fractured this policy process is. The same thing is true in the executive branch. The authority for cyber is in Homeland Security; it is in the CIA; it is in the FBI; it is in the NSA. It is scattered throughout the government. It is something that we proposed that we try to make sense of this process and provide both in the executive branch and in the Congress central points that can have authority and responsibility over this area. There is a great deal of work left to be done. We had some 80 recommendations. We hope that as many as 15 or more will be in the Defense bill. But there are others that will require other committees, and we look forward to working with them. Two of our recommendations in terms of making sense of the organization relates to this body, and one relates to the executive. This body--we are recommending that we create a Select Committee on Cyber in the Senate and one in the House--exactly what was done in the 1970s when it was realized that intelligence was too important to be scattered throughout the jurisdiction of all committees. That is when the Select Committee on Intelligence was created. We are recommending the same change here. In the executive, we are recommending a Senate-approved national cyber director in the Executive Office of the President--analogous to the Trade Representative--who is Senate-approved, appointed by the President, and serves at the pleasure of the President. The idea is to give the President a central point of contact to deal with the multiplicity of authorities that are involved in this issue throughout the executive branch of the Federal Government. One of my principles of business when I was doing contracts and working in business was that I want one throat to choke. I want one place where I can go to hold someone accountable and to hold them accountable not only for reacting but for planning. That is what we are proposing to be brought forth, and we hope we are going to be able to earn the support of the administration. The Commission, as I mentioned, had four Members of Congress, four members from the executive branch, who made significant contributions, and six members from the private sector. We had unanimous recommendations after an enormous amount of work and serious thought by very serious people from across this country. There is plenty of work left to be done. I want to thank the committee chairs and the leads and the staff and all of those who have worked with us to get these recommendations this far. But I also want to leave the Senate and the Congress and the American people with the knowledge that we are not there yet, that we are vulnerable, and that this is something we have to attend to. This is not something that may happen; this is something that is happening now, and it may happen--it will likely happen to a more serious degree in the future. The pandemic has taught us some important lessons about planning and preparing and providing. That is what we are talking about here. We have to plan for the unthinkable. We have to prepare continuity of the economy, continuity of government. We have to prepare in terms of what our deterrent policy is because the best cyber attack is the one that doesn't occur. We also have to provide the structures and the resources to be sure we are ready to meet and defeat this next challenge. I consider this one of the most serious threats facing this country. It is easy in the midst of a pandemic and all of the other issues that are swirling around an election year and everything else, but it is so clear that this is an overwhelming risk to the future of this country and that we have to take it seriously, we have to respond, we have to be ready, we have to deter, and we have to prepare. I deeply hope we will continue the momentum that has begun in this bill and be able to take the next step and the other recommendations and other good ones that may come forward in this process so that we will be prepared and we will be able to respond and prevail I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, someday, 100 years from now, a family will camp on a mesa in Utah or a hillside in North Carolina or a canyon in New Mexico or they will hike the rocky coast of Maine. They will play on a ballfield in Kansas, and it will be because of the work that we are going to do this week in this Congress. They will not know King or Daines or Alexander or Portman or Warner or Manchin or Gardner or all the others who are going to support our efforts. Our names will be long forgotten, but what we do will be benefiting this country for generations. There are very few things we can do in our work here that are permanent. Bills can be repealed. Programs can be amended. Times change, and all can change with it. What we are talking about this week in the Great American Outdoors Act is making a gift to our fellow Americans. Setting aside special places, setting aside opportunities for outdoors and recreation is a sacred trust, and it is one that goes back to the beginning of this country. As I said, there is very little we can do that is permanent, but this is one of those things. It is the right thing to do, but it also makes sense from the economy's point of view in all of our States. Acadia National Park in Maine generates more than $300 million a year in economic activity in the surrounding communities. Our new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is already generating economic activity in the area where it is located. A visit to Maine to see the seacoast and the forest at those two sites would be rewarding for any family. What we are doing today will enable families to continue to make these kinds of journeys--the next generation and the next and the next. That family will see a sunrise on the coast of Maine, a sunset on a mesa in Arizona. They will not know who it was, but they will know what we did. In Maine there is a wonderful mountain, Mount Katahdin, the highest point in the State, and it was proposed to be set aside for the people of Maine by the Governor named Percival Baxter in the twenties, one of my predecessors. The legislature of Maine said: No, we don't have to do that. We shouldn't really do that. Who is going to pay for the roads? We are going to take property out of the tax base. What about the trees? There were all kinds of reasons for not doing it, so it didn't happen. It didn't happen while Percival Baxter was Governor, but he dedicated the rest of his life to making it happen. Individually, privately, he purchased full parcels of land to assemble what is now Baxter State Park, one of the gems in this country that contains, at its center, Mount Katahdin. He did this as one of the greatest acts of private philanthropy in the history of the United States. It was the legacy of a lifetime. Few of us will have an opportunity to do what Baxter did, but we have that opportunity now. Where does the money come from? It comes from the people, in the sense of revenues from the use of Federal lands for mineral extraction. This is an idea that was brought forth in 1965 when the Land and Water Conservation Fund was created, and the idea was this: We are using the public's resources and assets, and, therefore, the money that flows from that should go back to the people and should go back into conservation. It is a beautifully symmetrical idea. The problem is that the fund that was created in 1965 has been systematically looted by the Congresses in successive years. There have been only 2 years since then that it has been fully funded with the funds that are available. Today, this week, we are going to correct that historic error and make a commitment not only to the people of the United States today but to people we don't even know--the children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren of today's citizens. The other thing this bill will do is begin to fund the backlog of maintenance at our national parks, bureau of public lands, and other public lands across the country. This sounds pretty boring, pretty mundane, and some of my friends are going to say: Well, you can't do this. We are going to raise a budget point of order. This is money, again, coming from excess funds in the generation of minerals, oil, and gas. But they are going to say: No, no. You can't do that. What we are doing here is paying a debt. Deferred maintenance is a debt. When I was Governor, I used to go to New York to kiss the ring of the rating agencies and hope and beg that they would give us a high bond rating so that our interest costs for our State debt would be low. At one point, I was making a presentation about how prudent Maine was. We didn't have much debt. We paid it off in 10 years, and we really needed this high bond rating. One of the analysts stopped me, and he said: Governor, don't forget that if you are not maintaining your infrastructure, that is debt just as sure as if you borrow money from the bank, and it is debt that is going to have to be paid, and it is going to have to be paid in the future, which means it is going to cost more. I had never thought of it that way, but that is what we are doing here. That is why what we are doing here is eminently fiscally responsible because we are paying off a debt, and we are preserving these wonderful, incredible places for people to visit and enjoy. Believe me, after this spring, people really want to get outdoors. In Maine, for example, Acadia National Park has more than 3\1/2\ million visitors a year. That is a big number. It is a really big number when you realize that more than twice the population of our whole State comes to visit this one small, beautiful, incredible spot on the coast of Maine on Mount Desert Island. So what we are talking about today is paying a debt and making a contribution to the well-being of the American people for generations to come. When Baxter completed the acquisition of Katahdin and the area that is now Baxter State Park, he had an amazing quote that I think applies to what we are talking about today. He said: Man is born to die. His works are short-lived. Buildings crumble, monuments decay, and wealth vanishes, but Katahdin in all its glory forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine. Areas across our country in all their glory will forever be part of the legacy for the people of America. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, each day, our peace officers prepare for work with no guarantee of what the next shift holds. They say goodbye to their loved ones and head out to serve and protect communities throughout Maine and across the country. And unfortunately, on some devastating days, they don't come home. These selfless citizens put themselves in dangerous positions day in and day out to ensure the safety of our people it is a commitment that evokes awe. They are heroes, walking among us, and when they make the ultimate sacrifice, it is on us to ensure that their names and deeds are not forgotten. So today, I rise to honor those who have made that sacrifice. This week, we mark National Police Week. This year's observance is, obviously, a bit different than usual. There will be no gathering peace officers from all over the country come to Washington, DC, to honor their fallen brothers and sisters; there will be no in-person candlelight vigil. But though the events are different, the goal is the same: to honor the memory of those who have given so much to protect our communities. This pandemic will not change our dedication to mourn their loss and honor their service, and this year, we will add 307 names of those who lost their lives in the line of duty to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, including two peace officers from my home State of Maine. I want to take this opportunity to share a little more about the legacies these peace officers leave behind. First: Detective Benjamin James Campbell of the Maine State Police died in the line of duty on April 3, 2019. Detective Campbell was helping a disabled vehicle in Hampden, ME, when he was struck by a vehicle tire. He was just 31 years old and leaves behind a wife and young son. He served the Maine State Police since 2012 and was promoted to detective in 2017. When asked to describe Detective Campbell, Maine State Police Col. John Cote put it simply and strongly, he said Detective Campbell was ``one of our very best.'' One of our very best--that tells you all you need to know about how his colleagues felt about him--an officer who stopped to help someone, a caring man, and a life taken much too soon. Second, the memorial will include the name of Perley Morrison Sprague, chief of the Rockport Police Department. Sadly, Chief Sprague suffered a major cardiac event on November 15, 1996, and died as a result. A son of Maine, Chief Sprague embodied a life of service. He was born in Bangor in 1948. He was a Coast Guard veteran, serving in Vietnam, and held numerous public safety positions in Maine, including as a member of the Portland Police Department and the Maine Department of Marine Resources, where he served for 21 years and worked his way up to chief of the bureau of the marine patrol. In 1995, he accepted his final position as the Rockport chief of police. Once at Rockport, he was described as a man with new ideas and visions for hiring and training. He lived a life of service, and Maine will never forget him. As we mourn the loss of these heroes, we must do our part to lift up the loved ones and communities they have left behind. May God bless Detective Campbell, Chief Sprague, and the others around the country who lost their lives. And may God continue to watch over those peace officers who go to work, with no guarantee they will return. They are examples for us all, and Maine will never forget them.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, today I recognize the bicentennial anniversary of the great State of Maine, which will be celebrated on March 15, 2020. For the past 200 years, Maine has made monumental contributions to our Nation and exemplified the best of America, with immense natural treasures surpassed only by the kindness, generosity, and work ethic of its people. With the Pine Tree State now entering its third century, we look back on the people and events that brought us to this milestone and look forward to all of the successes that lie ahead. Before it was ever known as Maine, the land was home to a number of Indigenous Tribes that together formed the Wabanaki Confederacy; to this day, Maine continues to be home to the Wabanaki people and several Native Tribes who make invaluable contributions to our State and our culture. The land was settled as an independent colony in the 17th century, before being later annexed by the colony of Massachusetts. Maine existed under Massachusetts' rule until March 15, 1820, when it regained its independence from our southern neighbors as part of the Compromise of 1820 and was admitted as the 23rd State of the United States of America. Maine's blessings are many. In the years since its admission to the United States, Maine has made major economic contributions to the Nation. Maine people have proven to be resourceful, adaptable, gritty, and hard-working, which, combined with our vast natural resources, have established the State as a leader in vital industries. As the most forested State in the Nation, Maine's timber industry thrived; with our thousands of miles of coastline, Maine people worked the waters and created one of the most lucrative and sustainable fisheries in the world. We have turned fertile farmland into a legacy of family farms and diversified agriculture, allowing Maine-grown food to be served across the Nation, and we have harnessed unmatched scenery to establish our State as a leader in tourism, where visitors from around the globe wait all year to spend a week in Vacationland. In these industries and many more, Maine leads the way, and it all starts with the men, women, and families who make up the fabric of our communities and set the standard for the way life should be. Maine's innate adaptability and determination extends to every part of our society, including our choice of leaders. For generations, Maine's elected officials have emphasized common sense and problem- solving above all, traits drawn directly from the State's voters and values. The example set by Joshua Chamberlain, the Lion of Little Round Top, who led his men against impossible odds during the Civil War to strike major victories for the Union, exemplifies Maine's focus on service over self. This legacy was furthered by Margaret Chase Smith as she stood up to the political powers of her day and chose country over party. There are so many other examples, from Ed Muskie to Bill Cohen to George Mitchell to Olympia Snowe, of how Maine's leaders have championed some of the country's most impactful pieces of legislation by focusing on results over partisanship, wielding an outsized influence given Maine's population. It is not just national either; there are too many examples to list of State and local leaders who have stepped forward to create a better Maine for all of our people. This legacy of fighting to achieve the difficult right instead of settling for the convenient wrong speaks to the unique independence of Maine citizens, who have always voted based on ideas, not on party. This approach is far too infrequent in our political discourse; on this subject, as on most, the Nation could use more of Maine's sensibility. I have always said that Maine is like a big small town, with very long streets because, no matter where you live in Maine, we are all neighbors and we are all in service to each other. This focus on service is why Maine has long had one of the highest rates of veterans per capita, and it is why towns across Maine offer a wide range of resources to help lift up our fellow citizens struggling with challenges ranging from substance use disorders to unemployment to food insecurity. I have been lucky enough to travel to every corner and pocket of our State, and the way our communities care for our own never ceases to amaze me. No matter if it is a time of crisis or business as usual, Maine people are in it together. That is a profoundly rare phenomenon, and we are infinitely better for it. Maine's motto, ``Dirigo,'' is simple, declarative, and fitting; translated from Latin, it means ``I Lead.'' That is exactly right: For the last 200 years, Maine has led the way, economically, politically, and socially. As we honor the 200th anniversary of Maine's statehood, I know that our State is positioned to continue its leadership for generations to come. So, regardless of which of the 16 counties you are from, let us come together--as is the Maine tradition--and celebrate our great fortune to live, work, and play in the greatest State in the Nation. Happy 200th birthday, Maine, and thanks to each and every person who makes our State so special. Thanks to your efforts, I am certain we will see history repeat itself as Maine embarks on another 200 years of prosperity, community, common sense, and leadership.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I would like to share my remarks, not only with my colleagues today, but more so with those who will come after us. I want to touch on four issues: the trial evidence; the President's actions as outlined in articles I and II of the Articles of Impeachment; and finally, and most importantly in my mind, the implications of our decision this week on the future of our government and our country. First, the trial--weeks ago, I joined my colleagues in swearing an oath to ``do impartial justice.'' Since that time, I have done everything possible to fulfill that responsibility. I paid full attention, taken three legal pads' worth of notes, reviewed press accounts, and had conversations with my colleagues and citizens in my home State of Maine. The one question I got most frequently back home was how we could proceed without calling relevant witnesses and securing the documents that would confirm or deny the charges against the President, which are at the heart of this matter. But for the first time in American history, we failed to do so. We robbed ourselves and the American people of a full record of this President's misuse of his office. This failure stains this institution, undermines tomorrow's verdict, and creates a precedent that will haunt those who come after us and, indeed, will haunt the country. But now, we are here, left to make this decision without the facts, concealed by the White House and left concealed by the votes of this body last Friday. This was not a trial in any real sense. It was, instead, an argument based upon a partial, but still damning, record. How much better it could have been had we had access to all the facts, facts which will eventually come out, but too late to inform our decisions? As to the articles themselves, I should begin by saying I have always been a conservative on the subject of impeachment. For the better part of the last 3 years, I have argued both publicly and privately against the idea. Impeachment should not be a tool to remove a President on the basis of policy disagreements. The President's lawyers are right when they argue that this would change our system of government and dangerously weaken any President. But this reluctance must give way if it requires my turning a blind eye to what happened last summer. The events of last summer were no policy disagreement. They were a deliberate series of acts whereby the President sought to use the power of his office in his own personal and political interests, specifically by pressuring a government of a strategic partner--a partner, by the way, significantly dependent upon our moral and financial support--pressuring that government to take action against one of the President's political rivals and, thereby, undermine the integrity of the coming American election. This last point is important. In normal circumstances, the argument of the President's defenders that impeachment is not necessary because the election is less than a year away would be persuasive. I could understand that. But the President, in this matter, was attempting to undermine that very election, and he gives every indication that he will continue to do so. He has expressed no understanding that he did anything wrong, let alone anything reassembling remorse. Impeachment is not a punishment; it is a prevention. The only way, unfortunately, to keep an unrepentant President from repeating his wrongful actions is removal. This President has made it plain that he will listen to nothing else. Article I charges a clear abuse of power, inviting foreign interference in the upcoming election. The President tasked his personal attorney to work with a foreign head of state to induce an investigation--or just the mere announcement of an investigation--that could harm one of the President's top political rivals. And to compel the Ukrainians to do so, he unilaterally withheld nearly $400 million appropriated by Congress to help them fend off Russia's naked and relentless aggression. The President's backers claim that this was done in an effort to root out corruption. So why not use official channels? Why did he focus on no examples of corruption generally other than ones directly affecting his political fortunes? And why did he not make public the withholding of funds, as the executive branch typically does, when seeking to leverage Federal moneys for policy goals? No matter how many times the President claims his phone call with President Zelensky was perfect, it simply wasn't. He clearly solicited foreign interference in our elections. He disregarded a congressionally passed law. He impaired the security of a key American partner. He undermined our own national security. And, if he was simply pursuing our national interests rather than his own, why was his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani put in charge? Why was Rudy Giuliani mentioned in that phone call? Put bluntly, no matter the defense, and as a majority of the Members of this body apparently now recognize, President Trump placed his own political interests above the national interests he is sworn to protect. And, as I mentioned, he has shown no sign that he will stop doing so when the next occasion arises, as it surely will. The implications of acquitting the President on article I are serious. This President will likely do it again, and future Presidents will be unbound from any restraints on the use of the world's most powerful political office for their own personal political gain. We are moving dangerously close to an elected Monarch--the very thing the Framers feared most. Article II, to me, is even more serious in its long-term implications. Article I concerns an incident--an egregious misuse of power, to be sure, but a specific set of actions in time. A scheme is probably the most appropriate description, which took place over the course of the past year. Article II, however, which concerns the President's wholesale obstruction of the impeachment process itself, goes to the heart of Congress's constitutionally derived power to investigate wrongdoing by this or any future President. I do not arrive at this conclusion lightly. I take seriously the White House counsel's argument that there is a legitimate separation of powers issue here, that executive privilege is real--although I have to note it was never actually asserted in this case, but that executive privilege is real--and that there must be limits on Congress's ability to intrude upon the executive function. But in this case, despite counsel's questions about which authorizing resolution passed when or whether the House should have more vigorously pursued judicial remedies, the record is clear and is summarized in the White House letter to the House in early October--that the President and his administration ``cannot participate'' in the impeachment process--cannot participate. To me, it is this ongoing blanket refusal to cooperate in any way--no witnesses, no documents, no evidence of any kind--that undermines the assertion that a categorical refusal, with overt witness intimidation thrown in, was based upon any legitimate, narrowly tailored legal or constitutional privilege. No prior President has ever taken such a position, and the argument that this blanket obstruction should be tested in court is severely undercut by the administration's recent argument that the courts have no jurisdiction over such disputes and that the remedy for stonewalling Congress is--you guessed it--impeachment. They argued that in the Federal court in Washington this week. Interestingly, the first assertion of executive privilege was by George Washington, when the House sought background documents on the Jay Treaty. Washington rested his refusal to produce those documents on the idea that the House had no jurisdiction over matters of foreign policy, but, interestingly, Washington, in his message to Congress, did specify one instance where the House would have a legitimate claim on the documents' release. What was the instance? You guessed it-- impeachment. If allowed to stand, this position that the President--any President--can use his or her position to totally obstruct the production of evidence of their own wrongdoing eviscerates the impeachment power entirely, and it compromises the ongoing authority of Congress to provide any meaningful oversight of the executive whatsoever. For these and other reasons, I will vote guilty on both Articles of Impeachment. A final point, the Congress has been committing slow-motion institutional suicide for the past 70 years, abdicating its constitutional authorities and responsibilities one by one: the war power, effectively in the hands of the President since 1942; authority over trade with other countries, superceded by unilateral Presidentially imposed tariffs on friends and foes alike; and even the power of the purse, which a supine Congress ceded to the President last year, enabling him to rewrite our duly passed appropriations bill to substitute his priorities for ours. And now this. The structure of our Constitution is based upon the bedrock principle that the concentration of power is dangerous, that power divided and shared is the best long-term assurance of liberty. To the extent we compromise that principle, give up powers the Framers bestowed upon us, and acquiesce to the growth of an imperial Presidency, we are failing. We are failing our oaths, we are failing our most fundamental responsibility, we are failing the American people. History may record this week as a turning point in the American experiment--the day that we stepped away from the Framers' vision, enabled a new and unbounded Presidency, and made ourselves observers rather than full participants in the shaping of our country's future. I sincerely hope I am wrong in all of this, but I deeply fear that I am right. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. Chief Justice.

Mr. KING. I am sending a question to the desk.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. Chief Justice, I have a question for both sets of counsel, which I send to the desk.

Mr. KING. Mr. Chief Justice.

Mr. KING. Mr. Chief Justice, I have a question for the House managers I will send to the desk.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 397, I voted no. It was my intention to vote yea; therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I rise for a few moments to compliment my colleague, the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources committee, along with her ranking member, Joe Manchin, who spoke a few minutes ago, the Senator from West Virginia. I have done a lot of thinking about leadership. One of the observations I have made is that the character and personality and thoughtfulness of the leader infect the entire organization. In this case, the chair and the ranking member of our committee have produced one of the most remarkable records of achievement in a committee that I have seen since I have been here over the past year. It has been because of their willingness to listen, their willingness to work with all of the members of the committee--and it is quite a diverse committee in terms of geography and in terms of ideology and in terms of representation of various interests at the table of the important questions of energy that face us. This has been an amazingly productive year. I attribute that to the skill and leadership and character of Senator Murkowski of Alaska and of Senator Manchin of West Virginia. It has been a wonderful experience for me to see what can be done in this institution. The next step, of course, is to get to the floor of the U.S. Senate and move these bills forward, as I think they can and should, through the House of Representatives and to the President. Again, I rise not only to congratulate but also to thank the leadership of this committee for the great work they have done this year. I look forward to even better and greater things in the years to come. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, there is a wonderful guy who lives in Maine named David Mallett. He has a keen ear and an eye for the rural parts of our country, and one of his most famous songs starts out like this: ``Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.'' The problem is, what we have now is rakes, hoes, a piece of fertile ground, and we have seeds and crops, but we have an administration that ties the hands of our farmers at every turn, particularly the blueberry farmers in Maine. Blueberries have been exported from Maine since the 1840s, and the people who are in this farming business are tough and resilient. They don't want bailouts; they want to be able to sell their product on the market. It is a wonderful product, by the way. If you ever have an opportunity to choose between blueberries and wild blueberries, choose wild blueberries. They are better for you, and they taste better. In recent years, the market for blueberries has been very difficult because of imports from Canada and additional cultivated blueberries from around the country, so our farmers, being entrepreneurial and doing what we have been telling them to do for years, have gone big time into the export market. Where is a great place to export to? China. I used to say as Governor that if we could get the Chinese hooked on blueberry muffins--just one a day--all of our problems would be over, and the Maine wild blueberries were getting to that point. Two years ago, $2.5 million a year of blueberries were going to China and half of the budget of the Wild Blueberry Export Commission was going to develop the Chinese market. Hours and hours, days, dollars--a lot of effort went to develop this Chinese market. Then all of a sudden came the Trump administration tariffs. Not surprisingly--it seems surprising to the administration--but not surprising to anybody who has paid attention to 500 years of trade, the immediate response to those tariffs was retaliatory tariffs by the Chinese, and one of the first ones was an 80-percent tariff on wild blueberries. We were doing pretty well. From 2014 to 2017, exports to China quadrupled to $2.5 million. This year they are $61,000. We have the trade war. It is well known that we have tariffs that are applying to all kinds of agricultural products. The response from the administration was a massive bailout--a bailout which has now reached something like three times the dollar value of the bailout of the automobile industry back at the beginning of the Obama administration when we almost lost that entire industry. We are now heading toward three times that amount. A lot of the bailout to the automobile industry was paid back. This is not a bailout that is going to be paid back. It has continued to just be paid out to various farmers across the country. I am sure the farmers in the Midwest, just as the farmers in Maine, don't want bailouts. They want sales. They want to sell their product in the market, which they have been doing, but what has happened is we have this bailout, and I call it the farm bailout lottery. I don't have a spinner on here, but it is a lottery because we don't know and we don't understand and nobody can tell us why certain crops are in and certain crops are out. Round and round she goes; where she stops, nobody knows--and that is the problem. What is in? Well, let's see. Cranberries are in. Blueberries are out--zip, zero, nothing. Soybeans are in. Wheat is in. Apples are out. Here is what else is in, and tell me if this makes any sense: dairy, hogs, almonds, cranberries, ginseng, grapes, cherries. All these are in. These are getting the bailout money. Some farms are getting over $500,000: hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pistachios, and walnuts but not blueberries and, for some reason, not apples. We have a double whammy here on this proud industry from Maine. First, there is the Chinese tariff war, of which we are collateral damage. By the way, the same problem is going on with lobsters. They were one of the first products to be retaliated against by the Chinese. We lost that export market, and now the same thing is happening in these agricultural products. It is a double whammy. No. 1, we got hit by the retaliatory tariffs, and No. 2, we are not in on the bailout. We are not in on the funds that are being distributed. Nobody can tell us what the formula is, what the rationale is. Is it who has the biggest, most powerful lobby in Washington? Is it if you are from a State that voted for the President in 2016? What is the rationale? We can't tell what that is. The President just said yesterday this trade war with China may go on for another year. That means another crop. We have third- and fourth- generation blueberry farmers in Maine leaving the land. It is heartbreaking. These aren't big enterprises. These aren't big operations. These are people with 100-acre farms. The administration knows about this because I and my colleagues from Maine wrote them in July and asked this question. Wild blueberry should be included in what is called the Market Facilitation Program. It didn't happen. We still don't really know what the criteria is. Just to put a fine point on it, if you are a wild blueberry harvester with a 100-acre farm, you get zip, zero, nada, zilch. If you are a cranberry farmer with a 100-acre bog, you get $61,000. How is that fair? How is the distinction made? That is the question we are asking. I have written again today to the Department of Agriculture asking them, A, why we aren't in and, B, how these distinctions are made. I don't think that is an unreasonable question when you are talking about people's livelihoods going back generations. These are tough people. These are resilient people. These are hard-working people. These are people who have given their lives to the land, and they deserve to be supported by their government--not undermined, not challenged, not undercut by their government. ``Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground'' and a government that supports your right to make a living at your chosen profession. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the 40th anniversary of New Ventures Maine, NVM. NVM is a nonprofit that provides adults with the tools they need to succeed in a changing economy. Through free classes and individualized coaching, NVM has helped thousands of Maine people find jobs, start their own businesses, and manage their finances. In 1978, Merle Nelson, a representative from Portland, ME, and Barbara Trafton, a senator from Lewiston, ME, spearheaded a bill that established what was then called the ``Displaced Homemakers Project.'' The program was designed to support Maine women transitioning into the workforce after focusing on raising their families. Since its inception, Gilda Nardone has served as executive director and she, along with her skillful team, have steadfastly executed the vision of its founders while seamlessly addressing the changing needs of the community around them for the last four decades. Fueled by the successes and tenacity of the people they serve, the organization has expanded its mission, adding courses on business management, financial literacy, and leadership. Other initiatives have been introduced as well, including innovative mini-grant programs, loan funding, and matched savings accounts. In 2015, the project officially became New Ventures Maine and rededicated itself to serving all Maine adults, men and women alike. Throughout its history, NVM has committed to providing access to the organization's services, regardless of wealth or status, and has always prioritized serving the historically disadvantaged and those with limited resources. There are NVM offices and opportunities in all 16 counties in Maine, and they continued to expand access to their resources with the adoption of online courses. I am not the first to stand up and applaud NVM's contributions to the State. In 1993, Ms. Nardone was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame for her work with the organization. In 2004, Representative Nelson was given the first annual Women Making a Difference Award, named in her honor, for her pioneering role in creating New Ventures Maine. These are some of the public accolades but there are countless Maine people who quietly praise the work of NVM because of the difference this remarkable organization has made in their lives. A tribute to their advocacy that has lifted so many out of uncertainty and into the light of strength and courage. I am proud to recognize the great work of New Ventures Maine over the last 40 years. Their team of professionals, and the paths they have cleared, truly exemplify Maine's motto of ``Dirigo,'' I Lead.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the Flag Ladies of Freeport, ME, who will soon retire from their unwavering efforts to commemorate the heroes and the victims of the life-changing events that occurred on September 11, 2001. Every Tuesday since that day--for 18 years--the Freeport Flag Ladies have stood on Main Street in Freeport in our Nation's colors waving our Nation's flag. First standing to honor the lives lost in the 2001 attacks, these ladies have continued to stand to support the brave men and women who serve our country today. Main Street shall see them wave the red, white, and blue for the last time on September 11, 2019. In the days after the events of September 11, Elaine Greene, Carmen Footer, and Joann Miller were just like the rest of the country: they wanted to heal the Nation. So they acted, devoting their time and energy to honor and salute those who were lost and those who are willing to make the greatest sacrifice our Nation can ask. Since beginning their effort, these ladies have not missed a single Tuesday to share their message of patriotism and solidarity. Nothing could deter them, not the heaviest rains, the coldest snows, the blazing summer sun or even a dislocated shoulder. The Freeport Flag Ladies have showed up every week--no matter what. When troops were deployed to Afghanistan and later Iraq, these women took this as an expansion of their mandate--traveling up to Bangor to send off soldiers and greet those returning home. The Freeport Flag Ladies have given up much themselves to ensure their mission is carried out week after week. Their own comfort has been forgone in their pursuit to bring comfort to their fellow countrymen. In waving the flag and shaking the hands of soldiers, Elaine Greene, Carmen Footer, and Joann Miller have represented the best of our Nation and the ideals of the flag they wave. I want to thank the Freeport Flag Ladies for their commitment to honoring both the lives lost on September 11, 2001, and the soldiers who are currently serving and defending the United States. Their mission is not political. It is clear that what they do is an act of love and appreciation for the great sacrifices made by those who serve our country. These unwavering patriots are a reminder to the American people of what the flag represents. While they may wave their flags for the final time on September 11, 2019, the patriotism of these women will continue to be remembered and celebrated.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I am happy to join my colleague from New Hampshire and other colleagues tonight to talk about one of the most serious threats to ever face this Nation or, in fact, this world. A few years ago, Tom Brokaw, the television news anchor, wrote a wonderful book called ``The Greatest Generation.'' He was writing about the generation of our parents and grandparents who fought in World War II, who paid off the debt from World War II, who built the Interstate Highway System--who, by the way, paid for it--and who built the greatest economy the world has ever seen. That was the ``greatest generation.'' The characteristic of that generation was that of meeting their responsibilities. It was not of avoiding problems but of meeting them head-on and establishing for the world and for this country an example of governance and of the responsible dealing with issues and problems the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes. If Tom Brokaw were writing another book today about us, it would be called ``The Lousiest Generation.'' We are the ones who have built up an unconscionable debt for our children. We cut taxes in the middle of a war in 2005. It was the first time I had been able to find in world history when that had ever happened. We have given ourselves tax cuts and not paid the bill, and we are passing on this enormous $22 trillion debt to our children. None of us on our deathbed, when our children are standing around, would lean up and say: Here is the credit card, kids. I have run it up to the max. You can now pay for it. Yet that is exactly what we are doing collectively--the lousiest generation, the one that hasn't paid its bills. Infrastructure. We have allowed our infrastructure to fall to pieces. It is the infrastructure that was given to us by our parents, that was paid for--the bridges, the roads, the railroads, and the airports. Now we have one of the poorest infrastructure situations in the world. It is embarrassing to go to a small country somewhere else in the world and walk into an airport that makes ours look old and falling apart. So we haven't kept up with the infrastructure, and that is a debt that we are passing on to our children, just as real as the national debt. Finally, we are facing a known, real, unquestionable crisis in terms of the effect on the climate, and this is something that we are shamefully passing on to our children. They are the ones who are going to have to deal with the consequences that we will not face. They are the ones who are going to have to pay the bills, who are going to have to shore up the infrastructure, who are going to have to respond to the drastic changes in the climate not only here but around the world, and we are doing nothing. What will it take? What will it take for us to meet this responsibility? What is it going to take? Well, OK, let's go down a list. Maybe it will take scientific data that demonstrates the level of CO2 that we have put into the atmosphere. I don't seem to have a chart. I don't need a chart. For millions of years, CO2 has varied between 180 and 280 parts per million. People say: Well, it varies over time. This is nothing new. No, between 180 and 280 is the variation until the last 50 to 75 years, when it has become a hockey stick. We are now at over 400 parts per million, the highest it has been in 3 million years, and, by the way, the last time it was at 400 parts per million, the oceans were 60 feet higher. CO2 in the atmosphere is our responsibility. It didn't come from volcanoes. It came from the consumption of fossil fuel, which developed and built the wonderful economy that we have and the economy around the world. Nobody can gainsay that. The question is, Now that we are seeing the consequences, don't we have a responsibility to do something about it? Has there been a gigantic increase in CO2 in the atmosphere? Check. Yes. Unquestionably. No. 2, how about Arctic ice? Here we are. In the last 30 years, two- thirds of the Arctic ice has disappeared--two-thirds. I was at a conference this morning on the Arctic. The Arctic Ocean is open for the first time in human history. The conference was about shipping and mineral exploration and Native peoples losing their habitat and their way of life. Two-thirds of the Arctic ice is gone in 25 years. This is a place that has been covered with ice for thousands of years--as long as we have any memory, but now the Arctic ice is going. Every time I see a prediction of where it is going to be in 10 years, lo and behold, it is there in 2 or 3 years. It is opening up. That is telling us something. Is there an indication from the Arctic ice that something drastic is happening to our climate? Yes. Check that box. No. 3 is the increased intensity of fires. We have seen the most intense wildfires in this country in the last 10 years that we have ever seen--more acreage, more intensity, more lives lost, more property lost. This is caused by drought and by changes in the climate, all wrought by our activity. Increase in fires and wildfires? Check. Sea level rise. Here is the background on the sea level. We tend to think of the sea level as being a fixed quantity. We walk out in the ocean, and it always looks pretty much the way it is, whether it is off the Maine coast or the New Hampshire coast. Well, it turns out that back here, 24,000 years ago, when the glaciers were covering most of North America, the sea was 390 feet shallower than it is today. Chesapeake Bay was dry land. It was 390 feet shallower than it is today. Then, the glaciers melted, and the sea level started to rise. This is an interesting period about 14,000 years ago called the meltwater pulse 1A. This drastic rise in sea level is about a foot a decade. That is what is predicted for the next century. Oh, it could never happen. A foot a decade? You must be crazy. It happened. We know that it happened. Now, here is why we aren't paying attention. The last 6,000 years, it has been pretty flat. It has been pretty level. The sea level has plateaued, in effect, and, therefore, that happens to be recorded human history, that 6,000 years. So we think that is just where the ocean has always been. But do you know what? The last remnant of the glaciers are in Greenland and Antarctica, and they are going. They are going. There is 20 feet of sea level rise in the Greenland ice sheet and 212 feet of sea level rise stored in the Antarctic ice sheet, and they are going. I have been to Greenland. You can see it. The Jakobshavn Glacier has retreated as much in the last 10 years as it retreated in the prior 100 years. The only thing slower than a glacier, by the way, is the U.S. Congress. We make glaciers look like they are moving fast, and, in fact, the Jakobshavn Glacier is moving fast. Sea level rise is happening. In Norfolk, VA, they have seen a foot and a half in the last decade. They are having sunny day floods. They are having sunny day floods in Miami. They are spending millions of dollars to build up their roads. People say dealing with climate change is too expensive. Not dealing with it is too expensive. In not dealing with it, the expense is going to be astronomical. By the way, if you talk about sea level in Norfolk, VA, it is a national security risk. With the number of bases that we have around the world that are at or near sea level, it is going to be an enormous task and a very expensive one to protect those assets. There is another national security issue involved in this that we are ignoring, and that is the displacement of peoples. During the Syrian civil war, there were 4 to 6 million Syrian refugees. A few came here, not many. Most went to Western Europe, and, as we know, that refugee flow turned the politics of Western Europe upside-down. Call it 5 million people. The estimates for refugees from climate change over the next 100 years is between 200 and 400 million people. Imagine what that is going to do to the geopolitics of this world--200 million people on the march, looking for water, looking for a place that is habitable, looking for relief from drought, from fires. This is a national security threat. Is it a national security threat? Yes. Check that box. What is it going to take? What is it going to take? Intense storms. We don't need to tell people about the intensity of storms. We have seen them. We have lived through them. I once made a joke in Maine that I am 300 years old, and somebody said: Why? I said: Because according to the news, I have lived through three storms of the century. We keep having storms of the century or 500-year storms, and they are happening more and more frequently. The heat. Nine out of 10 of the hottest years on record occurred in the last 15 years. This past June was the hottest June since records were kept--the hottest June since records were kept. Now, there is a difference between weather and climate. I understand that, and I am not going to say that the heat wave that the Midwest is suffering this weekend is a reflection of climate change. It may or may not be. Weather is what happens day-to-day. Climate is what happens in the long term, and we know that we have already increased global climate by about 1.5 degrees Celsius. In many cases, it is causing irreversible damage. When we get to 2 degrees Celsius, which we are headed for, it is going to be catastrophic for coral, for farms, for animals, and for people. Species are already on the move. Senator Shaheen mentioned the ocean. There are the lobsters in Maine. There used to be a vigorous lobster fishery in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It is essentially gone now, and the lobsters are in Maine, which is a mainstay of our economy. It is a $1.5 billion a year business. The lobsters are moving north and east. Why? Because the Gulf of Maine is heating faster than 99 percent of the areas of the world. The only place heating faster than the Gulf of Maine is the Arctic, and those lobsters are doing what any animal does. They seek out more hospitable climate. Climate. This isn't academic. These aren't predictions. This is something you can see. The people on the water in Maine know it is happening. The woodsmen know it is happening because they are seeing different species of trees. Bugs are moving farther north. Ticks are a huge problem in Northern New England and places where they weren't before. This isn't something that is academic. What is it going to take? One of the things that the Senator from New Hampshire talked about is--and I think it is important to emphasize because I hear this sometimes--why should we do this? It is happening everywhere in the world. Yes, that is why the Paris climate accord was so important. It wasn't mandatory, but it was a set of goals, and the entire world was engaged. Now there is the entire world but one--us. We are out. We are outliers. We have lost our voice. We have lost our influence. We have lost our leadership position on one of the most important challenges faced by this or any generation. Yes, we haven't met our responsibilities as our parents and our grandparents did. On December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln came to the House Chamber and spoke about the crisis of the Civil War. The Congress didn't get it. They were doing politics as usual, and President Lincoln was trying to move them from the lethargy of the legislative process into the emergency and the urgency of the Civil War. He said two things toward the end of that speech that I think are profoundly instructive for us today. The first is how to deal with this change. And this is a change. This is new. I understand that, and dealing with change is difficult. Abraham Lincoln uttered what I think are the most profound words about change that I have ever encountered. Here is what Abraham Lincoln said: The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise--with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. And here is the punch line: We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. ``We must disenthrall ourselves,'' and that means to think in new and different ways, to see reality as it is, ``and then we shall save our country'' and, in this in case, the world. The other admonition from Lincoln that day, which I think is very important for us, puts the responsibility directly on us right here. He was talking to Members of Congress. He said: Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass---- Of course he was talking about the Civil War, and we are talking about a fiery trial of our generation. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. I want to meet this responsibility. I want this Congress to be remembered, as we will be, either way, but I want this Congress to be remembered as people who met the fiery trial, who met our responsibility, who thought about others more than ourselves and made a difference in the life of this country and the world. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I want to join so many of my colleagues and the majority leader in congratulating my individual colleague from the State of Maine on this extraordinary achievement. I once was at a meeting with Senator Collins in Maine and had just gotten my voting record, and I think I missed two votes out of a couple thousand. I said to Senator Collins: Look, I am 99.2 percent on making all the votes. She paused for a moment and looked at me and smiled and said: You will never catch me. And she was absolutely correct that the math doesn't work. To have made 7,000 consecutive votes is an extraordinary achievement, particularly given the logistics of this place--the logistics of getting back and forth to Maine. She and I travel back and forth to Maine frequently together. But to have achieved this is really something remarkable in the annals of the U.S. Senate. In the 1980s and 1990s, I got to know one of her predecessors, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who was a legend in Maine. Senator Smith was not only legendary for making every vote but also for always wearing a red rose. Every day that she appeared in the Senate, Senator Smith wore a red rose. So I would like to conclude my remarks by taking a red rose to Senator Collins in recognition of her following in the footsteps of her illustrious predecessor. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, today I wish to recognize the 25th anniversary of the Salmon Habitat and River Enhancement Program, known as Project SHARE. SHARE has spent the last quarter of a century focused on river habitat restoration in Downeast Maine, specifically for Atlantic salmon. Thanks to SHARE and its many partners, hundreds of restoration projects have been completed, improving Maine's waterways for marine life. Founded in 1994, SHARE was built on the recognition that, without direct action, Atlantic salmon would go extinct from habitat destruction and overfishing. SHARE's work has focused on improving Maine's streams and rivers, a crucial habitat for salmon, as they require freshwater to breed. The organization uses a diverse range of methods during their projects, from the addition of clamshells to the stream or river in order to balance pH levels, to adding open bottom arch culverts and bridges to more effectively spread nutrients and ease passage in the waterways. While the goal of these projects is to help Atlantic salmon, the rest of Maine's marine life benefit from the improved living conditions in our fresh-water streams and rivers. A hallmark of SHARE's success has been its emphasis on building partnerships in order to achieve its goals. SHARE has valued these partners since the beginning, when a wide range of State agencies, land owners, research and conservation groups, and more signed on as charter members. Their focus on cooperation between public and private entities has clearly paid off, as they have completed more than 250 restoration projects in just the last 15 years. A key part of these partnerships is the work SHARE does with Maine's students. Including students from local schools and universities in their restoration projects has allowed SHARE to pass on the methods used to improve the safety and habitability of our waterways and the importance of Atlantic salmon to Maine and the rest of the country. I would like to thank Project SHARE for their 25 years of commitment to improving Maine's waterways for Atlantic salmon and other marine life. Thanks to their hard work, 2,800 habitat units have been improved, with many more projects planned in the years to come. SHARE's dedication to protecting and restoring outdoor habitats ensures that Maine's wildlife will continue to thrive. Congratulations Project SHARE on reaching this impressive milestone, I look forward to seeing your work over the next 25 years.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the town of Pittsfield, ME, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. Throughout its long history, Pittsfield has continually displayed a rich heritage of hard work, entrepreneurship, innovation, community, and family spirit. Situated along the Sebasticook River in Somerset County, Pittsfield is home to roughly 4,200 residents who help make it a thriving Maine town. Incorporated as Warsaw in 1819, the town became Pittsfield in 1824, named after one its prominent citizens, William Pitts. Early on, most of the town's occupants were farmers, growing so much corn and wheat that they used the grains to pay their taxes. Like many Maine towns, Pittsfield began to develop a strong mill industry that flourished along the Sebasticook River. This assortment of textile, saw, and grist mills created hundreds of new jobs and Pittsfield saw its population nearly double in just 40 years. Closures and relocation of many of the town's mills lead to some decline, but the citizens of Pittsfield helped reinvent the town, and today, Pittsfield is as vibrant as ever. Maine Central Institute, an independent high school, opened in 1866 and continues to serve many of the town's residents and foreign students from such countries as South Korea, Spain, Guatemala, and many more. The school's Manson Essay contest continues to bring members of the community together every year to hear presentations by students on their university level research papers. Along with its high-level academics, MCI's impressive athletic program has produced a number of professional athletes, many of whom have gone on to play professional basketball. A hallmark of Pittsfield's economy, Cianbro was founded by Carl Cianchette in 1946. Cianchette and his brothers would go on to grow this company into the largest construction company in Maine, providing thousands of jobs throughout the State. Now nationally recognized and 100 percent employee owned, with locations stretching into the mid- Atlantic region, Cianbro is still headquartered in Pittsfield. It is an honor and a privilege to congratulate Pittsfield on this historic occasion. For 200 years the town and its residents have repeatedly demonstrated the hard work and community spirit found throughout Maine. I hope the residents of Pittsfield take the opportunity during this yearlong celebration to reflect on their rich history and strive to make the next 200 years as prosperous as the last. Happy 200th birthday, Pittsfield, and congratulations to all who have made this a vibrant Maine community.