Tim Kaine

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am pleased today to introduce in the Senate, with my colleague Senator Flake, the first bipartisan Authorization for Use of Military Force, AUMF, against ISIL. The United States launched military action against ISIL over 10 months ago on August 8, 2014. It is far past time for Congress to fulfill its duty by debating and determining whether or not it is in the nation's best interest to order United States troops to risk their lives in this mission and vote on an ISIL AUMF. This bill authorizes the U.S. mission against ISIL for the purpose of protecting the lives of U.S. citizens and providing military support to regional partners in their battle to defeat ISIL. As stated by the authorization, the use of significant U.S. ground troops in combat against ISIL is not consistent with this purpose, except to protect lives of U.S. citizens from imminent threat. Other key provisions include a sunset after three years unless reauthorized; a repeal of the 2002 Iraq AUMF; and a clause that defines this authorization as the sole statutory authority for the war on ISIL, as opposed to the 2001 AUMF. Thousands of members of the United States Armed Forces have been deployed to support military operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. As of June 2015, the United States has conducted over 3,500 airstrikes against ISIL and spent more than $2,600,000,000 American taxpayer dollars on this war--a number that continues to rise by approximately $9,000,000 per day. Tragically, members of the Armed Forces have been killed in Operation Inherent Resolve, and United States hostages have been killed by ISIL in barbaric ways. However, while Congress has authorized appropriations for Operation Inherent Resolve and the training of anti-ISIL forces in Syria, it has yet to take formal action to approve this mission. Doing so is critical for reinforcing the leadership of the United States with our coalition partners and sending a strong message to our adversaries that the United States is united in the fight against ISIL and speaks with one voice in confronting ISIL. President Obama submitted an authorization for use of military force against ISIL in February 2015. And still Congress has not undertaken its most solemn duty and responsibility under Article 1. The American public deserves this congressional debate to educate them about the national security interests at stake and the advisability of this war and Congress should do its job by formally voicing its support or disapproval of the mission against ISIL. I am proud to join Senator Flake in introducing a bill to start this necessary debate. As we saw with the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, it is possible to find bipartisan compromise on even the toughest of foreign policy issues and I challenge my colleagues to finally come together to do what is right for our troops and our nation.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am pleased today to introduce in the Senate, with my colleague Senator Flake, the first bipartisan Authorization for Use of Military Force, AUMF, against ISIL. The United States launched military action against ISIL over 10 months ago on August 8, 2014. It is far past time for Congress to fulfill its duty by debating and determining whether or not it is in the nation's best interest to order United States troops to risk their lives in this mission and vote on an ISIL AUMF. This bill authorizes the U.S. mission against ISIL for the purpose of protecting the lives of U.S. citizens and providing military support to regional partners in their battle to defeat ISIL. As stated by the authorization, the use of significant U.S. ground troops in combat against ISIL is not consistent with this purpose, except to protect lives of U.S. citizens from imminent threat. Other key provisions include a sunset after three years unless reauthorized; a repeal of the 2002 Iraq AUMF; and a clause that defines this authorization as the sole statutory authority for the war on ISIL, as opposed to the 2001 AUMF. Thousands of members of the United States Armed Forces have been deployed to support military operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. As of June 2015, the United States has conducted over 3,500 airstrikes against ISIL and spent more than $2,600,000,000 American taxpayer dollars on this war--a number that continues to rise by approximately $9,000,000 per day. Tragically, members of the Armed Forces have been killed in Operation Inherent Resolve, and United States hostages have been killed by ISIL in barbaric ways. However, while Congress has authorized appropriations for Operation Inherent Resolve and the training of anti-ISIL forces in Syria, it has yet to take formal action to approve this mission. Doing so is critical for reinforcing the leadership of the United States with our coalition partners and sending a strong message to our adversaries that the United States is united in the fight against ISIL and speaks with one voice in confronting ISIL. President Obama submitted an authorization for use of military force against ISIL in February 2015. And still Congress has not undertaken its most solemn duty and responsibility under Article 1. The American public deserves this congressional debate to educate them about the national security interests at stake and the advisability of this war and Congress should do its job by formally voicing its support or disapproval of the mission against ISIL. I am proud to join Senator Flake in introducing a bill to start this necessary debate. As we saw with the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, it is possible to find bipartisan compromise on even the toughest of foreign policy issues and I challenge my colleagues to finally come together to do what is right for our troops and our nation.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am pleased the Senate is debating the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2016. Senators McCain and Reed, with help from my colleagues and me on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have worked tirelessly throughout the spring on these important military issues. Our committee prides itself on taking a bipartisan and measured approach to reforming and providing oversight to the Department of Defense. I believe we largely succeeded in this endeavor, but I remain gravely concerned about the chairman's proposals to streamline Department of Defense Headquarters by cutting funding to specific operations and maintenance, O&M, accounts. The Department of Defense already implemented a 20 percent reduction of headquarters, which began this year and continues through 2019. Planning for the reduction began several years ago, affording the Department adequate time to ensure compliance with various directives, including requirements of the Goldwater-Nichols Act that established the division in roles among the service chiefs and combatant commanders. I am concerned the chairman's proposed legislation this year, requiring additional headquarters reductions, will force the Department of Defense to find efficiencies that will blur the lines between service and warfighting functions, undermining the bedrock reforms established by Goldwater-Nichols. I support reducing the magnitude of these cuts, while allowing the Department to conduct a thorough analysis of the best methods to streamline organizations for the most efficient staffing solutions while remaining viable and effective. The chairman's specific proposed reductions are not supported by any report or study. Instead, they are based on a perception of unnecessary growth based on anecdotal evidence and nebulous data-sets fueled a $1.7 billion cut to several operations and maintenance accounts. To the chairman's point, there has undoubtedly been a growth in headquarters over the past decade. Areas that saw significant increases include cyber warfare and special operations. USCYBERCOM did not exist a decade ago, but now has almost 6,000 employees. Special Operations Command is forecasted to swell to over 70,000 by 2017, but both headquarters are excluded from consideration for reduction, against the requests of the DOD to leave everything on the table if forced to act on this provision. The timing and magnitude of these cuts are so severe that I fear the Department will be forced to reduce funding to critical programs associated with the targeted accounts. Some key programs associated with these accounts include military burial honors, suicide prevention, radioactive waste disposal, nuclear command and control networks, acquisition support, veteran hiring programs, and installation fire departments. Many of these programs are tied to our Nation's commitment to our servicemembers and veterans and should not be subjected to such drastic cuts without due consideration of the downstream effects. Finally, the men and women who will likely bear the brunt of these cuts are performing the very work that Congress charged the Department of Defense to conduct. Even this authorization includes additional reports, studies, and demands for improvement in areas like program management, acquisition, and sexual assault. These programs require a professional cadre to conduct the required analysis and propose recommendations for improvement. Asking our workforce to bear additional oversight and program management functions while cutting their funding is illogical and wrong.

Mr. KAINE

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

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise in support of the NDAA that is on the floor now but also in strong support of an amendment that has been offered by Senator Reed of Rhode Island to the NDAA. Actually, I have a deja vu feeling in the speech, because the speech is largely about what I gave as my maiden speech in February of 2013; that is, the BCA budget caps and sequester. To begin, before I focus on the amendment from my colleague from Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, I do think there is a lot of good policy in the NDAA. We worked on it together. That committee process is a productive one. I think we always find a great degree of bipartisanship as we are trying to tackle the programmatic description of our Nation's military budget and support. There is much good policy, acquisition reform, and other key reforms that are part of this budget. There are some items that I feel very strongly about dealing with shipbuilding and ship repair. I think it is great that we are having the debate on the floor. We have had NDAAs passed, but we have not had a lot of floor time on them in 2013 and 2014. So the fact that we have are having this debate about the critical nature of our Nation's defense and the authorizing bill on the floor is very positive. There are some aspects of the NDAA that I do not like. There are some items that I wish were in there but that are not. That is part of the process. I think we could all say that, but I am glad we are having the debate on the floor. However, the item that is in the NDAA that I have the greatest concern about is the use of what I consider a flagrant budget gimmick to sneak by defense spending caps that were imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act. I think the gimmick is a serious one and a challenging one. The gimmick is dishonest. It is bad for the Nation's defense. It is also bad for America's nondefense priorities. The good news is that the budget can be fixed. My colleague from Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, has a proposal to fix it. The proposal was offered in committee and rejected, and it has been offered again on the floor. I want to describe it and explain why I strongly support it. First, there is the gimmick itself. Just for the public on this, in August of 2011, before either I or the Presiding officer were in the body, Congress passed the Budget Control Act that imposed a set of draconian budget caps on defense and nondefense spending as a punishment, in case Congress did not find a grand budget deal. So the wisdom of this body at the time was that we will sort of punish ourselves unless we can find a budget deal. I describe that colloquially as if we don't do something smart, we will do something stupid. Well, Congress did not do something smart. There wasn't the grand budget deal that many hoped there would be. So on March 1, 2013, budget caps went into effect that put a significant crimp in both the defense and nondefense items in the Nation's budget. The first speech I gave on the floor was in February 2013. After my first State recess week, I traveled around and I heard my constituents talk about how bad these caps would be, especially for the Nation's defense. I stood up and just shared what my constituents had described to me. But, nevertheless, the caps went into effect and we agreed, through the early 2020s, to limit in a very significant and tough way both defense and nondefense spending. So what is the gimmick that is in this NDAA that is on the floor today? A decision was made that the world has changed since August 2011. ISIL has grown up and is gobbling up acres and square miles of territory. We are battling against Ebola, as we were earlier in the year. North Korea is cyber-attacking major American corporations. Vladimir Putin has moved into Ukraine and is threatening other nations. There are a lot of challenges. So it was the wisdom first of the President, in submitting the fiscal year 2016 budget, and then of the Armed Services Committee that living under the sequester defense caps was a bad idea. It would be a bad idea for the Nation. But instead of just saying: OK, the caps are a bad idea; let's adjust the cap--which we can do with 60 votes in this body and the concurrence of the House-- a decision was made: Let's not adjust the cap, let's end-run the cap. So we want to exceed the cap. We want to exceed it by $38 billion in fiscal year 2016. But rather than adjust the cap, let's do this: Let's just take $38 billion that the Nation needs to be safe, and we will put it in what is called the OCO account, Overseas Contingency Operations. It is something that is not subject to the cap. It is supposed to be used for core warfighting activity. But the $38 billion does not represent core warfighting. We spent $2 billion in the last year, for example, in the war on ISIL. We are not going to spend $38 billion in the next year. No, instead, we are going to fund all kinds of nonemergency, noncontingency, nonwarfighting expenditures that would require an adjustment of the cap, and we are just going to put them into the OCO account, kind of a slush fund. By doing that, we end-run the law of Congress, the Budget Control Act. I asserted, and I strongly believe, that this is dishonest, it is bad for defense, and it is bad for the nondefense accounts. It is dishonest. It is dishonest because, if we need this money for defense, we should fix the budget control caps. That is what we should do. We should not call expenditures for daily operations that are not core warfighting part of the OCO account. That violates the way the OCO account has been treated. Once we go down that path, we are going to see everything going into the OCO account, and we will really end-run. So we are not being honest with ourselves, but especially, since we all know what the game is, we are not being honest with the public. Second, putting this money, the $38 billion, in the OCO account is bad for defense. Defense needs the ability to plan. If we put the money in the OCO account, is it going to be here next year? Is it not going to be here? There is sort of a wink and a nod that it will probably be here. We ought to be acknowledging that these funds are needed in the base defense budget so that our DOD personnel can plan that it will be there in the future, because that is probably our intent. It is bad for defense to put this in this OCO account. Third, it is bad for the nondefense accounts. If we are going to say that the BCA caps are bad, we should adjust them. Instead of using an end run, let's adjust them. Let's adjust them not just for the defense accounts but also for the nondefense accounts, because, as the Presiding Officer and my colleagues here know, the nondefense accounts are critical to the Nation's defense. The FBI is nondefense. It is critical to the Nation's defense. Homeland Security is critical to the Nation's defense. In the Department of Energy, much of the research we do is for the reactors on nuclear carriers and nuclear subs. Those get cut by budget cups. They are critical to defense. We ought to be lifting the caps on the nondefense accounts, as well. So the gimmick that is used is a gimmick. It is dishonest. It hurts defense. It hurts nondefense accounts that are important to the Nation. Good news--there is a solution. We are doing this because we do not like the budget caps. That is why we are doing this. That is why we are using the OCO gimmick. If we don't like the budget caps, we should fix them. We should find the 2015 version of the Murray-Ryan budget deal that was reached in December of 2013, where we agreed to adjust the budget caps. That deal accepted part of sequester. It absorbed sequester cuts. But it also found targeted ways to provide relief, both to defense and nondefense accounts. That is what we should be doing. We should be showing the same leadership that was shown in 2013. I rise to say that the amendment that my colleague from Rhode Island, our ranking member, proposes does exactly that. It does exactly that. It takes the $38 billion that is in our budget, which I believe should be spent on defense, and it says that this money should be spent on defense, but it should be spent the right way, as part of a base budget, not as part of OCO. It puts a fence around those dollars and says that the money is there, and it is there for defense because the Nation needs it. But the fence will keep the money from being utilized until we fix the BCA caps on both the defense and nondefense accounts. If we do fix the BCA caps, that money will be available. Because of language included by the chair of the committee in the markup, fixing the budget caps would move the money from the OCO account into the defense base budget where it should be. I think we all know what the right answer is here, which is for this $38 billion to be used to protect the Nation but to be part of the base budget, not the OCO account. To get there we need to fix the BCA caps across the board for defense and nondefense. The Reed amendment would accomplish that. That is the reason that I am on the floor today, to praise the debate on the NDAA but to say this is the right way to keep our Nation safe. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, this bill has a complex backstory, but it serves a simple purpose: To allow asmall day care facility in Virginia to undertake routine repairs and maintenance. For more than 20 years, the Plains Area Day Care Center in Broadway, VA, has served children from moderate-income families in Rockingham County. This facility sits on a 3-acre parcel that was once Federal land before the National Park Service conveyed it to Rockingham County in 1989 under the Federal Lands to Parks Program. The county in turn leases this land to the center for $1 per year, with a contract that runs through the year 2027. The center is in need of repairs and maintenance, including a new roof. However, it has had difficulty in securing private financing for these activities because of the complex land ownership structure-- Federal land conveyed conditionally to a county and leased to a private company. Due to Virginia's status as a ``Dillon Rule'' State, Rockingham County cannot execute a loan either. This bill would specify that the 1989 land conveyance is transferred in fee simple, with no further use restrictions. I appreciate the goal of the Federal Lands to Parks Program to preserve land as open space, particularly after having overseen the preservation of 400,000 acres of open space in Virginia during my time as Governor of the Commonwealth. There are no plans to develop the open space on this site, only to fix the day care center building--a former Forest Service garage that has been on the site since before its transfer from Federal ownership. This is a small modification that simply removes unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles and allows the day care center to continue doing what it has been doing for 25 years. My Virginia colleague Congressman Bob Goodlatte has introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives, and I am pleased to join him in this common-sense, bipartisan effort.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, this bill has a complex backstory, but it serves a simple purpose: To allow asmall day care facility in Virginia to undertake routine repairs and maintenance. For more than 20 years, the Plains Area Day Care Center in Broadway, VA, has served children from moderate-income families in Rockingham County. This facility sits on a 3-acre parcel that was once Federal land before the National Park Service conveyed it to Rockingham County in 1989 under the Federal Lands to Parks Program. The county in turn leases this land to the center for $1 per year, with a contract that runs through the year 2027. The center is in need of repairs and maintenance, including a new roof. However, it has had difficulty in securing private financing for these activities because of the complex land ownership structure-- Federal land conveyed conditionally to a county and leased to a private company. Due to Virginia's status as a ``Dillon Rule'' State, Rockingham County cannot execute a loan either. This bill would specify that the 1989 land conveyance is transferred in fee simple, with no further use restrictions. I appreciate the goal of the Federal Lands to Parks Program to preserve land as open space, particularly after having overseen the preservation of 400,000 acres of open space in Virginia during my time as Governor of the Commonwealth. There are no plans to develop the open space on this site, only to fix the day care center building--a former Forest Service garage that has been on the site since before its transfer from Federal ownership. This is a small modification that simply removes unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles and allows the day care center to continue doing what it has been doing for 25 years. My Virginia colleague Congressman Bob Goodlatte has introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives, and I am pleased to join him in this common-sense, bipartisan effort.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, this spring, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of President Johnson signing legislation to establish the Appalachian Regional Commission, ARC. The ARC represents a unique partnership between Federal, State and local government in 13 Appalachian States with the aim to address persistent poverty in Appalachian regions. In Virginia, 25 counties and 8 cities are part of that region. Since its inception, the Appalachian Regional Commission has worked to combat problems such as poor health, limited transportation infrastructure, and the digital divide. Over the past 50 years, ARC has funded projects that assisted in the reduction of distressed communities in the Commonwealth by providing assistance for water and wastewater projects, encouraging the adoption of advanced technologies such as broadband service, and supporting the development of community leaders and entrepreneurs. ARC has also recognized the importance of economic development that encourages tourism to help create communities where people want to live, work and visit. In 1960, 43.2 percent of people lived in poverty in Virginia's Appalachian Region. That number has decreased to 18.6 percent today. In 1970, 28 percent of homes lacked complete plumbing. Today, that number has been reduced to 4 percent. This progress exemplifies ARC's steadfast commitment toward achieving its objective to increase job opportunities and per capita income, strengthen the capacity of Appalachia's citizens to compete in the global economy, improve the region's infrastructure, and build the Appalachian Development Highway System, ADHS. Great strides have been made in Virginia's Appalachian Region, but more work remains. I am proud to have signed a letter to the chairman and ranking member on Appropriations requesting fiscal year 2016 ARC funding at the President's budget request of $93 million. This critical work must continue until the 25 million Americans who live in the Appalachian Regions are helped out of poverty and can achieve socioeconomic parity with the Nation. With the Appalachian Regional Commission's continued work and determination, I am confident that the region will continue toward economic progress, growth, and development.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate an anniversary, as well as to challenge my colleagues in Congress. Today marks the completion of 9 months of America's war against ISIL. Tomorrow, May 8, starts the 10th month of this war. In the war on ISIL, here is what has happened so far. We have deployed thousands of troops far from home to support military operations in Iraq and Syria. A significant number of them are from Virginia, including the Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group based in Norfolk. We have conducted more than 3,000 U.S. air strikes on ISIL from land bases in the region as well as from aircraft carriers. We have spent more than 2 billion American taxpayer dollars--and counting. We have lost the lives of American servicemembers and seen American hostages killed by ISIL in barbaric ways. And while we have seen some significant progress on the battlefield in Iraq, we have also witnessed ISIL spread and take responsibility for attacks in Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen. We have seen other terrorist groups, such as Nigeria's Boko Haram, pledge alliance to ISIL. We have seen acts of terrorism in Europe and now in the United States that have been influenced or at least inspired by ISIL. All of this has happened in 9 months. Here is what hasn't happened. Congress, the article I branch whose most solemn power is the duty to declare war, has not done its job, has not debated this war, has not taken any formal step to authorize what was started unilaterally by the President 9 months ago. As of today, ISIL has no indication whether Congress cares one iota about the ongoing war. Our allies in the region who are most directly affected by the threat of ISIL have no indication whether Congress cares one iota about the ongoing war. And most importantly, the thousands of American troops serving in the region and serving in the theater of battle have no indication whether Congress cares one iota about this ongoing war. In the Senate there has been no authorization vote or even debate on the floor. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee did report out a war authorization in December, but it died without floor action at the end of the 113th Congress. In the House, there has been no debate or authorization on the floor. In fact, there has been no action in any House committee during the 9 months of this war. The silence of Congress in the midst of this war is cowardly and shameful. How can we explain to our troops, our public, or ourselves this complete unwillingness of Congress to take up this important responsibility? President Obama maintains that the authorizations voted on by Congress in 2001 and 2002 give him the power to wage this war without Congress. Having reviewed the authorizations carefully, I find that claim completely without merit. The 2001 authorization allows the President to take action against groups that perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. ISIL was not a perpetrator of the 9/11 attack; it was not formed until 2 years after the attacks, in 2003. It is not an ally of Al Qaeda; it is now fighting against Al Qaeda in certain theaters. The only way the 2001 authorization could be stretched to cover ISIL is if we pretend that the authorization is a blank check giving the President the power to wage war against any terrorist group. But that was precisely the power that President Bush asked for in 2001, and Congress explicitly refused to grant that broad grant of power to the President, even in the days right after the 9/11 attacks. The 2002 authorization to wage war in Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein also has no relevance here. That regime disappeared years ago. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 does grant the President some ability to initiate military action for 60 to 90 days prior to congressional approval, but it also mandates that the President must cease military activity unless Congress formally approves it. Here we have blown long past all of the deadlines of the act, Congress has said nothing, and yet the war continues. So the President does not have the legal power to maintain this war without Congress. Yet Congress--this Congress--the very body that is so quick to argue against President Obama's use of Executive power, even threatening him with lawsuits over immigration actions and other Executive decisions, is strangely silent and allows an Executive war to go on undeclared, unapproved, undefined, and unchecked. So 9 months of silence leaves the impression that Congress is either indifferent about ISIL and the threat that it poses or lacks the backbone to do the job that it is supposed to do. That is why I rise today to challenge my colleagues to take this seriously and promptly debate and pass an authorization for military action against ISIL. We should have done this months ago. By now, all know that ISIL is not going away soon. This problem will not just solve itself. I am given some hope by recent actions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and this body on the pending matter, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. On a challenging and important national security issue, because of strong leadership by Senators Corker, Cardin, and Menendez, we have shown the ability to act in a bipartisan way to assert an appropriate congressional role in reviewing a final nuclear deal with Iran. We are taking an important stand for the congressional role in matters touching upon diplomacy, war, and peace, and we have fought off thus far the temptation to play politics with this important matter. This gives me some hope that we might do the same with respect to the war on ISIL, because the role of Congress in war is undisputable. The Framers of the Constitution were familiar with a world where war was for the Monarch, the King, the Sultan or the Executive. But they made a revolutionary decision to choose a different path and place the decisions about the initiation of war in the hands of the people's elected legislative branch. They did so because of an important underlying value. The value is this: We shouldn't order young servicemembers to risk their lives in a military mission unless Congress has debated the mission and reached the conclusion that it is in the Nation's best interest. That value surely is as important today as it was in 1787. To conclude, I hope we will remember that right now in places far from their homes, thousands of members of the American Armed Forces are risking their lives on behalf of a mission that Congress has refused to address for 9 long months. Their sacrifice should call us to step up, do our job, and finally define and authorize this ongoing war. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time allotted during quorum calls be charged to both sides.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate the comments of Chairman Corker, and I appreciate the two punch lines of the Senator from Kansas to his argument that I am strongly in support of. The first is that this is a very momentous topic, and there are many, many questions about an ultimate deal that we have to grapple with. Second, it is so much of the moment that the congressional sanctions themselves are so wrapped up in the discussion that Congress must have a role to fulfill our constitutional obligation and to actually do what we essentially set in motion by passing the congressional sanctions. We must have a role. So to the chairman and to all who are supporting the bill, I think we have got it in a good place on the floor, and I am proud to be a strong supporter of it. The only issue on which I would offer a slightly different take than the Senator from Kansas is this. I think by all objective standards, the negotiations to this point have produced a status quo that has been better than where we were before the negotiations. If you think back to before November 2013, Iran--although under punishing sanctions--was moving forward in a very dramatic way to build up an architecture. While the sanctions were hurting the Iranian economy, there was some argument that it was not slowing down their nuclear program. It was accelerating it because they were feeling isolated. Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel appeared before the United Nations and gave a very famous speech in which he talked about the stockpile of uranium that was enriched to a 20-percent level. We drew a bomb and showed a level of enrichment that was getting to an extremely dangerous place. That is where we were before President Obama started these negotiations with the P5+1 in November 2013. At the time the negotiations were started, there were some who said they were misguided or a historic mistake or a giveaway. But, by now, virtually all--even those who were skeptical at the beginning--would acknowledge that the negotiations have actually led to a status quo significantly better than before November 2013. The 20-percent enriched uranium stockpile Iran had has been rolled back to a 5-percent enrichment level. Many of the centrifuges and facilities where nuclear weapons and nuclear activities were occurring have either been disabled or in some way have been reconfigured so that they are not continuing to produce more material that would cause significant concern. Since November 2013 the international community has been able to achieve significantly greater inspections of the Iranian nuclear activity than they had before. So while we still have significant questions about an ultimate deal and Congress's role, we have a much better handle on their program. They have rolled back that program to a significant degree, and even skeptics of the original deal acknowledge that. I do think that is important to mention. Congress needs to fulfill its article I powers, but we also need to have the President do the diplomacy that article II allows him to do.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the Corker- Menendez bill. I thank Chairman Corker for his kind words and for the opportunity to work together on something, in what I believe to be the best traditions of our committee and the Senate. I thank my ranking member, Senator Cardin, for being a great facilitator at the end to help us get over a number of challenging issues, to a point of unanimity on the committee, and to Senator Menendez, whose long-term interest on this issue has been so consistent and so helpful and whose work on this particular piece of legislation was critical. I believe Senator Corker began, and I want to begin as well, with a condolence to the family of Dr. Weinstein, a Marylander who--the announcement today about his death in Afghanistan in a drone strike sort of reminds us of the stakes that are involved in these kinds of issues. When we are talking about American military action or about diplomacy around a nuclear weapons program, it is not a bill we are talking about, it is not a concept we are talking about, we are talking about human lives; that even in the best of circumstances there will be days like today when there will be sad news and Americans who are in harm's way because of the dangerous nature of the world--and I feel like the announcement today about Dr. Weinstein--our condolences to his family should remind us of the seriousness of our obligation. Senator Cardin started with that great wisdom of Senator Vandenberg that ``politics stops at the water's edge.'' Now, we probably all know that was never 100 percent true. I know a little bit about some of the challenges Jefferson and other Virginians had early. There is always politics, but there is a core wisdom to that principle, a very important wisdom. Of course, we are going to battle because we see things differently, and people seeing things differently can sometimes get to a greater understanding. That is what we hope to do. But the reason politics should stop at the water's edge is because we want to send a unified message to our allies as they depend on us. We need to send a unified message to our adversaries about our intentions. But I would say in a personal way, because of maybe representing the Commonwealth of Virginia, we have to send a unified message to the men and women in our armed services who serve, who are serving in battlefields, who are serving in theaters of military operations around the world. When we are contemplating decisions about something so big that could potentially lead to war--we just deployed Virginia-based ships like the Theodore Roosevelt to Yemen to potentially check Iranian ambitions vis-a-vis the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Those are Virginians, many from other States, who are deployed on those ships. We owe it to those who are serving and risking their lives to try to be as nonpartisan as we can, so they know they are not serving just because one party thinks they should or the other party thinks they should, but the missions they are undertaking are missions of national consensus. I feel that very strongly. That is why I am so gratified this bill now reaches the floor on a fundamental matter in a bipartisan way. With respect to our negotiations with Iran, there was a view out there on the table that if Congress wanted to be involved, it must be because we are against diplomacy. In the committee I said that notion was offensive to me. There were those even who suggested that those who wanted a congressional oversight role were prowar, which was highly offensive and insulting. I am prodiplomacy. I supported the President's commencement of these negotiations in November of 2013. I think America has a wonderful diplomatic tradition where we have been able to achieve a lot when diplomacy is done right. I actually think the negotiation period from November 2013 to today has produced tangible benefits for the United States, our allies, and the world because Iran has rolled back its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium. They have allowed inspections they didn't allow before. And even nations and leaders who were skeptical about whether the negotiation would work have admitted to me: Maybe I shouldn't have been skeptical. The negotiation period has produced some benefits. In the framework announced on April 2, I see some items I like and I see some other things I have some deep questions about. But a commitment by Iran, for example, to roll back uranium stockpiles from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms--just a fraction of what would be necessary to produce even one weapon--would be very positive. But I say all that just to say that as a prodiplomacy Senator, as someone who would love to find a negotiation that would work to a positive end, I believe strongly that a congressional review role of a matter such as this is necessary, it is helpful, and it is something, frankly, that the American public deserves. It is necessary for the reasons that have been described. Now, a President, under article II powers, has significant ability to conduct foreign policy and even strike agreements without congressional approval. There are many things a President can do in the foreign policy sphere without congressional approval. But this is fundamentally a negotiation about what Iran must do to get out from under sanctions that Congress has constructed, that Congress has imposed, and that Congress has perfected and approved over the years. If that is the negotiation, there is no way to have an ultimate deal about the unwinding and eventual repeal of a congressional sanctions statute without congressional review. So Congress is necessary to this deal. Second, congressional review is helpful. It is helpful for the negotiators, as they are in this final chapter, to know that they must negotiate to their very best because they will have to sell this deal to Congress as the elected representatives of the American people. That is a helpful discipline for our negotiators. It is helpful for the Iranians who want to get out from under congressional sanctions to have some sense of how Congress might ultimately look at this deal. Put yourself in the Iranian shoes. We want them to make huge concessions, not modest ones. But what is their incentive to make big concessions to get out from under congressional sanctions if they have no idea what Congress will likely do? We have put a process in place that will give them some sense of what Congress would do in an orderly way, and that will be an incentive, I believe, for larger concessions. Not only is this review bill necessary, not only is it helpful, but it is what the American public expects and deserves. I think we have all been looking at the way the American public has been reacting to this negotiation. The American public is like all of us. They are deeply worried about an Iranian nuclear weapons program. They are like all of us. They would love it if we could find a diplomatic end to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. They are like all of us. They are skeptical about whether Iran will follow an agreement, and they overwhelmingly believe that if there is an agreement, it should be an agreement that Congress approves. Why do they think Congress should approve it? Is it because we have fantastic approval ratings? Absolutely not. We don't have great approval ratings. But, the American public says: In our anxiety about whether we can trust Iran on a deal, we will feel better if both the executive and the legislative have looked at this deal and concluded-- like you would try to get a second opinion from a doctor on something that was very important--that it is a good deal for our country and our national security. They are going to feel more comfortable, given the natural anxiety they have about Iranian compliance. That is why this bill is so important. Finally, I want to talk about how the bill got here because I do think there is a lesson for the floor activity on the bill but also for the body, more generally. This bill was filed in original version in 2014, and I did not sign onto it. Our chairman, Senator Corker, and I were in the Middle East in January with five other Senators, in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel. As we returned after a set of discussions with governmental leaders, military leaders, civil society, and political leaders about many topics, including the Iranian negotiation, Senator Corker, a friend, sort of challenged me a little bit: Hey, you are the guy who likes to say that Congress needs to play a role. I have been pushing hard for Congress to play a role in an authorization of military force against ISIL. If that is what you think, why aren't you on this bill about congressional approval of a deal with Iran? I said: You are absolutely right congressional approval, but there are some aspects of the bill I don't like. The chairman said to me: Then, fine, you rewrite it or propose amendments, and let's see if we can work together. So I did and others did, and we put our best good-faith proposals down on the table. We found a listening ear, a staff, and a set of Senators on both sides of the aisle who were willing to try to exercise that congressional approval role--but do it in the right way, not the wrong way. When we filed this bill on September 27, there were two Democratic original sponsors and two Republican original sponsors. Then there were five additional Democratic cosponsors and five additional Republican cosponsors. So from the very day this bill hit the floor, we were trying to build it in a bipartisan way to show that the Vandenberg maxim, although it is not as true even when it was stated and it certainly is not as true today as we would like it, still had some power. And we wanted to show the body that we could do it in a bipartisan way so that our allies, our adversaries, and our troops would see that we could act in a bipartisan way on something so important. There were steps between the filing of the bill and the Foreign Relations Committee action that threatened to push the bill off of the bipartisan rails into partisanship in ways that might have served the short-term purpose but that would have probably killed the bill. The chairman and others made sure that did not happen. So when we got to the vote in the Foreign Relations Committee--and it went from 2 plus 2, to 7 plus 7, and eventually, 19 to zero--we carefully worked at every step along the way to make this bipartisan and, hopefully, to send an example on the floor that this is what it should be. Robust debate and amendment, of course, is what this body is about. But we want to make sure that review of this most important matter is done in a way that is careful, prompt, and deliberate, according to rules that all can respect and all can understand. I conclude with thanks to my colleagues on the committee, to the leadership of the chair--both as the original drafter of the bill, then as the drafter willing to entertain other ideas, and then as the chair of this committee, trying to bring this to a productive place. I thank Senator Cardin for his great role in helping us bridge differences and, especially, for his communication with the White House. The White House threatened to veto this bill, but Senator Cardin, probably better than most, was able to listen to the concerns and then try to respond to the concerns in a way that we could make the bill productive. This matter is so important that we just cannot tackle it in any way other than trying to follow--the best we humanly can--that Vandenberg maxim. I hope, as we get into deliberations on the floor next week, that this would be the spirit of all the colleagues who tackled this most important matter. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

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

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate a horrible tragedy, to honor a community, and to challenge this Congress. Eight years ago today I was the Governor of Virginia. I had just landed in Japan to begin a 2-week trade mission in Japan and India, and there was a knock on my hotel room door. State Police informed me there had been a horrible shooting on the campus of one of my State universities, Virginia Tech. We turned on CNN--that far away around the world--and saw the news unfold, the horrific events of that day. We went back to the airport, and we flew back home and spent weeks, months, and then years dealing with the aftermath of this horrible tragedy. Thirty-two wonderful Americans, Virginians, and folks from around the world--students, professors, and graduate students of Virginia Tech-- lost their lives that day. If you will allow me, I want to read their names into the Record: Ross Alameddine, Jamie Bishop, Brian Bluhm, Ryan Clark, Austin Michelle Cloyd, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Daniel Alejandro Perez Cueva, Kevin Granata, Matthew Gwaltney, Caitlin Hammaren, Jeremy Herbstritt, Rachael Elizabeth Hill, Emily Hilscher, Jarrett Lane, Matthew La Porte, Henry Lee, Liviu Librescu, G.V. Loganathan, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, Lauren McCain, Daniel O'Neil, Juan Ramon Ortiz, Minal Panchal, Erin Peterson, Michael Pohle, Julia Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Samaha, Waleed Mohammed Shaalan, Leslie Sherman, Maxine Turner, and Nicole White. Thirty-two precious, precious people of amazing accomplishment and even more amazing promise. Seventeen others were shot that day and wounded. Six others were not shot but were injured leaping from windows in a classroom building to escape the carnage. And so many others were affected: first responders, pastors, counselors, and the entire Hokie Nation. That is what we call the Virginia Tech community. I know there has been a presentation on the floor about mental health issues and first responders. Some of the most painful discussions I had were in the aftermath of the shooting. I had many with family members and students who were injured, but some of the most painful were from the first responders. The EMTs on the scene included students who were volunteering at the campus EMT operation. Their description of this carnage they walked into, as horrible as the carnage was--the physical carnage--the thing that many of them told me was the most difficult for them to get over was walking into classrooms where there were dead bodies and hearing in pockets and backpacks next to these prone forms the vibrating and ringing of cell phones from parents and friends who had seen the news on TV and were reaching out to try to find out whether their friend or their child was safe. Those unanswered phones were deeply, deeply difficult to those who were the responders. I have friends who were pastors and counselors in the Blacksburg community. And their own experiences years later have profoundly transformed their lives. Even in tragedy, though, you can see examples of resilience and remarkable spirit. The Virginia Tech community, the Hokie Nation, on that day demonstrated resilience and in the years since. I do stand to honor that spirit and resilience of the entire community, even as we acknowledge the horrible tragedy. Two years ago on this day we were in the midst of a grim debate on this floor inspired by another horrific shooting--the murder of schoolchildren in Newtown, CT. I stood on the floor and talked about the shooting at Virginia Tech and the lessons we had learned. I told the story of just one of the victims. It is sort of unfair to single out a person because all were so special, but one of the victims who was killed that day was a professor of engineering, Liviu Librescu, Romanian-born, who survived the Holocaust and who survived the Soviet takeover of his native country, only to be killed by gun violence in America as he barred the door to his classroom to stop the shooter from entering so that his students could safely escape. He survived the Holocaust, survived the depredation imposed on his country by Soviet communism and was killed by gun violence at Virginia Tech University in Virginia in this country. I want to tell you today about two students who were shot that day but survived. They offer a powerful lesson about the resilient human spirit and also offer a challenge to this body. Colin Goddard was a senior just weeks away from graduation. He was badly wounded. He was shot four times that day. My wife Anne and I visited him in the hospital 2 days after the shooting. We see him and his parents often. They live in Richmond, where we live. In the years since his graduation, Colin has become a passionate advocate for gun safety, especially focusing on the need for a national system of background record checks. He helped produce and was part of an award-winning documentary about his friends. The documentary is called ``Living for 32,'' and it is very powerful. Elilta ``Lily'' Habtu was also a senior, and she was majoring in psychology. She was shot and badly injured that day. She is with us today in the Senate Gallery. Lily was already focused on helping people, but the shooting put her on a new path. Along with other survivors, she founded Students for Gun Free Schools, a grassroots movement to keep campuses safe. She received a master's degree in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University, and she has used that training to work on a number of gun safety issues. She also served as an intern at the White House. I could tell wonderful stories about many of the others who were killed or injured, and all of them are precious. I hope to do that in the years to come because I have a feeling I will stand on this floor often on April 16. I focused on Colin and Lily today because of their passionate work for gun safety. In the aftermath of the shooting at Virginia Tech, I commissioned a panel to review what went wrong that day. Lawyers said: Don't do that. People could use it to bring lawsuits against the State. I said: No. We have to know what went wrong. We have to know what we can do to reduce the chance this will ever happen again. We will not be able to eliminate violence. We will not be able to eliminate shootings. But at least we can reduce the chance if we learn what went wrong. My panel dug into it and made recommendations about mental health, campus safety protocol, first responders, the training of campus personnel, and about gun safety. These detailed recommendations led to numerous changes in State and Federal best practices and laws, and I saw legislators from both parties work together, with strong public support, to make changes so our campuses would be safer. Mr. President, I would not be honest if I didn't say there was one recommendation by my panel that was opposed both at the State and Federal levels--the institution of a comprehensive background record check system to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous individuals. I wish to talk today about that continuing failure. The Virginia Tech student who killed and wounded so many, Seung-Hui Cho, should never have been able to purchase weapons at all. He had been adjudicated in a court in the Commonwealth of Virginia as mentally ill and dangerous and was thus barred by Federal law from purchasing or owning weapons. That is a longstanding Federal law, but the Federal law is only as good as the background record check system that is able to determine when someone purchases a weapon if they have, in fact, been adjudicated mentally ill and dangerous. Because the record of his adjudication had not been entered into the national NICS database, he slipped through the cracks, and this troubled individual illegally bought the weapons that destroyed so many lives and removed so much promise from this Earth. We fixed the narrow issue that led to Seung-Hui Cho's adjudication being left out of the database. I did it by executive order. My legislature confirmed it at the Federal level. Laws were passed and signed into law by President Bush to encourage States to enter mental health adjudications into the Federal database--a database that in the last 20 years has succeeded at stopping more than 2 million people from making illegal gun purchases. But just months later, as Governor, when I tried to make sure we performed background record checks on everybody, especially those who purchased guns at gun shows, which account for a huge portion of the gun purchases in the United States--there is no law requiring background record checks at gun shows. When I made that effort, my general assembly basically caved in to pressure from a Virginia organization--the National Rifle Association--and other groups, and they voted against background record checks. Two years ago, as a Senator, during the very week we were commemorating the anniversary of the most horrific shooting to ever happen on a college campus in the history of the United States and in the shadow of the horrific shootings in Newtown, CT, we tried to create a uniform background record check system at the Federal level, but the same groups that fought against us in Virginia fought against background checks here. Even in the shadow of the horrific shootings of the little kids in Newtown--and since the Newtown shootings, more than 70,000 Americans have been killed by gun violence in this country--we still lack a comprehensive background record check system. It is estimated that 40 percent of all of the guns that are sold in the United States occur with no background record check. The Presiding Officer knows the law. Convicted felons are not lawfully allowed to purchase their own weapons, but without a comprehensive background record check system, they can and they do. People who have been adjudicated mentally ill and dangerous are not lawfully allowed to purchase their own weapons, but without a comprehensive background record check system, they can and they do. Domestic violence perpetrators who have been placed under protective orders are not lawfully allowed to purchase their own weapons, but without a comprehensive background record check system, they can and they do. So why not fix our laws to create a record check system so we can keep weapons out of the hands of those who are not legally allowed to have them? Why are groups such as the NRA so passionately opposed to keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people? I am particularly interested in the NRA's position on this issue because I know the organization very well. The NRA is headquartered in Virginia. I know many NRA members. When I was the mayor of Richmond and I helped implement an antigun program--Project Exile--that would send gun criminals to Federal prison, the NRA supported our effort. So why is the NRA opposed to background record checks? The NRA opposes background record checks even though American gun owners and even NRA members have frequently indicated strong support for background record checks in polling. The NRA opposes background record checks even though their avowed principles would suggest that they would support such laws. For example, the NRA has been fond of saying: We don't need new gun laws; we just need to enforce existing gun laws. That is exactly what a background record check does. It makes no change in the law as to who can and cannot have a weapon; it just enables us to enforce existing laws to stop dangerous people, such as Seung-Hui Cho, from purchasing weapons. The NRA has also famously said that we should not take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens; we should instead focus on getting guns away from criminals. Again, that is exactly what a background record check system does. It only stops people from purchasing weapons if they are legally prohibited from purchasing weapons. If gun owners and NRA members support background checks in polls, and if the NRA's own principles suggest that background checks are in tune with their philosophy, why have they fought so hard and so long to keep our Nation from having a comprehensive background check system? I have pondered that question since 2007 because that day was one of the worst days of my life. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and thinking about what I ought to do as a citizen and elected official to reduce the chance that anybody will ever have to go through that experience again. After pondering the question of why any legitimate organization would fight against background record checks, the only purpose of which is to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people who are not legally allowed to have them, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer, and the answer is this: The NRA does not really speak for or represent American gun owners. Instead, they speak for and represent and, most importantly, receive funding from gun manufacturers. If you make guns, it is in your financial interest to sell as many guns as you can to whomever you can, whenever you can, and wherever you can. And I believe that is the reason so many States and even Congress are not able to pass background record check laws to keep us safer. Mr. President, let me be self-critical. I would not call out the NRA if I were not about to do what I am about to do. I will bring it home and talk about Congress. If the NRA is now beholden to gun manufacturers, I have to be honest enough to admit that Congress can hardly be self-righteous about this. I would argue that Congress is equally beholden to gun manufacturers as well. As the Presiding Officer knows, Congress generally leaves the question of tort law as a matter for States to resolve. We generally don't have big tort reform at the Federal level. Republicans often advance notions of States' rights and oppose Federal laws that trump State laws. Democrats are generally against efforts that block plaintiffs' access to State courts to seek redress for injuries. So, in some ways, both Republican and Democratic principles have tended to be opposed to tort reform at the national level. But here is an unusual example. In 2005, 10 years ago, both Democrats and Republicans joined together to support a major Federal tort reform act, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and that act restricts the ability of people to bring lawsuits against firearm manufacturers in State or Federal court for negligent use of firearms. This 2005 act, which was a bipartisan one in this body--13 Democrats joined with Republicans to pass it--is highly unusual because if you look through the entire United States Code, you are not going to find many national, Federal-level tort laws that shield entire industries from State court claims based on negligence. There may be another one, but I don't know what it is. This is a highly unusual shielding of an entire industry--the gun manufacturing industry--from State and Federal claims based on negligence. This industry uniquely receives this very special protection from the Congress of the United States. When the law was passed in this body and signed into law by President Bush, plaintiffs in State courts whose cases were being tried had to immediately close down their cases. Plaintiffs who had won cases and had cases on appeal immediately had their cases dismissed. This does not happen often, but for gun manufacturers, in this Congress, it has happened. I will conclude by saying this: We have to make a decision about what is important. We have to make decisions every day about what is important. Should we keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous people, people who are prohibited by law from having them--if you think the answer is yes, then you should support background check laws--or should we embrace a policy that is based on the notion that we should sell as many guns as we can to whomever we can, whenever we can, and wherever we can? Because that is the current state of the law with an inadequate background check system. It serves no one's interest other than gun manufacturers', but the human cost is incalculably high. As we commemorate the shooting at Virginia Tech, honoring those we lost and those brave survivors, such as Colin and Lily, who are using their painful experience to help others, and honoring the resilience of the entire Hokie Nation, it is my hope that my colleagues will get serious about gun safety. I am a gun owner and a proud supporter of the Second Amendment, but the time is long overdue for a comprehensive background check system that keeps weapons out of the hands of dangerous people like Seung-Hui Cho. I look forward to the day when we will accomplish this and have a safer nation as a result. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, the key budget issue that we are grappling with is what will we do about sequester in the budget caps. All of us since March of 2013 have heard in our various committees about the effect these caps are having on our national defense, our law enforcement, medical research, education, and every other priority. This amendment does two simple things. It creates a deficit-neutral reserve fund to allow us to look for a sequester replacement that can analyze mandatory programs other than Social Security, discretionary programs, and tax entitlements--tax expenditures. Second, it creates a mechanism if such a bill is enacted to adjust the budget caps. If we are serious about lifting sequester, we should vote for this bill.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I also rise to speak on behalf of this budget amendment. I will be brief. There is a wonderful organization that analyzes education in this country called the Lumina Foundation. Their main area of research is the percentage of adults in the country and competitor countries who have higher education degrees. Because of the GI bill, the United States rocketed ahead of other nations and became the clear leading country in the world in the percentage of adults with higher education degrees. There wasn't a close second. But now we are 10th to 15th in the world and slipping. I would argue that the economic future for this country is not one that we would like if the United States continues to slip further and further behind other nations in the percentage of our folks with higher education degrees. That is why I support this amendment. I yield back my time.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Thank you, Madam President. I thank my colleague from Vermont who has done an able job as the ranking member on the Budget Committee. I rise today to talk about the budget resolution that we are considering on the floor of the Senate this week. I came to the Senate in 2013 with a background as a mayor and a Governor. I believe in getting budgets done and getting them done on time. Doing budgets under regular order is an important priority, and I have enjoyed and look forward to more work with colleagues on budgeting matters. Quickly, we have been in a budget crisis of our own making in Congress. It is not someone else's fault. It is not the President's fault. The budget crisis we have been in has been of Congress's making. In August of 2011, when one House pushed the country to the verge of defaulting on our debt for the first time in our history, in order not to default we came up with the idea of the sequester. This was before I was in the Senate, but the basic idea was this: Let's impose punishing across-the-board cuts on all of these Federal spending levels to begin in March of 2013 to force us to try to come up with a better deal. I call that ``let's try to do something good, and if we don't, then let's do something really stupid.'' I don't know that this is a principle you should ever apply. When I came to the Senate on the verge of sequester going into effect, my first floor speech as a Senator and one of my first votes was this: OK, we didn't find the budget deal that some wanted, but let's not do something stupid. Let's not embrace the sequester and hurt priorities that matter to people every day. Sadly, we couldn't get the 60 votes to cut off the sequester in the Senate. So since March of 2013, we have been in sequester mode. I said in committee and I will say again: The sequester violates every good principle of budgeting I have learned as either a public sector budgeter as a mayor and a Governor or as a private sector budgeter managing a multinational law firm with lawyers on three continents. Nobody would do budgeting this way. The United States, because of Congress, is doing budgeting this way, and I think we need to come up with a better solution. During the last Congress we did find a better solution. It wasn't a perfect solution, but the Murray-Ryan budget act did a 2-year budgetary framework that eliminated half of these punishing sequester cuts and gave a significant lift to the economy. The economy has generally been pretty strong, cutting deficits but also avoiding some of the mindless austerity that full sequester means. A good budget for the country--and I am sad to say that the budget we will be debating on the floor this week is not a good budget for the country--but a good budget for the country would do a couple of things. It would put the promotion of growth and jobs first. The best antideficit strategy--if that is what you are interested in--is promoting a strong economy, and job growth would be the first priority. Second, we would replace a mindless across-the-board sequester with a more targeted approach. If we did that, we could credibly reduce deficits rather than reducing deficits in a way that hurts the economy and punishes programs that matter to people. The economy and jobs side, we will grow the economy and grow jobs if we do things such as moving away from unnecessary austerity and promoting infrastructure. My colleague from Vermont has a strong proposal about infrastructure that we debated in committee and we will be debating this week. If you did infrastructure and other investments in human capital, you could credibly reduce sequester and increase jobs. We could also increase jobs if we had a tax code that didn't punish work, that didn't punish labor, wages, and salary the way this one does. The second way would be to restore key spending priorities and replace sequester with a targeted approach. We should be focusing on a budget that maintains a strong national defense; that keeps our promises to veterans; that invests in education, especially important programs such as Head Start, pre-K, and college affordability. We can protect Federal employees, we can protect programs for people of low and moderate incomes, such as SNAP or Pell grants, and we could ensure the environment is protected if we followed targeted strategies. That would be better. Finally, growing the economy and pursuing targeted budget strategies would enable us to credibly reduce the deficit. It is important to note that the deficit has been coming down since the Murray-Ryan budget deal was done, and that is important. But that is not the budget that will be on the floor this week. Last Thursday we voted a budget out of committee. It was a long day of debating and voting. I was able to support a number of amendments, and I had some of my own and others that were passed, and I appreciate them. But I ultimately voted against the budget, and unless there will be dramatic changes on the floor of the Senate, I will, in all likelihood, be voting against the budget for the following reasons: First, the budget before us proposes cuts to nondefense discretionary programs--education, infrastructure, research--the nondefense, noninterest, nonentitlement programs that are about 14 to 15 percent of the Federal budget. It proposes not just cutting those to full sequester levels but cutting them by an additional $236 billion over 10 years. Even the sequester levels are untenable, slashing these programs even further to make college more expensive, to spend less on infrastructure, and to spend less on research. It is foolish for the Nation. The budget proposes $4 trillion in unspecified cuts to programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, but it only includes a budget reconciliation instruction totaling $2 billion, which leaves a very unusual gap in the terms of how we are going to find magically the $4 trillion in cuts. The budget depends on gimmicks and sort of magic tricks to achieve balance, when we are not really achieving balance. It uses outdated baseline proposals by the CBO. We just had CBO numbers come in this March from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, showing that the country, because of an improving economy, is poised to collect more revenue and poised to spend less on some key programs. Instead of using that baseline data--the March data--the budget we worked on in committee used worse January data to make the situation seem more dire than it is. I don't know why we would do this. We should use the most updated numbers. Finally, I voted against the budget because it contained a critical dishonesty. It proposed to do two things simultaneously that violate the basic laws of physics. The two measures are this: First we are going to entirely repeal the Affordable Care Act. However, all the taxes we are collecting from companies and people to pay for the Affordable Care Act--we are going to keep all of those in the budget. So we will repeal all of the benefits, all of the coverage, all of the protection that tens of millions of Americans get under the Affordable Care Act, but we will keep taxing people and companies and keep all that tax revenue in the budget. Clearly, both of those things are not going to happen. So the budget has this air of unreality about it. But to me, the unreality of the numbers is even dwarfed in importance by just the flat statement that we are going to repeal the Affordable Care Act. There are many things I can say about the Affordable Care Act. Why don't I just pick one? That is that 16.4 million Americans are receiving insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. What does this budget say will happen to those 16.4 million Americans? The budget doesn't say. It has no plan for providing that they will be able to have health insurance. Taking away health insurance from 16.4 million Americans, many of whom have it for the first time in their lives, is no small issue. That number is a big number. Sometimes big numbers just sound like big numbers. Let me put it in context. How many Americans are 16.4 million people? Well, 16.4 million people with health insurance is the entire combined population of Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, and West Virginia. That is 14 States and the District of Columbia. The entire combined population from birth to death in those 15 jurisdictions is what 16.4 million American people are. What this budget proposes is to reach in and strip away health insurance from every last one of those 16.4 million people without a proposal, without a plan, without even any indication of how we would tackle this problem. I refuse to be a part of that. I refuse to contemplate voting for that. I have had too much experience with people who don't have health insurance to push willingly people back into the shadows when they have had health insurance for the first time in their life. I know the Presiding Officer understands this. We all do. Health insurance is about two things. It is about health, but it is also about assurance. So if you are sick, if you are in an accident, if your wife is in an accident, if your kids are sick, you have to have this so that you can receive health care, so that you can receive treatment. But when you are not sick and when you haven't been in an accident, you still go to bed worrying about what will happen to your children if they get into an accident, what will happen to your wife if she gets ill. Even when you are healthy, the absence of health insurance imposes an anxiety--especially on parents--that is very, very severe. So I will not be part of a budget that tells 16.4 million people--the combined population of 14 States and the District of Columbia--that while you may have had this health insurance for the first time in your life, we are now going to take it away from you without a plan to help you have the assurance and the peace of mind and the protection of your health that you have under existing law. We should not step backward. We should always step forward. Can we find improvements? Of course we can. But we shouldn't step backward. That is why I voted against the budget in committee, and that is why I am likely, absent major change, to vote against it on the floor. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be Attorney General of the United States. It is interesting that this is a week when we have been engaged in a dialogue about human trafficking, which is a serious and significant issue, obviously. But it, along with many other issues, demands a strong Justice Department, and a strong Justice Department is not possible without a confirmed Attorney General as a leader. Ms. Lynch has now been nominated over 4 months ago. It has been 124 days since her nomination, and she has still yet to be confirmed. I rise to speak on her behalf. I have visited with Loretta Lynch in person. I have observed her throughout the nominations process. My brother-in-law worked as an assistant U.S. attorney with her in the Eastern District of New York in the late 1990s. I am impressed, as are many of my colleagues, by her credentials and her extensive experience, and I was gratified to see that the Judiciary Committee reported her nomination to the floor. I am disappointed that it has taken 124 days to get to this point. I was pleased to hear the majority leader indicate that the Senate may take up her nomination next week, but I think it is important for the Nation to recognize how critical this appointment is and how we should not have let it go this long. I want to reflect back to probably the hardest elected office I held or will hold, which was mayor of Richmond. When I was a city councilman and mayor from 1994 to 2000, my city had the burden of having the second highest homicide rate in the United States. We worked in our community together with everyone, especially law enforcement and community leaders, to try to bring down that scourge of violent crime that was affecting neighborhoods, especially the poorest neighborhoods. We were able, over the course of 7 years, to achieve some very dramatic success to make our city safer, but along the way I learned a couple of very important things. The first was this. One can't tackle major public safety challenges without a strong relationship between the community and the local police department. It is impossible to make progress if that does not happen. Secondly, I also learned that one cannot tackle a difficult public safety challenge without a strong Department of Justice. We relied upon that partnership with our local U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia--all the way up through main Justice and the Attorney General--in order to try to tackle and turn our city's public safety situation around. Today there are critical issues facing this country--urgent issues facing this country--that deal with the relationship between our communities and law enforcement agencies. If there were ever a time when we would want to have a confirmed Attorney General in office without question marks surrounding when that confirmation will take place, it would be now. Over the last few months, we have seen a series of controversies that have torn at all of us as we have watched challenges and distrust between communities and law enforcement agencies. In early August, Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, was shot during a confrontation with an officer in Ferguson, MO. That shooting spurred nationwide protests and concerns against what many in Ferguson and elsewhere viewed as overly aggressive tactics by the police. A month prior to the death of Michael Brown, Eric Garner died as a result of a police chokehold in July in New York when he was confronted over the selling of untaxed cigarettes. There have been similar instances in Cleveland and Madison. It is not limited to one part of the country. It is not limited to North, South, East, or West. There have been similar instances that have raised serious concerns about the connection between law enforcement and communities. There have also been horrible atrocities committed against members of the law enforcement community, the deaths of two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were shot pointblank weeks ago in New York City while they sat in their patrol car. Yesterday, as we heard reported, there were shootings of police officers in Ferguson, MO. These instances in cities around the country demonstrate a significant level of tension and even distrust between the police and communities they serve, which are often minority communities or communities of color. I am here to say these tensions do not have to exist. They can be bridged. They can be solved. But it takes a fully functioning Department of Justice with a leader at the helm who has been confirmed to solve these issues. The Department of Justice has, throughout history and today, played a critical role in investigating cases such as this and some of the situations I mentioned. The DOJ has been able to come in and be involved and provide some calm to situations, provide some level of confidence that there would not be a sugarcoating or an effort to sweep legitimate questions into the closet in the community. In the State of Virginia, there is currently a DOJ investigation concerning the police shooting death of John Geer, an unarmed Caucasian who was shot on the steps of his residence in August of 2013. Local officials in that county have welcomed the involvement of the Department of Justice because they knew that citizens would have a greater confidence in the outcome if it was being done by someone other than the officials who had been elected locally. There is a critical need at this point to provide some confidence to communities that have questions about the relationship between their own concerns and the service of law enforcement departments, just as law enforcement departments want to have a way to build bridges with the communities they represent. Loretta Lynch understands the significance of the Attorney General's role in these situations. She testified that one of her key priorities would be to work to strengthen the bonds between law enforcement personnel, whom she has worked with during her entire career, and the communities they serve which she well understands. Last week, the DOJ released a report from their investigation into the Ferguson policing practices that laid out a number of significant concerns that, if left unaddressed, will continue to lead to distrust in Ferguson and elsewhere. A strong Justice Department that can help mediate and bring the sides together is a part of the solution. I raised these issues only to highlight that right now we are at a critical time in the Nation's criminal justice system. A delay of confirming an Attorney General for 4-plus months is never warranted, given the importance of the position. A delay is not warranted in this case, given these strong credentials of Loretta Lynch, but the delay is especially unwelcome, given the urgent need to have leadership at the Department of Justice. They can try to calm any potential situations and build confidence in communities and among law enforcement agencies. We need our incoming AG to be on the job, taking on these challenges in a manner that will bring different aspects of the community together, to make changes as necessary and to strengthen the equality of our criminal justice system for all. Of course, beyond the issue of community policing, we face so many other challenges, such as national security and terrorism, and in that respect the Eastern District of New York, which is where Ms. Lynch has served, has had one of the most significant dockets of antiterrorism cases of any jurisdiction in the country. She is an expert in those areas. Cyber security, the very human trafficking issues we have been discussing on the floor today, are issues Ms. Lynch has worked on significantly in her role, protecting voting rights, and so many more. Ms. Lynch is a no-nonsense, hard-working prosecutor known for her aplomb, her demeanor, her intelligence, and her ability to work with a wide variety of stakeholders. I am absolutely confident Ms. Lynch will approach these issues with the same focus, fairness, and expertise with which she has approached her work in the past. I stand today to urge my colleagues to not wait, and to support Loretta Lynch as our next Attorney General. It has been said to the point where it is a cliche, but nevertheless a true one, that justice delayed is justice denied. The refusal to confirm a leader to head the most important law enforcement agency in the United States is a delay of justice that for many seems to be a denial of justice. We can rectify that concern in communities across this country if we act with dispatch to confirm a person who is eminently qualified to hold the Nation's highest law enforcement position. With that, I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to address a question to myself and every Member of this body, and the question is a serious one: Is the Senate capable of tackling challenging national security questions in a mature and responsible way? We have many hard national security challenges before us now. Three of those challenges are urgent: the discussions about a potential nuclear deal with Iran, the discussions in this body about military action by the United States against ISIL, and the deliberations that will take place this month about the American budget, which will determine whether we have the resources we need to meet our security challenges. We have to show the American public--and I would argue the world--that we can give these issues the careful consideration they deserve, but I am forced to admit that recent events have caused me to have some significant doubts about our institutional capacity to tackle these issues in a responsible way. We recently--at the end of February--ran up to the very brink of shutting down the Department of Homeland Security at a time when terrorist threats and other threats to our homeland security are so obvious on our borders and throughout the world. Thank goodness, after a week's extension of funding for Homeland Security, we pulled back from the brink. But that did not lead to an increase in confidence in this body, that Congress would contemplate not funding the Department of Homeland Security. Last week there was a joint address to Congress by Prime Minister Netanyahu. I spent many hours conversing with Prime Minister Netanyahu in his office about Iran and other topics, but I am sad to look at that joint address and basically say it was history-making in some unfortunate ways. Congress has heard from the Prime Minister or President of Israel seven times in the last 50 years--eight times if you count last week. Last week's address was unusual because it was designed in a partisan way. It was an invitation by the leadership of one party with an intentional decision not to let the White House know, not to let the minority party in Congress know, and to schedule the speech days before a contested foreign election, leading many to conclude that it was an effort by Congress to affect a foreign election, which we should never do. Following that speech, a carefully worked bipartisan bill that has been introduced in Congress to give Congress an appropriate review role over any potential Iranian nuclear deal was basically hijacked. Instead of allowing the bill to go through Congress, there was a decision to force the bill to the floor for an immediate vote, which was seen by all as a partisan move. It was described by one of the Republican sponsors of the bill as an effort to embarrass Democrats. Thank goodness that at the end of the day that effort to accelerate consideration of what was a bipartisan bill was pulled back, and we will not be doing that this week. We will be allowing a normal committee process. But the fact that the effort was made did damage to reasonable bipartisan consideration of this important issue. Then yesterday we all awoke to the news that there had been a partisan letter signed by 47 Senators--47 of my colleagues, many of whom I work with very closely--not to the President saying ``We have concerns about a deal, and we are going to weigh in'' but instead to the leader of a nation that we characterize as a terrorist state. This letter presumed to instruct the nation about what Congress might or might not do. The letter was widely viewed as an effort to undercut or dilute diplomatic negotiations that are in the best tradition of our country, the notion of diplomacy. I just came from hearings this morning in the Armed Services Committee where we heard what we have heard for 2\1/2\ years: advice from our military leadership to the Senate that sequester is hurting our national defense. Will you finally listen to us? Will you do something about it? All of these events over the last few weeks when taken together suggest the sad possibility of a Senate that will elevate partisan political division over careful and constructive deliberation, even on the most critical security issues that affect the security of our country and the world. I deeply believe that this body--the Senate and Congress generally--has to pull back from the brink of irresponsible and partisan action with respect to these critical security questions because the stakes are simply too high. With respect to the Iranian nuclear negotiation, I share many of the concerns of my 47 colleagues who wrote the letter. I share many of the concerns of the Prime Minister that were shared in his speech last week. But I deeply believe we should not try to tank a deal, critique a deal, or undercut a deal before there is a deal because to the extent there are efforts to stand and say this is a bad deal before there is a deal, the message that is communicated to the American public and to the world is: We will never accept any deal. We are not interested in diplomacy. We are not interested in negotiation. That attitude plays directly into the hands of the nation of Iran, which is currently engaging in terrorist activity. They want to be able to blame the absence of any deal on an intransigent United States that is unwilling to negotiate in good faith. We should not tank a deal before there is a deal. Instead, why don't we do what we are supposed to do as the greatest deliberative body in the world? Why don't we allow negotiators who have been working in the best traditions of American diplomacy to see if they can find a deal and then put it on the table for the review of Congress, as has always been contemplated? I am a proud original cosponsor and worked on the draftsmanship of a bipartisan bill that was introduced under the key sponsorship of Foreign Relations chair Senator Corker and ranking member Senator Menendez to guarantee to Congress an appropriate review of any final deal with Iran over their nuclear program if such a deal was reached. This is a bill which is rigorously bipartisan--not partisan, not political, not rushed, not accelerated, but rigorously bipartisan. It respects the ongoing process by allowing the negotiators to do their work and see if they can find an outcome. It guarantees Congress a debate and vote if a deal includes relief under the congressional sanctions Congress has enacted over the years. It is appropriately deferential to the Executive, allowing the Executive the flexibility to do sanctions relief under Executive or international sanctions that have not been part of any congressional statute. This is a bipartisan bill which provides some assurance to allies. Our allies in the region--allies that are most affected by the Iranian nuclear ambitions are not part of the P5+1, whether you are talking about Israel or Gulf State nations or Jordan. The nations most affected by Iranian nuclear ambitions are not part of the P5+1, and the Corker- Menendez bill would give them some comfort that a deal, if announced, would receive some careful scrutiny in this body. Finally, I believe the Corker-Menendez bipartisan approach even provides some important assurances to Iran in the negotiation. We want Iran to make not small concessions, we want them to make big and bold concessions and give up any intent to develop nuclear weapons. But what is the likelihood that Iran will make those concessions if they have no knowledge about what Congress's intent is vis-a-vis the congressional statutory provisions? There is a right way and a wrong way to approach these matters. To rush it, to label a deal as a bad deal before there is a deal, to make it entirely partisan rather than bipartisan, reflecting the will of the body, is an effort to undercut negotiations that weakens our President, weakens our country, and weakens our credibility; whereas if we proceed in a bipartisan way, we can make the deal stronger. Similarly--and then I wish to cede the moment to my colleague, the Senator from Maine--we are about to start work on another critically important issue--whether Congress should finally, after 7-plus months, have a debate to authorize an ongoing war against the Islamic State in the Levant that was begun on August 8 by the President. We are now in the eighth month of a unilateral war, and aside from a Foreign Relations Committee vote in committee in December, Congress has not had a meaningful vote or debate on this fundamental responsibility. We owe it to ourselves and to this institution, we owe it to the important national security interests at stake, and especially we owe it to the people who are risking their lives in this war--and we have already had deaths of American servicemembers as part of Operation Inherent Resolve--we owe it to them to show we can have a meaningful debate that is not partisan, that is not rushed, but that is careful and deliberate. They have been waiting for 7-plus months to see whether Congress even cares. We are at war by a Presidential act. Does Congress even care enough to have the debate on the floor of the Senate and in the House of Representatives? Is it just partisanship now? Is it just delay now? Does the fact our service men and women are risking their lives even matter to us now? This is the debate we will be entering into within the next few days, starting with the hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tomorrow. We can't afford, on important issues of national security such as Iran or such as the war against ISIL, to send the impression to our troops, to our citizens, to our global citizens around the world, that on these important matters Congress is now just a partisan sort of sideshow rather than the deliberative body we were set up to be. We have to find a bipartisan path forward on these important security issues or we weaken confidence in this institution and in the leadership of this country. In conclusion, the national security interests that are at stake right now before us are fundamental, whether it is about Iran, whether it is about the battle against ISIL, or whether it is about the budgetary deliberations we will be undertaking this month--a budgetary deliberation that will determine whether we can meet our commitments in these national security challenges. We have to get these debates right for the good of our country and the world, and we have to get them right to demonstrate to all that this institution does have the maturity to tackle these issues in a reasonable way. With that, I yield the last minute or so of my time to my colleague from Maine, Senator King.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, the key to America's continued success lies in improving our Nation's educational system. Career and technical education, CTE, programs are a critical component to every student's education, creating diverse pathways into further education and careers. Today, these programs serve 94 percent of all high school students and 12 million postsecondary students. In both rural and urban communities, CTE plays a vital role in building student engagement, continuing our Nation's economic competitiveness, and building the skills of our workforce to meet and adapt to the needs of the 21st century. Further, approximately 30 percent of jobs by 2018 will require some college or a 2-year associates degree, a need that can be met by improved access to CTE programs. By increasing these opportunities to obtain postsecondary skills training and meaningful credentials, CTE equitably distributes economic opportunity to all students who are willing to work for it. According to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Career, Technical and Adult Education, the average high school graduation rate for students concentrating in CTE programs is 93 percent, compared with the national average of 80 percent. This is why today, with my Senate CTE Caucus cochairs Senator Portman, Senator Baldwin, and Senator Isakson and other colleagues in the Senate, I am submitting a bipartisan resolution to designate February as Career and Technical Education, CTE, Month. CTE Month provides a chance for students and educators alike to learn more about the educational opportunities available in their communities, and to become more engaged in their studies today so they can plan for their future. Our Nation's economic competitiveness relies on the skill of the American workforce and its ability to meet and adapt to the 21st century economy. By formally recognizing CTE Month through this resolution, it is our hope that we can build support in Washington and across the country for strengthening access to and expanding CTE programs.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, preparing all students to be college and career-ready upon graduating high school is one of the central promises that public education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA, should fulfill. However, career readiness has all too often taken a back seat to a focus on traditional college preparation. Strong academic skills are essential to college preparation, but it takes much more to be truly ready for a career. Today many students graduate high schools with little knowledge of the careers available to them and the technical skills needed to meet the demands of the 2lst century job market. ``Career readiness indicators'' are factors that demonstrate a student's preparedness, including both academic and technical knowledge and skills, for postsecondary education and the workforce. By encouraging school districts to track and report on career readiness indicators, States can send a signal to schools, communities, parents, and students that it is critical to be prepared for the workforce regardless of postsecondary education plans. Additionally, it provides public data for employers to help locate their operations in regions with a high- skilled workforce. This is why I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues, Senator Portman and Senator Baldwin, the Career Ready Act, which will amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to expand on these efforts by encouraging more states to report on courses in their school systems. This includes utilizing multiple indicators of career readiness when states report data to the federal government such as student participation in career and technical education courses or attainment of recognized postsecondary credentials or academic and technical skills including industry-recognized credentials, certifications, licenses, and postsecondary degrees. Tracking and publishing this data provides much-needed information for businesses and workforce leaders that is not provided under current law. This bipartisan legislation also strengthens the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling grant program in current law by placing an emphasis on career guidance and providing professional development for school counselors to use labor market information and partnerships with community groups such as local workforce investment boards, businesses, industries, and regional economic development agencies to educate students on postsecondary opportunities. The Career Ready Act encourages schools to align career exploration course offerings and counseling to the workforce needs of the local community and coordinate with the requirements of the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act and the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. I am proud to introduce this commonsense, bipartisan legislation to improve career readiness and career guidance to ensure students are prepared for the 21st century workforce. I strongly encourage my colleagues on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee to consider this legislation in any ESEA reauthorization.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, preparing all students to be college and career-ready upon graduating high school is one of the central promises that public education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA, should fulfill. However, career readiness has all too often taken a back seat to a focus on traditional college preparation. Strong academic skills are essential to college preparation, but it takes much more to be truly ready for a career. Today many students graduate high schools with little knowledge of the careers available to them and the technical skills needed to meet the demands of the 2lst century job market. ``Career readiness indicators'' are factors that demonstrate a student's preparedness, including both academic and technical knowledge and skills, for postsecondary education and the workforce. By encouraging school districts to track and report on career readiness indicators, States can send a signal to schools, communities, parents, and students that it is critical to be prepared for the workforce regardless of postsecondary education plans. Additionally, it provides public data for employers to help locate their operations in regions with a high- skilled workforce. This is why I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues, Senator Portman and Senator Baldwin, the Career Ready Act, which will amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to expand on these efforts by encouraging more states to report on courses in their school systems. This includes utilizing multiple indicators of career readiness when states report data to the federal government such as student participation in career and technical education courses or attainment of recognized postsecondary credentials or academic and technical skills including industry-recognized credentials, certifications, licenses, and postsecondary degrees. Tracking and publishing this data provides much-needed information for businesses and workforce leaders that is not provided under current law. This bipartisan legislation also strengthens the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling grant program in current law by placing an emphasis on career guidance and providing professional development for school counselors to use labor market information and partnerships with community groups such as local workforce investment boards, businesses, industries, and regional economic development agencies to educate students on postsecondary opportunities. The Career Ready Act encourages schools to align career exploration course offerings and counseling to the workforce needs of the local community and coordinate with the requirements of the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act and the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. I am proud to introduce this commonsense, bipartisan legislation to improve career readiness and career guidance to ensure students are prepared for the 21st century workforce. I strongly encourage my colleagues on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee to consider this legislation in any ESEA reauthorization.