Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today the Senate is going to be voting on the motion to instruct conferees for the National Defense Authorization Act to backfill the military construction money the President stole from our troops to pay for his wall--a wall that he gave his word Mexico would pay for. This is very, very troublesome. I say this as both dean of the Senate and as President pro tempore emeritus. In that role, I have arguably supported and voted for more funding for our military and their families than any Senator--Republican or Democrat--in this Chamber, but on this one, I will urge a ``no'' vote. As Members of the Senate--there are only 100 of us to represent 350 million Americans--we have a profound responsibility to support those who sacrifice everything for our country. We should not let this be a partisan issue. As I said, I voted for more funding for our troops than any Member of this body. From the soldier we have sent across the globe to the military family left at home, we--all 100 of us--have a responsibility to these men and women, regardless of our politics and our ideology. It is that responsibility that has drawn me to the Senate floor today. I cannot and will not support this motion. There is $6.1 billion. Let me say that again. There is $6.1 billion-- that is $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense and $3.6 billion from military construction projects--that President Trump has stolen from the men and women of our military in fiscal year 2019 alone, just that one year, to pay for his ineffective, vanity wall--a wall that he boasted to the press last week was the ``Rolls-Royce'' of walls. But just like every Rolls-Royce in the middle of the desert, Trump's wall is nothing more than outrageously expensive and completely useless. Experts agree that a wall will do nothing to address the humanitarian crisis along our southern border. Families fleeing violence in their home countries--fleeing murder, rape, and other crimes--are openly turning themselves over to Border Patrol officials. They are not trying to sneak across the border. It is a lot different than absconding across the border in the middle of the night. What has $6.1 billion in stolen funds purchased for the American taxpayers? Here is the money that was taken away from our military: Children continuing to go to a middle school in Kentucky every day that Pentagon officials have described as ``deficient, inadequate, and undersized''-- we took money from that to pay for the wall. Buildings that do not meet the military standards for fire safety or management of explosives, putting American lives at risk--we took money from correcting that to pay for the wall. And there are numerous cases of infrastructure problems that are detrimental to our military's readiness and DOD's national security mission. That is not even mentioning the military housing with mold issues, inadequate daycare facilities for the children of military families, and all the 127 military construction projects President Trump canceled--not delayed but canceled--to pay for his Rolls-Royce of a wall in the middle of the desert. The $6.1 billion for a Rolls-Royce in the middle of the desert is an even heavier burden for our military families to bear. Outrage does not even begin to describe how I feel about President Trump's actions. Today, we are being asked to somehow cover up his theft, cover up the fact that he broke his word about Mexico, and cover up the fact that this is a vanity project. We are being asked to give our constitutional blessing to President Trump's contorting the law beyond recognition. I believe that the Senate is the conscience of the Nation. Contorting the law to undo congressional funding decisions by fiat is not following our conscience, and I will not stand for that. We are being asked to take the first step to approve $3.6 billion in emergency spending to replace part of what the President stole. Let's make another thing clear. This spending is on top of the discretionary caps agreed to by Congress and the President. So we are being asked to finance this coverup on our children and grandchildren through deficit spending. I would say this to the President: I believe you said that Mexico was going to pay for your wall, not our troops, not their families, and not future generations of American citizens. If this were not troubling enough, last week, the press reported in the Washington Post that the Trump administration does not even intend to use this funding to replace what they stole. ``The plan is to sell it as replenishment money for the Defense Department for the $3.6 billion they took this year,'' said one administration official. ``Then, once they got it from Congress, they would take it again.'' What is the saying? Fool Congress once, shame on you. Fool Congress twice, well, shame on us. Congress got fooled once. Are we just going to stand by idly and allow Congress to be fooled again? I have heard a lot of speeches on this floor, and politicians often wax poetic about their love of our troops. Yet this body--100 Members of this Senate, the body that should be the conscience of our Nation-- has done nothing to constrain this President's ability to continue to steal from those troops. We have done little more than shrug at this abuse of our constitutional authority. We have just looked away from the egregious treatment of our troops as a little more than a piggy bank for the President's political pet project. I don't stand for that. I am not going to support that. I will not abandon our profound responsibility to support those who sacrifice everything for our country. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have been honored to know and work with many of the leaders in our military. One of the absolute finest I have known is General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I have known General Dunford for years, certainly in his current capacity, but before that as Commandant of the Marine Corps. As the father of a marine, I looked at Joe Dunford as the best the Corps could have and what we all want from the men and women serving and leading the Marine Corps. General Dunford has had a long and distinguished career of service as a marine. He was deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom, earned the nickname ``Fighting Joe'' while serving under James Mattis, and led the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. He is admired by the men and women who served under him and is known for his respect and care for civilians caught up in conflict. Marcelle and I were honored to travel with him to Vermont in 2017, where he gave the commencement address at St. Michael's College, 40 years after his own graduation at that same institution. He told the graduates about to step out into their futures, ``have the moral courage to do what's right, even when it's tough. Commit to serving something bigger than yourself.'' Like General Dunford, I am a graduate of St. Michaels, and Marcelle has an honorary degree from St. Michaels. Also like General Dunford, I did my graduate work at Georgetown. I mention his background because he is not a man that would ever brag about all the things he has done. Rather, he speaks to the values that he believes America should follow. I listened to him, standing in his uniform, speaking to these young men and women who were graduating. You could hear a pin drop in the hall, except for the times when they would interrupt his speech with standing ovations. He has led by service his entire career. He thought always of the men and women under his command. He thought of their families. He thought of our future and the world we would leave to our grandchildren. His legacy will be measured by his presence on the battlefield, but perhaps more so by the capable leadership he has brought that will be felt for generations to come. That is truly the mark of an exceptional and visionary leader. General Dunford and his wife Ellyn are looking forward to their retirement, but I do hope that academic and public institutions will call on him for his expertise and his knowledge, but especially his conscience. I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Washington Post, entitled ``Joseph Dunford's steady hand in the turmoil of Trump's Washington,'' by David Ignatius be printed in the Record, as it so eloquently captures the general's legacy and service to our Nation.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I agree with my distinguished colleagues from Washington State and New Mexico for what they have said. Sometimes casting a vote on the Senate floor is just a matter of course. It is something we do routinely, often without considering the impact of that vote on the Senate as an institution, let alone our constitutional Republic as we know it, but this week's vote on President Trump's national emergency declaration is different. It is a pivotal moment in this body's history. It is a stress test of the very notion of separation of powers. The Constitution speaks of Congress as being a coequal branch of government. Well, this is going to be viewed as a moment when Congress either asserted itself as a coequal branch of government or surrendered as a subordinate to the will of a President who now claims his powers are absolute. This is a President who has said out loud that the Constitution gives him the right to do ``whatever I want as President.'' It makes one wonder if the President has ever actually read the Constitution of the United States. This President is attempting to ignore the explicit will of Congress by simply declaring a national emergency to fund his ``big, beautiful'' wall. That is after, time and time and time again, he gave us his word that Mexico would pay for the wall. For 3 years, he failed to convince Congress that the wall was a good idea. Even when his own party controlled both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, his tweets and tantrums could not convince enough Members that his cynical campaign promise was worthy of tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. He could not convince anybody, Republican or Democrat, that he was telling the truth when he said Mexico would pay for it. So when Congress did not comply, he directed his yes-people to tell them he could fund his pet project, nonetheless, by declaring a national emergency out of thin air and stealing the money from our troops and their families. He even admitted his national emergency declaration was a matter of political expediency rather than justified by facts. I remember him standing in the Rose Garden. He said he did not ``need'' to invoke a national emergency; he could ``build the wall over a longer period of time,'' but he just wanted to do it ``faster.'' Once again, the whims and tweets of the President were used to trample our Constitution. President Trump's declaration of a national emergency to build his wall should offend all 100 Senators--Republicans and Democrats alike-- in this body. First and foremost, he is using it to steal $3.6 billion from critical military construction projects that would benefit our men and women in uniform and their families. This impacts 127 military construction projects, including a child development center, an elementary school, a fire and rescue station--all falling victim to his fixation on the wall. He is telling the families of our military who are living in substandard housing--some of it with mold and other damaging health conditions--that, no, you are not going to get that money you need to fix that up. I am going to put it toward my wall. We already ask our military families to sacrifice so much to keep our country safe. Now they have to sacrifice, yet again, and to what end? To keep this President's ego safe. Furthermore, I would note that his national emergency declaration is a transparent end-run around Congress's constitutional power of the purse. Article I, section 9 of the Constitution, which I doubt the President has ever bothered to read, states that Congress--and Congress alone--decides how to spend Americans' hard-earned tax dollars. That has been the case from the time of the founding of this country until today. It is one of the most critical checks and balances in our constitutional system. In our democracy, Presidents must respect--and normally do--the appropriations decisions of Congress but, for the first time, not this President. I was here when Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act of 1976. When we passed it then, we assumed that any President would have enough respect for the office to invoke the extraordinary powers granted under it judiciously and only in times when there was, in fact, an emergency to be addressed. But not this President. Where the world sees women and children seeking refuge at our southern border, he sees criminals and terrorists invading our country. Where the world sees declining border crossings-- crossings have dropped steeply since June--he sees an escalating border crisis that only his wall can fix. Facts may not matter to a President willing to invent a hurricane path with a sharpie marker, but they should matter to us. We must not allow this President to invoke such sweeping powers--powers we granted to him for real emergencies--simply to address some emergency he has concocted in his head. So this week I hope all Senators, no matter what their political background is, will think carefully about their vote on the President's national emergency declaration. I hope each of us thinks long and hard about what it would mean for our role as a coequal branch, for the separation of powers, for the Constitution, which has protected our country all these years, and what would it mean if we fail to reject this naked power grab by President Trump. In March, 12 of my Republican friends joined Democrats in rejecting the President's emergency declaration, forcing him to override our vote with a veto. I hope every one of us tonight will go home and read the Constitution and realize what we must do. I hope more Republicans will join Democrats this time in voting aye on the joint resolution of disapproval. We must send this President a veto-proof message that Congress will rise above party to protect what is most precious in our American democracy; the Senate will stand for the Constitution above all else; that the Senate will be the conscience of the Nation, as we should be. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, killings of environmental defenders are shockingly common in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The assassination of Berta Caceres in Honduras 3 years ago, orchestrated by top officials of a hydroelectric company and carried out by retired and Active-Duty soldiers who had received training from the United States, was emblematic of the widespread use of harassment, threats, and murder to silence those who courageously call for changes in policies and practices to protect the environment. According to a report released today by Global Witness, the Philippines has the highest number of killings in Asia of people who oppose illegal logging, destructive mining, and corrupt agribusiness, with at least 30 cases documented in 2018. The total number is likely higher, as some investigations are ongoing. Many of the victims simply wanted a say in how their land and the country's natural resources are used. The perpetrators are almost never arrested or prosecuted. On July 25, 2016, the Philippines' newly elected President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his first state of the nation address. He promised to safeguard the country's rural and indigenous communities, tackle corruption, and protect the environment. The results since then paint a very different and distressing picture. If President Duterte meant what he said, he has failed miserably. According to Global Witness, in the 3 years before Duterte took office at least 65 land and environmental defenders were murdered. That was appalling enough. But in the 3 years since he came to power, that number rose to 113. At least 31 of those murders were reportedly committed by the Philippine Armed Forces, whose soldiers and officers act with near total impunity. The Philippines is a major recipient of U.S. military aid, and we are perceived by the families of the victims to be enablers of these crimes. In addition to increasing support for local environmental defenders, the Secretary of State and Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development should urge the Duterte government to ensure that the right to free, prior, and informed consent of those impacted by policies and practices that threaten their land and natural resources is respected. This is necessary not only to prevent the destruction of forests and farms, the pollution of watersheds, and the extinction of species, but to avoid confrontations and violence that result when extractive industries, supported by the Armed Forces and police, run roughshod over local communities. The Secretaries of State and Defense should also ensure that those in the Philippine Armed Forces who receive our aid respect the rights of civilians and are accountable to the rule of law. When abuses occur they should be thoroughly investigated and the individuals responsible brought to justice. The Leahy Laws require that, and it is the responsibility of U.S. officials to ensure that they are enforced.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, later today, we are going to vote on whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2740, the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. I must say I have to strongly urge Senators to vote no. I am not urging a ``no'' vote because the House bills are not good bills. The underlying House bills are good bills. If we were going to vote just to consider these bills, that would be easy. I and practically everybody in this Chamber would vote yes, but that is not what we are doing. Senator McConnell has made it very clear that he will bring up H.R. 2740 not to vote on the bills that have been passed by the House of Representatives but for the consideration of the Senate's Defense appropriations bill, which was a partisan bill that was reported along party lines out of the Appropriations Committee. He is going to offer that as a substitute once we proceed to the underlying bills. On top of taking a totally partisan bill as a substitute for legislation that could have easily passed, as part of the substitute, Leader McConnell is going to offer the Energy and Water Appropriations bill as well as the State, Foreign Operations, and Labor-HHS and Education bills. Now, those last two bills have never been considered by the committee. They have not been voted on by the subcommittees, and they have not been voted on by the full committee. They were pulled from the committee markup last week because the Republicans were afraid to vote on amendments that would have received the support of both Republicans and Democrats. Is that how we operate? Just because things get complicated and difficult, do we just skip parts of the legislative process? Do we say, ``Oh, my goodness gracious, I am afraid to have to vote on something either yes or no''? That is no way to proceed. Not one Democrat on the Appropriations Committee voted for the Defense bill--not one--including me, and I have voted for more money for the Department of Defense than any Senator who is serving in this body today. The way the Defense bill was written, it does nothing to prevent the President from stealing billions of dollars more from our troops to pay for his cynical campaign promise of building a gigantic wall across our southern border. He will steal this money from our troops and their families even though he promised us that Mexico would pay for it. In fiscal year 2019 alone, the President has already raided $6.1 billion from the Department of Defense's accounts for his border wall. He did that without having congressional approval. He first diverted $2.5 billion from the fiscal year 2019 Defense Appropriations Act for the wall by using standard transfer authority. We provide this authority to the Department of Defense to ensure that the DOD has the flexibility it requires to meet the needs of the troops in an evolving threat environment. It is not intended to be used by the President as a piggy bank for a campaign promise or for a pet project that Congress has refused to support. He took $3.6 billion more from military construction projects for a southern border wall. This was the wall he gave his word that Mexico would pay for. He, instead, is taking the money from projects like military schools, childcare centers, and improved training facilities that would improve the lives of our troops and their families to pay for his wall. We cannot let that happen again. I offered an amendment during committee markup of the Defense appropriations bill that would protect the money we appropriated for our troops by prohibiting the President from using it to build a border wall, but that amendment was defeated on a party-line vote. Now the Republican leader accuses Democrats of not standing with the troops by voting against this bill, but it is exactly the opposite. We are the ones saying we want funds that should go to support the troops and their families to go to them, and we should not allow the President to take the money from the troops and their families for the wall. Taking that money is tantamount to telling military families: You may serve loyally, but we care more about a failed campaign promise--a wall in the middle of the desert that the President promised Mexico would pay for--than we do about providing schools and daycare for their children or weapons training or a fire station. I am not going to sign up for that. We have to stand up for the Constitution. The President has contorted the law beyond all recognition by raiding defense dollars for his wall. He has undone congressional funding decisions by fiat. If we let that go unanswered, we are surrendering Congress's constitutional power of the purse. Last year, we were able to move appropriations bills on the floor because the leaders agreed that only bills that had bipartisan support would move forward. I commend my colleague, the senior Senator from Alabama, Senator Shelby. We showed the right way to proceed then and it is the right way to proceed now. We passed those bills, but the package of bills before us today does not have such support. I was hopeful that once we secured a bipartisan budget agreement, we would be on a bipartisan path to consider Senate appropriations bills that reflect the best of our country. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership started out the process on a partisan note by refusing to rein in the ability of the President to take the defense dollars meant to help our troops and using them to build his wall and by shortchanging the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations so they could put $5 billion of it in the Homeland Security bill for the President's wall. Now I wonder how many more of our tax dollars we are going to spend on this boondoggle. If you put it to a vote to this country, they would say: No more. In the bipartisan budget agreement, nondefense funding was given a $27 billion increase. That was roughly a 3-percent increase. If all things were equal, the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which is our largest domestic funding bill, should receive a 3-percent funding increase in fiscal year 2020, but the Republican bill only gives 1 percent, while the Department of Homeland Security receives a 7-percent increase to pay for the wall. That is not right. The result is a bill put forward by the Republicans today that fails to cover even the annual cost of inflation in public health and Head Start, childcare, special education, education for the disadvantaged, veterans' training grants, and dozens of other programs. So robbing from the funds that were meant for education, childcare, and healthcare programs that have a real positive impact on the lives of all American people to pay for President Trump's wall is just as unacceptable as robbing from these funds from our military. Members on our side of the aisle are not going to support that. Last year, the President shut down much of the government for 35 days in a tweet tantrum over his wall. This strategy of border wall above all else, border wall above any interests of this country, has already failed once, and it will fail again. The majority leader has said there is no education in the second kick of a mule. I agree, but now we find ourselves in this position again. We have been down this road. It was the President's failed strategy that led to the longest government shutdown in the history of our country just 9 months ago and cost Americans billions of dollars. It was the President's failed strategy to hold the government of the American people hostage to pay for a wall that he gave his word Mexico would pay for. There is a bipartisan path forward. We have bipartisan bills that have gone through the Appropriations Committee with overwhelming support of Republicans and Democrats. The majority leader ought to just bring those bills up while we sort out these other issues. The Energy and Water Appropriations bill was reported out of committee last week on a unanimous vote; every Democrat, every Republican voted for it. Tomorrow the Appropriations Committee will consider the Agriculture appropriations bill and the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. I expect that most Democrats and most Republicans will vote for them, and we could bring these bills to the floor. Instead, we are forced today to vote cloture on a partisan defense appropriations bill, a partisan state-foreign operations bill, and a partisan labor-HHS- education bill, the last two of which were never even considered in committee. The State-Foreign Operations bill continues the President's discriminatory Mexico City policy, which prohibits funding for private organizations that support family planning and reproductive health, and it caps funding for family planning at an arbitrarily and unacceptably low level. It eliminates all funding for the U.N. population fund. That is a fund that provides lifesaving assistance to women and girls in Yemen and dozens of other countries where USAID does not have programs. For the past 30 years, I have been either chairman or ranking member for the State, Foreign Operations Subcommittee. That subcommittee has a long record of producing bipartisan bills. That was true when the majority leader, Senator McConnell, was chairman, when former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire was chairman, while Senator Graham has been chairman, and during the years I was chairman. We were ready to mark up that bill last week, but because one Senator wanted to offer an amendment related to family planning--an amendment that had both Republican and Democratic support of a majority of members of the committee--the markup was canceled. We were not allowed to vote on it. Rather than vote, the majority canceled the markup. What kind of process is this? What kind of democracy is that? We are better than this. We are the 100 Members of the U.S. Senate--100 men and women--who represent 325 million Americans. That is an awesome responsibility. Senators should not be afraid to vote. Senators should show courage, not hide behind procedural actions so they never have to take a position. That is not why people come to the U.S. Senate. That is not what is expected of the 100 people here to represent this great country. So I would urge Members to vote no on the cloture motion. It is nothing more than a political stunt. We have bipartisan bills with overwhelming support of Republicans and Democrats. Bring them up. Let's not waste time on show votes. I will continue to work with my good friend Chairman Shelby and the majority and Democratic leader to find a way forward, but let's not have show votes. Let's have real votes. Let's have all 100 of us stand up and say what we stand for. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, throughout my years in the Senate, I have met with people from around the world who have been persecuted by their own governments, but the stories I have heard from survivors and family members of the victims of China's efforts to silence and eliminate religious minorities continue to shock me. The Chinese Government systematically brutalizes millions of people, including Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners. Those who practice Falun Gong use meditation and are guided by a philosophy of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, but because the Chinese Communist Party fears any organized religion or association it cannot control, it views this revival of traditional Chinese religion as a threat to its survival. Falun Gong practitioners recently marked the 20th anniversary of the beginning of China's campaign of brutality against their community. On July 20, 1999, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in their homes in the middle of the night. Over the following week, as many as 50,000 Falun Gong were reportedly detained. In the years since that initial crackdown, the Chinese Government has relentlessly continued its repression of Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, interred at reeducation camps, beaten, sleep-deprived, starved, sexually assaulted, electrocuted, force-fed, shackled, and had their limbs slowly broken, until they have renounced their beliefs and practices. They have been ordered to participate in propaganda vilifying their own community. They have had their organs harvested against their will. They have been murdered. We will probably never know how many innocent people have been the victims of these atrocities, since the Chinese Government denies to the outside world that it is happening, while justifying it to their own citizens. The Chinese Government should immediately cease its arbitrary detention and brutalization of Falun Gong practitioners and other religious and ethnic minorities. It should release political prisoners from reeducation centers, decriminalize religious and spiritual practices, and allow international human rights groups and journalists to interview survivors. It should commit to ending the use of torture, organ harvesting of prisoners, and propaganda against minorities. The plight of these people in China, the horrors of torture and murder by the government, can seem very far away from Washington, DC, and very far away from my State of Vermont. Yet Vermonters travel to Washington to meet with me and my staff, urging Congress to take action on behalf of Falun Gong. Vermonters are persistent people who rightly refuse to let us forget about Falun Gong and the other victims of China's repression. It is all too easy to ignore crimes against humanity on the other side of the globe, when the victims are people we will never meet, but Vermonters demand that we pay attention. The Falun Gong deserve to be remembered, and they deserve the international community's collective action.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last week, the administration announced it was going to raid $3.6 billion from military construction projects to pay for President Trump's ineffective and controversial border wall. That is the wall they gave their solemn word that Mexico would pay for. Now the money is being taken out of our military. Look at some of the things he has taken money from: a new middle school at Fort Campbell, KY, a child development center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, a new elementary school in Puerto Rico, a fire rescue station at Tyndall Air Force base in Florida. These are among the projects canceled on orders from a President who apparently values his cynical campaign promise over our men and women serving our country in uniform and their families. Remember, on the campaign trail he repeatedly promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Supporters cheered about that--Mexico would pay. Have my friends on the other side of the aisle forgotten that? Now, after unsurprisingly failing to convince Mexico to do so, he is forcing our troops and their families, who already sacrifice so much to keep our country safe, to sacrifice yet again just to keep his ego safe. This announcement should outrage every U.S. Senator from both parties--not just because it is an insult to our troops, which it is, but also because it is part of a larger pattern by the President to disregard the Congress and to subvert the Constitution. He is doing so not in furtherance of our national security or to address the very real humanitarian needs along our border; he is doing so merely in service of his own ego, and that should not go unchallenged. For those people at the White House who have actually read the Constitution, they will find that article I, section 9 of the Constitution established that Congress--and Congress alone--possesses the power of the purse. Congress's exclusive power over our government's spending priorities is one of the most critical checks and balances in our constitutional system. The President can propose funding for whatever project he wants--he has that absolute right--but it is the job of Congress to decide where to invest the American people's hard-earned tax dollars. In a democracy and under our Constitution, the President has to respect those decisions, but this President apparently is willing to ignore our country's foundational document, the Constitution, or perhaps he has not read it. When President Trump declared a national emergency in February, citing a crisis at the southern border, he did so for one reason: to do an end-run around Congress and the Appropriations Committee and to use taxpayer money to build a wall on the southern border, when Congress specifically voted to downsize his request by $4.2 billion. He cited 10 U.S.C. 2808. That is an authority unlocked by the declaration of a national emergency. He used that to raid military construction projects to pay for the wall--projects we had determined were important and worthy of Federal dollars like cleaning up the housing for some of our soldiers and their families. He has done this by contorting the law beyond all recognition. He has undone congressional funding decisions by fiat. This should concern any Senator in a State where critical military construction projects are being canceled to pay for President Trump's obsession with a medieval wall. It should concern those of us who believe the Constitution should carry more weight than the whims of a President who genuinely thinks--and he has actually said this out loud--that the Constitution gives him the ``right to do whatever I want as President.'' No. We have a Constitution because the President is not above the law any more than the rest of us. Only a few weeks ago, the administration yet again disregarded objections from Congress and announced plans to divert $116 million we appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security for national security purposes, as well as $155 million from FEMA's wildfire and hurricane disaster relief fund, and use it to detain more immigrants by increasing the number of ICE detention beds and building court facilities for the deeply misguided, dangerous, and cruel Remain-in- Mexico Program. The level of funding for ICE detention beds was set in the fiscal year 2019 in the Department of Homeland Security Act. That was passed by Congress and signed by the President just 6 months ago. It was one of the last issues resolved. Like the wall funding itself, it was central to the final agreement. I had serious concerns with the funding level we agreed to at that time. I still do. There is no reason to turn to mass incarceration when most people crossing our borders are desperately fleeing violence in their home countries, not seeking to do harm to ours. More humane and cost-efficient ways to address these issues exist and allow us to have a secure border, but a deal is a deal. It is what we agreed to. The President signed that bill into law. For the President to undo what he signed into law only months later by increasing funding for ICE through transfers is outrageous. The fiscal year 2019 DHS appropriations act set a level of funding that required DHS to end the fiscal year with a debt ceiling of 40,520. They now operate at a level of 52,930 beds--a 31-percent increase, all without the approval of Congress. The President will say he is merely relying on general transfer authority provided to him by Congress in the DHS appropriations act to increase funding for ICE detention beds. Well, that is ridiculous. It is disingenuous and makes no sense. Congress provides the executive branch certain transfer authority so it can be flexible and react in realtime to emergencies, unanticipated needs, and changed circumstances. We have provided this flexibility for decades for Presidents of both parties because it was the responsible thing to do. No government can anticipate all of its needs at the beginning of each fiscal year. We trust the administration to follow the law, follow the Constitution, and use the authority appropriately. We have done this for both Republicans and Democrats. In return for that flexibility, past administrations of both parties, they respected the will of Congress. For the most part, when the Appropriations Committee objected to a transfer or reprogramming, the objection was honored until a compromise might be reached. This President, however--after all, he said the Constitution allows him to do anything he wants, and we know it does not--has thrown that tradition out the window. He has decided that consulting Congress is a box-checking exercise to be summarily disregarded. For the second year in a row, he is increasing money for ICE detention beds over the objection of the Appropriations Committee and in violation of the agreements reached in the DHS appropriations laws. Earlier this year, he used the transfer authority to divert $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense accounts to pay for the wall after Congress refused to give him that authority. That money is in addition to the $3.6 billion he recently announced he will take from military construction projects and $600 million that he took from the Treasury asset forfeiture account for the wall. He is doing all this while refusing to spend the money Congress appropriated to address the root causes of migration in Central America. So when will it stop? When will Members on the other side of the aisle take a stand and say: ``We passed a law, and we expect you to follow it''? So far, the abuses of authority have been used in ways that mostly impact issues Democrats care about. Republicans have stood silent. What happens when the administration crosses a Republican redline? What about Members from States impacted by the canceled military construction projects? When this has been canceled in your State, will you stand up for your State? If they will not stand up for Congress or the Constitution, will they at least stand up for their own State? Last month, the administration threatened to cancel over $4 billion in foreign assistance in blatant violation of the law. The funds were appropriated by overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats after lengthy negotiations between the House and Senate, including the White House, and signed into law by the President. These funds were intended to implement policies and programs which, among other things, fulfill U.S. treaty obligations, support our allies and partners, protect the public against Ebola and other infectious diseases, counter Russian aggression and Chinese influence, respond to humanitarian crises, and counter violent extremism. The President backed down from this threat, but what if he had not? And now we hear reports that he is withholding $250 million in aid to Ukraine meant to counter the Russian invasion of that country. This week, we will begin marking up the fiscal year 2020 appropriations bills in committee. If we care about this institution, Members on both sides of the aisle need to stand up for the power of the purse, granted to it under article I, section 9 of the Constitution. I plan to do so by offering amendments to appropriations bills to undo the President's actions on the wall and to limit his flexibility to transfer and reprogram money, which he has so abused. I urge all members of the committee to support me in this effort. Our country was built on the concept of separation of powers. This is meaningless if Congress cedes one of its most important powers to the executive branch or refuses to take a stand when the administration overreaches, ignores Congress, or breaks the law. We may disagree on the utility of the President's wall, but we should not disagree on the constitutional role of this body. The President may not care about our system of checks and balances, but every one of us here should. Political winds tend to change direction. It is time to reassert ourselves and do so before it is too late. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, anyone who follows the situation in Honduras, as I and many Vermonters do, cannot help but be disappointed and concerned by what is happening there. I won't take the time to discuss in detail the lengthy litany of circumstances that have resulted in the deep social and political divisions, the rampant corruption, violence and insecurity, the prevalence of threats and assassinations by gangs, the dysfunctional justice system, and the sense of desperation and hopelessness that so many Hondurans are feeling, but I do want to mention several that should concern every Senator. To put the situation there in perspective, it is important to keep in mind what is happening in our own country. For purely political reasons, President Trump has directed his wrath and contempt on the thousands of Central American migrants seeking entry to the United States, many of whom are women and children and many of whom are from Honduras. Regrettably, his xenophobic attacks have encouraged other extreme voices demonizing migrants and asylum seekers. They have apparently forgotten that America is fundamentally a nation of immigrants. There is no question that our government is woefully unprepared to humanely and expeditiously handle this influx and that there is a humanitarian crisis at our southern border. We are each aware of the appalling treatment to which many of these desperate migrants have been subjected, both during the harrowing journey from their home countries to the U.S. border and in our government's custody--human beings trafficked, robbed, and sexually abused by unscrupulous smugglers; defenseless, impoverished people crammed into grossly overcrowded detention facilities; frightened children forcibly separated from their families and sleeping on cement floors in wire cages; a backlog of hundreds of thousands of asylum applications; and if that were not enough, racist and disparaging Facebook posts by U.S. Border Patrol officers about the people in their custody. This, not the Statue of Liberty, is what awaits the Hondurans who have abandoned their impoverished, violence-ridden communities in search of safety and a better life for themselves and their children. Yet they continue to come because remaining in Central America is a worse option. While the White House justifies its mistreatment of Central American migrants by falsely labeling them all as criminals who have engaged in asylum fraud, it has rightly asked Congress for millions of dollars to help care for refugees from Venezuela who are fleeing economic collapse, violence, and political chaos in that country. The similarities of the factors that are motivating the exodus of Hondurans and Venezuelans are far greater than their differences, which illustrates the blatant hypocrisy and unfairness of the administration's incoherent policies. Honduras has been in a state of convulsion since the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 and the 2013 election that was plagued with vote buying, violence, and fraud and that ended with President Hernandez declared the winner. The situation was exacerbated by the 2017 election that was widely regarded as flawed before it even took place. After President Hernandez secured the support of the National Assembly, the electoral commission, and the Supreme Court, each of which was beholden to him, to change the Constitution so he could run for a second term, the election was marred by reports of egregious vote counting irregularities. Given these circumstances, after being sworn into office a second time, President Hernandez would have been wise to appoint a politically, ethnically, and geographically diverse cabinet and to promote policies designed to rebuild confidence and trust with the opposition and civil society. Instead, he and his government have often embraced policies and practices that have further deepened divisions in an already polarized society. Popular protests over election fraud, corruption, land disputes, and seemingly intractable poverty have been met with the indiscriminate use of live ammunition by the police and armed forces resulting in multiple deaths, arbitrary arrests, beatings, and prolonged detention without trial. Despite repeated appeals by the international community, including the United Nations and the U.S. Embassy, to the Honduran Government to respect the rule of law and use restraint against protesters, the situation has not improved, and those responsible have not been held accountable. The country is afflicted by near daily confrontations, and the number of people seeking refuge outside the country continues unabated. Many of us also remember the emblematic case of Berta Caceres, a courageous indigenous environmental activist who was repeatedly harassed and threatened and ultimately assassinated for opposing the illegal construction of a hydroelectric plant. After the police tried to cover up the crime, it was only thanks to international outrage that seven individuals, including an employee of the DESA hydroelectric company, a former security chief for the company who was an ex-U.S.- trained army lieutenant, another U.S.-trained special forces major, and a former special forces sergeant, were arrested and convicted. Yet more than 3 years after that horrific crime, none of them has been sentenced. The prosecution of an eighth individual, David Castillo, the former DESA president who was also a U.S.-trained former military intelligence officer, has been stalled for months. It is also widely believed that there are other coconspirators who have not been charged. Scores of similar assassinations of social activists and independent journalists in the past 10 years have never even been investigated, much less resulted in prosecution or punishment. By its inaction, the Honduran Government is sending the unmistakable message that impunity for these crimes is acceptable. For many years, Vermont and Honduras were ``sister states.'' I have traveled there, as have many Vermonters, including some who have served as volunteers providing primary health care, education, and other humanitarian services to isolated rural communities. So I have a longstanding interest in Honduras and its people, and over the years I have supported hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. assistance for Honduras. Yet today Honduras faces every imaginable problem. It is a transshipment point for Colombian cocaine and a haven for ruthless drug gangs. Millions of Hondurans live in dangerous, squalid conditions with no hope for the future. The police have a history of corruption and are mistrusted. Violent crimes are common and almost never result in conviction. And the government is plagued by corruption, its officials often seeming to be more concerned with staying in power and enriching themselves than addressing the needs of their people. Why is this? There are obviously many factors, but one is undoubtedly a failure of leadership in Honduras and in the United States. For too long, successive U.S. administrations made excuses for and continued to support Honduran Governments that were corrupt, ineffective, unaccountable, and whose commitment to fundamental rights and democratic principles was lacking. It was a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars and a disservice to the Honduran people. In a reversal, the White House has suspended assistance for Honduras and the other Northern Triangle countries because President Trump says they have not done enough to stop the exodus of migrants. The President seems to believe that the Honduran Government should somehow prevent its citizens from leaving, even though they have a legal right to. At the same time, there is no doubt that the Honduran Government can and must do far more to address the violence, poverty, corruption, and injustice that cause people to seek refuge elsewhere. That includes firing corrupt officials, enacting and implementing the plea bargaining legislation that has been pending for years, strengthening the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity instead of weakening it, as the Honduran Government is trying, and defending civil society activists who are frequently harassed, threatened, arbitrarily arrested, and even assassinated. The United States has not had an Ambassador in Tegucigalpa for more than 2 years. The message this sends to the Honduran people is that it doesn't matter, that Honduras is not important. That is wrong. We need an ambassador who is a strong voice for good governance, for human rights, for accountability, and for defending the independence of the judiciary and other democratic institutions against fraud, exploitation, or improper influence. Those who were involved in conceiving, carrying out, and attempting to cover up the assassination of Berta Caceres should be brought to justice without further delay. The Honduran people also need to see justice done in the cases of excessive, deadly force against protesters by Honduran military police following the 2017 election. There needs to be fair trials of the protesters who were arrested and who have languished in jail without due process for a year and a half. Justice delayed is justice denied YET, unfortunately, that is the norm in Honduras. Finally, it is the Honduran Government's urgent responsibility to take whatever steps are necessary to reform Honduras election laws and procedures. The Honduran people need to have confidence that the next election--only 2\1/2\ years away--will be unlike the 2017 election, free and fair and will not result in more social upheaval, more excessive force by the police, more impunity, and a further exodus of people seeking safety and a better life.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, on Sunday, May 19, 2019, I was honored to attend the 218th commencement ceremony at the University of Vermont, where my wife Marcelle was presented with an honorary doctorate degree and recognized for her many years of public service. The commencement speaker, Darren Walker, made this wonderful day even better when he delivered a truly moving address. By recounting his personal story, examining the challenges our Nation faces, and celebrating the achievements of the recent graduates, Darren implored us to view our differences as a strength and our division as a liability to our collective futures. It is with great appreciation that I recognize Darren for his commitment to social justice and thank him for sharing such an eloquent and unifying message with us on that day. As the president of the Ford Foundation, Darren oversees a $13 billion endowment and $600 million in annual grant making for international social justice philanthropy projects. He has served as the vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, as the chief operating officer of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, and has spent more than a decade working in the fields of international law and finance. Prior to all of this success, however, Darren was raised in the humblest of conditions by a single mother in rural Texas, where he attended public schools, and battled racism and homophobia, to set himself on a path toward what he says is the great honor of serving as president of the Ford Foundation. I ask unanimous consent to have Darren Walker's Address to the University of Vermont Class of 2019 printed in the Record. I encourage all Senators to read these moving remarks, with the hope that we can transcend our differences and focus on the shared values and aspirations that unite us.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, over a storied 50-year career, Sabra Field has established herself as a great Vermont artist. Her works have made hers a unique and highly sought-after brand, one which beautifully depicts Vermont's landscape. Her prints, made by hand using woodblocks, are a premier example of how Vermonters harbor a deep commitment to creating and providing high-quality goods, made with passion. Her work has promoted Vermont, and I could not be more proud to recognize this acclaimed artist. Sabra enrolled at Middlebury College in 1953, where she was inspired by Piero della Francesca's painting ``The Flagellation of Christ.'' One of her instructors instilled a belief within her that, in her words, made art ``seem like a noble calling.'' Sabra has followed this calling over the last 50-years, creating beautiful works of art that portray Vermont's landscapes. Born in Oklahoma and raised in neighboring New York, Sabra believes that her professional career began when she moved to Vermont. She recalled in a Vermont Digger article that ``Vermont was beautiful and Vermonters unpretentious, generous, and understood `home occupation.' I was free to be me.'' This environment made Vermont an ideal work and home location for Sabra. Sabra's achievements are impressive. Her work has been featured on the cover of Vermont Life magazine. It is showcased in a stained glass window at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. It has been printed on 250,000 UNICEF Cards. And Sabra's work was featured on 60 million postage stamps commemorating Vermont's 1991 bicentennial. Sabra's work has gained popularity far and wide over the last five decades. Marcelle and I have several of her prints in our home as well. I am proud to recognize the contribution and achievements that Sabra has made over her 50 years in Vermont. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a Vermont Digger article titled ``Sabra Field marks 50th year making Vermont Art.'' It describes the hard work that goes into making each piece of art and highlights Field's commitment to capturing Vermont's picturesque landscape.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, White River Junction, VT, has seen a renaissance over the last 20 years. Led by a band of female entrepreneurs, this village tucked along the Connecticut River is today the home of dozens of thriving businesses. No fewer than 25 of these business are run by women, and together they are the core of a vibrant, growing community. Kim Souza, the owner of the consignment store Revolution, was one of the first business owners to move back to White River Junction. The first few years were tough, but with the support of her community, Revolution found its footing. Soon more businesses opened, and new life was breathed into the town. Across the street, Julie Sumanis and Elenda Taylor opened JUEL, a juice bar and cafe, in the ground floor of a new apartment building. In 2008, Leslie Carleton moved from nearby Norwich to open Upper Valley Yoga. Seven years later, Kate Gamble opened Open Door, another yoga studio. The successes of these businesses did not come without challenges and difficulties, but their successes showcase the power of bold ideas, commitment, dedication, and, ultimately, community. In 2007, Kim thought Revolution would have to close its doors, until she found the backing of a local mother and daughter that allowed her to stay open. Catherine Doherty, the producing director of White River's Northern Stage theatre company, credits the community's support for keeping the company alive through challenging times. Today, White River Junction has become a destination and a cultural center of the region. The surge of development brought on by pioneers like Kim continues to bring new people into the town, some feeling empowered to start businesses of their own, to shape their futures, and to make the community stronger. This is the very heart of the American dream. The future of Vermont rests with entrepreneurs across the State, and I am glad to see it in such capable hands. I am proud to recognize the achievements of these women and the contributions they have made to the town of White River Junction and their broader communities. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the Record a Boston Globe article titled ``In White River Junction, sisters are doing it for themselves.'' It describes their successes and the challenges they overcame in helping to revive their town.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, when Lincoln, VT, resident Tom Verner performs magic shows for children in refugee camps, orphanages, and hospitals, he brings joy and laughter to the places where it is most needed. In 2002, Tom and his wife, Janet Fredericks, cofounded Magicians Without Borders and have since performed in more than 40 countries, for more than 1,000,000 of the world's most vulnerable people. Magicians Without Borders is one shining example of Vermonters thinking outside the box and using their creativity to make the world a better place. It is with pride and appreciation that I recognize Tom, Janet and the Magicians Without Borders organization for their achievements. Tom was a professor of psychology in 2001 when he embarked on a trip through the Balkans, performing magic shows in the refugee camps of Kosovo and Macedonia. The performances were so well received that, upon returning to Vermont, Tom took a year off from his position at Burlington College to found Magicians Without Borders. Since Tom's first trip, he and Janet have made six trips each year, continuing to use magic to transform the lives of youth in at risk situations around the globe. Tom, Janet, and Magicians Without Borders have performed everywhere from the Sudan, to Colombia, from Ukraine to Bangladesh. They traveled to Thailand and Burma for a month of performances in the wake of a tsunami and performed stateside throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. In 2004, a series of shows at rural schools in El Salvador was met with such positivity that Tom was asked to teach a few magic tricks to the students. These impromptu classes turned into a unique, long-term education program geared toward increasing self-confidence, discipline, focus, and self-esteem. Tom, Janet, and Magicians Without Borders have now returned to El Salvador more than 30 times to entertain and educate these children who find themselves surrounded by terrible gang violence and abject poverty. The program has inspired young Salvadoran magicians to perform their own magic shows in orphanages, hospitals, and disaster areas and aspire to teach magic to other young people. Due to their success in El Salvador, Magicians Without Borders expanded these education programs to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and the United States. Two additional education programs have been implemented in India. I am proud to recognize the contributions that Tom, Janet, and Magicians Without Borders have made me so many communities across globe in the last 18 years. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an Addison Independent article titled ``Lincoln Magicians Bring Joy to Refugees at the Border.'' It describes how Tom and Janet use magic to connect with those suffering at our southern border and how they have expanded their mission to entertain, educate and empower across the world.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, earlier this month, fans across the country--and around the world--watched as the U.S. Women's National Team made history, winning its second consecutive World Cup title, and fourth title overall. The players, coaches, and support staff of the Women's National Team are role models to athletes young and old, male and female. They played through the tournament with the tenacity, skill, and commitment that is the hallmark of any champion. These women--world class athletes--have consistently demonstrated their dedication to excelling in the sport and to representing our nation on the world stage. Their success on the soccer field is remarkable in itself, but many of these women have used their voices to speak out and speak up against a glaring disparity that disadvantages them, and countless women across our country and around the world: equal pay. This is not a new issue, and it's shameful that it is one that has not been rectified. What the players of the U.S. women's soccer team want is pretty simple: to be treated no different than their counterparts on the men's team. Earlier this year, the players filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation, arguing that disparities in pay between the men's and women's teams constitute discrimination on the basis of gender. But even if this lawsuit improves U.S. Soccer pay practices, much of the pay disparity will remain, due to policies of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). For example, FIFA awarded $38 million to the winner of the 2018 Men's World Cup, but will award only $4 million to the U.S. women's team for their win this year. Men's teams also earn more from FIFA for losing a World Cup qualifying game than women's teams earn for winning all of them and becoming world champions. Today I am reintroducing a resolution that I first introduced in 2015, after the U.S. Women's National Team won its third World Cup. This is a simple, straightforward, and commonsense resolution. I am calling on FIFA to immediately eliminate gender pay inequity and treat all athletes with the same respect and dignity, regardless of gender. Yet in 2015, Senate Republicans inexplicably objected to its adoption. I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why. I'm proud that this resolution is cosponsored by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Mazie Hirano (D-Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). Equal pay for equal work should not be a political football. All women, including the women of the U.S. National Team, deserve to be paid for the job they do, not based on their gender. Equal pay should not still be up for debate in 2019. When time expired on the game clock during the World Cup championship game, chants of ``Equal Pay!'' echoed throughout the stadium in France. I am proud to join in that chorus today.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Today I am introducing, along with 45 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, the Freedom for Americans to Travel to Cuba Act of 2019. Identical legislation was introduced on July 25th by Representatives Jim McGovern and Tom Emmer in the House. We are introducing this bill for one reason: so Americans can travel to Cuba in the same way that they can travel to every other country in the world except North Korea, to which President Trump banned travel by executive order. Based on my conversations with other Senators, I am confident that if we were afforded the opportunity to vote on this bill, more than 60 Senators would support it. It is indefensible that the Federal government restricts American citizens and legal residents from traveling to a tiny country 90 miles away that poses no threat to us. At a time when U.S. airlines are flying to Cuba, does anyone here honestly think that preventing Americans from traveling there is an appropriate role of the Federal government? Why only Cuba? Why not Venezuela? Or Russia? Or Iran, or anywhere else? It is a vindictive, discriminatory, self- defeating vestige of a time long passed. This bill would end these Cold War restrictions on the freedom of Americans to travel. It would not do away with the embargo. Americans overwhelmingly favor travel to Cuba. The last poll I saw, a CBS poll, found that 81 percent of Americans support expanding travel to Cuba. Officials in the White House, however, have a different agenda, driven by purely domestic political calculations. They have not only rolled back steps taken by the previous administration to encourage engagement with Cuba, they have gone further by imposing even more onerous restrictions on the right of Americans to travel. As a result, the number of Americans traveling to Cuba this year is projected to plummet by half, due to the policies of their own government. And the thousands of private Cuban entrepreneurs, the taxi drivers, the Airbnb renters, restaurants, and shops that depend on American customers are struggling to survive. It is a shortsighted, anachronistic policy that is beneath our democracy. I and others, including Republicans, have traveled to Cuba many times over the past 20 years, met with Cuban officials, with Cubans who have been persecuted for opposing the government, and with many others. Every one of us wants to see an end to political repression in Cuba. The arrests and mistreatment of dissidents by the Cuban government should be condemned, just as we should condemn such abuses by other governments including some, like Egypt and Turkey, whose leaders have been welcomed at the White House and the State Department. Americans can travel freely to Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, but not to Cuba. The issue is how best to support the people of Cuba who struggle to make ends meet, and who want to live in a country where freedom of expression and association are protected. Anyone who thinks that more economic pressure, or ultimatums, will force the Cuban authorities to stop arresting political dissidents and embrace democracy have learned nothing from history. For more than half a century we tried a policy of unilateral sanctions and isolation, and it achieved neither of those goals. Instead, it is the Cuban people who were hurt the most. And it provided an opening in this hemisphere for Russia, China, and our other competitors. Change is coming to Cuba, and we can help support that process. Or we can sit on the sidelines and falsely claim to be helping the Cuban people, while pursuing a failed policy of punitive sanctions. The bipartisan bill I am introducing is about the right of Americans, not Cubans, to travel. Every member of Congress, especially those who have been to Cuba, should oppose restrictions on American citizens that have no place in the law books of a free society.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Today I am introducing, along with 45 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, the Freedom for Americans to Travel to Cuba Act of 2019. Identical legislation was introduced on July 25th by Representatives Jim McGovern and Tom Emmer in the House. We are introducing this bill for one reason: so Americans can travel to Cuba in the same way that they can travel to every other country in the world except North Korea, to which President Trump banned travel by executive order. Based on my conversations with other Senators, I am confident that if we were afforded the opportunity to vote on this bill, more than 60 Senators would support it. It is indefensible that the Federal government restricts American citizens and legal residents from traveling to a tiny country 90 miles away that poses no threat to us. At a time when U.S. airlines are flying to Cuba, does anyone here honestly think that preventing Americans from traveling there is an appropriate role of the Federal government? Why only Cuba? Why not Venezuela? Or Russia? Or Iran, or anywhere else? It is a vindictive, discriminatory, self- defeating vestige of a time long passed. This bill would end these Cold War restrictions on the freedom of Americans to travel. It would not do away with the embargo. Americans overwhelmingly favor travel to Cuba. The last poll I saw, a CBS poll, found that 81 percent of Americans support expanding travel to Cuba. Officials in the White House, however, have a different agenda, driven by purely domestic political calculations. They have not only rolled back steps taken by the previous administration to encourage engagement with Cuba, they have gone further by imposing even more onerous restrictions on the right of Americans to travel. As a result, the number of Americans traveling to Cuba this year is projected to plummet by half, due to the policies of their own government. And the thousands of private Cuban entrepreneurs, the taxi drivers, the Airbnb renters, restaurants, and shops that depend on American customers are struggling to survive. It is a shortsighted, anachronistic policy that is beneath our democracy. I and others, including Republicans, have traveled to Cuba many times over the past 20 years, met with Cuban officials, with Cubans who have been persecuted for opposing the government, and with many others. Every one of us wants to see an end to political repression in Cuba. The arrests and mistreatment of dissidents by the Cuban government should be condemned, just as we should condemn such abuses by other governments including some, like Egypt and Turkey, whose leaders have been welcomed at the White House and the State Department. Americans can travel freely to Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, but not to Cuba. The issue is how best to support the people of Cuba who struggle to make ends meet, and who want to live in a country where freedom of expression and association are protected. Anyone who thinks that more economic pressure, or ultimatums, will force the Cuban authorities to stop arresting political dissidents and embrace democracy have learned nothing from history. For more than half a century we tried a policy of unilateral sanctions and isolation, and it achieved neither of those goals. Instead, it is the Cuban people who were hurt the most. And it provided an opening in this hemisphere for Russia, China, and our other competitors. Change is coming to Cuba, and we can help support that process. Or we can sit on the sidelines and falsely claim to be helping the Cuban people, while pursuing a failed policy of punitive sanctions. The bipartisan bill I am introducing is about the right of Americans, not Cubans, to travel. Every member of Congress, especially those who have been to Cuba, should oppose restrictions on American citizens that have no place in the law books of a free society.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this week America celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of a monumental achievement for our country and all of humankind, the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first human beings on the Moon. Like families across America and across the world, our family gathered in front of the television in our living room that Sunday night of July 20, 1969, to watch this history unfold. I was State's attorney then, and we lived in a duplex in Burlington. Our 5-year-old son Kevin asked if he could stay up late to watch, and of course, Marcelle and I agreed. He stretched out on the floor in his PJs. He had nodded off by the time the images from the Moon started to come across, and we roused our little fellow. We knew this was a night we would always remember. The next day, I went to court for an arraignment. Then I met with police officers about several matters, and we all had a hard time concentrating as we excitedly discussed what we had seen the night before. As Neil Armstrong so famously said, his one small step was a giant leap for all of humanity. As he and other astronauts often noted, that leap was made possible not just by his step, but by the small steps of thousands of men and women across America who participated in the space program, including some from the town of Vergennes, VT. Today, 50 years ago, the Apollo 11 mission was hurtling toward the moon, but getting to the Moon is not a matter of just pointing the nose of a craft and igniting the powerful engines. First, the command module had to dock with the lunar expeditionary module, then leave Earth's orbit, then navigate to get into lunar orbit, and then return. Throughout the process, Michael Collins needed to use the craft's engines, known as a burn, to adjust the heading. But with no option to refuel, these burns had to be precise and effective, and any deviation from the planned fuel usage had to be worked into future plans. Otherwise, there would be no return for America's heroes. This is where Vergennes came in. Vermont has a long tradition of building precision tools and machinery, and NASA turned to Simmonds Precision of Vergennes, VT, to ensure that the Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control knew exactly how much fuel they had. The fuel probes and valves had to be as nearly perfect as possible, and they had to perform perfectly in varying levels of microgravity. It was an immense technological challenge, which the engineers and workers in Vergennes met. Fifty years later, the company is still there. Now operating under the name Collins Aerospace, they still make fuel probes, along with other aerospace technology that seems to be able to do the impossible. When you enter the factory, along their wall of history, the Apollo Program commands a special place of pride. It is a reminder of how the small steps taken by Americans everywhere, when working together, can accomplish tremendous leaps. I ask unanimous consent that a recent article about one of the engineers from Vergennes, published by the Burlington Free Press, be printed into the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, ``Show me your papers.'' Those are words that you should never hear once inside the United States. Unless a government agent has a legitimate reason to stop and search you--a reasonable suspicion or probable cause--Americans should not be subject to questioning and detention for merely going about their daily lives. This is a fundamental tenet of the Fourth Amendment. Yet Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations are effectively immune from the Fourth Amendment within a broadly defined ``border zone.'' And this so-called border zone need not be near the border at all: Seventy-year-old regulations define it as up to 100 miles from any border, land or sea. According to the CBP, southern Vermont is in the border zone, as is the entire State of Florida, and even Richmond, Virginia. In fact two-thirds of the entire U.S. population is in the border zone. In Vermont, under the Trump administration, the border zone has resulted in highway checkpoints and bus boardings. In May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents set up the first highway checkpoint in a decade. The checkpoint was set up miles from the Canadian border in South Hero, Vermont. It was in operation for hours. We do not know how many hundreds of cars were stopped, but we do know that it did not lead to a single arrest or seizure. Last month, the CBP established a second checkpoint in the same location. This time nearly 900 cars were stopped, and only one individual was detained--for a visa overstay. Border Patrol agents have also boarded Amtrak trains in White River Junction and boarded a Greyhound bus at the Burlington airport, demanding to know whether passengers were citizens. Today, I am joining with Senator Murray in reintroducing the Border Zone Reasonableness Restoration Act of 2019. Our legislation would establish critical privacy protections by reducing the unjustifiably large border zone from 100 miles to 25 miles. I find it difficult to believe that these checkpoints are an effective use of law enforcement resources. Border Patrol stations in Vermont are already stretched thin, And just last month the Senate passed a bipartisan $4.6 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill to address the humanitarian crisis on the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security's limited resources should be focused on improving conditions of detention and providing food, appropriate shelter, and medical care to families fleeing violence and dire poverty, not conducting pointless vehicle checkpoints miles from the northern border in Vermont. The Border Zone Reasonableness Restoration Act is based on an amendment that Senator Murray and I successfully attached to comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2013. The 100 mile ``border zone''--and the similar 25 mile zone where many types of warrantless property searches are permitted--predates this current administration, but the actions of this administration have shown just how much we need it. That bill passed the Senate with a bipartisan vote of 68 to 32. Americans' right to privacy does not end simply because you are within 100 miles from our land and sea borders. I hope all members of Congress will join us and support this commonsense legislation to ensure that every person in this country receives the constitutional protections to which they are entitled.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, ``Show me your papers.'' Those are words that you should never hear once inside the United States. Unless a government agent has a legitimate reason to stop and search you--a reasonable suspicion or probable cause--Americans should not be subject to questioning and detention for merely going about their daily lives. This is a fundamental tenet of the Fourth Amendment. Yet Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations are effectively immune from the Fourth Amendment within a broadly defined ``border zone.'' And this so-called border zone need not be near the border at all: Seventy-year-old regulations define it as up to 100 miles from any border, land or sea. According to the CBP, southern Vermont is in the border zone, as is the entire State of Florida, and even Richmond, Virginia. In fact two-thirds of the entire U.S. population is in the border zone. In Vermont, under the Trump administration, the border zone has resulted in highway checkpoints and bus boardings. In May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents set up the first highway checkpoint in a decade. The checkpoint was set up miles from the Canadian border in South Hero, Vermont. It was in operation for hours. We do not know how many hundreds of cars were stopped, but we do know that it did not lead to a single arrest or seizure. Last month, the CBP established a second checkpoint in the same location. This time nearly 900 cars were stopped, and only one individual was detained--for a visa overstay. Border Patrol agents have also boarded Amtrak trains in White River Junction and boarded a Greyhound bus at the Burlington airport, demanding to know whether passengers were citizens. Today, I am joining with Senator Murray in reintroducing the Border Zone Reasonableness Restoration Act of 2019. Our legislation would establish critical privacy protections by reducing the unjustifiably large border zone from 100 miles to 25 miles. I find it difficult to believe that these checkpoints are an effective use of law enforcement resources. Border Patrol stations in Vermont are already stretched thin, And just last month the Senate passed a bipartisan $4.6 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill to address the humanitarian crisis on the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security's limited resources should be focused on improving conditions of detention and providing food, appropriate shelter, and medical care to families fleeing violence and dire poverty, not conducting pointless vehicle checkpoints miles from the northern border in Vermont. The Border Zone Reasonableness Restoration Act is based on an amendment that Senator Murray and I successfully attached to comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2013. The 100 mile ``border zone''--and the similar 25 mile zone where many types of warrantless property searches are permitted--predates this current administration, but the actions of this administration have shown just how much we need it. That bill passed the Senate with a bipartisan vote of 68 to 32. Americans' right to privacy does not end simply because you are within 100 miles from our land and sea borders. I hope all members of Congress will join us and support this commonsense legislation to ensure that every person in this country receives the constitutional protections to which they are entitled.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished majority leader and the distinguished Democratic leader--both very close friends of mine whom I have served with for so long. And my dear, dear friend Senator Shelby from Alabama. It is the friendships that mean the most, both to me and to my wife Marcelle. It is the friends we gather on both sides of the aisle and the people I have traveled with around the world. One of my proud achievements was the War Victims Fund, but it was Senator Mitch McConnell who had it renamed the ``Patrick J. Leahy War Victims Fund.'' I know that Senator Schumer helped guide me into committee assignments that made the most sense for Vermont and for my own career and, I hope, for the Senate. My first vote was for the Church Committee. Frank Church wanted oversight of our intelligence agencies, and the Intelligence Committee came out of that. The two leaders of the Intelligence Committee now-- Senator Burr and Senator Warner--do such a great job with that. As I was looking at the paper today, I thought of the first Supreme Court Justice I voted for, John Paul Stevens, a wonderful man. I have voted on each member of the Supreme Court since then. Going back through the 16,000 votes, I am sure I could find some and think, what the heck was I thinking when I voted that way? But I am proud to serve Vermont. I am proud to be in this body. I am mostly proud to serve with all the Senators who are here on both sides of the aisle. Some of my closest friendships are here. I have served with three wonderful Senators from Vermont. Senator Robert Stafford, who is no longer with us, was the senior Senator from Vermont when I came here. He was Mr. Republican in our State, and I wondered how he was going to react to this youngster, this Democrat coming in. He and his wife Ellen took Marcelle and me under their wing and helped us on everything. He taught me how best to form coalitions across the aisle. I will never forget that. I am not going to hold up my colleagues here. I will speak more about this at another time. But I was the first Vermonter to vote to end the war in Vietnam, which we ended by a one-vote margin at that time in the Armed Services Committee. There were other votes that were very close. There were bipartisan votes. It is a privilege to be in this body. This body has been at times, and can be and should be, the conscience of the Nation. I urge my friends on both sides of the aisle to continue to work together. We have worked together on trips that many of us have taken. I will close with mentioning just one trip to give you an idea of that. Senator Hubert Humphrey and Republican Leader Hugh Scott were going to go to Moscow. He said: Patrick, you and Marcelle are going to come to Moscow. I was 34 years old. I had just gotten through a campaign that nobody had contributed to. We were flat broke. I blurted out: What is the airfare to Moscow? He said: No, we are going to take Jerry's plane. I said: Jerry who? He said: Jerry Ford. He is the President. Don't you read the papers? We had an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on that trip, and we formed lifelong friendships and learned how to work together. I urge Senators to continue doing that. And it was better than flying commercial. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I thank my colleagues. (Applause.)

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, Ms. Agnes Callamard, recently released her report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi after a 6-month investigation. I encourage everyone to read the report, and I want to share several of her findings. First, Mr. Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. It was an extrajudicial killing that violated numerous international laws, and for which the Government of Saudi Arabia is responsible. Second, there is credible evidence warranting further investigation of the liability of high-level Saudi officials, especially the Crown Prince. Third, once Turkey publicly announced Mr. Khashoggi's murder, the Saudi Government used consular immunity to obstruct Turkey's investigation until the crime scene could be cleaned, and there are reasons to conclude that the destruction of evidence could not have taken place without the Crown Prince's knowledge. Fourth, Saudi officials falsely denied knowledge of Mr. Khashoggi's murder for more than 2 weeks, and they continue to deny state responsibility. Fifth, the trial of the suspects who have been charged in Saudi Arabia will not deliver justice or the whole truth. Sixth, Jamal Khashoggi's remains have yet to be located and turned over to his family. Some have ignored the findings in the report, as the lobbyists who continue to rake in millions of dollars from the Saudi Government have encouraged, and as the Trump administration appears inclined to do. But ignoring the facts doesn't change what happened. And it bears repeating: The fact is, a journalist was murdered by the Saudi Government in a manner that implicates officials at the highest level in the royal family. The fact is, the Saudi Government engaged in a flagrant coverup and continues to deny any responsibility. The fact is, the steps being taken to pursue justice are a sham. After the report was released, the Saudi Foreign Minister dismissed its finding as not containing any new information--as if the murder, coverup, and lack of accountability are irrelevant because they have been previously reported. While many of the summary findings in the report may not be new, they are supported by roughly 100 pages of detailed information in which the Special Rapporteur and her team document official reports from the U.S., Saudi, and Turkish Governments, they include quotes from interviews conducted around the world, and they share excerpts of the gruesome intelligence information to which they had access. Ms. Callamard presented the facts, her own conclusions, and the methodology used to reach those conclusions, and she was clear about where there were limitations of her inquiry. The report shows a meticulous and objective effort to find the truth. For that reason, it stands in stark contrast to the approach taken by both the Saudi Government and the Trump administration. The Special Rapporteur also made several recommendations, including some that are directed specifically to the United States. They include the following: Open an FBI investigation into the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and pursue criminal prosecutions within the United States as appropriate. Make a determination under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act regarding the responsibility of the Crown Prince, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. To the greatest extent possible, consistent with national security, declassify materials relating to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. And hold congressional hearings on the responsibility of top Saudi officials and demand access to the relevant classified materials. After Ms. Callamard's report was released, President Trump, just like the Saudi Foreign Minister, dismissed its findings. He made clear he intends to take no action in response to the report. In addition, despite Secretary Pompeo's repeated claim that the administration is ``committed to holding each individual accountable'' in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the facts indicate the opposite. The administration continues to refuse to adhere to its legal requirements--refuses to follow the law--under the Magnitsky Act to determine liability in the murder, including the liability of the Crown Prince. In fact, President Trump has made no effort to conceal that the administration's complicity in protecting the Saudi royal family is linked to billions of dollars in sales of U.S. weapons to the Saudi Government. During an interview shortly after the report was released, the President admitted to not raising the U.N. report with the Crown Prince, and said: ``Saudi Arabia's a big buyer of American products; that means something to me.'' Asked whether Saudi Arabia paid the right price for the United States ``to look the other way,'' President Trump said: ``No, no. But I'm not like a fool that says, `We don't want to do business with them . . . Take their money.' '' I was a prosecutor for 8 years. The fact that premeditated murder is being condoned because of billions of dollars in Saudi money is unconscionable. According to President Trump, our relations with Saudi Arabia should not change regardless of the outcome of any investigation. Think about that. The President is saying that no matter what the evidence shows, no matter how compelling the evidence implicating the Crown Prince in murder and obstruction of justice, that should not affect our relations with the Saudi Government. That is a shocking statement. Instead, the administration has limited its response to imposing sanctions only against individuals who reportedly carried out the murder, as well as a few other officials believed to have played a role in ordering or facilitating the operation, and has argued that, by doing so, it has fulfilled its commitment to pursuing justice. It is the same as what the Saudi Government has done--claim to be holding the hit men accountable while absolving the Saudi leadership and royal family of any responsibility. Yet the Special Rapporteur has rightly emphasized that the pursuit of justice for Jamal Khashoggi and his family is about finding the truth. Secretary Pompeo recently spoke about the need to ensure that our principles guide our policy. That is a view I share, but I have to wonder what he meant by that pious statement. What principles was he talking about? There is no evidence that the administration is being guided by principle in the Khashoggi case. To the contrary, there is every reason to believe this administration has made a calculated decision to do the opposite. In fact, the President has said as much. There should be nothing controversial about holding accountable a government that systemically represses and abuses its own people, that is currently arbitrarily detaining American citizens whom it has also reportedly tortured, that has repeatedly committed war crimes in Yemen that potentially implicate the United States, and that is responsible for the premeditated murder of a widely respected journalist. I hope other Senators will join me in calling on the Trump administration to lead the international community by example. Our government should put Special Rapporteur Callamard's recommendations into practice, and we should urge other governments to do the same. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last week, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee came together and we approved by a vote of 30 to 1 an emergency supplemental to address the most urgent humanitarian needs at our southern border. Some would say that the way the Senate has been led lately, you couldn't get a 30-to-1 vote to say the Sun rises in the east. The bill reflects weeks of good-faith negotiations between Republicans and Democrats to forge a bipartisan agreement to mitigate what has been an escalating humanitarian crisis--one where infants and toddlers are sleeping on cold cement floors in wire cages and under bridges. Inaction is simply not an option for those who care about alleviating the suffering of desperate children and families seeking refuge in the United States. Action in the Senate requires compromise. That is the reality in a body where 60 votes are required to move a bill forward. No one, Republican or Democrat, is going to get everything they want--including me, and I am the vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee--but that is the nature of compromise. One thing I am not willing to compromise on is our American values, and this bill reflects that. The Senate supplemental protects unaccompanied children, some of our most vulnerable migrants, by securing funds for their safety and their well-being in HHS custody. It includes $109 million to ensure the safety and well-being of those children through post-release wraparound services, legal services, and case management to get children out of cages and put them in loving homes. It puts restrictions on the use of influx facilities. It establishes standards of care to ensure that children are kept in safe, sanitary facilities where they are properly cared for--not cages. Our bill will mitigate inhumane conditions faced by migrant families in DHS custody by providing funds to improve conditions in grossly overcrowded facilities and buy food, clothing, and medical services for the people in our care. It provides money to ensure that we have diapers, formula, baby wipes, and other essential supplies for infants and toddlers. Like the rest of the country, I read in horror the reports from a border facility in Clint, TX, where the children were unbathed, where sickness was spreading, and where infants were being cared for by other young children in custody barely old enough to care for themselves. No child, no matter where they are from, deserves to live in such conditions. Our bill improves due process for migrants by expanding access to legal services and our immigration courts. It provides grants to nonprofit organizations and local jurisdictions that provide critical services in shelters to migrants released from DHS custody. Bolstering border security and treating migrants with humanity are not mutually exclusive goals. Indeed, accomplishing both together is the American way. We are America. We can do two things at once. Apparently, President Trump never got the memo about our American values. Since the day he took office, he has demonized and vilified immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees at every opportunity. Through false and inflammatory tweets and cruel policies, he has worked to instill widespread fear among immigrant communities, targeting asylum seekers as if they were hardened violent criminals. In just this past week, he threatened widespread arrests of thousands of immigrant families, seemingly without concern for the many families that would be torn apart and the separated children who happen to be American citizens who would be left behind. Now he has backed away from that threat temporarily, but he has promised to revisit it. Just last week, the Trump administration went to Federal court to argue that it should not be required to give detained migrant children toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, towels, showers, or proper sleeping conditions when in U.S. custody--that such amenities are not part of the definition of ``safe and sanitary'' conditions. What would we say if another country were holding Americans like that? It has become painfully obvious: President Trump views immigrant families, asylum seekers, and refugees not as human beings but as political ammunition intended solely to rile his base. When asked about the horrendous conditions at DHS and ORR facilities and the separation of families, he said it is not true and he repeated his threat of mass deportations--even though many of us here in the Congress in both parties have seen it. He is either willfully ignorant about what has been widely documented or he has no qualms about lying about it. Not a single one of the President's anti-immigrant, fearmongering tactics would address the very real humanitarian crisis overwhelming our southern border. This is exactly why the bipartisan Senate supplemental does not provide a single dollar for President Trump's request for hundreds of millions in additional dollars for the incarceration of immigrants in ICE facilities. It is why we did not provide any of his requested funds to pursue misguided policies like ``Remain in Mexico,'' which law enforcement officials have stated actually encourages, not discourages, illegal crossings. It is why, in a bipartisan way, we included a strict prohibition on the transfer of supplemental funds for any purposes other than addressing the humanitarian crisis at the border. And finally, it is why we refused to include any of the deeply harmful, unprecedented changes to our immigration and asylum laws that the President has advocated for. I am under no illusion that this supplemental bill will address all of the problems with our immigration system--far from it. It is a temporary solution to address some of the most urgent issues. We need to have a broader debate about comprehensively addressing those problems, just as we did years ago. Years ago, a bipartisan group of Senators put forward a thoughtful, bipartisan immigration bill. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I held three hearings on the bill. We had five days of markups. We considered 212 amendments, 141 of which were adopted, including nearly 50 from Republicans. And then 68 Senators supported the legislation on the floor. Unfortunately, the Republican Speaker of the House would not bring up the bill, even though it would have passed overwhelmingly, because he thought it might violate the Dennis Hastert rule. I think, if we were to have that same process here again today, I would bet we would also have 68 Senators--Republicans and Democrats--vote for it. Yet this is a conversation and a debate we will have to have on another day. I will be happy to work with those Republican and Democratic Senators who worked together to get an immigration bill before, but we are not going to do it in the context of an emergency supplemental, which is meant to address the most urgent humanitarian needs at the border. It is why Senator Shelby and I and others-- Republicans and Democrats--have worked for weeks, quietly behind the scenes, in order to put this together and get our 31 votes. It is because we know we have to first act to provide safe, humane care for the migrant children and families who seek mercy and safety. It was yesterday that the House passed its own version of an emergency supplemental for the southern border. It is also a very good bill, and it goes further in offering protections to immigrants in our care than we are able to do in this Chamber, because there have been objections from the Republican side of the aisle. It provides important additional protections for children who are under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and for those being held at CBP processing facilities, and I support that. We should be taking care of the children in our custody as if they were our own. Taking care of children is not a partisan issue. We should all agree on that. I am also pleased that the House bill includes a provision to protect the funding that Republicans and Democrats have already appropriated to address the causes of migration in Central America. I am upset the President has threatened to take that money and reprogram it elsewhere. We were not able to reach agreement on that issue in the Senate, but in a few moments, we will have an opportunity to vote on the House bill. I hope Members on both sides of the aisle will be able to support it. Neither the House nor the Senate bill has any funding for additional ICE detention beds. This is no mistake. The President's predisposition to turn to mass detention above all else is cruel, irresponsible, and also a horrible waste of taxpayers' money. There are alternatives to detention that exist that are safe and less expensive. The administration needs to use the resources it has for ICE detention services to house those people who truly present a danger to our communities and not lock up every man, woman, and child simply for being here. Lock up those who really do present a danger. Most 5-year- old children do not. It makes no sense to lump them all in together. We carefully negotiated ICE's bed levels in the fiscal year 2019 Homeland Security Appropriations bill just a few months ago, which was passed by both Republicans and Democrats, and there is no reason to revisit it now. We have heard that the administration plans to set up a request to fund more ICE detention beds through reprogramming the money that we need. I urge my Republican colleagues to join me in opposing any such request. The administration should not do administratively what both Republicans and Democrats have rejected. Unfortunately, this is a pattern with this administration. It just wants to ignore bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. It ignores the will of Congress. It uses loopholes and ignores traditional norms in the appropriations process. It uses suspect readings of the law to accomplish its agenda. When Congress rejected the administration's request, it acted as though it was above the law, above the Constitution. Nobody is above the law in this country. None of us in the Senate are, and neither is the President of the United States. Let's not forget the President's declaration of a national emergency to fund his wall when Congress debated it and refused to provide him the money he had requested. We have to stand up for ourselves as an institution. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join me--not as Democrats or Republicans but as U.S. Senators--in saying no to this President when he blatantly ignores the will of the Congress. I thank Chairman Shelby for working with me on this bipartisan humanitarian assistance bill. We need to work quickly to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate bills so we can get a bill to the President's desk. I hope President Trump will have the good sense to sign the supplemental bill into law. Then let's turn to the much needed debate on comprehensive immigration reform. We showed we could do it when I was the chairman of the Judiciary. We showed we could get a 2-to-1 vote in this body. Let's do it again. Of course, I urge Members to oppose the Paul amendment. Four months ago, Republicans and Democrats came together and appropriated funds in the State and Foreign Operations Act that would help counter terrorism and human trafficking, promote democracy, combat poverty, provide humanitarian aid, and support global health programs. A bipartisan majority of Congress supported this funding and the President signed it into law. The Paul amendment proposes to rescind $4.6 billion, clawing back programs with a wide range of consequences. Counterterrorism programs would be cut. These funds support programs that target vulnerable youth to prevent radicalization. These programs provide governments with the tools to counter the influence of violent extremist organizations, including by countering terrorism financing. Programs to combat human trafficking would be cut by the Paul amendment. These programs support nongovernmental organizations that promote stronger government policies and programs to combat human slavery and trafficking. They help hold perpetrators accountable and support governments that are combatting human trafficking, and they help to protect victims of trafficking. Programs that strengthen civil society, independent media, and promote democracy in Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Hungary, Egypt, and many other countries would be cut. These funds support efforts to hold governments accountable for repression, promote freedom of expression and religious freedom, and provide services to victims of persecution. The Paul amendment would claw back humanitarian aid. There are more people forcibly displaced in the world today than at any time since World War II. It is a global humanitarian crisis that is contributing to instability and insecurity, including in our own hemisphere. The amendment would rescind funding for U.S. refugee aid and aid to victims of famine, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. And funding for PEPFAR, programs to combat malaria and TB, and other global health programs would be cut by the Paul Amendment. This includes programs to respond to deadly pandemics like Ebola. There are countless other examples, since the Paul amendment uses a meat cleaver approach to demolish most of our international development and humanitarian programs that reduce poverty, respond to crises, build free markets, and strengthen democratic institutions. Why are there unobligated balances in these programs? These funds were appropriated only 4 months ago and are available for obligation through the next fiscal year for multiyear projects. That is how foreign assistance works. In the last two foreign aid appropriations laws, Senator Graham and I included targeted rescissions of funds that could no longer be spent effectively, or that were about to expire. That is the responsible approach, and one that preserves the integrity of the appropriations process. That is not the approach in this amendment. I urge members to vote no on this amendment and pass the bipartisan bill reported by the committee 30 to 1 so that we can sit down with the House tonight to work out the differences with the House bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. I ask for the yeas and nays.