Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, let's put this in realistic terms. I have been here through eight Presidents. I am now in my 45th year. I have never seen anything like the Trump shutdown from the day it began 34 days ago until now. I hear from people every day about the pain and suffering this shutdown has caused. Certainly I hear from my home State of Vermont. We know that tomorrow hundreds of thousands of public servants will miss their second paycheck since this shutdown began. Many of these public servants have had to work the entire time. They are angry. They are confused about why their paychecks are being held hostage by the President in what he appears to view as a political game. Many of these people can no longer pay their bills. They are worried about what tomorrow will bring, and all of us should worry. We know that our basic government services are no longer functioning. Our Federal courts will run out of money by the end of this month. Important scientific research has been put on hold. Think of the cost to turn it back on. The fishing industry is in turmoil because they cannot get the Federal permits or inspections required to take out their boats. In the wake of a record-setting fire season, the Forest Service has curtailed thinning and fire-prevention projects. Federal law enforcement and prosecutors are sounding the alarm that the shutdown is hindering important investigative work and criminal prosecutions. The Transportation Security Administration, TSA, has employees who are calling in sick in record numbers after a month of being on the job with no paycheck. Some even say they cannot pay for the gas to get to the job. These are the people charged with detecting dangerous threats at our Nation's airports. Instead, they are stressed and frustrated. Everybody knows that is not a very good combination. Long lines are forming at airports. A lack of TSA employees has forced some major airports to close screening areas, causing further delays. I could go on and on, but we know the Trump shutdown is hurting our Nation and our citizens. Overseas, it makes the United States of America look weak and foolish. This great country is made to look weak and foolish by the Trump shutdown. We can end it right now, today, and for the sake of the country, we should. The McConnell amendment, the so-called End the Shutdown and Reopen the Government Act, we all know is a nonstarter. I came to the floor yesterday, and I detailed why. I am not going to repeat that here today. It is the height of irresponsibility to use the pain and suffering of the American people as leverage to force the U.S. taxpayers to fund the President's bumper-sticker, campaign slogan southern border wall--on his solemn promise that Mexico would pay for it--or to enact his hard- line, anti-immigrant agenda. That is what the bill does. It is not a compromise. It is not a deal. I hope my fellow Senators oppose it. If we give in to these tactics now, where will it stop? What is the next thing the President will shut down the government over? H.R. 268, which is what the Schumer amendment contains, is a bipartisan bill that we should all support. It would reopen the government by extending funding for the seven remaining appropriations bills through February 8, 2019. Remember, those are appropriations bills that Chairman Shelby and I worked very hard on and that passed through the committee virtually unanimously. We ought to applaud that. The passage of the bill will ensure that Federal employees are paid and that critical services are restored and provide time for negotiation and debate on border security without the American people being held hostage to the President's ill-considered, anti-immigrant agenda. I urge Senators to vote for it. On December 19, in this Chamber, we passed the bill to fund the government until February 8. We did it unanimously by a voice vote. Republicans were in charge of both the House and the Senate at that time. In other words, the Senate was for keeping the government open. The President's own Republican leaders supported it. Suddenly, he changed his mind, and the Republican leaders had to back off. H.R. 268 also provides $14 billion in assistance to help communities and families impacted by natural disasters recover and rebuild. It provides assistance to the victims of Hurricanes Michael and Florence, the California wildfires, the volcanic eruptions in Hawaii, the recent typhoons in the Pacific, and other natural disasters. It will also continue assistance for Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from the category 5 Hurricanes Maria and Irma. The McConnell amendment contains a disaster package nearly identical to H.R. 268, but to appease the President, it eliminates all disaster assistance for Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is part of America. I know the President referred to it as an island surrounded by water, as though that is the only island that is surrounded by water. The McConnell amendment eliminates $1.3 billion in funding for clean and safe drinking water grants, community redevelopment funds, and nutrition assistance that would help the American citizens of Puerto Rico continue their recovery. Hurricanes Maria and Irma devastated Puerto Rico and destroyed the island's homes and infrastructure. Hurricane Maria caused the deaths of 2,975 Americans. It is one of the deadliest hurricanes this country has ever seen. While Congress has provided Puerto Rico with assistance in past disaster bills, they still have unaddressed needs that have to be met. Absent supplemental assistance, it is estimated that 140,000 Puerto Ricans--and I have to reemphasize that they are all U.S. citizens--are going to lose nutrition assistance at the end of March. This in the United States of America? Is there any wonder that the rest of the world looks at us and says: What are you doing? We are supposed to take care of all of our citizens when there is a crisis, not pick and choose based on who we are or who we are aligned with politically. Just as I voted for disaster aid in States represented by Republicans, Republicans have voted for disaster aid in my State when it has been represented by Democrats. The President's disregard for the victims of Hurricane Maria is shameful. I urge Senators to vote aye on the Schumer amendment. It provides much needed assistance to disaster-affected communities, and it immediately allows us to send this bill to the President to reopen the government. It has gone on long enough. The President and the people in his Cabinet are billionaires. They do not care about the harm he has inflicted on this country, but I know Members of this body, both Democrats and Republicans, do. We know what it means to govern. We have a responsibility to do it now. Senator Shelby, whom I admire, is a friend of mine. He and I worked together last year in a bipartisan way. We got the appropriations process back on track. We showed that this is the way to get things done. But then the President decided to take us off course. The Senate is an independent, coequal branch of government. We should act like it. Let's end this national nightmare. Let's vote to open the government now for our fellow Americans. Let's do it now, today. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I hope the country has heard what the distinguished senior Senator from Maryland said. He sees this every day. He sees it when he goes home to Baltimore. He sees it when he talks with his neighbors. He sees it when he is in the grocery store. He sees it at the temple. He sees it everywhere because these are the people who are among our finest government workers, and they are out of work. They are not being paid. I suspect he also sees it with the contractors and subcontractors and those who are not on the Federal payroll but who would lose their jobs if the Federal Government is closed. So I compliment him for doing this. I also appreciate what he said about the Appropriations Committee. The distinguished Presiding Officer is one of the hardest working chairs of the Appropriations subcommittees. I realize she cannot respond in her position as Presiding Officer, but I note that she moved her bill through. She did it in a way that got enormous support from Republicans and Democrats across the political spectrum, which is the way we are supposed to do it. It certainly has been the way we have seen it done with people from her State. We did it with her father. We did it with my dear friend, Senator Stevens, when he was chair of the Appropriations Committee. We did it when the distinguished senior Senator from Maryland, Ms. Mikulski, was chair of the overall committee. We got this done. It is a lot of work. It is tremendous work for our staffs on both sides of the aisle--a lot of late nights and weekends--but it is done because the American people want the U.S. Government to work. For a month now, much of the Federal Government has been closed for business while the President of the United States rants and raves about his personal obsession, the centerpiece of his extreme, anti- immigration agenda--a wall on our southern border. For a month now, hundreds of thousands of dedicated public servants have gone without a paycheck, even while many of them showed up for work every single day. Many can no longer pay their bills. They worry about how they are going to put food on the table. Many are looking for temporary work. Many are standing in line at food pantries. These are professionals. They are trying to figure out: How do we pay for childcare or healthcare? How do we pay our student loans? How do we pay for our mortgage? It is not just the individuals. It is also our institutions. Our Federal courts are running out of money. Our Federal courts are running out of money. TSA agents are calling in sick in droves after weeks on the job without pay. What is that doing with air traffic, especially during the winter, in America? Thousands of people who are trying to buy new homes, which boosts our economy, with a Federal Housing Administration loan told: Come back later. Come back when? Well, we don't know. Whenever President Trump ends the shutdown, come back. Small businesses and farmers cannot get federally backed loans. This is after this body--under the leadership of the distinguished Republican, Senator Roberts, and the distinguished Democrat, Senator Stabenow--put through a 5-year farm bill, which brought almost all of us together. We voted for it, but now farmers can't use it. They don't even know what the new rules are because nobody is there to answer their questions. We scaled back on food inspections. We are not enforcing our clean air and clean water rules. Our national parks are being vandalized and permanently damaged as they remain open to the public, but they are not staffed. As a former prosecutor, here is something that sends a chill down my spine. The FBI Agents Association says criminal investigations are being stymied, grand jury subpoenas are going undelivered, and confidential sources are being lost. It is quickly becoming a national security threat. This is America? This is the country I am proud to serve? Either the President does not understand the harm his shutdown is causing, or he does not care. But the country is suffering. Our economy is suffering. The American people are suffering. The Trump shutdown makes us look foolish and weak to the rest of the world. This is the leader of the free world we are seeing as weak and incompetent. However, over the weekend, the President addressed the country from the White House, and he laid out his price to stop the shutdown. Calling it a compromise, he made vague promises for protections for DACA recipients and those who receive TPS, or temporary protected status. We could end this shutdown, he said, and all U.S. taxpayers had to do was fund his wall--a wasteful monument to himself that he just wants the taxpayers to fund, even though he gave his word to all Americans, over and over, that Mexico would pay for it. He did not tell the truth then, and now he wants the American taxpayers to bail him out. It was a transparent attempt to look reasonable on national television, while simultaneously holding the Federal Government and millions of Americans hostage to a shutdown that harms our economy and our communities every day. But as for offering temporary protections for vulnerable immigrants--protections that he unilaterally chose to strip, in the first place--in exchange for a permanent, ineffective wall, nobody can call that reasonable. It is hardly reasonable to hold the well-being of our Federal workforce or the services upon which many in America rely as hostages to fund a pet project. The President cannot bargain with something that he broke. On Monday night, Senate Republicans unveiled the President's plan in more detail. It became clear that what seemed like a disingenuous ploy to seem reasonable to stop his slide in the polls was really a much more cynical attempt to implement his hard-lined, anti-immigration agenda, using the harm of the Trump shutdown as leverage. The McConnell bill before us reads like an A-through-Z immigration wish list for President Trump and those in his anti-immigrant inner circle. First, the bill provides $5.7 billion for a wasteful monument to the President's ego--a wall that most experts say would do little to address the real problems on our southern border. The bill, ultimately, dramatically increases the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or so-called ICE, detention beds to 52,000 and ICE enforcement agents by 2,000. Even as I give these numbers, I think of walking through these rooms with cages that children are being kept in. Every one of us who has children or grandchildren and every one of us who has gone through a school yard and has seen young children has heard that the decibel level is outstanding. They are laughing. They are playing. They are talking with each other. When you go through these cages--these cages holding these young, innocent children--there is dead silence--no laughter, no talking with each other, no joking. There is dead silence. This is America. What are we showing the rest of the world? The Trump administration has repeatedly proven it does not know how to prioritize its immigration enforcement resources. In the first 14 months of the Trump administration, ICE's arrests of immigrants with no criminal convictions--no criminal convictions--spiked by 203 percent over the last 14 months of the previous administration. So it shows that President Trump has not deployed resources to round up, as he said, ``bad hombres'' or threats to our national security. He is deploying his enforcement resources to strike fear into the hearts of all undocumented immigrants. This administration's enforcement policies are driven by the cruel desire to scare undocumented immigrants into believing that they or their disabled children or their elderly parents could be next. Until the Trump administration changes its dragnet approach to immigration enforcement, Congress should not fund an expansion of his detention and deportation force. I would ask anybody to walk past those cages with the children in them. I never thought I would see this in America. I have seen it in war zones and other countries, but not America--not in the America I love. The bill also contains provisions that serve as fig leaves to fix problems the Trump administration brought about in the first place. It would provide 3 years of temporary protection to 700,000 individuals currently involved in DACA--protections that are only required because of the President's own decision to terminate the DACA Program. It would not provide a path to citizenship for these Dreamers or any protections to the nearly 1 million more individuals who are eligible for DACA protections. Similarly, the bill would provide 3 years of temporary protection to TPS recipients from a few countries with TPS designation the Trump administration terminated in the first place. If you provide permanent funding for a wall in exchange for provisions that temporarily clean up messes of the Trump administration's own making, that is not a compromise. It is taking hostages on top of hostages. That is a nonstarter. Stripping away protections from Dreamers and TPS recipients and then treating them like pawns by suddenly offering them temporary reprieve--this is not compassion. It is callous. It is wicked. It is evil. Finally, the bill seeks to dismantle our humanitarian asylum system as we know it. It contains provisions that would effectively bar any asylum applications from Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran minors that are not made from a designated processing center somewhere in Central America. In other words, thousands of vulnerable children fleeing the horrors of torture, murder, and rape in the Northern Triangle and arriving at our border would be categorically barred from applying for asylum and be subject to immediate removal proceedings. The entire point of asylum is to provide an opportunity for those who have fled from persecution and violence to seek refuge in our country. Our asylum system would become distorted beyond recognition if, instead, we punish these desperate children--punish them for the very act of fleeing for their lives. It is remarkable that the man whose name is on the book called ``The Art of the Deal'' would think that Democrats would accept what amounts to a deal breaker. This Democrat will not. I welcome a debate on the need for immigration reform. I would remind Senators that in 2013, when I was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I issued a bipartisan bill to reform the immigration system and secure our border through the committee. We held dozens of hearings. We considered hundreds of amendments. We often met until late at night. Then, when we brought it before the Senate, it got 68 votes here on the Senate floor. Republicans and Democrats joined together to give it a supermajority. So it shows it can be done, but not while the President holds hostage all Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Federal workers and their families. I remind the Senate that on December 19, when Republicans controlled the House and Republicans controlled the Senate, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to fund the government by a voice vote. In other words, the Senate was for keeping the government open--until President Trump changed the mind of our Republican leader. The President and Senate Republicans should reopen the government now, without any further foot-dragging. Congress and the Senate are a coequal and independent branch of government. We have bipartisan bills before Congress right now to do that. My friend the majority leader has refused to bring them up while the country pays the price. This has to end. I hope he will pull up the bipartisan bills. I hope he will let us vote. Again, I would say that we are looking weak to the rest of the world. We are looking foolish to the rest of the world. But what hurts the most are the people--not only Federal employees but contractors, private industry, and everybody else in every one of our States--who are suffering and watching our economy sink further as a result. I see the distinguished majority leader on the floor, so I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

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

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President--and I welcome the distinguished Presiding Officer, who has probably presided before, but this is the first time I have been on the floor and have seen him preside. I realize he cannot respond, but I welcome him to the Senate. Government Funding Mr. President, for 26 days, President Trump has held funding for our Federal Government hostage, using it as leverage to force Congress to provide $5.7 billion to build his ill-conceived, expensive, and unfortunately totally ineffective wall on the southern border. We knew this was coming because for months during the campaign, he riled up his base with chants of ``Build the wall. Build the wall.'' He invented a crisis at the southern border and then told supporters that only he could solve it. He gave his word over and over again that Mexico would pay for the wall so American taxpayers would not have to. That was over 2 years ago, and I think he is feeling the pressure now as he shutters himself in the White House. Having failed to convince both Republicans and Democrats in Congress that the campaign slogan was actually good policy and having failed, as we all knew, to get Mexico to pay for the wall, he turns to a negotiation tactic that he seems to have mastered--bullying. He has shut down the government of the most powerful Nation in the world, making us a laughing stock around the rest of the world, and he says he will keep us shut down until he gets what he wants. It is the height of irresponsibility. It certainly destroys our effectiveness in other parts of the world. He is the President of this country. We all--Democrats and Republicans--accept that he is the President. But that also means he is supposed to lead the Nation, not run it into the ground like so many of his businesses that had to declare bankruptcy. But he sits in the White House tweeting and watching television all day, ignoring the damaging effect his actions are having on millions of Americans of whatever political persuasion around the country. The shutdown not only hurts our Federal workers, it is hurting America's economy. The President's own Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that gross domestic product will slow by .1 percent for every 2 weeks the government is shut down. Today, there are reports that this estimate is too low and that the impact could be .1 percent for every week the government is shuttered. Those are numbers, but let me tell you a story and give an example. Small businesses employ more than 59 million people in this country. Small businesses in this country are one of the main drivers of economic growth, but every day the government is closed is a day small businesses can't get Small Business Administration-backed loans to invest and grow their companies. Last week, I heard from a woman who runs a small sign company in Essex Junction, VT. Essex Junction is in Chittenden County outside of Burlington, VT. It is a beautiful community. It survives by small businesses that expand. She is trying to grow her business, and she is trying to acquire another one, but the SBA backs the space she is trying to purchase, and so she can't bring the sale to finality during the shutdown. As a result, the seller is threatening to just move on. He can't get an answer from the SBA. And, of course, that would throw her expansion plans into jeopardy. We have many excellent craft breweries in Vermont. They bring in a lot of revenue. They hire a lot of people. They are a key part of our tourism. I heard from one of the head brewers from one of these major craft breweries. He depends upon the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau to approve his license applications, formulas, and the labels he puts on his beer. He has been brewing the beer and it is ready to be labeled, but the office is closed due to the government shutdown. They are not processing applications. He wrote: I am one of the millions of voters whose livelihood depends on the government operating. . . . Every day that passes without the ATTB up and running is another potential day of lost sales. Farmers across the country and in Vermont are also feeling the pain of the shutdown. Just a few weeks ago, we passed the bipartisan farm bill. I was one of the conferees on that bill. I praised Senator Pat Roberts, Republican from Kansas, and Debbie Stabenow, Democrat from Michigan. They put together this bipartisan bill, and the President took credit when he signed it. Well, it is a 5-year farm bill, and now the President, right after signing the farm bill, has shut the U.S. Department of Agriculture field offices that help farmers implement the law. Farmers need information now as the new planting and growing season looms. How long will it affect operations heading into the planting year? Most of the staff are on furlough. If you are a farmer in the Midwest and you are preparing your crops, you can't say: Well, you know, we can wait a few months--maybe past the growing season--to find out what the rules are going to be, and then we will plant. The decisions have to be made now. It also means that farmers can't apply for much needed loans. They need these loans because the drop in commodity prices brought on by the President's tariffs has hit many farmers hard. They need loans to help pay their bills. Many banks are not willing to lend on them, so they have to rely on the Department of Agriculture as a lender of last resort. Guess what happens in these multiple whammies. Offices that issue these loans are closed due to the shutdown. They need the loans because of the President's tariffs and the President's shutdown, but these offices can't give them the loans. For those farmers who have better credit, who can access other lending options, many of their loans are also delayed by the shutdown since the lenders are unable to confirm that the farmer has other outstanding loans from the USDA. They could just connect to the USDA office to ask, but it is closed. Just this week at the Farm Bureau convention, the President loudly proclaimed that he is providing assistance to the Market Facilitation Program to have farmers mitigate the financial losses caused by the Trump tariffs. But as of December 28, there is no one left in the USDA accounting offices to process any new applications for these much needed payments. I recently heard from a dairy farmer in what we call the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont. She milks 80 cows, and she is proud of her operation, but she has been hit hard by the President's trade policies, which have led to retaliatory tariffs against U.S. dairy exports, and she is now behind in her electric bill. The electric company is threatening to turn off the power to her home, to her barn, to her milk parlor, to her milking machines. She received one installment from the American Facilitation Program to help mitigate the effects of the Trump tariffs, but she hasn't received the second installment because of the Trump shutdown. The second installment is needed to help pay her bills. She says that she will be in much better shape when the new Dairy Margin Coverage Program from the new farm bill is implemented. Again, I applaud Senator Pat Roberts and Senator Debbie Stabenow for ushering that through in an almost unanimous vote. Unfortunately, no work is being done to get the program up and running because of the government shutdown. She is frustrated. She is worried about her future. She is looking for help. She is an honest, hard-working person, and she is stymied. I don't blame her. Implementation of the farm bill, which I spent more than a year working on--I was on the committee conference working hard to deliver for our Nation's farmers on a wide range of key priorities, especially our struggling dairy farmers. It is now on hold during the shutdown with nearly every USDA Agency furloughed. This is life in the age of the Trump shutdown. The President says that shutting down the government, paralyzing our country, is necessary to address a growing crisis on our southern border. The only crisis we have in our country right now is the one caused by the Trump shutdown. The crisis we face is not at our southern border but at kitchen tables, on family farms, and in small businesses across the country as families hurt by the Trump shutdown try to figure out how to make ends meet. The President talks of hordes of illegal immigrants rushing across our borders, but border apprehensions have dropped 75 percent since 2000, and the majority of people apprehended at borders today are families--women and children--fleeing violence in their own country. They deserve our compassion, not vitriol. More people are in this country illegally as a result of visa overstays than from illegal border crossings. This wall does nothing to address that. To address our complex immigration issues, we need comprehensive legislation based on facts, not bumper sticker slogans. We all support strong border security--every Democrat, every Republican does. By working on a bipartisan basis in the last fiscal year, Democrats and Republicans supported $21.1 billion for border security and immigration enforcement. This followed a similar investment we made in fiscal year 2017. As vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I know that we invested in our ports of entry, including the purchase of nonintrusive inspection equipment to detect illegal and illicit contraband. We invested in aircraft to monitor our sprawling border from above and quickly respond to emergencies. We invested in video surveillance, radar systems to detect movement in remote locations. These are solutions that work. These are smart uses of taxpayer dollars. A 30- foot wall that Mexico will not pay for is not a good solution. This shutdown is not about border security. If this were about border security, we would be done with it today. The Trump shutdown is the President trying to distract America from his failures as a leader and shore up the support of his base. It is shameful. It is clear that President Trump will not do the right thing on his own, so it is time for Senate Republicans to step up. Just yesterday morning, Democrats asked unanimous consent to take up two bills that would get this government back open--a six-bill minibus that has bipartisan support, including four bills that passed the Republican- controlled Senate 92 to 6--virtually every Republican voted for it--and a continuing resolution for the Homeland Security Department through February 8. Even though virtually every Republican has voted for this, the Republican leader objected to going forward. If they continue to object to opening the government, this shutdown is as much on them as it is on the President. We have bipartisan bills before us that could reopen the government. We could vote on them today, and they would pass with veto-proof margins. Leader McConnell, bring up these bills. Let's vote to end this national nightmare. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, let me tell you about the impact the Trump shutdown is having on one couple from my home State of Vermont. Kelly and Ricky Klein own Groennfell Meadery in Colchester, VT. In fact, this is Kelly with her very pretty little daughter, Nora. Groennfell Meadery is part of a growing industry in Vermont. We are a small State. We have the most craft breweries per capita in the Nation, and they create jobs. They support small businesses. They bring people to Vermont from all over the country. Business has been good. Kelly and Ricky have been planning an expansion. Recently, they were approved for a $1.3 million Small Business Administration loan. They were going to buy three new stainless steel fermenter tanks. They were going to move to a bigger facility, double their production, hire additional people, and bought additional supplies in anticipation of it. What happened? Their loan from the SBA is now on hold because of the Trump shutdown. It is not clear if it will ever come through. So instead of expanding, they have to use their own money. They have to use their stockpiles of mead. They have to take out a loan to make payroll. They are really hurting, but they told me one thing, even in this difficult time. Even in this difficult time, they said they were more concerned for people who have lost paychecks and lifesaving benefits and with others in their industry who have been harder hit. It is a sense of community and empathy. I wish President Trump had that same sense of empathy and caring that they do. We have to end this shutdown. I call on the majority leader--the Republican leader--to bring up the bills, which we have already passed by an overwhelming majority, that would reopen this government. Democrats and Republicans have voted for them. All we need is for the Republican leader to bring them up. Stop the shutdown. Let people go back to their businesses. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, it is interesting--we have entered the 24th day of the Trump shutdown. That means that for 24 days, hundreds of thousands of Federal workers have lived with the uncertainty of when they will get their next paycheck. Tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of private contractors know they will never be paid. For 24 days, nine Federal Departments and dozens of Agencies have been closed for business. They have withheld vital services from millions of Americans. I want to point out that the millions of Americans who are not receiving these services pay taxes to have these services. It has now become the longest government shutdown in history. Taxpayers have lost billions of dollars. The country has lost billions of dollars. The United States should be considered the most powerful country in the world, but the rest of the world sees our government being held hostage to the whims of an undisciplined President who is proud of the shutdown and shows no concern for the chaos he is causing to all Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike. Ask people at home what this means to them, no matter whether they are Republicans or Democrats, that the President seems not to care that the Food and Drug Administration has stopped inspecting seafood, fruits, and vegetables, and Americans are at the risk of eating tainted food and feeding their families tainted food. He seems not to care that the Environmental Protection Agency has stopped inspections of chemical factories, water treatment plants, and other industrial sites, leaving our country vulnerable to dangerous pollutants seeping into the air we breathe and the water we drink. Ask any parent how they might feel about their child going to school and drinking water that is tainted with chemicals solely because we closed down the Agency that is supposed to inspect those chemicals. He seems not to care that over 800,000 dedicated Federal workers have gone without a paycheck this month. As a result, across this Nation, hundreds of thousands of families are wondering how to pay their bills and put food on the table. It doesn't make any difference whether they are Republicans or Democrats or Independents; they are hard-working Americans. Just a few days ago, the President's own chief economic adviser went on national television and said furloughed workers were better off from this shutdown because they don't have to use up vacation days during this time they are being forced to take. Does he actually know what he said? Can you even believe such an arrogant, out-of-touch dismissal of hard-working Americans? The President's economic adviser is going to get paid and doesn't have to worry, but this cavalier way of treating hard-working, honest Americans is indefensible. I hear from Vermonters every day about the impact the shutdown is having on their lives. None of these Vermonters--Republican and Democratic alike--are better off. Let me give you an example. The other day, I heard from a single mother who works at the Department of Homeland Security in Vermont. She has been working without pay since December 22, when the Trump shutdown began, and it has taken a toll. Remember, this woman works for Homeland Security. She writes: I love my job and country. I do have a child to feed and bills to pay. I have been working a second job to get some money coming in, but when you are working full time and you have a family to care for, there are only so many extra hours you can work, especially if you are not getting a paycheck for some of the work you are doing. I heard from another mother. She is worried about her daughter. Her daughter works for the U.S. Institute of Peace. She has been furloughed. She just missed her first paycheck, and she is unable to pay her bills and her student loans. Her daughter dedicates her life to combating terrorism, and now she is not only unable to do her job, but she is getting into financial trouble. She is worried, and her mother is worried, as any mother would be, but she does not have the financial resources to help her daughter. Then there is the story of Anthony Morselli, who is a TSA agent at the Burlington International Airport. I see him often as I fly back and forth. The local paper recently reported he was forced to start a GoFundMe page in order to raise money to help his family pay the bills during the shutdown. His wife is also a TSA agent. They are both working without pay during the shutdown--it is a double hit--and they have two children to support. He points out that almost everyone seems to understand except the President. Mr. Morselli says: To see a zero balance in your bank account really hurts. Some of us live paycheck to paycheck. Today would be payday, and no money is coming in. Another Vermonter called in who also works for the Department of Homeland Security in Vermont. He says he has a month's worth of money available in his savings account, and then he runs out of money entirely. He has a mortgage to pay, and the bills are piling up. He is scared. He works for the Department of Homeland Security. He says he wants to keep his job, but the shutdown is beyond reason. He says he certainly does not feel valued at all by the President and this White House. He points out that while the President says he wants border protection, he has been holding the pay from the people who protect our borders, including this Vermonter. I couldn't agree with him more. Last week, the Senate and House passed a bill to ensure that all Federal workers will get backpay as soon as the shutdown is over. I was a cosponsor of that bill. I am glad to hear the President will sign it. It is the least he can do, considering the fact that he is the one who caused the mess. While this bill offers assurance to Federal employees that they will eventually get their paychecks, it does absolutely nothing to help them now. It does not help the people who call my office--the TSA agents, the DHS employees, or the State Department employees--because their bills are due now. This is not a case of, ``Oh, don't worry about it. Someday, you will get a check.'' The bills are due now, and the President has threatened that his Trump shutdown could last months or years. This is untenable. The President says it is about border security. You could have fooled me. The examples I just talked about--and I could give so many more-- all involve dedicated Federal employees who are working to keep this country safe. They are proud of the work they do to keep America safe and are proud of the service they perform for their country, but they are all caught in the crosshairs of the Trump shutdown. The Trump shutdown is not about border security; it is about fulfilling a cynical campaign rally chant the President made to spin up his base. He even gave his word that Mexico would pay for the wall, while knowing, even as he said it, that it would never happen. Congress is a coequal branch of government. We are not in the business of throwing taxpayer dollars around to build monuments to the Presidential egos of the Presidents of any party. Everyone knows the $5.7 billion wall he wants to build is a waste of taxpayer money. Everybody knows it will not address the immigration challenges in this country. The President has manufactured a sense of urgency on the southern border solely to generate support for his ridiculous wall. The President likes to spin up his base by talking about the invasion of illegal immigrants, but that is not the reality. Apprehensions at the southwest border have dropped 75 percent since 2000. More people are here in this country illegally because they have overstayed their visas, not because they have snuck across the border. Every Member of the Senate supports border security, but I would argue we need to invest in smart border security, not spend billions of taxpayers' dollars on a 30-foot wall that determined people will be able to go over, or through, or under. The President is now asserting that Democrats are for open borders. That is nonsense. In fiscal year 2018, the Democrats supported $21.1 billion in direct appropriations for border security and immigration enforcement. That followed a similar amount in fiscal year 2017. This funding supports investments at our northern and southern borders to help stop the flow of dangerous drugs like opioids, fentanyl, and methamphetamines. It targets money where it is needed. It pays for 19,500 Border Patrol agents nationwide, including, roughly, 16,500 on our southern border. It pays for 23,500 Customs Officers at our ports of entry, including 6,815 who are assigned to the southwest border's ports of entry. In fact, with Democratic support, the number of agents and officers we have is at a record high, even though illegal border crossings are at the lowest level we have seen since 1971. Last year, Democrats and Republicans came together and agreed upon $1.7 billion in targeted border security investments. This included over $1 billion to be used between the ports of entry for improved facilities, tactical communications equipment, additional air assets, integrated fixed towers, video surveillance systems, ground detection systems, tactical aerostats, and money for countering cross-border tunnel threats. This is from Republicans and Democrats working together. It included $580 million for security at our ports of entry by increasing funds for intelligence capabilities at the National Targeting Center, nonintrusive inspection equipment so as to detect illicit contraband, and opioid testing equipment. It also included another $615 million to help address the root causes of migration from Central America. These are investments that Republicans and Democrats can all agree on. This is how you protect our borders. It is more complex, but it is more effective than building a 30-foot wall. A 30-foot wall would not begin to do what this does. The shutdown is not about border security. Let's just be honest. It is about the President's own ego. It has to end. In a few minutes, we are going to be voting on another bill that is one the Republican leader keeps bringing up. It is S. 1. At a time when people are desperate and are out of work here in America, we are to bring up this bill which has nothing to do with funding the government or border security. Rather than voting on the appropriations bills that would put Americans back to work, S. 1 authorizes more than $800 million, in this year alone, for Israeli defense contractors as part of $38 billion for Israel over the next 10 years. It is money that will put Israelis to work. It will pay for them to go to work. That is fine, but couldn't we take time, first, to put Americans back to work? It also includes the boycott, divestment, sanctions legislation. This is an open violation of our First Amendment. It would give up Federal authority over matters of foreign policy to our State and local governments. I might not like a particular boycott, but the right to boycott is fundamental. Just pick up any one of our books about the U.S. civil rights movement and wonder if Martin Luther King and others would have been successful if they had not been allowed to have boycotts. It is not up to the government to pick and choose which boycotts citizens should support or oppose. We have bills that are supported by Republicans and Democrats alike that could reopen the government. That should be our focus. We could talk about creating jobs in Israel at another time. Let's create jobs in America. Let's reopen our government. I call on my friends, the Republicans, to stand up to the President and put a stop to this madness. Otherwise, the shutdown will not be just the President's fault but the fault of the Republicans in the Senate. I implore Senator McConnell to bring up H.R. 21 and H.J. Res. 1 and send them to the President. Let Democrats and Republicans join together in voting for them. We could pass them with a veto-proof majority. Congress is a coequal branch of government. We should not be intimidated by any President of any party. We should start acting like a coequal branch of government. Frankly, we have 800,000 people in this country who will be paid for their work immediately if we start acting like we are supposed to--as a coequal branch of government. There are hundreds of thousands of others who need to work--contractors and all. Let's stand up for Americans. We have the money for border security, but let's stand up for Americans. Let's put them to work. Let's let them get paid for what they are doing. These are our neighbors. These are people I see in the grocery store in Vermont when I am home on weekends. They are the people I see coming out of church on Sunday. These are the people I see when I am walking down the street to pick up my newspaper. These are good, hard-working people. Of the ones I have talked to, I have no idea whether they are Republicans or Democrats. All I know is that they want to do their work for this country. They support this country. They want to help this country be secure, but they can't understand why a temper tantrum at the White House will allow their paychecks to be stopped. I yield the floor. I don't see anybody seeking recognition. So I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask for the time to be equally divided.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, now, President Trump is right about one thing. There is a crisis in America, and I want the President to know I agree with him, but I would note it is not fictitious hordes of illegal immigrants crashing into our southern border. That is nothing more than the imaginary invasion of a President obsessed with constructing a wasteful monument to himself; the obsession of a President who, long before the Trump shutdown, began resorting to misinformation and stoking fear among the American people for political gain. There is a crisis in America, but it is not the crisis the President wants us to believe. It is a crisis at the kitchen table of Americans. Hundreds of thousands of American families are preparing to miss their first paycheck through no fault of their own. These families are trying to figure out how they are going to make ends meet, how they will pay their mortgage or heating bills or, God forbid, whether they can afford both food for their table and medicine for their children next week. That is not fiction. That is a real choice in America today. That is the crisis in America. These are the adjustments President Trump has glibly said our country's public servants are ``willing'' to make on behalf of his wasteful border wall; incidentally, a wall the President repeatedly promised--gave his word--that Mexico would pay for. I have been privileged to be here for a long time, but in my 44 years in the U.S. Senate, I have never seen something so tone deaf from a President of the United States of either party. Even during his address to the Nation on Tuesday night--which was more of an exercise in data- distorting demagoguery than informing the American people--President Trump refused to acknowledge the real pain the Trump shutdown is causing. Dozens of Vermonters have contacted my office to share how they are suffering under the Trump shutdown. These Vermonters are urging the President and my Republican colleagues in the Senate to stop playing politics with their lives and reopen the Federal Government. These are not just people who are Federal employees; these are people who have contracts with the Federal Government. These are people who have to rely on the Federal Government being open. I will give you one example. Like many Americans affected by the Trump shutdown, one of the Vermonters who contacted my office is a veteran. He spent more than two decades serving his country in the Navy. He is now a Federal employee in charge of more than a dozen people who are coming to him with questions he cannot answer. He writes: I have run out of words to tell the 15 employees who work for me when asked how they are supposed to provide food, heat, and electricity for their families here in Vermont. Keep in mind, the weather in Vermont is projected to drop well below zero this weekend with enough snow to close down all of Washington. This Navy veteran continues: We are real people, with real families, and real bills. Creditors do not ``understand'' [as the President claimed they would]. They want their money. Try to explain to the bank why you cannot pay your mortgage this month. Go to the bank and say: Well, the President of the United States is throwing a tantrum, and he is holding my paycheck hostage. Try explaining that to the bank. Try explaining that to your children. Another Vermonter wrote to me expressing concern for his 88-year-old aunt. She recently moved to a new nursing home to be closer to the family. Because the phones at the Treasury Department are going unanswered, approval for the transfer of his aunt's benefits from one facility to another has been delayed. Thankfully, we heard that the transfer had been approved just this morning, but that doesn't detract from the uncertainty and the anxiety caused for this family. The new home allowed her to stay while we in Washington were sorting out this mess caused by President Trump, but the bills are piling up, and the delays are placing a burden on what is a small local nursing home that has to pay its bills, including when it is 5 below zero. The Vermonter said in his letter: ``To be sure, we do not believe that capitulation to the Republican demand for the Wall is the answer; yet, the toll on the people of holding the government hostage to such outrageous demands must not be ignored.'' Finally, today, let me share the story of a Vermonter who wrote to me about her sister. Her sister joined the U.S. Forest Service. In the wake of the recent hurricanes and typhoons, she used a government credit card issued in her name, following orders to travel with the service to assist in the aftermath of these disasters. But now the bills for her official travel--travel she was ordered to take by the Federal Government--are due. Guess what. There is no one at the Forest Service to pay them. She is now stuck with more than $5,500 in government bills in her name for carrying out her duties for the Federal Government. Now she has to pay them or risk damaging her own financial record. In her letter to me, she writes: This, though, is one very small story in a flood of credit disasters, unpaid mortgages, Christmas debts, anxieties, and uncertainties among government employees affected by the shutdown. I'm writing you to suggest that this kind of government shutdown should not be on the negotiation table, because it holds out the possibility that the suffering of the American people can be used as political leverage. There are other ways. I agree. This is just a handful of stories from my small State of Vermont. Think of the fear and anxiety today of American families as they sit around the kitchen table trying to figure out what to do when the check does not arrive tomorrow. Think about the impact this has on the talented young student who is thinking about taking a pay cut to work for their government out of a sense of duty. Think about the morale of the American people who serve this country when the President of the United States says that their livelihoods are worth risking over his border wall--and I say ``border wall'' on purpose. If this were about border security, the men and women who protect our borders and patrol our coastlines would be receiving their paychecks, not forced to be pawns in the President's political game. Think about that. If this were really about border security, these people protecting us would be paid. The great irony of the Trump shutdown is that it has made our borders less safe, not more safe. Today, 88 percent of the Department of Homeland Security, including 54,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents are working without pay. At our airports, where the overwhelming majority of the ``suspected terrorists'' President Trump's wall is meant to stop are actually intercepted--keep that in mind. He keeps talking about all of the suspected terrorists. They are not coming across the border. They are being stopped at the airports. So what has happened at our airports? More than 51,000 TSA agents at our airports are working without pay. Morale is so low that many just stopped showing up for work, leading to longer wait times and straining security measures. (Mr. SULLIVAN assumed the Chair.) Take another area. More than 42,000 members of our Coast Guard--and the Coast Guard is an effective investment in securing our borders and stopping the flow of drugs. But 42,000 members of our Coast Guard are working without pay as I stand here today. The Coast Guard are deployed along the coasts of the distinguished Presiding Officer's State and are deployed in my State. What does President Trump say to all of this? Nothing. It has been widely reported that instead of sitting down and negotiating with Democrats, President Trump simply stood up and walked out of the room like a bully yesterday, tweeting shortly afterwards, ``bye-bye.'' Does anybody think he hadn't planned to do this before he went there? This is what you do on so-called reality TV. Well, this is not reality TV; this is reality. He should try to act Presidential. There is a real crisis in our country. It is a crisis at the kitchen table as families struggle over how they will make it through the next week. It is a crisis of morale as dedicated men and women who serve our country debate whether to stop serving our country and look instead for a career where they cannot be used as a political pawn. It is a crisis of confidence in the young men and women, doubting a career in public service, and it is a crisis of leadership when the President simply walks away so that he can send another tweet. This is a crisis created by one man, President Trump. We have bipartisan bills before us that could reopen the government. We have passed them in this body before by an overwhelming veto-proof majority. Well, I would call upon our Republican leader to bring up these bipartisan bills to reopen the government. It is time for Republicans and Democrats to join together to tell the President to put a stop to this self-inflicted wound on this great country, and he needs to hear it from both Democrats and Republicans. I implore Leader McConnell: Bring up H.R. 21 and H.J. Res. 1. Send them to the President. Send them to the President. Show the rest of the world that the United States is a great country and can act like a great country, not act like a pawn in a temper tantrum. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I just note parenthetically that virtually every Republican and every Democrat in this body has voted for the bills that would open the government. Every single Democrat in this body is willing--if the Republican leader would bring those bills back up--to vote for them, and the government would open. So I hope the Republican leader will allow the government to open. There are a lot of people who need to go back to work, and I will speak about this later today. It is going to be 10, 15 below zero in my home State at one point this week, making it more urgent that we reopen the government. We also have government contractors who would like to get back to work. Catholic Clergy Misconduct Now let me speak about a different matter. I am going to speak as an individual more than as a Senator. My wife Marcelle and I, as Catholics, have shared the concern of many, whether Catholics or not, about the continued revelation of often gross misconduct on the part of some in the clergy and in the hierarchy of our church. We have seen this throughout the United States, including in our own State of Vermont. I have rarely--rarely--spoken about religious issues in my capacity as a Senator, because I feel one's religion is private and certainly not political. However, I have spoken out about my concern and my dismay with what we have heard, and Marcelle shares those concerns with me. I mention this because this past Sunday at mass at Holy Trinity Parish in the District of Columbia, we heard a sermon preached by Father Benjamin Hawley, a member of the Jesuits. When he finished his sermon, I will freely admit I wanted to stand up and applaud him. He spoke about what the church is finally doing in facing up to this, but then he spoke about how he was reacting and how one hopes we might react, what the reaction should be from the Pope straight down to every member of the clergy and every member of the laity. Except for some sermons preached by Marcelle's brother, Father Claude Pomerleau, I do not remember being so touched or affected by a sermon. I had not met Father Hawley before, but after mass, I spoke with him, and I asked him if I could have his permission to put his sermon into the Congressional Record. He agreed. I ask unanimous consent that the homily by Father Benjamin Hawley, S.J., of January 6, 2019, be printed in the Record at this time.

Mr. LEAHY. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY

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

Mr. LEAHY. It is now day 19 of the Trump shutdown, 19 days that the Federal Government of the oldest democracy and the world's only superpower has been functioning on only half of its cylinders. I have spoken multiple times about the devastating impact this reckless and unnecessary shutdown is having on the Federal workforce at domestic departments and agencies--departments like Homeland Security, Agriculture, Transportation, Justice, Interior, and Commerce, agencies like Customs and Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the National Park Service. These departments and agencies have furloughed and stopped paying hundreds of thousands of employees who, as a result, are idle and no longer able to do the jobs that millions and millions of Americans depend on. Hundreds of thousands more are working without pay until the shutdown ends. The President, a billionaire who has never had to worry about not being able to pay the rent, says he can relate. If he actually believes that, he is alone. Programs are on hold, and contracts are being cancelled, for which the Federal Government is liable for penalties. Government shutdowns don't save money; they cost billions of dollars and have lasting consequences. And who pays? American taxpayers. This is a disgrace, and it is made even more so by the fact that it is entirely avoidable were it not for the intransigence, indifference, and obsession of one person, President Donald Trump. An obsession not with border security--we are all for that, and there is more than a billion dollars in prior appropriations for border security waiting to be spent. In fact, we have offered another $1.3 billion for fiscal year 2019. The White House never says anything about that. No, the President's myopic obsession--repeated on national television last night--is with building a 30-foot-high wall--mostly on desolate land that the government will have to seize from private owners--along our southern border. The price tag to U.S. taxpayers would be at least $18 billion and likely more, a price tag that at campaign rally after campaign rally he promised Mexico would pay. There are multiple reasons why that is a terrible idea, why it won't stop illegal migration, why it won't stop illicit drugs, and why it would be a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars, which I have discussed before and will again. Today I want to speak briefly about the impact the Trump shutdown is having not on the Federal Government's domestic programs and workforce, but its impact on U.S. national security and global leadership. It is worth asking: What made the United States the world's superpower and a global leader in the first place? Of course, one reason is our superior Armed Forces. That, I suspect, is the answer President Trump would give, but he would be only partly correct. Even more important are the ideals enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, our democratic institutions and coequal branches of government, our diverse citizenry, and our regional and global alliances and partnerships. Without these, our men and women in uniform would have precious little to defend. Today, the global supremacy and influence of the United States are being challenged like no time since the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. Why? One need look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Since his first days in office, President Trump has disparaged longstanding friends and allies. He has withdrawn from international agreements negotiated by past Republican and Democratic administrations, announced plans to withdraw from a key nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and proposed drastic cuts to the operations and programs of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which implement foreign policy. Now the State Department, like other Federal departments and agencies, is swept up in the Trump shutdown. Our choices are obvious: We can engage with the world by affirming our commitment to our ideals, by continuing to strengthen our democratic institutions, by empowering our diplomats and by expanding our global alliances and partnerships. Or we can withdraw, even to the point of shutting down the Federal Government, cede the global stage to others whose interests are often adverse to our own, and become the captives of simplistic campaign slogans, xenophobic antimigrant hysteria, and a manufactured national security emergency. The President said the country needed a ``good'' shutdown. He said that: a ``good'' shutdown. There is no such thing. He said he would be ``proud'' to take the ``mantle of blame'' for shutting down the government. Then the next day he blamed Democrats, rejecting out of hand our proposal to pass the six appropriations bills that already received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Senate. Most of those bills have nothing to do with border security, but the President is obstinately holding hostage thousands of Federal programs funded in those bills, including the paychecks for the people who implement them, which harms all Americans. With a stroke of a pen, the President could reopen the government and continue negotiations on border security; yet he refuses, and instead he flippantly said the shutdown could last ``months'' or even ``years.'' What has this reckless abuse of executive power meant for our standing in the world? What has it meant for our diplomats at the State Department and in our embassies overseas whose job is to protect our global interests, to maintain our alliances and partnerships, to assist the millions of Americans working, studying and serving overseas, and to protect our security? As of yesterday, 34 percent--more than one-third--of U.S. direct-hire State Department employees in Washington and at our embassies around the world have been furloughed. That is nearly 10,000 employees at the State Department alone who are unable to do their jobs. Others are working without pay. If the shutdown continues, more paychecks will be withheld, the number of furloughed employees will increase, and there will be a parallel shutting down of diplomacy, of programs, of contracts, and of our ability to engage with both allies and adversaries. The effects are far reaching. The Bureau of Diplomatic Security will run short of funds, forcing the State Department to deplete resources used to keep other programs operating order to protect our diplomats and facilities overseas or eventually relying on unpaid contractors to do the job. Roughly 85 percent of the employees of the State Department's Office of Inspector General have already been furloughed. Oversight of waste, fraud, and abuse has virtually ground to a halt. Vietnam, a country of nearly 100 million people bordering China, is becoming a key security partner in the Pacific region; yet thanks to the Trump shutdown, key employees at our embassy and USAID mission in Hanoi were furloughed. The American flag is flying, and the lights are on, but that is about it. This is illustrative of what is happening in every region of the world, and it does not take a lot of imagination to predict the consequences of a longer shutdown. For example, the State Department and U.S. Embassies regularly use their social media accounts to update Americans overseas of important developments that potentially threaten their safety. This was the case during the recent tsunami in Indonesia. How will the State Department respond to the next natural disaster when its social media accounts-- tools that are relied on increasingly in today's world--have fallen silent? What about the loss of U.S. influence on the world stage? With most official travel suspended, how do we ensure that our priorities are protected at the next trade, arms control, or international health summit? What do you suppose the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea--not to mention allies like Great Britain, Canada, and Japan--think about this? If I were President Putin, or President Xi Jinping, or Ayatollah Khamenei, I would be celebrating. What could be better than U.S. Embassies operating on life support and U.S. diplomats sidelined, while the U.S. Government is shut down over building a wall across the southwest desert? Does President Trump think the rest of the world will sit idly by, waiting until the U.S. Government reopens? The opposite will happen. They will take full advantage in ways that will not be short lived. While massive humanitarian crises imperil the lives of millions of people in Yemen, Syria, Burma, Venezuela, and Central Africa, the White House is embracing a diminishing role for the United States. While Russia meddles in our elections and expands its influence in the Middle East, while China buys the allegiance of countries in Africa, Asia, and our own hemisphere by investing billions in ports, energy and transportation projects, the State Department is shutting down programs and sending its people home. It is not just the State Department. USAID, the Peace Corps, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, they are all furloughing personnel and cancelling new activities. With the exception of the U.S. military, if this drags on, the United States will be a superpower in name only. An exaggeration? Don't bet on it. While our diplomats are furloughed, rather than use the funds Congress already provided for border security that remain unspent, the President has threatened to ignore the legislative process, declare a national emergency where none exists, and order the Pentagon to pay for the wall that he swore Mexico would pay for. Such a flagrant, unwarranted misuse of authority and circumvention of the democratic process would be immediately challenged by Congress and in the courts. Regardless of the outcome, what would it say about our commitment to democracy around the world? How would it be perceived outside this country, particularly by autocrats in Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Russia, Hungary, Poland, or China? It would be welcomed as a green light for declaring a state of emergency and wielding unchecked executive power--without regard for the legislature or judiciary--as a pretext to do virtually anything. Shut down the independent press. Arrest judges and opposition political leaders. Use the army to police the streets. Close the borders. All in the name of a manufactured national emergency. This is already happening. In Guatemala, which purports to be a democracy, President Morales is openly defying rulings by constitutional court magistrates who are courageously defending the institutions of justice that are under assault, and the police are ignoring orders of the attorney general. In Egypt, President al Sisi has locked up tens of thousands of political opponents and other dissidents. In Turkey, President Erdogan has done the same. President Trump has praised both leaders. In Brazil, President Bolsonaro, a former military officer, has vowed to open up the Amazon to mining, logging, and agribusiness. He wants to give the police a free hand to use lethal force with impunity. He is gearing up to crack down on civil liberties. The White House has applauded. No one disputes that the United States has experienced national emergencies, when we faced a potentially existential threat. Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks are obvious examples. The Cuban missile crisis could have been. A future deadly disease pandemic that infects thousands of Americans and rapidly spreads out of control might qualify. The President talks as if the sky is falling in Texas, but any rational person recognizes that the situation on our southwest border is not remotely a national emergency. To call Central American families fleeing poverty and violence a threat to the security of the world's wealthiest, most powerful country is an embarrassment, especially when the Border Patrol's own data shows the number of migrants apprehended at the southern border has plummeted over the past 10 years. The White House, grasping for arguments to justify the President's broken campaign promise that Mexico would pay for his wall, has played fast and loose with the facts in a desperate attempt to incite fear among the American people. The President and Vice President have shamelessly trumpeted all kinds of wildly inaccurate and grossly misleading statistics about migrants, terrorists, asylum applicants, unaccompanied children, and illegal drugs that are contradicted by their own agencies. The White House says thousands of migrant terrorists have been apprehended, falsely suggesting they were stopped at the Mexican border. Almost none of them were. We face a far greater threat from al Qaeda and ISIS using social media to inspire extremists already in the U.S. or Canada to commit terrorist acts. The last thing anyone would do who is genuinely concerned about terrorism is to shut down the government and withhold funding from the very agencies whose job it is to track down and arrest those people. The real threat to our national security is shutting down the government, furloughing 10,000 State Department employees, telling our embassies to cancel programs and our diplomats to stay home. While we come to grips with practical ways of strengthening our borders so we can more humanely and efficiently process migrants who request asylum, which we must do, we must also stay focused on the real threats to our national security. We need our embassies at full strength. We need our diplomats in the room with their European, Russian, Chinese, South Korean, Central American, Middle Eastern, and African counterparts. We need to strengthen NATO and our other alliances, so we can rely on our allies and partners to support us in responding to real national emergencies. We need to expand our cyber security, nonproliferation, international broadcasting and other public diplomacy and internet freedom programs, military education and training, maritime security, law enforcement, and other international assistance programs. Instead, because of the President's obsession with the wall, these and other State Department programs are stuck in neutral, and the people who implement them are at home. We need to act like a superpower at the United Nations, in NATO, and in the many other regional organizations where decisions are made that directly affect our interests and our security. None of this is possible during a government shutdown, a shutdown that with each passing day erodes our democracy, weakens our global leadership, and threatens our security. We all know this. The American people know this. The world knows this. The President needs to reopen the government and start acting like the defender of the Constitution and of our national security that the country needs. I again urge the Republican leader to let us vote on the bipartisan, six-bill minibus, and when it passes, he and the entire Republican Caucus should urge the President to sign it. That is our job, as an independent, coequal branch of government: to vote, to appropriate the funds so the Federal Government can work for the American people. It is not our job to sit on the sidelines while the wheels of government grind to a halt because the President is recklessly holding it hostage. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Appropriations Committee has worked extremely hard to get these bills through. We passed them almost unanimously. Every single bill to keep this government open has been passed by this Senate or the Senate Appropriations Committee and will be passed again if Republicans allow it to come to a vote. They passed almost unanimously out of committee. Senator Shelby and I worked very, very hard to have bipartisan bills, and we did. I think the appropriations bills have had more bipartisan votes than they have had in over 20 years. Now, where are we? We are on the 18th day of the Trump shutdown. For more than 2 weeks now, the President has withheld the paychecks of more than 800,000 Americans. He has held them hostage in order to extort Congress into funding his border wall--a wall for which he gave his word to the American taxpayers over and over again that Mexico would pay for, not the American taxpayers. Now he says: I want the American taxpayers to pay for it. For more than 2 weeks, the President has withheld vital government services from the American people in order to gain leverage to fulfill a divisive campaign promise and rally his base. He has totally ignored that we had passed the bills that would reopen the government. Shamefully, he cares more about this cynical bumper sticker symbol of his Presidency than he does about the millions of Americans impacted by his shutdown or the hardships to come if the Trump shutdown continues. He wants rhetoric, not reality. I want reality. I ask, what will the President say to the 800,000 Federal workers who will not get a paycheck this Friday because of this political stunt? What will he say to the men and women who have mortgages, families to feed, and bills to pay? What will he say to those forced to deplete their hard-earned savings or retirement funds or to those who have no safety net at all? I will give an example. Just yesterday, a man called my office. He has a job with the Internal Revenue Service in Vermont. He has been furloughed. He will not receive a paycheck this week. He fears he will not be able to pay his bills past mid-January if he does not get paid. He has already turned off the cable and most of his family's cell services to save money. He is concerned about feeding his family, and his wife has serious medical issues that require attention. Incidentally, I was looking at the weather report for parts of Vermont. Tomorrow, it will be 5 degrees below zero. He also has to heat his home in that weather. So he was upset, he was worried, and he was looking for help. Does the President even care about these people? The President claims he can relate to them, but he dismisses their fears, glibly saying they will ``make adjustments.'' Make adjustments for their child's medical bills? Make adjustments for their mortgage payments? Make adjustments for heating their homes when it is 5 degrees below zero? He even absurdly claims they support his silly wall. Really? Really? Come on. There are 800,000 Federal employees who are affected by the Trump Shutdown. Let somebody poll them and find out how many support what many in Vermont have called a ``dumb wall.'' I have never heard anything more tone-deaf from a President of the United States of America. Perhaps for a man who was made a millionaire by his father at the age of 8, the idea of living paycheck to paycheck is a foreign concept, but it is not to the millions of Americans--both Republicans and Democrats alike--across this country who struggle to make ends meet. They should not be bargaining chips in the President's game. This is not a game for them, and the President should not treat it as such. In fact, in addition to all of the Federal employees who are wondering when they will get their next paycheck, vital services on which many Americans rely and have paid taxes to support have come to a grinding halt. Remember that. Americans have paid taxes for these services, and they have come to a grinding halt. Farmers can't get loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture-- USDA--to get them through the next planting season because no one is in the office to process the applications. We passed a 5-year farm bill. I am proud of the bipartisan bill that Senator Roberts and Senator Stabenow led through the Senate. I was one of the conferees on that farm bill, and it was bipartisan. It is complicated, and there are new rules in it, but the USDA cannot implement the new farm bill because all of the staff have been furloughed. How about all of the midwestern farmers who don't know what the rules are going to be before they start planting? They have to make that decision now. They paid their taxes to have the Department of Agriculture to help them, but it is closed now. Our national parks--the prize of this country since the time of Teddy Roosevelt--are being vandalized and littered with trash and human waste. Since the Trump shutdown began, seven people have died in national parks. The parks were left unsupervised and unstaffed. Homebuyers are finding out that their Federal Housing Administration loan applications are on hold. Food safety inspections are slowing. How many people are going to die of food poisoning? The Small Business Administration has stopped issuing new business loans, and our Federal courts are running out of money. This is the United States of America. We are an embarrassment to the rest of the world because of this. The President should be embarrassed because he is the one who has asked for the Trump Shutdown. Everyone agrees that we need to secure our borders, but there are smart ways to do it. A wall is not one of them. It is a 5th-century solution to a 21st-century problem. In 2015, the President's own acting Chief of Staff said that the idea of a wall was ``absurd and almost childish.'' He said that a ``fence doesn't stop anybody who really wants to get across . . . you go under, you go around, you go through it.'' It may be one of the few times Mick Mulvaney and I are in agreement. To do what the President wants to do would require seizing land from ranchers and farmers. Some of these ranchers and farmers have had that land in their families for years. They are proud, hard-working, taxpaying Americans, and we say that we are going to come in with a wall through their land. It would require building walls through wildlife refuges and nature preserves. It would forever scar the landscape and ecosystem of the southwest border in ways we cannot anticipate. After all of that and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars, what would we have accomplished? Tonight, the President will assert that the security of our Nation is in crisis. He will assert that criminals and drugs are pouring across the border. But his claims are not grounded in fact. That is typical of the claims he makes. The disinformation coming from the White House has been staggering. In his zeal to feign a national emergency at the border, the President has employed nothing short of a propaganda campaign like we have seen in dictatorships of the past. The reality is that between the year 2000 and 2018, apprehensions at the border have dropped. How much? They have dropped by 75 percent. The reality is that apprehensions at the southwest border have dropped to similar levels we had in the 1970s. It has dropped. The reality is, many southern border communities have violent crime rates that are lower than the national American average. The reality, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, is that the vast majority of drugs apprehended at the border are seized at ports of entry so a wall between such ports would be entirely useless at stopping drugs. The demographic that is increasing in number are families--women and children--seeking asylum. Many are not even trying to sneak past the Border Patrol; they present themselves to Border Patrol agents when they cross. They are not here to perpetuate violence; they are fleeing violence, they are fleeing murder, they are fleeing rape, they are fleeing crime from their countries. Wasting billions of American taxpayer dollars to build a wall will not stop them from coming. We need comprehensive immigration reform--like the bipartisan bill the Senate passed in 2013--and smart foreign policy to address these issues, not fearmongering, not distortions, not lies, and certainly not thousands of miles of concrete or steel. The Constitution vests the power of the purse to Congress. It is our job to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. A border wall doesn't meet that threshold. Even if it did, the President has never provided us with a detailed plan for how he would spend the money, and he has been all over the map about how much he is demanding. The only thing he has said is: We are going to have a wall, and Mexico will pay for it. Fine, let Mexico pay for it. For someone who spent years as the host of a reality TV show, reality has never been his strong suit. We are not in the business of providing blank checks to satisfy Presidential whims. The President's own budget request to Congress was $1.6 billion for the wall, and he has never submitted an addendum. No matter how much he or others talk about it, he never has. Instead, he makes demands by tweets and through the press. I have lost track of all the times his demands for the wall have changed, but I still go back to the original request. The only request in his budget was $1.6 billion. This weekend, Democrats asked the Vice President for more details on their border wall request. The administration sent Chairman Shelby and me a letter asking for $7 billion in border security investments that the President is demanding as part of this negotiation, including $5.7 billion for the wall. This letter came out of nowhere 3 months into the fiscal year and 18 days into the shutdown, and it did not come from the President, it came from the Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I think I may have that letter. They are asking for $5.6 billion more for the Department of Homeland Security than they proposed in their original budget request, including an additional $4.1 billion for the wall. This came up this weekend, but the letter included no budget justification, no details, and no suggestions for how to pay for it. The letter has a lot of cliches but does not say where the money comes from or what it is going to do. That is not the way we operate. It should not be the way we operate. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. The President may not care about the impact the shutdown is having on millions of Americans, but the U.S. Senate--a body that should be the conscience of the Nation--should care. Stoking fear through misinformation in order to promote a political agenda is simply wrong. We could and should reopen the government this week. Last week, the House passed a bipartisan, six-bill minibus to reopen most of the government and a continuing resolution for the Department of Homeland Security. To show how bipartisan it is, the six appropriations bills the House passed originated in the Republican- controlled Senate last Congress and had bipartisan support, including by Senator Shelby as chairman and by myself as vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee. I worked hard with Senator Shelby--and I admire his efforts--to produce these bills last summer and fall, and all of them received nearly unanimous support when they were considered on the floor of the Senate or in the Appropriations Committee. Senator McConnell should bring them to the floor of the U.S. Senate today and put them up for a vote. We have already shown virtually every Republican and every Democrat in this body will vote for them. Bring them up. Let's vote for them. End this nonsense. End it. The leader owes that to the American people. We owe that to the American people. Let us be the conscience of the Nation, not an institution that is simply a foil for the latest tweet or posting. We can do it. We have passed these bills before. Bring them up. Bring them up. Bring them up, and pass them again. Republicans and Democrats have voted for them in the past. The Republican chairman and I strongly support them. Bring them up. Bring them up. Bring them up and pass them and open the government and let 800,000 Americans stop their suffering. I yield the floor. I see the Senator seeking recognition, so I withhold my request.

Mr. LEAHY

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

Mr. LEAHY. Today, 9 of our 15 Federal Departments and several dozen Agencies have shuttered their doors. By doing that, they denied vital services to millions of American citizens. Since midnight last night, just a few days before Christmas, more than 800,000 dedicated public servants and their families have been told not to expect their next paycheck for the foreseeable future. There is one reason and one reason only that our Federal Government has shut down today and countless Americans are living with uncertainty. That reason is President Donald J. Trump. The President is holding the Federal Government hostage for $5 billion of from the American taxpayer for his unnecessary, ineffective, and expensive wall on the southern border--a wall he repeatedly promised--gave his word to the American taxpayers--that Mexico would pay for. Now he wants American taxpayers to dig in their pockets and pay for it. The President's irresponsible behavior is astounding. His job, like ours, is to keep the Federal Government operating for the hundreds of millions of Americans who depend on government services every day, from our national parks, to housing services for the elderly, the disabled, our veterans, and for assistance for our Nation's farmers. In fact, 2 days ago, the President signed the farm bill into law and praised his efforts. Today, he precipitated a shutdown that shuttered the doors to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's field offices--the same offices farmers rely on to understand this new law. But the worst part of all is that this was completely avoidable. We provided the President with several options to avoid this result. It is a case where he cannot take yes for an answer. We offered to pass six full-year appropriations bills and a continuing resolution for Homeland or a continuing resolution for all the remaining bills. Either of these options would have kept the government open. They would have provided more than $1 billion for border security--the very thing the President says he needs and cares most about. Plus, signing them instead of having a needless shutdown would save taxpayers millions of dollars. After both of these offers were rejected, the Senate passed by voice vote a 7-week continuing resolution. This would have given us more time to negotiate and avert this catastrophe. Democrats and Republicans came together to pass it. The President had agreed to sign it. We finally had a path forward. Then FOX News and the rightwing media started criticizing it. The President's ego won out over his duties to the country. His ego was so bruised, he reversed course and went back on what he had agreed to. Here we are exactly where the President wanted us to be--in the middle of a Trump shutdown. For anyone doubting where responsibility lies, let's recall that the President has publicly called for a government shutdown no fewer than 25 times over the past year. Just last week, he declared he would be proud to shut down the government unless we capitulated to his demand. Proud? I have been here with every President, Republican and Democratic, since President Gerald Ford. It is one of the most reckless statements I have ever heard uttered by a President of the United States. And now he has made good on his threat. His pride has won out, and the Trump shutdown has begun. How long is it going to last? Who knows? Yesterday, the President promised it would last a long time, and then he promised us it would be a short shutdown. Even in this, his behavior is erratic. How did we get here? Is there a legitimate crisis precipitating this shutdown? Is the President playing games with the lives and livelihoods of American citizens to solve some immediate problem that threatens our Nation? No. Of course not. In caving to the most extreme sliver of his base, President Trump is throwing what many of us have described as a childish tantrum because he wants money to fulfill a cynical promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail--more of a symbolic prize than any sensible policy solution. This wasteful wall--a wall he promised Mexico would pay for, not the American taxpayers--this wasteful wall that he now wants to bill to the American taxpayers would do more to preserve the President's ego than it would to protect the American people. But I believe it is the natural result of the President's years-long demonization and vilification of immigrants, years during which the President rallied his base with falsehoods and fantasies where vulnerable women and children are portrayed as hordes of gang members and terrorists invading our country. The sad reality, as Republicans and Democrats know, is that many of these people coming to our country are fleeing desperate situations in their home countries, and they are looking for sanctuary. They are not coming here to perpetuate violence; they are running from it. Let me be clear. There is no crisis that requires us to build a 30- foot wall between us and our neighbors to the south. The President's hateful rhetoric about a crisis on our southern border does not reflect reality. At the end of 2017, arrests of people attempting to enter the United States illegally dropped to historic lows. Between 2000 and 2018, border apprehensions fell sharply from 1.6 million in fiscal year 2000 to approximately 400,000 in fiscal year 2018. That is a 75-percent drop. Not only do the facts on the ground not warrant spending billions of American taxpayer dollars on a ``big beautiful wall,'' as the President likes to call it, that is not who we are as a nation. We are a country founded by immigrants, just as my maternal grandparents came to Vermont from Italy, my paternal great-great-grandparents came to Vermont from Ireland, and my wife's parents came to Vermont from the Province of Quebec in Canada. We need to look at the immigrant founding of our country. Then, if we want to wall ourselves off from our neighbors, it will not only be an expensive waste of Americans' taxpayer dollars, but it will be immoral, ineffective, and an affront to everything this country is supposed to stand for. To build a wall, the President wants to seize land from ranchers and farmers in Texas and in other border States--seize lands that have been in their families for generations. He would need to construct walls through wildlife refuges and nature preserves, basically destroying them. Ironically, we would end up walling ourselves off from the Rio Grande in the process, essentially ceding the river to Mexico. After all of that and after billions of wasted taxpayer dollars, what would it accomplish? Would it stop people from fleeing violence in their home countries and seeking sanctuary? No. Would it stop drug smugglers and human traffickers from engaging in illegal activity? Definitely no. As so many have said, show me a 30-foot wall, and I will show you a 31-foot ladder or a tunnel. To address these complex issues, we need real solutions, not bumper sticker slogans, not angry tweets. Everyone agrees we need to keep our borders safe and secure, but it has to be with smart border security, with border security that works, with new technologies that have proven to have worked on the border and at our ports of entry, technologies with new air and marine assets and additional personnel who are needed. A 30-foot wall is symbolic and unneeded. Even if we needed to build it, what is the rush? Over the past 2 years, Congress has provided nearly $1.7 billion to build or to replace fencing on the southern border. Yet the administration has hardly spent any of that money, and the projects it has undertaken have been handled in such a way that they have ballooned in cost. We have given the administration $1.7 billion, and it is now demanding more. How much of the $1.7 billion did it spend? It spent 6 percent. Six percent of these funds have been spent. We have recently learned that one project in the Rio Grande Valley that was supposed to cost $445 million will now cost American taxpayers nearly $787 million. That is a 77-percent cost overrun with a pricetag of $31.5 million for each and every mile. We have seen that you cannot trust the administration to be responsible with the money we have already provided, let alone trust it to spend responsibly the additional money the President is demanding. Once and for all, let's put an end to this nonsense, and we have an easy way to do it. We could finish six of the seven appropriations bills right now while we continue to debate these other issues. These bills are the product of bipartisan compromise as the Republicans and Democrats have come together. They provide billions of dollars in new resources to address critical needs for the American people. They protect U.S. national security. These six bills that we have already agreed on--Republicans and Democrats--would provide much needed funding to help combat our Nation's opioid epidemic and critical investments in infrastructure. They would help us to rebuild our Nation's crumbling roads, bridges, and highways. They would provide resources to protect the environment and help ensure that the water we drink and the air we breathe is safe and clean for this generation, for our children, and for the following generation. They would also support key allies and national security programs to enable the United States to be a global leader--a role that is being increasingly challenged by China and Russia. So I have to ask; is the President really going to hold the American people hostage over a wall that he, time and again, has promised Mexico will pay for? Is he really going to force hundreds of thousands of Federal employees, including the very Agency he depends upon to carry out his immigration enforcement policy, to work without pay over the Christmas holiday? Is he really going to tell millions of Americans, including his most ardent supporters, that he could care less whether they are cut off from critical government services purely in the service of his own vanity? The President has, apparently, decided that fighting a symbolic fight for a shiny object is more important than keeping our government running for the American people. It is the height of irresponsibility. As negotiations with Chairman Shelby and Leader McConnell continue in good faith, I am here this weekend to continue to talk with Members of both parties, but we are all coming to the same conclusion. We can agree easily, Republicans and Democrats, but we can only succeed if the President decides to do what we have done, which is to put the country first. The President of the United States owes that to the American people. He owes reality, not rhetoric. I don't see another Member seeking recognition. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial in yesterday's New York Times about Secretary Mattis be placed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, like so many Republicans and Democrats, I was stunned to hear that Secretary Mattis was going to be leaving. I understand his reasons. He has said he always felt a duty to uphold the interests and security of the United States and to uphold our agreements with other countries for the security of democracy. The President has disagreed with him on that. He feels otherwise. So Secretary Mattis feels the President should be entitled to have somebody who takes differing views. Unfortunately, General Mattis's views are those that are the result of decades of service to this country as a marine in combat, as a marine commander, as a four-star general, and as one who has the strong respect of Republicans and Democrats alike. Certainly, he has the strong respect of those who have served in the military and who know what it means to actually stand up for this country, not just in rhetoric but by putting their lives on the line on the battlefield. I will always admire General Mattis. I applaud his service to the United States of America, and I know he is a man who can leave with his head held high. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, like many Members of Congress who have long supported efforts to help build an independent judiciary and reduce public corruption and impunity in Guatemala, I have observed a pattern of alarming actions by President Morales's administration and his allies in Guatemala's Congress to thwart these efforts. In the latest development, earlier this week, the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs withdrew the diplomatic immunity of 11 investigators and other personnel of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, CICIG, and ordered them to leave the country. This followed an announcement by the Minister of Interior of the removal of another 15 high-ranking police officials from their posts. Over the years, the United States has invested many tens of millions of dollars to support the national police, the attorney general's office, and CICIG. These actions by the Morales's administration directly undermine those investments and indicate that it cannot be trusted to keep its word and is not serious about upholding the rule of law. Working jointly with the Attorney General's Office, CICIG has investigated cases of public corruption and other serious crimes. It has helped to strengthen the investigative capabilities of the attorney general's office and the police and promoted key criminal justice reforms. For this reason, CICIG, its commissioner, and the former attorney general have been the target of acts of intimidation and a smear campaign orchestrated by the Morales's administration and its allies in the military and the media. These actions by the government threaten CICIG' s independence and its ability to function effectively. According to information I have received, the professionals whose diplomatic immunity and visas were revoked include investigators and lawyers involved in some of the most sensitive cases related to alleged corruption and illicit campaign financing by top government officials. Other actions by Guatemalan authorities are equally disturbing. Since assuming office in January 2018, Minister of Interior Enrique Degenhart has, on multiple occasions, removed or relocated senior national police officers and detectives. Most of these officers had many years of experience in criminal investigations, counternarcotics, and other specialized areas. Most were trained by the United States. Even worse, the Minister has reportedly appointed police officials with alleged links to the military and promoted officers without transparent, merit- based processes, undermining efforts to build a professional, transparent, and accountable police force. This threatens our ability to continue working with the police, which has in the past been infiltrated by organized crime, to combat narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and other transnational criminal activity. In 2009, working with key Guatemalan law enforcement agencies, CICIG helped establish a wiretapping unit within the Attorney General's Office. Prior to that, wiretaps were illegal. The unit, which has been supported by the United States, has been instrumental in helping the Attorney General investigate and dismantle complex criminal networks. Reportedly, among the officers recently removed by Minister Degenhart was the director of the wiretapping unit. If we have learned anything over many years of trying to assist the countries of Central America build the institutions of government necessary to effectively combat corruption and impunity, it is that without partners who care at least as much about these issues as we do it is a fruitless exercise and a waste of U.S. taxpayers' money. What is happening today in Guatemala is a repeat of what we have observed many times before. New government officials take office, they profess their commitment to democratic ideals, the rule of law, and judicial independence, and then, when their own misdeeds become the focus of criminal investigations, they show their true colors. They ignore rulings by the country's highest courts. They seek to replace magistrates who cannot be intimidated, with cronies who will shield them from the law. They expel international prosecutors on grounds of ``sovereignty.'' They threaten those whose job it is to apply the law. They try to intimidate their political opponents. It is the same sad story. I recently met Constitutional Court Magistrate Gloria Patria Porras Escobar, an experienced and internationally respected jurist and former prosecutor known for her independence and courage. She, like others who have honored their professions, is an example of what Guatemala needs; yet she is being vilified by those who seek to subvert the institutions of justice. The people of Guatemala deserve better. They have demanded an end to corruption, an end to impunity, and an end to public officials who care more about enriching and protecting themselves than they do about addressing the needs of their people. The Guatemalan people overwhelming support the attorney general's office and CICIG, which have, for the first time in the country's history, shown that public officials who abuse their authority are not above the law. President Morales's administration has less than a year left in office. Let us hope that he quickly reverses course because the path he is on will jeopardize further U.S. support for his government's participation in the Alliance for Prosperity. Otherwise, we will have no choice but to wait for a government in Guatemala that has the integrity to be a credible partner of the United States. (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as a President pro tempore emeritus, I would like to recognize the retirement of the Senate's current President pro tempore, Senator Orrin Hatch. Senator Hatch and I have both had the privilege of representing our constituents for more than four decades. He has fought for the interests of Utah and his constituents throughout his career. Senator Hatch has shown a commitment to his beliefs. As both a chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee during my tenures in both posts, we have had more than one occasion to partner, to spar, and to share a laugh. Once we even exchanged ties. I gave him a Jerry Garcia one, and he gave me a Rush Limbaugh tie. He will be remembered here in the Senate as a respected colleague. I wish Senator Hatch, his wife, Elaine, their six children, and all his family the best.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Senator Nelson is the only Member of this body to see the Earth from space. Perhaps that is why he has been a champion of our environment, our climate, clean air and water, both here in the United States, and for the entire planet. Senator Nelson has said that seeing our little planet suspended in the infinity of space imparted him ``with a profound sense of obligation to become a better steward for our planet Earth.'' He has never shirked that obligation. Whether urgently warning about the dangers of a quickly warming planet or about the importance of conserving wildlife and our natural spaces, Senator Nelson has long understood that the health of our children and grandchildren depends on our responsible stewardship of our planet today. What is more, Senator Nelson understands that confronting climate change is not only good for the planet but crucial for his constituents. Florida has already begun to feel the effects of extreme weather made worse by warmer temperatures, and Senator Nelson's work on the issue reflects his deep commitment to Floridians. In addition to his global outlook, Senator Nelson has shown his willingness and ability to accomplish small changes that can have big benefits for his constituents. In the aftermath of horrific shootings in Florida, he didn't just offer condolences to the victims; he got to work to call attention to gun violence, and he issued calls to action. He partnered with me to introduce legislation that would give law enforcement agencies the tools they need to modernize efforts to combat gun violence. The small technical fix in this legislation--allowing the ATF to digitize its records--would make a world of difference to police trying to solve crimes across the country. I wish his calls to action, like so many of ours, were heard by Congress. Senator Nelson has devoted his career to public service, and his role in elected office started back in the Florida House of Representatives in 1972. Since then, he has faithfully represented the State of Florida, and we have been fortunate to have him here in the Senate. I am sad to see him go, and the Nation will miss his strong voice on environmental issues. I wish Senator Nelson and his wife, Grace, the best.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Senator McCaskill has left an indelible mark on the Senate. A former prosecutor in Missouri, she brought the fight to protect the most vulnerable in her State and across the country to her work here in the U.S. Senate. Her work to preserve the Affordable Care Act and protect victims of sexual harassment and violence speak to the depth of her convictions. She has also shown great talent safeguarding our Nation and holding our government accountable as a former chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Senator McCaskill has fought hard to protect college students from sexual harassment and assault on campus. Senator McCaskill has even spoken of the sexual harassment that she herself faced as a young woman in the Missouri State Legislature. Long before the Nation began talking openly about the extent of sexual harassment and assault across all sectors of our society brought into the open by the #MeToo movement, Senator McCaskill prepared a report on the extent of sexual harassment and assault on college campuses. But Senator McCaskill has never been a woman content with report-writing; she introduced a bill to help address the issue. And when the Senate didn't move on that bill, she worked directly with colleges, holding public roundtables to call attention to the issue. That is a just a glimpse of the determination that Senator McCaskill brings to all of her work on behalf of her constituents. She is a straight shooter. In the face of misinformation campaigns about the Affordable Care Act, Senator McCaskill has always stepped up to promote the truth. I have always admired her commitment to preserving that law that helps so many of her rural constituents. As a former chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator McCaskill has dedicated much of her Senate service to keeping our country safe. I greatly appreciated her support for my National Guard Empowerment Act, which finally gave our National Guard the tools it needs to protect our Nation and take care of its members. I will miss Senator McCaskill's tenacity, and I am sure that Missouri and the Nation will too. Missouri is losing a champion in the Senate. Marcelle and I wish her, her husband, Joe, and her family the very best in this new chapter.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Senator Dean Heller may have been a freshman Senator when he came to this body in 2011, but he was not short on experience. First elected as a Nevada assemblyman in 1990, Senator Heller has served in government ever since. During his Senate tenure, Senator Heller has shown a great interest in protecting American's data privacy, and he was an important partner in our efforts to pass the USA FREEDOM Act. He was a staunch advocate of that bill, even when many in the Senate were pushing for expanded surveillance powers over Americans. Both of us recognized that though the bill may not have included every provision we wanted, the best way to offer privacy protections was through compromise. While his tenure here was brief, I have appreciated getting to know Senator Heller and working with him on issues of great importance. I wish Senator Heller, his wonderful wife, Lynn, and their four children the very best in this next chapter of their lives.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I know that Senator Jeff Flake believes, as I do, that the Senate at its best can be the conscience of our Nation. Lately, I believe the Senate has been less than that. In the closing months of his tenure in the Senate, however, Senator Flake has spoken about his hopes for this body and for our Nation. What is more, throughout his tenure, he has on many occasions reached across the aisle to bridge the partisan divide for the good of the Nation. When I first approached Senator Flake about joining me in visiting Cuba, he was willing to come with an open mind. He recognized the failure of the continuing U.S. embargo, and his partnership helped us create a new path forward that culminated in the release of Alan Gross, an American long imprisoned in Cuba, and restored diplomatic relations between our two countries. The few minutes on the tarmac in Cuba while we waited to bring Mr. Gross back home after 5 years in captivity are some of the most meaningful minutes of my life. Senator Flake's partnership helped lead to that moment. While the release of Alan Gross was the most dramatic event in U.S.- Cuban relations in a generation, Senator Flake has also partnered with me on initiatives to encourage Cuban entrepreneurs, open Cuban markets to American farmers and agriculture, and boost the Cuban Government's respect for human rights. His assistance from across the aisle has been helpful in shining light on the more than 50 years of failed policy toward this small island neighbor. I have also watched with admiration Jeff's commitment of the last month in protecting one of the most pivotal national security investigations in our Nation's history--the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in our elections. The security and sanctity of our elections is a cornerstone of our democracy. As he rounds out this chapter of his career, Senator Flake's stance and insistence that the Senate act to protect the work of the special counsel has been laudable. I will be sad to see Senator Flake leave, and the Senate will be losing an independent voice willing to pursue bipartisan progress. That is a voice that is needed now more than ever. I will miss working with my friend here in the Senate, and Marcelle and I wish Jeff and Cheryl all the best as they begin a new chapter.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Bob Corker is a businessman. He is a husband, a father, and a grandfather. He is a U.S. Senator. But at his heart, he is a Tennessean. Senator Corker's success in business has translated into a successful Senate career. In these uncertain times, where diplomacy sometimes seems reduced to a tweet or a hashtag, Senator Corker has shown a willingness to refuse to compromise American values for political expediency. Most recently, I was proud to join him and other Senators in sending a letter that triggered an investigation under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act to determine if Saudi officials are responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Senator Corker also recognizes that reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles is an important step to a more peaceful world, and he was just one of 13 Republicans to vote for the New START treaty. I thank Senator Corker for his service here in the Senate and wish him and his wife, Elizabeth, well.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. Preident, you wouldn't guess it, but North Dakota and Vermont are more alike than they are different. Both depend on agriculture and small businesses to support rural communities. Likewise, Senator Heitkamp and I are not all that different: We are both natives of our States, and we both are committed to working across the aisle to get things done. Before running for the Senate, Senator Heitkamp served as North Dakota's attorney general, where she worked to keep communities safe, much as I did as State's attorney in Vermont before I first ran for the Senate. One of her biggest achievements as State attorney general was forcing the tobacco industry to tell the public the truth about the health risks of smoking, and securing a settlement of $336 million in damages for North Dakota taxpayers. Senator Heitkamp was a strong cosponsor of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. We worked together closely to include provisions to protect Native American victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault. These protections were sorely needed, and it was an honor to fight with her for their inclusion. She also introduced and helped usher into law the Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children Act, which works to ensure that Native children and families have access to critical economic and educational resources. North Dakota, like Vermont, struggles with affordable housing and a rural housing shortage. As a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Senator Heitkamp worked to help families achieve stable housing. She sought housing finance reform and relief for community banks and credit unions, giving more rural families access to the economic tools they need to thrive. Senator Heitkamp and I have served together on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, working most recently to pass a comprehensive and bipartisan farm bill to support the hard work of our farmers, who are the backbone of our rural communities, and to address nutrition and food insecurity challenges across the country and abroad. Senator Heitkamp has been committed to ensuring we invest in our rural infrastructure and business development, and North Dakota is stronger for that. Senator Heidi Heitkamp has been a tireless champion for the people of North Dakota for longer than just her term in the Senate, and although I will miss her, I know she will continue to serve her State in other ways for years to come. Marcelle and I wish her and Darwin the very best.