Carl Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, when the War Powers Resolution was passed over a Presidential veto in 1973, its supporters expected that the War Powers Resolution would ensure that a national dialogue takes place before the employment of the U.S. Armed Forces in hostilities. The President--then President Nixon--was concerned that the War Powers Resolution's termination of certain authorities after 60 days unless extended by Congress would create unpredictably in U.S. foreign policy. The War Powers Resolution, as a practical matter, has not been effective. Every subsequent President since President Nixon has viewed the War Powers Resolution as an unconstitutional impingement on the President's powers as Commander in Chief. So the 60-day trigger in the act has never been used to terminate hostilities, and the national dialogue envisioned by the authors of the resolution has failed to come about. I have a proposal to amend the War Powers Act in those instances where nonstate actors are the target. We are the target of them. They must become and should become the target for us to try to deter and respond to them when they attack us and try to terrorize us. I have introduced a bill today with a suggested amendment to the War Powers Act. When the War Powers Resolution was passed over a Presidential veto in 1973, its supporters expected that the War Powers Resolution would ensure that a national dialogue takes place before the employment of the U.S. Armed Forces in hostilities. The President, on the other hand, argued that the enactment of the legislation ``would seriously undermine this Nation's ability to act decisively and convincingly in times of international crisis.'' In his veto message, President Nixon argued that: ``As a result, the confidence of our allies in our ability to assist them could be diminished and the respect of our adversaries for our deterrent posture could decline. A permanent and substantial element of unpredictability would be injected into the world's assessment of American behavior, further increasing the likelihood of miscalculation and war.'' The President was particularly concerned that the War Powers Resolution's termination of certain authorities after 60 days unless extended by Congress would create unpredictability in U.S. foreign policy. The War Powers Resolution requires the President to consult ``in every possible instance'' prior to introducing U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities and to report to Congress within 48 hours when, absent a declaration of war, U.S. Armed Forces are introduced into ``hostilities or . . . situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.'' After this report is submitted, the resolution requires that U.S. troops be withdrawn at the end of 60 days, unless Congress authorizes continued involvement by passing a declaration of war or some other specific authorization for continued U.S. involvement in such hostilities. Every subsequent President has viewed the War Powers Resolution as an unconstitutional impingement on the President's powers as Commander in Chief. As a result, the 60-day trigger in the Act has never been used to terminate hostilities, and the national dialogue envisioned by the authors of the Resolution has failed to come about. At this very moment, our troops have been engaged in hostilities in Iraq and Syria for more than 60 days, without the enactment of an authorizing resolution by Congress. Some believe that the continuing hostilities are a violation of the War Powers Resolution. Others argue that the War Powers Resolution has not been triggered, because our military actions can be justified under earlier authorizations. Either way, it is clear that the 60-day limitation in the resolution has had no more force and effect in the case of the battle against ISIS than it did in earlier actions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. I believe that the War Powers Resolution needs to be modernized to make it more relevant to the situations our military is likely to face in the 21st century--in particular, the ongoing struggle against new and evolving terrorist groups. Today, I filed a bill that would amend the War Powers Resolution to authorize the President to act against non-state actors like ISIS, where he judges it necessary to address a continuing and imminent threat to the United States, subject to a resolution of disapproval by Congress under the War Powers Resolution. This approach would allow the President to take decisive action to address imminent terrorist threats, while reserving a clear role for Congress through a resolution of disapproval. I believe that this approach would provide for a national dialogue on the use of military force with respect to non- state actors like ISIS, while avoiding the dead end provided unworkable requirement of the current War Powers Resolution, under which congressional inaction could require U.S. troops to suddenly disengage from the enemy while in harm's way. My amendment would provide that the authority to use U.S. Armed Forces against non-state actors would terminate after 60 days unless either: 1, the President's actions are based on a law providing for the use of military force against a non-state actor; or 2, the President notifies Congress that continued use of military force is necessary because the non-state actor poses a ``continuing and imminent threat'' to the United States or U.S. persons, and Congress does not enact a joint resolution of disapproval under expedited procedures. Expedited procedures under the War Powers Resolution would ensure that Congress considers the issue. Under these procedures, if a resolution of disapproval is filed in a timely manner by any Senator, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would have 15 calendar days to report the resolution or be discharged. The Senate would then have 3 days to consider the Resolution, with time equally divided between proponents and opponents of the measure. As with any joint resolution, the measure could be vetoed, and such a veto would be subject to an override vote in Congress. I believe this approach would provide greater clarity for the Executive and Legislative branches and I hope a future Senate will consider it.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing the Partnership Auditing Fairness Act, a bill designed to improve and streamline the audit procedures for large partnerships. This bill would ensure that large for-profit partnerships, like other large profitable businesses, are subject to routine audits by the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, and eliminate audit red tape that currently impedes IRS oversight. This legislation mirrors a provision in the Tax Reform Act of 2014, introduced earlier this year by Congressman David Camp. This legislation would fix a problem that has gained only more urgency with time and the explosion in growth of large partnerships, including hedge funds, private equity funds, and publicly traded partnerships. In a September 2014 report, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, determined that the number of large partnerships, defined by GAO as those with at least 100 partners and $100 million in assets, has tripled since 2002, to over 10,000, while the number of so-called C corporations being created, which include our largest public companies, fell by 22 percent. According to the GAO report, some of those partnerships have revenues totaling billions of dollars per year and now collectively hold more than $7.5 trillion in assets, but the IRS is auditing only a tiny fraction of them. According to GAO, in 2012, the IRS audited less than 1 percent of large partnerships compared to 27 percent of C corporations. Put another way, a C corporation is 33 times more likely to face audit than partnership. A recent hearing by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, demonstrated the critical need to audit large partnerships for tax compliance and abusive tax schemes. Our July 2014 hearing presented a detailed case study of how two financial institutions developed a structured financial product known as a basket option and sold the product to 13 hedge funds that used the options to avoid billions of dollars in Federal taxes. The trading by those hedge funds was mostly made up of short term transactions, many of which lasted only seconds. However, the hedge funds recast their short-term trading profits as long-term option profits, and claimed the profits were subject to the long-term capital gains tax rate rather than the ordinary income tax rate that would otherwise apply to hedge fund investors engaged in daily trading. One hedge fund used its basket options to avoid an estimated $6 billion in taxes. Those types of abusive tax practices illustrate why large partnerships like hedge funds need to be audited by the IRS just as much as large corporations. During its review, GAO found that large partnerships are often so complex that the IRS can't audit them effectively. GAO reported that some partnerships have 100,000 or more partners arranged in multiple tiers, and some of those partners may not be people or corporate entities but pass-through entities--essentially, partnerships within partnerships. Some are publicly traded partnerships, which means their partners can change on a daily basis. One IRS official told GAO that there were more than 1,000 partnerships with more than a million partners in 2012. GAO also found obstacles in the law. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, TEFRA, now 3-decades-old, was enacted at a time when many partnerships had 30-50 partners; it does not adequately deal with current realities. That is why I am introducing legislation to repeal some of its provisions and streamline the audit and adjustment procedures used for large partnerships so that the IRS can exercise effective oversight to detect and deter tax noncompliance or tax abuse schemes. Three technical aspects of TEFRA create particularly difficult obstacles to IRS audits and tax collection efforts for large partnerships. The first requires the IRS to identify a ``tax matters partner'' to represent the partnership on tax issues, but many partnerships do not designate such a partner, and simply identifying one in a complex partnership can take months. Second, notifying individual partners prior to commencing an audit costs time and money, yet produces few if any benefits. Third, TEFRA requires that any tax adjustments called for by an audit be passed through to the partnership's taxable partners, but the IRS's process for identifying, assessing, and collecting from those partners is a manual rather than by electronic process, which makes it laborious, time consuming, costly, and subject to error. For example, if a partnership with 100,000 partners under-reported the tax liability of its partners by $1 million, the IRS would have to manually link each of the partners' returns to the partnership return. Then, assuming each partner had an equal interest in the partnership, the IRS would have to find, assess, and collect $10 from each partner. That collection effort is not practical nor is it cost effective. In addition, under TEFRA, any tax adjustments have to be applied to past tax years, using complicated and expensive filing requirements, instead of to the year in which the audit was performed and the adjustment made. Fixing the technical flaws in TEFRA is critical to ensuring that the audit playing field is level for all taxpayers. An essential element of any system of taxation is that it be fair--that is, that all those who pay taxes have a reasonable expectation that they are being treated in the same fashion as other taxpayers. Without fairness, not only does a tax system violate ethical principles, but the system itself fails to collect taxes owed, arouses resentment and complaints, and can even spark widespread noncompliance. The current situation in which large corporations are audited 33 times more than large partnerships is neither fair nor sustainable. The Partnership Auditing Fairness Act would eliminate the existing audit disparity by streamlining the audit process for large partnerships. It would simplify audit notification and administrative procedures. It would no longer require the IRS to waste audit time trying to find a tax matters partner. It would allow the IRS to audit, assess, and collect tax from the partnership, rather than passing the adjustments through to and collecting from each taxable partner. It would apply any tax adjustments to the tax year in which the adjustments were finalized, rather than past tax years under audit. The enormous discrepancy in audit rates between partnerships and other business forms raises a fundamental question of fairness. If one type of entity can be nearly free of IRS audits, businesses that do pay their taxes and are subject to the audit process rightly feel disadvantaged. That lack of fairness is something we simply can't tolerate. For these reasons, in the next Congress, I urge my colleagues to consider supporting this legislation to fix the large partnership audit problem. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a bill summary be printed in the Record. There being being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Summary of the Partnership Auditing Fairness Act The Partnership Auditing Fairness Act would ensure that large for-profit partnerships, like other large profitable businesses, are subject to routine audits by the IRS and eliminate audit red tape that currently impedes IRS oversight. Specifically, it would reform audit procedures imposed by the 1982 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, TEFRA, which are now outdated and contribute to the low audit rate for large partnerships. The bill mirrors the same provision addressing this issue in the larger tax reform bill developed by Congressman David Camp. Key provisions of the bill would: Apply streamlined audit rules to all partnerships, but allow partnerships with 100 or fewer partners, other than partners that are pass-through entities, to opt out of the bill's audit procedures and elect instead to be audited under the rules for individual taxpayers. Simplify partnership audit participation by having partnerships act through a designated partnership representative. Simplify audit notification and administrative procedures by repealing the TEFRA and Electing Large Partnership requirement that the IRS notify all partners prior to initiating an audit. Streamline audit adjustments by authorizing the IRS to make adjustments at the partnership level and apply the adjustments to the tax year in which the adjustments are finalized, rather than to the tax years under audit. Streamline tax return filing by enabling partnerships to include audit adjustments on their current tax returns for the year in which the adjustments are finalized, instead of having to amend prior-year returns. Eliminate the TEFRA problem of having to find and separately collect any tax due from each affected partner by instead collecting the tax at the partnership level. Enable partnerships to use administrative procedures to request reconsideration of a proposed under payment of tax by submitting tax returns for individual partners and paying any tax due, while retaining the ability to contest all audit results in court.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, when the War Powers Resolution was passed over a Presidential veto in 1973, its supporters expected that the War Powers Resolution would ensure that a national dialogue takes place before the employment of the U.S. Armed Forces in hostilities. The President--then President Nixon--was concerned that the War Powers Resolution's termination of certain authorities after 60 days unless extended by Congress would create unpredictably in U.S. foreign policy. The War Powers Resolution, as a practical matter, has not been effective. Every subsequent President since President Nixon has viewed the War Powers Resolution as an unconstitutional impingement on the President's powers as Commander in Chief. So the 60-day trigger in the act has never been used to terminate hostilities, and the national dialogue envisioned by the authors of the resolution has failed to come about. I have a proposal to amend the War Powers Act in those instances where nonstate actors are the target. We are the target of them. They must become and should become the target for us to try to deter and respond to them when they attack us and try to terrorize us. I have introduced a bill today with a suggested amendment to the War Powers Act. When the War Powers Resolution was passed over a Presidential veto in 1973, its supporters expected that the War Powers Resolution would ensure that a national dialogue takes place before the employment of the U.S. Armed Forces in hostilities. The President, on the other hand, argued that the enactment of the legislation ``would seriously undermine this Nation's ability to act decisively and convincingly in times of international crisis.'' In his veto message, President Nixon argued that: ``As a result, the confidence of our allies in our ability to assist them could be diminished and the respect of our adversaries for our deterrent posture could decline. A permanent and substantial element of unpredictability would be injected into the world's assessment of American behavior, further increasing the likelihood of miscalculation and war.'' The President was particularly concerned that the War Powers Resolution's termination of certain authorities after 60 days unless extended by Congress would create unpredictability in U.S. foreign policy. The War Powers Resolution requires the President to consult ``in every possible instance'' prior to introducing U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities and to report to Congress within 48 hours when, absent a declaration of war, U.S. Armed Forces are introduced into ``hostilities or . . . situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.'' After this report is submitted, the resolution requires that U.S. troops be withdrawn at the end of 60 days, unless Congress authorizes continued involvement by passing a declaration of war or some other specific authorization for continued U.S. involvement in such hostilities. Every subsequent President has viewed the War Powers Resolution as an unconstitutional impingement on the President's powers as Commander in Chief. As a result, the 60-day trigger in the Act has never been used to terminate hostilities, and the national dialogue envisioned by the authors of the Resolution has failed to come about. At this very moment, our troops have been engaged in hostilities in Iraq and Syria for more than 60 days, without the enactment of an authorizing resolution by Congress. Some believe that the continuing hostilities are a violation of the War Powers Resolution. Others argue that the War Powers Resolution has not been triggered, because our military actions can be justified under earlier authorizations. Either way, it is clear that the 60-day limitation in the resolution has had no more force and effect in the case of the battle against ISIS than it did in earlier actions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. I believe that the War Powers Resolution needs to be modernized to make it more relevant to the situations our military is likely to face in the 21st century--in particular, the ongoing struggle against new and evolving terrorist groups. Today, I filed a bill that would amend the War Powers Resolution to authorize the President to act against non-state actors like ISIS, where he judges it necessary to address a continuing and imminent threat to the United States, subject to a resolution of disapproval by Congress under the War Powers Resolution. This approach would allow the President to take decisive action to address imminent terrorist threats, while reserving a clear role for Congress through a resolution of disapproval. I believe that this approach would provide for a national dialogue on the use of military force with respect to non- state actors like ISIS, while avoiding the dead end provided unworkable requirement of the current War Powers Resolution, under which congressional inaction could require U.S. troops to suddenly disengage from the enemy while in harm's way. My amendment would provide that the authority to use U.S. Armed Forces against non-state actors would terminate after 60 days unless either: 1, the President's actions are based on a law providing for the use of military force against a non-state actor; or 2, the President notifies Congress that continued use of military force is necessary because the non-state actor poses a ``continuing and imminent threat'' to the United States or U.S. persons, and Congress does not enact a joint resolution of disapproval under expedited procedures. Expedited procedures under the War Powers Resolution would ensure that Congress considers the issue. Under these procedures, if a resolution of disapproval is filed in a timely manner by any Senator, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would have 15 calendar days to report the resolution or be discharged. The Senate would then have 3 days to consider the Resolution, with time equally divided between proponents and opponents of the measure. As with any joint resolution, the measure could be vetoed, and such a veto would be subject to an override vote in Congress. I believe this approach would provide greater clarity for the Executive and Legislative branches and I hope a future Senate will consider it.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing the Partnership Auditing Fairness Act, a bill designed to improve and streamline the audit procedures for large partnerships. This bill would ensure that large for-profit partnerships, like other large profitable businesses, are subject to routine audits by the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, and eliminate audit red tape that currently impedes IRS oversight. This legislation mirrors a provision in the Tax Reform Act of 2014, introduced earlier this year by Congressman David Camp. This legislation would fix a problem that has gained only more urgency with time and the explosion in growth of large partnerships, including hedge funds, private equity funds, and publicly traded partnerships. In a September 2014 report, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, determined that the number of large partnerships, defined by GAO as those with at least 100 partners and $100 million in assets, has tripled since 2002, to over 10,000, while the number of so-called C corporations being created, which include our largest public companies, fell by 22 percent. According to the GAO report, some of those partnerships have revenues totaling billions of dollars per year and now collectively hold more than $7.5 trillion in assets, but the IRS is auditing only a tiny fraction of them. According to GAO, in 2012, the IRS audited less than 1 percent of large partnerships compared to 27 percent of C corporations. Put another way, a C corporation is 33 times more likely to face audit than partnership. A recent hearing by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, demonstrated the critical need to audit large partnerships for tax compliance and abusive tax schemes. Our July 2014 hearing presented a detailed case study of how two financial institutions developed a structured financial product known as a basket option and sold the product to 13 hedge funds that used the options to avoid billions of dollars in Federal taxes. The trading by those hedge funds was mostly made up of short term transactions, many of which lasted only seconds. However, the hedge funds recast their short-term trading profits as long-term option profits, and claimed the profits were subject to the long-term capital gains tax rate rather than the ordinary income tax rate that would otherwise apply to hedge fund investors engaged in daily trading. One hedge fund used its basket options to avoid an estimated $6 billion in taxes. Those types of abusive tax practices illustrate why large partnerships like hedge funds need to be audited by the IRS just as much as large corporations. During its review, GAO found that large partnerships are often so complex that the IRS can't audit them effectively. GAO reported that some partnerships have 100,000 or more partners arranged in multiple tiers, and some of those partners may not be people or corporate entities but pass-through entities--essentially, partnerships within partnerships. Some are publicly traded partnerships, which means their partners can change on a daily basis. One IRS official told GAO that there were more than 1,000 partnerships with more than a million partners in 2012. GAO also found obstacles in the law. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, TEFRA, now 3-decades-old, was enacted at a time when many partnerships had 30-50 partners; it does not adequately deal with current realities. That is why I am introducing legislation to repeal some of its provisions and streamline the audit and adjustment procedures used for large partnerships so that the IRS can exercise effective oversight to detect and deter tax noncompliance or tax abuse schemes. Three technical aspects of TEFRA create particularly difficult obstacles to IRS audits and tax collection efforts for large partnerships. The first requires the IRS to identify a ``tax matters partner'' to represent the partnership on tax issues, but many partnerships do not designate such a partner, and simply identifying one in a complex partnership can take months. Second, notifying individual partners prior to commencing an audit costs time and money, yet produces few if any benefits. Third, TEFRA requires that any tax adjustments called for by an audit be passed through to the partnership's taxable partners, but the IRS's process for identifying, assessing, and collecting from those partners is a manual rather than by electronic process, which makes it laborious, time consuming, costly, and subject to error. For example, if a partnership with 100,000 partners under-reported the tax liability of its partners by $1 million, the IRS would have to manually link each of the partners' returns to the partnership return. Then, assuming each partner had an equal interest in the partnership, the IRS would have to find, assess, and collect $10 from each partner. That collection effort is not practical nor is it cost effective. In addition, under TEFRA, any tax adjustments have to be applied to past tax years, using complicated and expensive filing requirements, instead of to the year in which the audit was performed and the adjustment made. Fixing the technical flaws in TEFRA is critical to ensuring that the audit playing field is level for all taxpayers. An essential element of any system of taxation is that it be fair--that is, that all those who pay taxes have a reasonable expectation that they are being treated in the same fashion as other taxpayers. Without fairness, not only does a tax system violate ethical principles, but the system itself fails to collect taxes owed, arouses resentment and complaints, and can even spark widespread noncompliance. The current situation in which large corporations are audited 33 times more than large partnerships is neither fair nor sustainable. The Partnership Auditing Fairness Act would eliminate the existing audit disparity by streamlining the audit process for large partnerships. It would simplify audit notification and administrative procedures. It would no longer require the IRS to waste audit time trying to find a tax matters partner. It would allow the IRS to audit, assess, and collect tax from the partnership, rather than passing the adjustments through to and collecting from each taxable partner. It would apply any tax adjustments to the tax year in which the adjustments were finalized, rather than past tax years under audit. The enormous discrepancy in audit rates between partnerships and other business forms raises a fundamental question of fairness. If one type of entity can be nearly free of IRS audits, businesses that do pay their taxes and are subject to the audit process rightly feel disadvantaged. That lack of fairness is something we simply can't tolerate. For these reasons, in the next Congress, I urge my colleagues to consider supporting this legislation to fix the large partnership audit problem. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a bill summary be printed in the Record. There being being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Summary of the Partnership Auditing Fairness Act The Partnership Auditing Fairness Act would ensure that large for-profit partnerships, like other large profitable businesses, are subject to routine audits by the IRS and eliminate audit red tape that currently impedes IRS oversight. Specifically, it would reform audit procedures imposed by the 1982 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, TEFRA, which are now outdated and contribute to the low audit rate for large partnerships. The bill mirrors the same provision addressing this issue in the larger tax reform bill developed by Congressman David Camp. Key provisions of the bill would: Apply streamlined audit rules to all partnerships, but allow partnerships with 100 or fewer partners, other than partners that are pass-through entities, to opt out of the bill's audit procedures and elect instead to be audited under the rules for individual taxpayers. Simplify partnership audit participation by having partnerships act through a designated partnership representative. Simplify audit notification and administrative procedures by repealing the TEFRA and Electing Large Partnership requirement that the IRS notify all partners prior to initiating an audit. Streamline audit adjustments by authorizing the IRS to make adjustments at the partnership level and apply the adjustments to the tax year in which the adjustments are finalized, rather than to the tax years under audit. Streamline tax return filing by enabling partnerships to include audit adjustments on their current tax returns for the year in which the adjustments are finalized, instead of having to amend prior-year returns. Eliminate the TEFRA problem of having to find and separately collect any tax due from each affected partner by instead collecting the tax at the partnership level. Enable partnerships to use administrative procedures to request reconsideration of a proposed under payment of tax by submitting tax returns for individual partners and paying any tax due, while retaining the ability to contest all audit results in court.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, last month the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded a 2-year bipartisan investigation into Wall Street bank involvement with physical commodities. Our investigation, which focused on Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase, culminated in a 400-page report and 2 days of hearings. The subcommittee's investigation found these banks involved in a breathtaking array of physical commodities activities. They owned coal mines and oil pipelines, oil tankers and refineries, electric powerplants, massive amounts of copper and aluminum and even uranium. We examined multiple aspects of financial holding company involvement with physical commodities, including the nature and extent of those activities with the attendant risk, such as the threat to a bank's safety and soundness from a catastrophe along the lines of the BP oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico. We also examined the impact of those activities on consumers, manufacturers, and markets. One key area of concern relates to possible price manipulation and unfair trading. What we found is that involvement in physical commodities gave these banks access to important nonpublic information that they could use to profit in their trading of financial products tied to those same commodities. In the stock market, the use of such nonpublic information is prohibited, but no such clear prohibition exists in commodities markets. That gives the biggest Wall Street banks an enormous incentive to pursue physical commodities activities--often to the detriment of consumers and manufacturers--in order to profit in financial trades by the use of the nonpublic information they gain from their physical commodities activity and to provide the opportunity in some cases to engage in market manipulation. I have introduced, with Senator McCain, a bill intended to prevent such abuses. The Ending Insider Trading in Commodities Act, S. 3013, which we just introduced, would prevent a large financial institution from trading in physical commodities and commodity-related financial instruments while at the same time in possession of material nonpublic information arising from its ownership or interests in a business or facility used to store, ship, or use the same commodity. A large financial institution should not be able to control, for instance, a huge number of warehouses and then use the nonpublic information that it gains and sometimes creates from the operation of those warehouses to trade on the same kinds of commodities stored in those warehouses. As we learned from our investigation, a financial institution that owns warehouses may manipulate warehouse operations in ways that move the prices of the very financial instruments and commodities the financial institution is trading. In the case of aluminum, we saw that Goldman Sachs owned dozens of warehouses in the Detroit area, which it used to build a near monopoly on the storage of aluminum in the United States that is used to settle trades on the London Metal Exchange, which sets the benchmark price for aluminum around the world. Using that dominant position, Goldman approved warehouse deals and practices that lengthened the lines, the queues for metal owners to get their metal out of the warehouses to nearly 2 years. By lengthening the queues, Goldman raised the premium that includes such costs as storage and transportation and which, along with the London Metal Exchange's benchmark price, makes up the total price consumers pay for aluminum. Goldman manipulated these warehouse practices in ways that made metal owners wait to get their metal and influenced prices paid to buy aluminum and hedge aluminum costs. All the while, Goldman was trading in aluminum and aluminum-related financial instruments. It is a rigged game. It needs to be stopped, and that is what this bill is intended to do. I thank Senator McCain for joining me in this important effort. We hope our colleagues will take up this bill and carry on this effort in the next Congress. (The remarks of Mr. LEVIN pertaining to the introduction of S. 3019 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to proceed as though in morning business for 5 minutes.

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

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, 15 years ago, in the days after the shooting at Columbine High School stunned our Nation, I spoke to the Economic Club of Detroit. There, as our country reflected on gun violence's horrific toll, I asked a simple question: ``Are we willing to say enough is enough?'' Now, so many years later, that question still haunts us. Today, in a country dedicated to ``life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,'' guns kill over 32,000 people a year. That is almost 88 people a day. On top of that, there are over 73,000 nonfatal gun injuries each year. That is 200 a day. Some statistics have shown that 50 percent of suicides in the United States are committed with a firearm. Others have found that children and young adults account for 38 percent of gun deaths and nonfatal injuries, and that when guns are present during incidents of domestic violence, the risk of homicide escalates over 500 percent. Each of these statistics represents tragedy: people with stories, families, loved ones left behind and dreams shattered. A recent CNN report, for example, analyzed all the gun incidents that occurred in America on a day picked at random--July 12, 2014. Their research found on that day alone, at least 83 gun incidents occurred in our country. At 3:20 a.m., a 23-year-old man was shot and killed at an apartment complex in Tallahassee, FL. At 11:01 a.m., in Ohio, officers responding to a domestic violence complaint arrived to a firefight that ended when the gunman turned his weapon on himself. At 6:20 p.m. an elderly man mistakenly shot and killed his neighbor, whom he mistook for an intruder. At 8:40 p.m., in South Carolina, after an altercation at a party, a man sprayed bullets into the crowd, killing a 47-year-old man and injuring another. And these are just a few examples: in the report's words, ``we are certain about one thing--we did not capture every gun incident.'' Congress can take commonsense steps to make things better. We should pass a bill making background checks mandatory on all gun sales, a step that study after study has shown is supported by 90 percent of the American people, as well as 95 percent of American internists and 55.4 percent of gun dealers and pawnbrokers. We should pass legislation to ban military style assault weapons, so as to stop the flood of these weapons into our neighborhoods and streets. The bottom line is that law enforcement personnel who put their lives on the line every day need and deserve our support in their effort to ban assault weapons, require background checks and take other steps to reduce gun violence. We recently observed the 2-year anniversary of the day when a deranged individual took the lives of 26 people, 20 of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. The children were first graders, 6- and 7-year-olds. Today, they would have been 8- and 9-year- olds, third graders, celebrating birthdays, learning about fractions and decimals, and reading books. Instead, we can only honor their memory and rededicate ourselves to the work of preventing these tragedies in the future. So I must ask the question again, Are we willing to say that enough is enough? After so many years and so much senseless death, injury and pain, when will we come together to stop this violence? I am still hopeful. I am hopeful that Congress will finally answer the question in the affirmative ``Enough is enough.'' I am hopeful that Congress will listen to our communities, our educators, and clergy, our law enforcement officials and businesspeople, our families and loved ones and join them in saying ``enough is enough.'' And I am hopeful that one day soon, Congress will pay victims and survivors of American gun violence the highest tribute that it can: legislation to stop the bloodshed, and to make this country that we love better and safer for generations to come.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today we face a difficult choice. The appropriations bill before us today contains a lot of good for Michigan and for our country, and it will provide most of our Federal agencies, and the people who rely on them, with the certainty needed to plan and invest. But it also contains some very troubling provisions. We shouldn't use appropriations bills like this one to weaken our financial protection laws and to open the floodgates to campaign donations from millionaires. We shouldn't fund our financial regulators far below what they need to do their jobs. We shouldn't meddle with the will of the majority of residents in our Nation's Capital. And we shouldn't let tax cheats walk free by funding the IRS at the lowest level in years. I could go on and on about the flaws in this bill, and there is one in particular that I will highlight further. But despite these significant flaws, the alternatives to this bill are also deeply problematic. Passage of a continuing resolution, which would put the Federal Government on autopilot, or worse, a government shutdown, are the two alternatives to passage of this bill. So that leaves us with the terrible decision we face today. So this bill appears poised to pass because it must and because it is better than the terrible alternatives I just discussed. If my vote were needed to pass this bill, I would, grudgingly, vote in favor. But it appears that this bill will pass regardless, and so I will not vote in favor of it today because I wish to express my deep concern about a number of provisions. That provision, which guts the swaps pushout rule, will repeal an antibailout section of the Dodd-Frank act and risk putting taxpayers back on the hook for Wall Street banks' risky bets. As chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, just last month I held a hearing on bank involvement in the commodities markets. As chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, just last month I held a hearing on bank involvement in the commodities markets. We found that Wall Street had huge, wide-ranging ownership and control of and inside information about oil, copper, aluminum, uranium, and electricity markets at the same time they were engaging in financial transactions related to those same commodities posing big risks to the banks and, as a result, to the taxpayers who could be called on to bail them out in the event that those bets go awry. Less than 14 years ago, the seeds of our financial crisis were planted in a derivatives provision planted in the 2001 appropriations bill. This provision, which like the provision in the bill before us, was added at the last minute and not subject to debate on its own, exempted derivatives from regulatory scrutiny, and left regulators, banks, and the American public on the hook when risky bets went bad. As a result, Congress voted to enact a prohibition against Federal Government bailouts of swaps entities, or the swaps pushout rule, as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This provision bans big banks from conducting risky derivatives trading in their insured banking units--the units that taxpayers would have to bail out if their bets went wrong. Now we risk repeating the same mistake of 2001. The language of the provision was written--literally written--by lobbyists for the big banks. According to a New York Times report, 70 of the 85 lines of the provision came directly from Wall Street's recommendations. Even more surprisingly, according to the Times, ``two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word.'' The Senate has long operated under rules that prevent legislative changes from being made on an appropriations bill. This provision runs completely against that longstanding precedent. The swaps pushout provision is bad policy, and it is bad procedure. And if I could vote against that provision by itself, I certainly would. But, unfortunately, because of where we are today and because of the decision to insert the unrelated, lobbyist-drafted provision into this bill at the last minute, we won't be able to considering that provision on its merits. Instead, we are considering this as part of an all-or- nothing package, with the threat of a continuing resolution or a government shutdown looming. So, I will vote against this bill despite much good that it would do for my State and for our country in hopes that the next Senate will heed the warnings of myself and many of my colleagues that the provision in this bill weakening our country's banking regulations may sow the seeds of another taxpayer funded bank bailout and another financial crisis.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, before asking for the yeas and nays, I want to thank my friend again, Senator Inhofe, for mentioning our staff. John Peter has done such good work with all of our staffs. We put the names of our staffs in the Record a day or two ago and they deserve that and a lot more. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEVIN. I know that Senator Harkin is waiting to speak. Senator Harkin is truly one of the greatest Senators I have ever served with and Senator Harkin is one of the greatest people I have ever known. He, Ruth, Barb, and I have spent quality time, which is not always true for many of us in the Senate to have that opportunity. I thank everyone. The words have meant so much to me and my family today. I am going to join my family now. I know Tom will forgive me for not listening, but I will be reading what you say. You, Ruth, Barb, and I will have some more quality time together--perhaps not as much fun as being in the Senate, but we will make the best of it. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Thank you.

Mr. LEVIN. I have no objection to the Senator stating his purpose.

Mr. LEVIN. I will not support the unanimous consent proposal of Senator Lee for several reasons. He may want to state his motion first before I give the reasons for objecting to it, but I will object and, if necessary at this point, I do object.

Mr. LEVIN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I first thank my friend from Oklahoma, my partner as well in the Armed Services Committee. I have enjoyed the presence of the Presiding Officer on our committee, and I think she knows how well that committee works together, and Senator Inhofe and I guess both sides--both parties have worked very closely together for our troops. That is what this is all about is pulling together for our troops. They inspire us, they unify us, they protect us, and the least we owe them is a Defense authorization bill. We haven't missed in 52 years. This would be the 53rd straight year that there would be a Defense authorization bill--coincidentally, the same number of years I have been married. So this may be the gift to my wife for our anniversary if we are done with this bill, if we finish it today. This bill takes provisions critical to our national security, to the well-being of our men and women in uniform, to our retirees and their families. If we fail to enact this bill, the Department of Defense's statutory authority to pay combat pay, hardship duty pay, enlistment and reenlistment bonuses, incentive pays for critical specialties, assignment incentive pay, accession and retention bonuses for critical specialties, will expire on December 31. We cannot let that happen. After that date, the statutory authority to provide combat pay to our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will lapse. We cannot let that happen. We would lose some of our most highly skilled men and women with specialties that we vitally need. We cannot let that happen. Not only would we be shortchanging our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, we would be denying our military services critical authorities they need to recruit and retain high-quality servicemembers, and to achieve their force-shaping objectives as they draw down their end strengths. And there is more. If we fail to enact this bill, school districts all over the United States that rely on supplemental impact aid to help them educate military children would no longer receive that money. If we fail to enact this bill, the Department of Defense will not be able to begin construction on important new military construction projects in the coming year. That would mean our troops don't get the barracks, the ranges, the hospitals, the laboratories, and the other support facilities they need to support operational requirements, conduct training, and to maintain their equipment. It would mean that military family housing will not receive needed upgrades, and that schools to educate the children of our servicemembers will not be built or modernized. If we fail to enact this bill, we will not enact provisions that strengthen survivor benefits for disabled children of servicemembers and retirees. We would not then enact provisions addressing the employment of military spouses, job placement of veterans. That is an issue which the Presiding Officer knows an awful lot about, because she has been so directly involved in that and so many other issues. We would then not be enacting provisions relative to military hazing, military suicides, post-traumatic stress disorder, and mental health problems in the military. If we do not enact this bill, we would then enact none of the 20 provisions in this bill addressing the scourge of sexual assault in the military. We will not eliminate the good soldier defense which is eliminated in this bill, as it should be. We would not give victims of sexual assault a voice in whether their case is prosecuted in military or civilian courts. They should have that voice. We would not give survivors of sexual assault the right to challenge court-martial rulings that violate their rights and to challenge them in the Court of Criminal Appeals. They should have that right. If we don't pass this bill, we would not be strengthening the psychotherapist-patient privilege. So this bill includes critical authorities for the Department of Defense. It provides essential support to our men and women in uniform, military retirees, and their families. If either of the motions we are going to be voting on is adopted, this bill then will not pass and not become law, because it would then in one instance be open to amendments, and that could be endless because there are so many amendments that people would like to offer. I have gone into the reasons why we are in a position where that simply is not practical or possible. We are asking our colleagues to allow this bill to come to a final passage today and become the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. Again, with thanks to all of our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, thanks to my partner Senator Inhofe who has worked so closely, he and his staff, with myself and our staff. I hope this would have an overwhelming vote and that we would not adopt any motion which would lead then to our not adopting this critically needed bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, the reasons that I object to the offering of the amendment at this time are several. First, the amendment which Senator Lee asks consent to offer is not germane to the bill, it is not in order postcloture, and it would amend a statute of jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee relative to a subject not addressed in this bill. Second, when we included a similar provision in our bill several years ago, the House objected and insisted the provision be dropped. So the inclusion of this provision would require, at the least, difficult discussions with the House when there is no time for such discussions. When I voted for a similar provision which was offered several years ago, the language was somewhat different than it is now. The bottom line is there is simply not enough time left before we adjourn to debate even a single amendment, and surely not a single amendment of this complexity, to vote on it, and to reconcile the provision, if it were adopted, with the House of Representatives and to pass the bill again in both Houses. And those are the reasons for my objection. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, after 36 years as a Member of the United States Senate, this is likely my last opportunity to address its Members as colleagues, and to address the people of my State as constituents, and to thank them for placing their trust in me. The highest honor any citizen of a democracy can receive is to be elected to represent his or her fellow Americans to be their fiduciary. To the Senate staff, including the floor staff, the Capitol Police, and those throughout the Capitol complex who work so hard to keep things here moving, thank you for your service and support for us through the long days and nights. To my staff, thank you for your strong loyalty to the people of Michigan, to our Nation, and to me. And thank you for believing in public service. I am immensely proud of what the men and women who have worked on my staff for the last 36 years have helped to accomplish. My staff back in Michigan has helped make communities across our State safer and more prosperous. Countless times they have helped individual constituents resolve an issue, making a real difference in thousands of lives. The Armed Services Committee and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--PSI--staffs have worked tirelessly through long hours and complex issues, sacrificing nights and weekends and vacations to help address the pressing issues of our Nation. My personal office staff has been instrumental in addressing a breathtaking range of issues--from preserving our American auto industry, to making our tax system fairer, to protecting our irreplaceable Great Lakes, to making medicine available to fight addiction, and much, much more. As to my mentor, my big brother Sandy, Congress is keeping the better half of ``Team Levin,'' as I retire to Michigan while Sandy remains in Congress. To Barbara, my wife of 53 years, to our three daughters Kate, Laura, and Erica; to their husbands Howard, Daniel, and Rick; and to our six grandchildren, Bess and Samantha, Mark, Noa, and Ben Levin, and Beatrice and Olivia Fernandez--thank you for your love and support, which has meant so much to me. I have been asked many times if I am leaving the Senate out of frustration with gridlock. The answer is: No. My family and friends, and those of you with whom I serve, know how much I love the Senate and that I will love my work until the last day here, and that I will leave here with unabashed confidence in the Senate's ability to weather storms and to meet the Nation's needs. I know firsthand the challenges before this Senate. I believe one of the greatest is the need to meet the fundamental economic challenge of this era: the growing gap in our society between a fortunate few and the vast majority of Americans whose fortunes have stagnated or fallen. While I believe that the economists who tell us this inequality is holding back economic growth are right, this isn't just about economic data. It is about our Nation's heart and soul. This growing gulf between a fortunate few and a struggling many is a threat to the dream that has animated this Nation since its founding, the dream that hard work leads to a better life for us and for our children. To restore the connection between hard work and greater opportunity, I hope the next Congress will act on many fronts, strengthening education and worker training programs, making greater investments in infrastructure and research that foster growth. And as I have said here many times, it should pay for these needed investments by closing egregious tax loopholes that serve no economic purpose, but enrich some of the wealthiest among us and our most profitable corporations. Many foresee a continuation of polarization and partisanship in the Senate and say it is naive to suggest that the next Congress might come together, break out of gridlock, and accomplish great things. But I know the Senate can do better because I have seen it happen with my own eyes. The Senate has indeed demonstrated, even in our own era, that bipartisanship is not extinct. The Senate Armed Services Committee has upheld a more than 50-year tradition of bipartisan cooperation to produce an annual Defense Authorization Act that advances the security of our Nation. I am grateful to the members of the U.S. military and their families for their selfless sense of duty. But I am also grateful for the way they have inspired us, year after year, to come together across lines of party and ideology to support them. They not only protect us, they unite us. Congress has come together over the years to make improvements in pay, benefits, and health care for the men and women of the military; to reform the way in which we buy the weapons they use to carry out their missions; to adopt policies to protect them from sexual assault; and to provide improved education benefits through a modern GI bill, and reform the way in which we care for our wounded warriors. We are training and equipping the militaries of nations under assault by extremists and religious fanatics so that those nations can depend more on themselves for their own security and less on America's sons and daughters. We have passed a defense authorization bill to accomplish these things each year for more than half a century by laying aside partisan differences for the common good. We have never allowed disagreements over policy to interfere with our duty to our troops and their families, and I am deeply grateful to the many ranking Republican partners I have been fortunate to work with in that endeavor: people such as John McCain and John Warner and Jim Inhofe. John McCain, my great friend, who has demonstrated extraordinary courage in war and in this Senate, will take the gavel of the Armed Services Committee, and my trusted wingman and friend Jack Reed will become ranking member. At a pivotal moment for the Senate and for this Nation, the Armed Services Committee will be in strong hands. I have seen firsthand additional powerful evidence that the Senate can work together to meet the Nation's needs, and that is in the work of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--PSI--which I have been privileged to chair for 10 years, working with Republican partners--and I use the word partners advisedly--such as Tom Coburn, John McCain, and Susan Collins. Our subcommittee has exposed the tax avoidance schemes of some of the most powerful corporations and wealthiest individuals. We have shined a light on abusive credit card practices. We have investigated wasteful and ineffective government programs. We have confronted market manipulators and exposed conflicts of interest, mortgage fraud, and reckless schemes by some of the most powerful banks, schemes aided by some of the largest accounting and law firms. We have demonstrated how those activities helped bring our economy to its knees, destroying jobs, reducing the value of our homes, and damaging our neighborhoods. The work of PSI has helped lead to reforms that have strengthened our financial system and reduced credit card abuses. The power of PSI lies in the in-depth work of our staffs, and in the willingness to confront powerful and entrenched interests. Like the Senate Armed Services Committee, PSI is strengthened by a dedication to bipartisanship and a respect for the rights of the Senate minority. We have recognized the danger of using investigative power for partisan or political purposes, and we have ensured that our great staffs, majority and minority, participate together in every investigation. Indeed it is protection of the minority that is the singular hallmark of the Senate. The majority cannot always have its way. The Senate is more than just a place where the hot tea is cooled in the deliberative saucer that President Washington famously spoke of. Protections for the minority make the Senate more than just a place to slow things down; those protections make it a place where we work things out. It is those protections that force compromise that is essential to unifying and governing our country. Making progress in the Senate requires solutions that while they may not provide everyone with everything they want, are broadly accepted as in the common interest. When compromise is thwarted by ideological rigidity or by abuse of the rights that our rules afford us, the Senate can become paralyzed, unable to achieve the lofty task that the Founders set forth before us. Polarization is exacerbated by forces outside this Chamber. For instance, we seem to make news more often these days by our responses in the corridors outside this Chamber to reporters questioning us about the latest breaking story or rumor than we do by debating or legislating inside this Chamber. The viral nature of information and disinformation and the expectation that public officials will be immediately responsive to every news flash with but a few seconds to think through the implications or consequences or pros and cons has led too often to less thoughtful discourse, and that has helped drive rhetorical wedges between us. The incoming Senate has an opportunity to restore a greater measure of bipartisan compromise by revisiting one of the most contentious issues we face, one that we struggled with at the beginning of this Congress; that is, the Senate rules. I believe the excessive use of the filibuster to obstruct confirmation of President Obama's nominees was damaging to the Senate and to the Nation. Any President--Democratic or Republican--should have the ability to choose his or her team. But the Senate majority eliminated obstructions to Presidential nominations through the use of the nuclear option, effectively accomplishing a rules change outside the rules, a method I could not support. In doing so, a precedent was established that the majority could effectively change the rules as it wished by overruling the Chair and the Parliamentarian. That precedent will not serve the country well in the future because it leaves the minority with no protection, diminishing the unique role of the Senate. I hope the Senate next year considers reversing that precedent while simultaneously--and I emphasize simultaneously--amending the rules so as to assure the President's ability to fulfill his or her constitutional duties. Put simply, I believe the Senate should do the right thing in the right way. It should amend the Senate rules, as provided for in the rules, to adopt the substance of the changes we made last year. I know my good friend Senator Lamar Alexander, who was part of the bipartisan Group of 8 who worked closely and successfully together on this issue in 2012, has proposed something similar. Such action by the Senate next year would be a welcome victory for comity and for compromise, and it would I hope represent a step back from a precedent that leads to effective rules changes by simple majority. It would be a step toward a better functioning Senate. No leader alone, no single Senator, neither party by itself, can determine the Senate's course, but together the Members of this body can move the Senate forward and in doing so help move forward the Nation we all love. I will enjoy reading about the Senate's progress in the years ahead as Barbara and I are sitting on a Lake Michigan beach or showing the world to our grandchildren. I thank the Chair, I thank my dear friends, the leaders of this body, and I see my brother sitting here, and I am not allowed to refer to my family in the Gallery, so I will not do that. (Applause, Senators rising.)

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. We are going to vote on cloture on H.R. 3979 soon, which represents the agreement between the Armed Services Committees of the Senate and the House on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. I urge my colleagues--I know my good friend from Oklahoma, the ranking member, joins in this urging--to support cloture so we can enact this important bill into law. The Armed Services Committee approved the defense authorization bill by a 25-to-1 vote in May. In June, Senator Inhofe and I came to the Senate floor to urge Senators to begin to file amendments to the bill so we could work on a package of cleared amendments and try to identify relevant amendments that would need votes. We made the same request in July. When our efforts failed to bring about a unanimous consent to bring the committee-reported bill to the floor with an opportunity to offer relevant amendments, we began to meet with the House Armed Services Committee in an effort to reach a bipartisan agreement that could be presented to the two Houses for approval in the form of a new bill. We also established an informal clearing process pursuant to which we were able to clear 44 Senate amendments--roughly an equal number of Democratic and Republican amendments--which are included in the bill that is now before us. The process is far from ideal, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances. We now have before us a bill that is the product of a bipartisan, bicameral agreement between the Armed Services Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The House has already passed this bill by a vote of 300 to 119. This bill includes hundreds of important provisions to authorize the activities of the Department of Defense and provide for the well-being of our men and women in uniform and their families. The bill will enable the military services to continue paying special pays and bonuses needed for recruitment and retention of key personnel. It strengthens survivor benefits for disabled children of servicemembers and retirees. It includes provisions addressing the employment of military spouses, job placement for veterans, and military child custody disputes. It addresses military hazing, military suicides, post-traumatic stress disorder, and mental health problems in the military. It provides continued impact aid to support military families and local school districts. The bill includes 20 provisions to continue to build on the progress we are starting to make in addressing the scourge of sexual assault in the military. It provides continued funding and authorities for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and for our forces conducting operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria--ISIS. It takes important steps to respond to Russian aggression in Ukraine. It adds hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to begin to restore the readiness of our Armed Forces. And it begins to make some of the structural changes that are needed to enable DOD to perform its essential missions in an era of tight budgets. The process may have been flawed, but we have done everything we could to overcome those flaws and produce a defense bill that does the right thing for the national defense and for our troops. I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. We have produced a defense bill that does the right thing for our national defense and for our troops. I hope our colleagues will vote for cloture. I hope I have a minute left to yield to the ranking member.

Mr. LEVIN. I will yield for 1 minute.

Mr. LEVIN. We are going to vote soon on cloture on--by the way, I understand there was an objection to the unanimous consent request by Senator Gillibrand.

Mr. LEVIN. It is an objection which I join. I understand she wishes to respond for 1 minute. I have no objection, as long as we can really do it in 1 minute because I would like to close the debate prior to the vote on cloture. My friend from Oklahoma, the ranking member, also wants to make a comment.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. The letter contains no indication that he had asked the Czech government for its view, as he committed to do. But Director Brennan's letter includes, and therefore finally declassifies, this very clear statement from the cable: ``[T]here is not one USG [counterterrorism] or FBI expert that . . . has said they have evidence or `know' that [Atta] was indeed [in Prague]. In fact, the analysis has been quite the opposite.'' Again, that cable was sent to CIA headquarters on March 13, 2003--a week before our invasion of Iraq. But the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, continued to suggest the meeting may have taken place. He said the following about the meeting on ``Meet the Press'' on September 14, 2003--6 months after CIA received that cable: ``We've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know.'' Here is what he told the Denver Post newspaper on January 9, 2004: ``We've never been able to collect any more information on that. That was the one that possibly tied the two together to 9/11.'' Here is what he told CNN on June 17, 2004: ``We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we been able to knock it down. We just don't know.'' Mr. President, those statements were simply not true. We did know. We did know that there was no evidence that such a meeting had taken place. We did know there was ample evidence it did not take place. We did know that there was, as the CIA cable says, ``not one'' government expert who said there was evidence that Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. The Vice President recklessly disregarded the truth, and he did so in a way calculated to maintain support for the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. There is a second recent revelation about how the ``Prague meeting'' progressed from unsubstantiated report to justification for war. It comes from Jiri Ruzek, who headed the Czech counterintelligence service on and after 9/11. Mr. Ruzek published a memoir earlier this year, which we have had translated from Czech. It recounts the days after the terror attack, including how his nation's intelligence services first reported a single-source rumor of a Prague meeting between Atta and al- Ani, how CIA officials under pressure from CIA headquarters in turn pressured him to substantiate the rumor, and how U.S. officials pressured the Czech government when Czech intelligence officials failed to produce the confirmation that the Bush administration sought. Mr. Ruzek writes: It was becoming more and more clear that we had not met expectations and did not provide the `right' intelligence output. Mr. Ruzek continues: The Americans showed me that anything can be violated, including the rules that they themselves taught us. Without any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion and use it as an excuse for military action. We were supposed to play the role of useful idiot thanks to whose initiative a war would be started. That is chilling. We have a senior intelligence official of a friendly nation describing the pressure that he and other Czech officials were under to give the Bush administration material it could use to justify a war. When it came to the most serious decision a government can make--the decision to commit our sons and daughters to battle--the Bush administration was playing games with intelligence. The full, still classified cable includes critically important, relevant information, and it has been redacted and denied to the public in order to protect those in the Bush White House who are responsible. The March 13, 2003, cable is an invaluable record in helping the American people understand how their elected officials conducted themselves in going to war. Continuing to cloak this document with a veil of secrecy, revealing a few sentences at a time, allows those who misled the American people to continue escaping the full verdict of history. It deprives the American people of a complete understanding of how we came to invade Iraq. In his letter to me, Director Brennan writes, ``I understand that your principal concern is that the historical record be as complete as possible regarding this period in our history, and on this point we are in agreement.'' But Director Brennan's apparent refusal to do what he has committed to do--to ask the Czech government if it objects to release of the cable--now takes on the character of a continuing cover-up. I believe decisionmakers should have to face the full, unadulterated, unredacted truth about their decisions. The American people should know the full story, not just so we can understand the decisions in 2002 and 2003 that took us to war, but as a warning to future leaders against the misuse of intelligence and the abuse of power. Very briefly, what I am doing in this statement, which is now in the record, is I am asking CIA Director Brennan to fully declassify a March 13, 2003 cable from CIA field officers to headquarters. This cable provides information about the Bush administration's campaign to build public support for the Iraq invasion. One part of that campaign was the repeated misleading suggestion that Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers, had met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. I received a letter from Director Brennan making public for the first time some of the cable's contents. He quotes the cable as saying: There is not one USG [counterterrorism] or FBI expert that . . . has said they have evidence or ``know'' that [Atta] was indeed [in Prague]. In fact, the analysis has been quite the opposite. In my statement just entered into the Record, I also discussed recent revelations by the former head of the Czech intelligence agency about U.S. pressure to confirm the report of that meeting. The American people deserve to know the full truth about this episode and particularly in light of the new revelations from a top Czech official. I have renewed my request to Director Brennan to declassify the entire cable. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I wish to speak for a few moments about one of the most significant events in my 36 years as a U.S. Senator, the war in Iraq. I want to speak about important historical records crucial to our understanding of why we went to war against Iraq in 2003, I want to enter into the public record recent revelations not yet made public, and I make one more public call for a key document to be made fully public. I will begin by renewing a request to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan. It is a request I have also made to his predecessors: I ask Director Brennan to declassify fully a March 13, 2003 CIA cable debunking the contention that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official named Ahmad al-Ani. Earlier this year, Director Brennan wrote to me, refusing, as did his predecessors, to fully declassify the CIA cable. But in his letter to me he makes public for the first time a few lines from that document. While this is a significant addition to the public record, and I will discuss that in a moment, it is still not the full cable, and I am calling on him to declassify and release the full cable. In order to understand why I am making that request, we need to return to early 2003. On March 6, 2003, just two weeks before U.S. troops would cross the Iraqi border, President Bush held a prime-time televised press conference. In that press conference he mentioned the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks eight times, often in the same breath as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded. According to public polls in the week before the Iraq war, half or more of Americans believed Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. One poll taken in September 2003, 6 months after we invaded Iraq, found that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed it likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans who believed in a link between Iraq and 9/11 overwhelmingly supported the idea of invading Iraq. Of course, connections between Saddam and 9/11 or al Qaeda were fiction. America's intelligence community was pressed to participate in the administration's media campaign. Just a week after the President's prime-time press conference, on March 13, 2003, CIA field staff sent a cable to CIA headquarters, responding to a request for information about a report that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings, had met in 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech capital of Prague. In stark terms, this CIA cable from the field warned against U.S. government officials citing the report of the alleged Prague meeting. Yet the notion of such a meeting was a centerpiece of the administration's campaign to create an impression in the public mind that Saddam was in league with the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. On multiple occasions, including national television appearances, Vice President Dick Cheney cited reports of the meeting, at one point calling it ``pretty well confirmed.'' Officials from Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, who set up a sort of rogue intelligence analysis operation, briefed senior officials with a presentation citing the Prague meeting as a ``known contact'' between Iraq and al Qaida. Why am I bringing up a CIA cable from more than a decade ago? Isn't this old, well-covered terrain? No, it isn't. This is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. It is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable. It is about warning future leaders of this nation that they must not commit our sons and daughters to battle on the basis of false statements. There is no more grave decision for a nation to make than the decision to go to war, and there is no more important issue for every member of Congress than the decision to authorize the use of military force--A decision to authorize force is a decision to unleash the might of our Armed Forces, the strongest military on the planet. It commits the men and women of our Armed Forces to fight, and perhaps to die, on the battlefield. The decision to go to war must be careful, considered, and based on the facts. Such careful consideration was tragically absent in the march to war in Iraq. Here is what the Vice President said on December 9, 2001, in an interview on ``Meet the Press'': ``It's been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.'' Far from ``pretty well confirmed,'' there was almost no evidence that such a meeting took place. Just a single unsubstantiated report, from a single source, and a mountain of information indicating there was no such meeting, including the fact that travel and other records indicated that Atta was almost certainly in the United States at the time of the purported meeting in Prague. It was highly irresponsible for the Vice President to make that claim. Calling a single, unconfirmed report from a single source ``pretty well confirmed,'' as he did on Dec. 9, 2001, was a reckless statement to make on such a grave topic as war, in the face of overwhelming doubt that such a meeting occurred. Yet Vice President Cheney's reckless statements continued, even as evidence mounted that there was no Prague meeting. In September 2002, he said Atta ``did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.'' The Vice President made those statements in the face of a then- classified June 2002 CIA assessment that said the alleged meeting was ``not verified,'' called the information about it ``contradictory,'' and described assessments of Iraqi cooperation with al Qaida terror plots as ``speculative.'' The Vice President made those statements in the face of a July 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which reported that there was no evidence that Atta was in the Czech Republic at the time. He made those statements despite a Defense Intelligence Agency memorandum in August 2002 rejecting the claims by a rogue intelligence analysis shop at the Pentagon that the meeting was an example of a ``known contact'' between Iraq and al Qaida. That brings us to the March 13, 2003 cable. It is unfortunate that I cannot fully lay out the contents of that cable, because much of it remains classified. But as the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2006 ``Phase II'' report indicates, it appears that the cable was sent in response to a request from headquarters at Langley for comment on the claim that Atta and al-Ani had met in Prague because the White House was considering a reference to a Prague meeting in a speech. At that time, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet's memoir, the CIA had been given a draft of a speech by Vice President Cheney containing assertions about connections between Iraq and al Qaida. Tenet writes in his memoir that he had to object to the President that the speech went ``way beyond what the intelligence shows. We cannot support the speech and it should not be given.'' The text of this cable and the information surrounding it was almost entirely redacted by the CIA from the Intelligence Committee's 2006 Phase II report. A number of us objected to that redaction at the time the report was made public; indeed, the Majority Leader introduced legislation which I cosponsored that would have declassified the cable, legislation Republicans blocked. At the time of the report's release, I joined several members of the Intelligence Committee, including Ranking Member Rockefeller, Senators Feinstein, Wyden, Bayh, Mikulski and Feingold, in concluding that the administration's decision to keep the contents of the cable classified ``represents an improper use of classification authority by the intelligence community to shield the White House.'' In the years since I have sought declassification of the March 2003 CIA cable on numerous occasions. Twice, in 2011 and 2012, I wrote to then-CIA Director Petraeus asking him to declassify the cable. Then in February 2013, I asked Director Brennan during his confirmation hearing whether he would contact the Czech government to ask if they would object to declassification of the cable, and he responded, ``Absolutely, Senator, I will.'' Despite his commitment, I heard nothing from Director Brennan for some time. Finally, in March of this year, more than a year after his public commitment to me, I received a letter from Director Brennan. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Director Brennan's March 13, 2014, letter to me be printed in the Record.