James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 9.

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to take the chance to have just a moment to be able to reflect on what the Senate has just completed. We have worked through a process of identifying what is called the Congressional Review Act. Most Americans are not familiar with this because it is so seldom used. In fact, it has only been used one time before this Congress successfully. It is a moment for the Congress to be able to look back at regulations that have been promulgated by the administration and say: Was that the intent of the law? It is something that we have worked at for a long time to be able to get as a frequent part of this national conversation. We call it the REINS Act. It allows Congress to be able to look at each major regulation when it comes out from the administration and ask the simple question: When the regulations are created, are they consistent with the statute? That is what regulations are. No administration can just invent policy and say: We think this is a good thing to do. That is the task of Congress. That is why the Constitution says that all legislative powers shall reside in the Congress, because an administration can't make up the law. It has to come from this body, from the House of Representatives, and then be signed by the President. After that is done, then regulations are created that have to be consistent with the law. The Congressional Review Act was created years ago to allow Congress to have a second glance at regulations as they are put out and say: Is that consistent with the statute we passed? This Congress has already gone through multiples of those. In the last 6 months of the Obama administration, many regulations were created. When they were created, they were not consistent with the statute. This Congress has already turned back billions of dollars of regulations from the American people. One of those was done this week. Ironically, it is an issue that deals with unemployment benefits and drug testing. Many States have requested the ability to be able to do drug testing for unemployment benefits. And this is not a situation where this Congress believes that all people on unemployment benefits need to be drug tested or are unemployed because of drug use--far from it. In 2012, Congress passed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. In that, it allowed States, if they chose to--they don't have to but if they chose to--to do drug testing for benefits eligibility, for unemployment benefits under two circumstances. One of them is if the applicant was terminated from their employment based on the unlawful use of a controlled substance. In other words, if they were just fired from a previous job because they were using drugs, they wouldn't be able to get unemployment benefits because they had already been certified as a drug user. The second one is that if the only available suitable work meant that they had to be drug tested, then they could be drug tested. What is the design of this? The design of the policy was to encourage people to get back to work. If they were fired from a previous job because they used drugs, it is a natural thing to say: Before you can get unemployment benefits, we want to make sure you have gotten off drugs since that time period you were fired, or if you will be drug tested for the only job that is available to you in your targeted area, you are not available to be able to take that job if you haven't already had some sort of drug testing. It is a commonsense measure, and it is given to the States to say to the States: You can choose to do this or not to do this, but if you choose to do it, you can, because unemployment benefits are a partnership between the Federal Government and local States. We believe this is one tool of many to be able to help people who are trapped in the addiction of drugs to have one more incentive to be able to get off that addiction. Multiple different methods are also used within States to enable them to walk alongside families and individuals and help them get off their substance abuse habits as well. It is a powerful motivator to say to people: If you want to get some support into your family to help you transition back into a job, the law says that to be on unemployment benefits, you have to be available for work. And if this person is currently addicted to drugs and using drugs, they are not available for work. This measure was passed in 2012. The Obama administration took 4 years to promulgate the rules off of this commonsense measure, and once they finally promulgated the rules, they created a set of rules so complex, so complicated, with so many exceptions built into it, that the rule meant nothing. It put us in the situation of saying: What Congress passed 4 years ago, we actually wanted that to go into effect to give those States the right to be able to do it. So this Congress--the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted and this week the Senate also voted to be able to block out that last- minute regulation from the Obama administration, which they took 4 years to promulgate, and to be able to say to the States: If you choose to do drug testing with someone who was fired from a previous job because of drug use or because the only job available to that person will have drug testing, if you want to help families be able to get off substance abuse and to be able to set this standard for them, you can. We have an epidemic of drug use in our Nation. We should do everything we can to not only deal with the interdiction of drugs coming into the country but to also deal with abuse of drugs in our country. This is one of those measures, and I am glad my State and other States will again have that opportunity to be able to use this.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, on January 15, 2017, an incredible ice storm came through my State. For some States that haven't seen ice storms, they are beautiful, but boy are they destructive. As freezing rain comes down, it lands on power lines, lands on trees, destroys the trees, power lines come down, and it is incredibly difficult for families and for regions when this happens. You can't move. You can't function. You can't travel the streets because they are covered with ice. It is very destructive. The northwest part of our State experienced an ice storm like that on January 15. That ice storm devastated the Woodward area and all over the northwest--trees, debris, damage, power out for weeks in that area. Then, in early March, it was starting to warm up. The forecasters from the National Weather Service and the Forest Service saw the forecast coming out of rapidly dropping humidity levels and very high winds, with a lot of debris damage still in the area. It was the perfect storm for wildfires. They prepositioned assets in that area to be able to respond if they broke out, but on March 6--just a week and a half ago--wildfires broke out all across northwestern Oklahoma. Four large fires in particular broke out simultaneously in multiple areas. Some of them were started by some of those same power lines that were weakened by the ice storm. Now the high winds--60 miles an hour--are taking down those weak power lines, and they are striking the ground and starting a fire spontaneously out in a field. There were four individual fires across this area covering 315,000 acres just in Oklahoma. One of those fires spread straight across the Kansas border and burned an additional 472,000 acres. To give you a point of reference of how large these fires were, the total fire damage that was done in acres is greater than the entire State of Rhode Island. Twenty homes were destroyed, 3,000 cattle were killed in the field, 6,500 hogs were killed, and 7 people died in the fire. Let me give you a picture of what we faced in this area as I went out last Friday with Senator Inhofe to tour the area both from the air and on the ground and to talk to farmers and those individuals who are trying to work through this very difficult process. Those farmers and ranchers are facing something you can't even imagine in their fields. For miles, there is no grass. The cattle that did survive the fire had literally no food on their ranch for miles. Hundreds of miles of fence line were taken down. Each mile of fence in Oklahoma, just a simple barbed wire fence, costs about $10,000, and hundreds of miles of fence line were destroyed. We have animals that burned alive as they tried to escape the fire. We had deer that, as they were running across the fields, got caught up in the barbed wire fence and 16-mile-per-hour winds, and the 16-mile- an-hour flame caught up with the deer in the fence and burned them alive as they tried to escape. We have families who have lost absolutely everything. We have volunteer firefighters across much of this area who would literally be fighting the fire in one county in one area and hear on the radio about how a fire had broken out in another county on a road right near their own home, and literally volunteer firefighters fighting one fire could hear on the radio about the destruction of their home at a different fire. In different places, the volunteer firefighters and those who were gathered, both career and volunteers, would see a raging fire at the home of their neighbor, of people they knew. In western Oklahoma, you know your neighbors in that area. You know the folks in the county. They would head out to a home as the fire was rushing at them and try to fight it off, try to cut a fire line to be able to stop it. Eventually, the fire would get so close, they would literally take their fire equipment and park the equipment between the fire and the home and spray down their equipment in hopes that the fire would jump over the house as the firefighters just huddled behind their own equipment hoping the fire didn't come to them. They saved several homes by using that extreme method. Neighbors took their own farm equipment and their own tractors and created fire lines to be able to protect their neighbors' homes. These small community firefighters fought fires for hours and hours. They saved a lot of lives, and they saved a lot of structures. I can't even begin to tell you the pain of walking through that area, what has been described by many as walking across a moonscape of destruction where there is literally nothing left. What have we seen in that? I will state that what we have seen is a tenacious spirit from people who survived an ice storm, were without power for weeks in many areas, and then had a wildfire come right behind it and destroy what was left. Over 20,000 bales of hay have already been donated from farmers all over Oklahoma who are trying to feed the cattle that are still left--20,000 bales. Understand the expense of 20,000 bales of hay being donated but also understand the efforts of all the truckdrivers who loaded up their vehicles and personally paid the gas money and the travel expenses to be able to deliver that hay over hundreds of miles to those folks. Oftentimes, the travel of that truckdriver and the gas required are more expensive than the hay that is in the back of it, and they are delivering as much as they possibly can. I have to thank the folks from the Farm Bureau; the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association; Western Equipment; Oklahoma Farm Credit; the Red Cross of Oklahoma; the Salvation Army; the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture; the Oklahoma Forestry Service; Southern Baptist Disaster Relief; Oklahoma emergency management--first responders from all over the State, volunteer and career firefighters who worked very long and difficult hours. USDA and FEMA were also on site. I thank Harper County Extension; all the emergency management folks from Beaver, Harper, and Woodward Counties; all the folks who have donated, places like Love's Travel Stops that have donated so much to be able to move things there; the United Way; Cleanline Energy and their donations; and untold numbers of civic organizations and churches from around that community. As I looked at many of those folks in the area last week and met with some leaders and pastors in the area, I reminded the folks that the devastation they face is not something that will be recovered from quickly. Springtime will come soon, and the area that is just black earth right now will spring to life with green grass again in the weeks ahead. But the loss of those fence lines, the loss of thousands of animals, the loss of homes, the loss of structures, will take a very long time for the folks--the farmers and ranchers who don't live on a high profit margin. I have continued to encourage the pastors and churches in that area to walk alongside some families who will have a hard time recovering from this for a long time. I have encouraged our Oklahoma agencies and our Federal agencies to do what we can to be able to step in with repairing fence lines and helping them recover from a very traumatic event. My wife and I stood with a rancher who talked about going out into the field after the fire. His home was completely destroyed. As he traveled out to the field around him checking on his cattle, he found dead cattle but also found cattle with their faces completely burned, blinded, with coyotes chasing them down. He said all he could do was stand there in the field and cry. These are going to be long days. I am grateful that there are neighbors taking care of neighbors. I am proud of the people of Oklahoma watching out for each other. As we walk through this, God willing, we will continue to be able to hug and take care of our neighbors in the days ahead. I want to tell this Senate and the people of the United States that this was a wildfire as big as the State of Rhode Island, and many people haven't even heard of it. But I can assure all of you that the folks in Oklahoma have experienced it, and we will walk through it together as a Nation. With that, Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1362 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 83 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 76.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn, to then convene for pro forma sessions only, with no business being conducted, on the following dates and times and that following each pro forma session, the Senate adjourn until the next pro forma session: Thursday, March 16 at 11:30 a.m. and Monday, March 20 at 10 a.m.; I further ask that when the Senate adjourns on Monday, March 20, it next convene at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 21; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; further, that following leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein; finally, that the morning business hour be equally divided, with the majority controlling the first half and the Democrats controlling the final half.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Hatch.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in December of 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act after it passed this body with overwhelming bipartisan support--85 of 100 Senators supported the bill. The Wall Street Journal called the Every Student Succeeds Act ``the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter- century.'' It also had the support of Governors, State legislators, chief State school officers, school district superintendents, local school boards, principals, and teachers unions, who all agreed on the need to replace No Child Left Behind. The core of the education reform in the Every Student Succeeds Act was to restore local control to the States--not just control for them but that they would have the responsibility and the authority for things such as school accountability, teacher evaluation, student evaluation. It is very clear. In fact, the Every Student Succeeds Act says things very specifically. States are solely responsible for choosing which standards to adopt. The Secretary cannot mandate, direct, or control State standards. The Secretary of Education cannot require, coerce, or incentivize States to adopt common core State standards. States are responsible for choosing which assessments to adopt. The Secretary of Education cannot mandate, direct, or control State assessments for education. States design their own system for holding schools accountable and decide which schools to identify for school intervention and support. The Secretary cannot add new requirements or criteria on State accountability systems that are not in the law. States and local school districts decide what strategies they will implement to help fix identified schools without Federal interference. The Secretary of Education cannot prescribe how States and local school districts improve those schools. Congress passed that clear education law to take power out of Washington, DC, and from the Department of Education and the Secretary of Education and hand it back to the States. Five months after the bill was signed, the Obama administration changed their mind and released regulations to take back school decisionmaking and accountability, in direct violation of the law. Eighty-five of one hundred of us agreed that our passion is for every school district, every parent, every State to take care of every child; that no child would be left behind by switching to local control rather than Federal centralized control. But when this new rule was put out by the Obama administration, they reinterpreted that clear law. Let me tell you what they said in the rule. In the rule, they dictate to States the consequences for schools that don't annually test at least 95 percent of their students. They prescribe to the States and school districts how they would intervene and improve schools that don't exit from this identification process of being an underperforming school. They limit how States may measure school quality or student success based on 4-year graduation rates. They define how much weight States must afford to non-test-based indicators in their accountability systems. This regulation prescribes the long-term goals and measurements of progress that States would use for their student subgroups. This new regulation prescribes when schools may exit from comprehensive support based on improvement. This new regulation mandates that States comply with specific Washington, DC, created requirements instead of letting the school districts or the States determine how best to proceed on those requirements. This new regulation limits how States award school improvement funding to school districts and schools. This new regulation adds a new and burdensome reporting requirement every 4 years on States and local school districts that will drive up compliance costs and will divert resources away from students in the classrooms, in direct violation of what we passed. This new regulation requires States to establish a statewide definition for ``infective teacher,'' requiring a statewide system of evaluation controlled by DC. This new regulation limits how students are scored when they have exited from special education. This new regulation controls how the school report cards are created and how long they are. This is what we were exiting from with No Child Left Behind. We said in that vote for Every Student Succeeds that Washington, DC, should not do this. This rule directly violated the spirit and the letter of the law and will put the new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, in charge of school evaluation, teacher evaluation, and student success. That is not her role or the intent of this law when we passed it, regardless of who is the Secretary of Education. Our intent was to provide maximum flexibility for the States and the parents. The rule is central control from Washington, DC. It is essential that we stop this rule right now. While some of my colleagues have said: Let's just wait, and we will do regulations, and we will unwind some of this--they are basically admitting that the Trump administration will fix the Obama administration overreach. I understand that statement. I think there will be some unwinding of regulations, but here is why it must be done right now--two reasons. One is, when we do this right now with a Congressional Review Act, we settle this forever, that no administration ever, as long as this law is in place, can repromulgate a rule and turn right back around and say Washington, DC, is going to control teacher evaluation, student success evaluation, and school evaluation. This ends that forever. The second thing is, right now schools in Oklahoma have already diverted resources in their administration, and they are filling out forms that are due to Washington, DC, in April to fulfill this new requirement that was put down by the administration. If we don't end this now, the districts in Oklahoma and in all of the States represented by this great Senate--their administrators will be working on forms for Washington, DC, rather than educating children at home. Let's get those folks back in the classroom, working on things that matter, not some form that no one in Washington, DC, will read anyway. Why don't we allow our schools to focus on educating kids instead of filling out forms for the Secretary of Education? That is the reason we passed the Every Student Succeeds Act. I encourage this body to support H.J. Res. 57 when it comes up. This will fix this overreach and will put a permanent marker down to say we meant it when Congress said to the administration: Do not control local education. Let the States and the parents do it. With that, I yield back. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is an absolute honor to be able to rise and speak in support of Attorney General Scott Pruitt. For the last 6 years, Scott has been a leader in the State of Oklahoma. He has been strongly committed to enforcing the law in Oklahoma as it is written and as is consistent with the Constitution. He is a statesman. He is a dedicated public servant. As the Administrator of the EPA, I fully expect Scott to be able to lead the Agency to follow every environmental law and to partner with States, local authorities, and tribes to do what is best for the present and for the future. I have heard some people talk about their opposition to Scott's nomination, saying they don't believe Scott believes in clean air, in clean water. That is not the issue for Scott. Scott absolutely believes in clean air and clean water, and the accusations that somehow he wants dirty air and dirty water and our children to be poisoned is ludicrous. The question for Scott is not if we should have clean air and clean water, it is who is the primary steward of our clean air and our clean water. Everyone has a role. We are a nation that is connected to each other. What happens in one State does affect another State. That is why we have a national strategy working with the Environmental Protection Agency, but in the Clean Water Act and in the Clean Air Act, the States are given primary responsibility through what is called a State Implementation Plan to determine what is in their best interests and the best solutions to be able to deal with the issues of air and water. Scott has fought for the State to be allowed to be in the driver's seat with regard to all of the State resources, arguing for those that work in wind farms, in oilfields, and on cattle ranches, for families who have drinking water and breathe the air and who live there. The people who should have the loudest voices should be the people who actually drink that water and breathe that air and understand the effects of it firsthand. He has not been alone in this fight. As the attorney general of Oklahoma, he stood shoulder to shoulder with more than half of the States to ensure the Federal Government operates within the bounds of the statutes and the Constitution. He has consistently argued that the EPA, when they promulgate rules that violate that basic principle of the State Implementation Plan, should stop, do what the EPA does best, and have the EPA push the States to do what they should do best. In an environment where Chevron deference is the precedent set, it is critical that the leader of an Agency that has such wide latitude to extract costs out of the economy, should respect the federalist foundation we have, and the pocketbooks of hard-working families, as well as our air and our water. In previous congressional testimony, he stressed the importance of laws like the Clean Air Act, stressing that the intention was for States to work together under a model of cooperative federalism that protects the environment while considering economic costs. Scott pursued cases against the EPA and other Federal agencies in an effort to enable and embolden our State government officials to craft the legislation that needs to be done. His focus has been not to eliminate environmental protections, it is to honor a country with tremendous diversity, from rocky mountains to open deserts, to beautiful woodland areas. Surprisingly enough, the issues that we face on our environment, in the concrete jungle of Washington, DC, is different than it is in Woodward, OK. Let me give you an example of one of those cases that he engaged in. It is a case where the EPA created a new regulation called waters of the United States. It dramatically changed the definition of what are the areas the EPA can oversee and increased their regulatory authority by millions of acres in just one regulatory sweep. The courts immediately stepped in and stopped this, and Scott Pruitt and many other States' attorneys general said: The EPA does not have the right to be able to step into almost every inch of our State and say they suddenly have regulatory authority. In fact, the court said this: ``We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims.'' Furthermore, they said this: ``What is of greater concern to us, in balancing the harms, is the burden--potentially visited nationwide on government bodies, state and federal, as well as private parties.'' The court stepped in and agreed with Scott Pruitt that the EPA was overreaching, and that case is still in the courts right now. That is a reasonable thing to be able to do, for an attorney general who has the responsibility to not only manage the legal issues of the State but also to watch out for the consumers of the State. As funny as it sounds, if you go to the EPA's website today and look at Oklahoma and air quality, here is what it says. The EPA website today reads: ``CAA permitting in Oklahoma. Clean Air Act permitting in Oklahoma is the responsibility of the Air Quality Division Exit of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.'' The EPA's website today says responsibility for this is from the Department of Environmental Quality in Oklahoma. All our attorney general has done is said to the EPA: You should probably follow the law or at least your own website to be able to handle all of the permitting issues of who has authority to do this. For the past month, I have heard Senator after Senator come to this floor and describe my great State of Oklahoma in a way that makes Scott Pruitt sound like an ogre and my State sound like a toxic waste dump. Let me give you an example. Attorney General Pruitt has been dismissed by some who say that he has personally been engaged in leading our State to such terrible air quality that the American Lung Association has given the counties in Oklahoma an F rating. Well, that is an interesting accusation, until you actually go to the American Lung Association website and see that they give almost every county in America an F rating. In fact, they give every county in Delaware an F rating in air quality. They categorize those under ``high ozone days'' and one of three counties just barely skated by with a D in particle pollution for Delaware, while in Oklahoma the two largest metropolitan areas actually received an A from the American Lung Association. Similarly, in that same study, Rhode Island lacks a single county that doesn't get an F for air quality on high ozone days, while only two counties received passing grades for particulate pollution. The accusation that somehow the American Lung Association has looked at Scott Pruitt and his record on environmental policy and has given us dirty air quality is not actually true when you see the full study. What is interesting, as well, is that the EPA publishes data about whether counties meet the national ambient air quality standards, and they have six criteria that the EPA puts out. In fact, recently they dropped their criteria significantly from the previous years. What is interesting, as well, is that for Oklahoma, last week, the EPA released their national ambient air quality standards, trying to determine which counties had attainment of the standard or nonattainment. Guest what. Every single county in Oklahoma--all 77--have attainment. Even as to the new standard that was just released, that we don't even have to operate under, we already meet those standards for ambient air quality. Meanwhile, Maryland has 12 counties in nonattainment for at least 1 of those criteria. Connecticut has eight counties that don't meet those standards. California has 38 of their 58 counties failing to meet those standards in at least 1 criteria. There are 77 counties in Oklahoma, and every single one of them meets attainment. I don't hear anyone standing on this floor challenging the attorney general of California or of Maryland or of Connecticut and demonizing them and accusing them of not taking care of the air and the water in their State. By the way, I have also heard on this floor, as my State is being ripped apart for political gain, over and over that asthma rates for children are catastrophically high in Oklahoma and that Scott Pruitt should have been more engaged, filing lawsuits so that asthma rates would go down--until you look at the CDC website for asthma rates for children. It is 10.1 in Oklahoma. One child is too many. It is 10.1 percent in our State, but you can compare that to Rhode Island, which is 12.4; or Michigan, which is 10.7. Vermont beat us, by the way. They are 9.9--0.2 below us. Again, I don't hear anyone on this floor calling out the attorneys general of Vermont, Michigan, and Rhode Island and saying they failed to protect their children because children have asthma in their State. Another thing that is commonly said about Scott Pruitt and the State of Oklahoma is that he is committed to conventional energy sources and that he is stuck in the past, dealing with oil and gas. I will tell you that Oklahoma is rightfully right proud of its history of oil and gas in our State. We have unlocked resources that have absolutely powered our Nation forward. We also have an incredible group of visionaries in our State that are driving renewable resources as fast as we are driving oil and gas in our State. For all the folks that are here bashing oil and gas, I would remind you that you traveled to Washington, DC, on a plane, in a car, or on a train that was powered by Oklahoma energy. So you are welcome. And I will assume that, 2 weeks from now, when we return back for session, you are going to ride in on a horse just to be able to spite Oklahoma's energy--probably not. But can I remind you of something? What is often overlooked about Oklahoma and what has not been stated here is that Oklahoma truly is an all-of-the-above energy State--solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, oil, gas, and coal. Let me give you an example--just one of the examples from that. Recent data shows that Oklahoma ranks third nationally in total wind power. We just passed California for total wind production. We are just barely behind Iowa and Texas. The installed capacity for Oklahoma alone--just in wind generation--is 1.3 million households powered by wind power out of Oklahoma. I will admit that I am a little biased about my State. But I am weary of hearing people inaccurately demean the air and water in Oklahoma and try to accuse it of something that is not true for their political benefit. Here is my invitation to any Member of this body. Why don't you come home to Oklahoma with me? I will buy you some great barbecue and drive you around the State. I will take you through the Green Country in the northeast part of the State, over to Kenton, OK, and Black Mesa to see the majestic area around our panhandle. We will drive four-wheelers in Little Sahara, and maybe we will drive down to Beavers Bend Park, stand under the tall trees, and put our feet in the crystal clear water of that river. I will even take you to my house in Oklahoma City, a community of a million people that exceeds the EPA air quality standards for ambient air quality. We say in Oklahoma: ``The land we belong to is grand,'' and we mean it. We are passionate about our land, and we are passionate about our air and water. I will tell you that Scott Pruitt is passionate about his State and what we do there. I will tell you how political this has really become. Mike Turpen is the former attorney general of the State of Oklahoma and, by the way, he is also the former chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. Mike Turpen, when it was announced that Scott Pruitt was going to be tapped to be head of the EPA, released this statement: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is a good choice to head up the Environmental Protection Agency. I am convinced Scott Pruitt will work to protect our natural habitats, reserves and resources. His vision for a proper relationship between protection and prosperity makes him superbly qualified to serve as our next EPA administrator. That is from the former head of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. So far, my colleagues have found a good reason for every Cabinet nominee to delay, delay, delay. This has now been the slowest confirmation process for any President since George Washington. The tradition has always been that the President won an election, and he should be able to hire his own staff and his own Cabinet and get busy going to work. That is what the American people asked him to do. Scott Pruitt deserves an up-or-down vote, and he deserves our trust to be able to take on and follow the law, doing what the EPA requires him to do. Scott Pruitt is a friend. I understand that some of the folks who have attacked him have only met him at a hearing or read about him on some blog site. But I have prayed with Scott. I have seen Scott struggle with the hard decisions that affect our State's future. I have seen Scott listen to people from all sides of an issue, and I have seen him take difficult stands. I think he will be an excellent EPA Administrator, and I think he will make some wise choices to not only protect what is happening now but to be able to help protect us for the future. You see, Scott is a husband and a dad as well, and he cares also about the future of our country. I think he is going to go after it, and he will be able to be an excellent Administrator in the days ahead.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I rise to talk about what is going on in the Senate right now and the work that is done. It is early in the morning right now. It is 8 a.m. In Senate time, we have already done a series of votes that started at 6:30 this morning to be able to work through some of the nominations, and we have a great deal of work to be done. In the middle of the work that we are taking on right now, there is a lot of conversation about personnel. As you know well, the Senate is in the personnel business as much as we are in the legislative business, especially at the beginning of a Presidential term. One of the biggest decisions that we will make in the Senate will be the Supreme Court. Americans voted last year, in great measure, about the Supreme Court--in the direction of the Supreme Court. President Trump put out a list of 21 individuals he said he would choose from so the American people would be fully aware that this is the type of individual he would go after, and you can look at any of these to be able to evaluate it. As I looked through that list of 21, one name stuck out to me. It is the name Neil Gorsuch, who is from Oklahoma, as many people in this Chamber know. Neil Gorsuch represents the Tenth Circuit. He served on that circuit with great distinction, which includes Oklahoma. We have been able to see his work in what has happened on the bench, the opinions he has put out and the consistency, how he has been respected by individuals on both sides of the aisle throughout Oklahoma and across the Tenth Circuit. Neil Gorsuch went onto the bench in 2006. He was put on the bench by President Bush. What is interesting is this body, when they debated Neil Gorsuch in 2006, unanimously approved him with a voice vote. Not a single Senator opposed Neil Gorsuch when he went onto that Tenth Circuit bench in 2006. That means at that time Senator Barack Obama supported him. Senator Hillary Clinton supported him. Senator Joe Biden supported him. Senator Chuck Schumer supported him in 2006. All these individuals looked at who he was, what he was about, and supported him going on the Tenth Circuit bench. What has he done since that time? He has been a remarkable judge. He has advocated for something very clearly; that is, the role of each branch of government and each branch of government doing its job and only its job. He has spoken out on an issue I have spoken out on this floor about several times and oftentimes in committee, an issue called Chevron deference. It is one of those issues that most people don't track, but I hear a lot of people say the Executive orders are out of control and the executive branch is putting all these Executive orders out. I will typically smile at folks and say, actually, if you want to go down into the heart of it, it is not Executive orders, it is Chevron deference. In the 1980s, the Supreme Court gave the ability to every President to interpret the law as they choose to and to be able to put regulations in if under this term they were reasonable in interpretation. In other words, if a piece of legislation mentioned a topic, then a President could create regulations around it. It started slow, but I will tell you that has accelerated in the last several years. What has happened in the last several years is, Presidents have reached in, looked at a statute, tried to find a gray area of the statute, and used their deference ability to be able to interpret it. In his writings, Neil Gorsuch has stepped out and said what that does, to be able to give that kind of deference to any President, is to give the President the ability to literally legislate an issue and then implement the issue and do his own interpretation of the issue. That is all three branches all piled into one. That is the President having the ability to say I am also the Court, I am also the legislative branch, and I am going to execute this out. That is a government out of balance. What Judge Gorsuch has done is over and over again pushed out this basic judicial philosophy that our Nation was founded on three separate parts of government; that the legislative branch is the only branch that legislates; that the executive branch carries it out; and there is only one branch that interprets the law, and that is the courts. If we were to move back to that simple model, it gives balance and consistency to all individuals to be able to know what the law says, what is the law, and to be able to actually push that out in such a way that people can trust it stays consistent. I am proud to be able to sit down and have conversations with Neil Gorsuch in the days ahead. I am looking forward to getting a chance to meet with him in my office and to be able to work through other areas and issues he faces. When President Trump selected Neil Gorsuch and suggested him for the bench, as I have mentioned before, my first thought was we couldn't have a better judge to be able to come out of the Midwest and to be able to speak out for the issues that real Americans want to be able to speak out for and to be able to have a Court that is consistently speaking, ``What did the law say when it was written? Let's just do that.'' There are a lot of other personnel issues that are in front of the Senate right now. Betsy DeVos is in the process of what is called a cloture vote right now for Secretary of Education. That is final closing of debate and to be able to move to a vote that will happen Monday or Tuesday of next week. I will tell you, there has been a lot of conversation about Betsy DeVos, and I have heard the debate on this floor and in conversations and things I have read. What is interesting to me is, to be able to hear person after person stand up and say she is not for public education. Let me tell you where I am on this. Nine out of ten students in our Nation are in public schools. I grew up in public schools. My kids attend public schools. Many of my family members work in public schools or have worked in public schools. I am very passionate about what happens in our public schools because the vast majority of our students will be influenced and will be trained in our public schools. That has to be a primary focus of what we do. What is interesting to me is, Betsy DeVos was very outspoken during her confirmation process about her support for public schools. Did her children attend public schools? No, they did not, as Barack Obama's children did not attend public schools, as many other wealthy families' children did not attend public schools. Many wealthy families choose to do that because they have that option. Betsy DeVos, though, has been a person to raise her hand and say: Why do only wealthy families get to choose where their kids go to school? Why is that? Why don't other families have the same option that wealthy families have? But Betsy DeVos has been outspoken in saying it is a main responsibility to be able to focus on the improvement of our public schools because, again, that is where the vast majority of our students attend school. It has also been interesting to me that all of these statements against Betsy DeVos often don't take into account this basic thing: Betsy DeVos for decades has been passionate about trying to help students in the inner city, students who are in poverty--any student-- to be able to have every opportunity in education they can possibly have. I would think that as a nation we would encourage that, and that would be a positive thing rather than a negative thing. In 2015, this body looked at a public school education law called No Child Left Behind and said that the direction of public school education was going the wrong way. And for 15 years, we have had mandates coming down on our schools from Washington, DC, mandating what type of curriculum they use in their school, what kind of teacher evaluation is done for our public school teachers, what kind of testing requirement will come down on our schools. This body, with 85 of 100 voting for it, said that No Child Left Behind is putting Federal mandates on every school. The place where those decisions should be made is not Washington, DC; it is in local districts--done by parents, done by teachers, done by superintendents, and done by State legislators. That is exactly what Betsy DeVos has said as well. Betsy DeVos has been very clear. She is not trying to promote every State and every district doing charter schools, allowing vouchers for private schools, allowing other options. That is completely the decision of the school. While I have heard people say that if she is put in place, she will take away all this money from the schools, it is not her role nor her capacity to even do that. She has been very clear in saying that all of those decisions are made by local districts and by State legislators and by parents--where the decisions should be made. Betsy DeVos has been very clear that No Child Left Behind was the wrong direction. In a very bipartisan way, 85 Members of this body agreed with that 2 years ago. President Obama agreed with that 2 years ago. And we all said that the best place for education decisions to be made is at the local level. Betsy DeVos was asked very directly: Will you go to these districts and try to impose on them to be able to put charter schools and private school access there? Her answer was: No, it is up to that local district what they choose to do--but nor would she try to stand in the way. If a local district or if a State chose to provide other options, it is not her role in the Federal Government to try to stand in the way of that. Quite frankly, I find it refreshing that someone would say: We are not going to run your school from Washington, DC. What you choose to do in your schools, you are allowed to do. Again, there has been a lot of conversation about charter schools and other options that are out there. I hear people all the time say that there is a problem with vouchers. How could the Federal Government be involved in any money going to private schools or public schools or whatever that may be? We settled that issue decades and decades ago. It is called the GI Bill. When the GI Bill was passed after World War II, the Federal Government told those veterans coming back from the war: You can choose to go to any school you want to go to--public school, private school, wherever it may be. The GI Bill is still considered one of the most effective tools that our Nation has ever done in higher education. It is a voucher program. And many people have not had the opportunity to think through: What does this mean? Again, Betsy DeVos has been very clear in saying it is not her desire to be able to impose that on every State, but if a State chooses to do that, why would we stop them when we have already seen clear evidence that the GI Bill was already successful in its time, going back now 60- plus years? It is an issue that we look at and say: Why would we stand in the way of charter schools when, in the past, they have been very well received by Republicans and Democrats alike? President Obama was a supporter of charter schools. Both of his Secretaries of Education were outspoken supporters of charter schools. In fact, one of them helped found a charter school. Charter schools are public schools, and they are received well. In my State of Oklahoma, we just had another school that came online that is a charter school that has been approved by our State board of education in a unanimous vote just a few weeks ago. These are decisions that are made by local districts. These are decisions that don't work in every area, in every location, especially in many rural areas. It doesn't work the same way. So why don't you allow that local district to make those decisions? Why don't you allow that State to make that decision? Why don't you give the authority to Oklahoma to do it? Let's not ask Betsy DeVos; in fact, allow Congress to hold her to account to make sure that our Secretary of Education is not trying to impose on our States what she wants to do but is allowing our State to do what we want to do. What we ask of a Secretary of Education is not to run our schools but to stay out of our schools' business and to allow us to be able to make those decisions. She is not going to step in and try to take funds away. Those are not her funds to give and to be able to monitor. Our decision is--what do we want to do as a State in education? What options do we want to provide to our kids? What I would ask most of a Secretary of Education is to leave us alone and allow us to do what we can for our kids. Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with school choice, even as a parent who sent my kids to public schools when I could have sent them to private schools. I thought the school was doing a great job in my area. I was glad for my kids to be able to be involved in it. But why would we ever tell a parent: If you will give us just 5 more years, we will get this school cleaned up and turned around. Their child doesn't have 5 more years. Their child has one shot. And if they wait 5 more years, they graduate from high school and without the opportunities they needed. It may work for their younger brother, but they couldn't wait. Why don't we give that ability back to the parent? As an avid supporter of public education, as a person with deep respect for teachers in my school, as a person who--I myself have a secondary education degree from college; I spent 22 years working for students, and I cannot tell teachers enough: Thank you for your thankless service. They spend all day with students who don't want to be there most of the time. They deal with parents at night who are upset that their child got a B-plus rather than an A. And they work tirelessly through a lot of bureaucracy. We are grateful for that. I can assure them that this Congress will make sure that no Secretary of Education, including the next one, reaches into any classroom and tells them how to do their business.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for consideration of the Chao nomination be modified to occur on Tuesday, January 31.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in 2010, when I ran for Congress, all the questions circled around the Affordable Care Act. Every townhall meeting, every conversation, everyone who caught me in the grocery store, everywhere I went there was a conversation about the Affordable Care Act. What is going to happen? Where are things going to go? And there was a lot of concern about it. The President promised at the time that if you liked your insurance, your doctor, and your hospital, you would keep it, and it would just get better. Prices would go down; options for insurance would go up. There would be marketplaces where more and more companies would rush in, and that would drive the prices down. Now, 7 years later, the greatest fears of a lot of the Oklahomans I am around all the time have come true. Here is the crisis in Oklahoma dealing with health care: We have the highest rate increase in the entire Nation. Last year, our rates went up in Oklahoma 76 percent; the year before that, they went up 35 percent. That is an 111-percent rate increase in 2 years in my State. Over the course of the last 3 years, insurance companies have left my State. All 77 counties of Oklahoma now have one insurance carrier left. I met with that insurance carrier before, and they are seriously looking at how they stay functional in Oklahoma in the days ahead, which is a concern to me. There is a possibility that we may have zero on our marketplace in some counties and in some locations in Oklahoma. With a 76-percent increase, I have had some folks who caught me and said: Well, your State didn't expand Medicaid. That is the problem. If you had expanded Medicaid, then it wouldn't have been an issue. Well, I will tell you that a study from HHS has now come back, and they have confirmed that it is true. If our State would have expanded Medicaid, it would have reduced our costs by 7 percent. That means instead of having a 76-percent increase, as we had, we would have had only a 69- percent increase of health care costs in our State. Zero competition, dramatically higher deductibles, dramatically higher premiums--every hospital in my State, rural and urban, has more charity care now and more bad debt now than they had 7 years ago. Insure Oklahoma, a program we set up a decade ago to take care of people who did not have access to insurance, continues to falter because my State is playing ``Mother May I?'' every year with the Federal Government on whether we can maintain a program that our State had and was growing. Small risk pools are not allowed. People still don't know the price of their health care. Electronic health records still can't talk to each other. There is still a rise in the cost of prescription drugs. We still have overlapping administrative costs on dual eligibles, Medicare and Medicaid, for senior adults. Compliance costs for our doctors, clinics, and hospitals have skyrocketed. Physician-owned hospitals, which we have quite a few of in Oklahoma, have been cut off and limited since 2010 and are slowly struggling just to be able to stay afloat. Fewer doctors are taking Medicare and Medicaid patients. On the horizon, it gets even worse because most people don't realize that the Affordable Care Act was backloaded and that the worst of the worst of it wouldn't be for several years out. Well, guess what. It is now several years out. Union households in my State are about to take a major hit with the Cadillac tax that is coming because union households in my State have insurance that is too good, and those individuals will face a tax increase. The insurance company tax is coming, which is a massive tax increase on insurance companies. They will pass that cost directly down to consumers, so it will go up again. We continue to fight off the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a board specifically set up to be able to cut options for patients if they cost too much. That is still out there on the horizon, not to mention the tax penalties that go up even more next year. People ask me: Why are you still focused on repealing ObamaCare? Why is this such a big deal? It is because the people in my State are struggling under the negative effects of this, and it has to be dealt with. Let me just give you a couple of real life stories. An Oklahoman from Altus, OK, in the southwest part of my State wrote me and he said: Senator Lankford, I came home tonight . . . having finished cotton harvest and looking forward to celebrating with my wife and kids. I was greeted at the supper table with somber news about our health care premiums from my distraught wife. Our premium is going from $960 a month to $1,755 per month! That's with a deductible of $6,000. I can't even process how to handle this. I think I'm through. Done with any hope of a bright future for my family. An Oklahoman from Poteau, OK, wrote me and said: My husband and I have had Healthcare Marketplace health insurance for the past 3 years. The first year my monthly premium was over $1,200.00, this year I pay $1,923.84 monthly. Now I get a letter from [my health insurance carrier] that my monthly premium will [go up next year to] $3,540.07. That is an increase of approx. 84%. . . . How is this possible? Why can't anything be done about this? When individuals ask me about ObamaCare, they say: You are just arguing about something because of disdain for the President. No, this is what we have disdain for; this is what people are frustrated about: People who work, people who pay for their health care insurance cannot pay their mortgage and their health insurance anymore because they are literally priced out of it. This is what Bill Clinton meant in October of last year when he made this statement: So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world. I could not agree with Bill Clinton more on that because that is exactly what is happening in Oklahoma. But now, here is what is happening because for years Americans and Oklahomans have said: We have to do something to stop this. It is choking out my family. We are finally at a point we are going to do something about it, but I have colleagues who are now spreading fear all over the country that suddenly everyone is going to be thrown off their insurance and we are going to have people living out on the streets without coverage. I have heard on the floor of this Senate that 30 million people could die if we repeal ObamaCare. I have heard 20 million people will lose their insurance. I have heard there is no replacement plan, and people will get sick because their coverage will be gone. Well, let me just go through a couple of those because there are people calling my office and writing me who are very concerned. They are cancer patients, they are diabetics, they are people with long-term blood diseases, they are people who have difficulty getting insurance, and they are being told: All those mean Republicans up there don't like you and don't care about you, and all they want to do is throw you out on the street. When people say that, it couldn't be further from the truth. It may make for good politics, but it is using people who are in a very vulnerable spot in a negative way. First, let me get a couple of facts straight. This ``30 million'' number that is being thrown around--even past President Obama doesn't agree with that. It is not 30 million; in fact, it is not 20 million. It is 14 million people who gained access to health care coverage, if you count the people who have actually gained coverage and paid for their premiums through the course of the year or have been a part of the expansion of Medicaid. Of those 14 million people, 11.8 million gained additional coverage from Medicaid, not from the exchanges, and, of that, almost 12 million people got expanded coverage from Medicaid. Jonathan Gruber, as one of the architects of ObamaCare, made the statement that from their own studies, the vast majority of those people who were added to Medicaid weren't added to Medicaid because of expanded coverage; they were added to Medicaid because of promotions through advertising. They were already eligible for Medicaid. So we are talking about 6 million people or so that have been added to it. I am not belittling those 6 million people; that is a lot of people. But it is not 20 million, and it is not 30 million. So now what? As people address this to me, they ask about what just happened on January 6 when the Senate and later when the House voted to start the legislative process to repeal ObamaCare. What happened was we just actually started the process. It wasn't a total repeal. No one has been thrown out. It starts a legislative process. As we start that legislative process of what is called reconciliation and as we work through that process, it is a very simple process. It starts the opening conversation to work through committees, to work through debate on the floor so that in the days ahead we will bring a full repeal of ObamaCare and a replacement. But that replacement is not going to be a 2,700-page bill to replace the previous 2,700-page bill. It will be a series of solutions, and it will deal with things on a long-term basis. There was no vote to suddenly end people's health care in one day. This begins a transition point to make sure that we are watching out for those individuals, such as those cancer patients, diabetics, and individuals who are in very vulnerable situations and over the next couple of years will be able to transition to other care. We are watching to make sure this is not some sudden shift for those individuals. There are very vulnerable people who are in health care options right now and need to know that there is still that safety net there for them and that moving forward, we will continue to be able to watch for them. We want to be able to move a lot of those decisions back to the States. Quite frankly, that is where those decisions were before. And we want to be able to allow those individuals who are in very vulnerable situations to seek out the doctor they want, to get the options for health care coverage they want, and to have greater access to health insurance, not less. The people in my State who had been added and who received those subsidies are grateful to be able to have health care, but there are also individuals in my State who can now literally no longer afford to have health care because they have been priced out of the market, and they are stuck. ObamaCare moved the system from one uninsured group of people to now another uninsured group of people. Let me read a statement coming from a person from Oklahoma who said: My wife and I will be going without health insurance next year! I do not resent anyone who is able to afford healthcare, I just resent a government system that causes [us] to be priced out of the reach of working people. Why is it we can argue about ObamaCare and people can say those individuals got coverage and people are not paying attention to a whole new group of Americans who no longer have coverage because they literally have been priced out of the market? Why is it that for the sake of 6 million people, we have affected the cost of health care for millions and millions of other Americans? We can do this transition. We will do this transition. It will take a couple of years. It is not going to be rapid, and there will be a large debate that will happen nationally in the process. That is appropriate, but allow us to be able to walk through this process together. One quick illustration and then I will be done. I have a friend who discovered last year that she had mold in her house. Initially, there were some treatments that were done. She had been very sick for a while and didn't know why. They did treatments to the house and such and thought that would settle it. It didn't. Eventually, she had to move out of her own home. Now they have had to actually strip out the walls and take out all the sheetrock. They are literally replacing studs and everything in the house. It will be a long-term issue to be able to get it all right. I tell that simple story to say that anyone who says replacing health care is going to be some simple ``spray everything down and that will fix it'' strategy just doesn't understand the difficulties of the American health care system. This will be much like my friend who is having to do a pretty radical transition that is going to take a long time, but that will actually get her house whole and healthy again. If we want to have a healthy nation again with people who have access to health care, regardless of what class they are in, it is going to take a while to make this transition, and it will be difficult in the process. But I can assure my colleagues that this Congress is watching out for all people, of all ethnicities, of all neighborhoods, of all diseases, to make sure that we are paying attention to this one simple thing: When ObamaCare was put into place, it punished people. We should encourage people to be able to get health care, and we should be able to walk through it with people in their most vulnerable moments and make sure they are able to make personal decisions, have access to their own doctors, have access to hospitals that can afford to stay afloat, and to provide the ability for people to choose their own health care. Why is that so radical? It used to not be. There are things that need to be fixed, but it begins with giving the power of the decision back to the patient and back to people, where it needs to be. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I rise today to support Congressman Mike Pompeo for the CIA. He isn't somebody I just met in my office to be able to talk with; he isn't just somebody I served with in the House. I know him personally. For 6 years, he served on the House Intelligence Committee. He struggled through the legal issues of what it means to be in the CIA and also have good oversight, understanding those difficulties that keep America safe but also making sure we protect the privacy rights of Americans. Mike Pompeo was a Harvard law grad at the top of his class. He gets this information. He understands the constitutional implications. He is also a top graduate of West Point, serving in the Army as well. He knows what it means to be able to defend this country. He is one of the most qualified people out there to possibly serve in this role, understanding the legal implications, having 6 years of service on the House Intelligence Committee, understanding the background, what it means to seek real oversight and to be able to struggle through these issues. He is a person of great integrity, and he is a person who will passionately help protect the Nation. He is a person who holds tremendous respect for the people serving in our intelligence community--people who most of us will never, ever meet but work every single day to be able to keep our Nation secure. These are individuals who are also passionate about not only keeping our Nation secure but also maintaining the constitutional protections we have always had as a nation. I heard a lot of the debate today, and I have been astounded at some of the conversations coming out. Let me just recap a couple of these things that I have heard because it was surprising to me. On the issue of advice and consent from the Senate, it seems that some people have not actually read the written testimony and the questions for the record that Mike Pompeo has put out there or listened to his actual testimony or maybe seen his voting record when he was in the House of Representatives. For instance, there is this conversation sitting out there about torture--that he is going to somehow promote torture. He has stated over and over again that he would abide by the law and the Army Field Manual. That is what every candidate would say on that. That is the actual law. He has been very clear on that; he doesn't promote torture. I don't know what else he would have to say. Yet it continues to come up that somehow the head of the CIA is going to promote torture. I have also heard that he wants to keep Gitmo open. Well, I would stand in line with him on that one. For those of us who have actually been to Guantanamo Bay and have seen it, it is a modern prison facility. It is not some dog cage out there that is holding people out in the weather. Neither is it a place that is doing torture. Guantanamo Bay is a place where the worst of the worst terrorists are being detained and held for trial. The issue of the past 8 years wasn't just that the Obama administration was working as hard as they could to release as many terrorists as they could from there; it is that they weren't taking them to trial. That is the right action--not to do indefinite detention but to actually work toward trial for these individuals. But in the meantime, they should be held at Guantanamo Bay, which is a modern prison facility, and it is the appropriate spot to be able to hold terrorists offshore. Then there are all of these conversations about collecting data, as if Mike Pompeo wants to scan through all of our Facebook pages. May I remind everyone that the Central Intelligence Agency is focused on foreign intelligence gathering--outward facing. The FBI is focused on the United States, on what is happening with U.S. persons. The CIA has strict prohibitions from gathering data on U.S. persons. The comments he made about gathering any kind of information on social networks and about gathering from what is publicly available is something all of us, I think, should support. If anyone outside the United States--whether they be in Pakistan, whether they be in Syria, or wherever they may be--is on social networks talking about the destruction of the United States, I would assume someone is tracking that, and that someone would be the CIA. We would hold the head of the CIA to account, saying: Weren't you tracking this terrorist's Facebook page, at least? Weren't you tracking their Twitter account? So for him to make a public statement that we should gather information on social media, I think all of us would agree, hopefully, that, yes, on foreign terrorists we should gather as much as we can possibly gather from the publicly available information, whatever it may be. Comments about his wanting to expand data collection fly in the face of reality when he voted as a Member of the House of Representatives to limit data collection. I have no issue supporting Mike Pompeo. He is very experienced, he is very well educated, he is well prepared for the task, and he is passionate about keeping our Nation safe within the bounds of the law. That is what we want a CIA Director to do: to passionately go to work to honor our civil liberties. We want to make sure he is standing up for us every single day. In the moments when our Nation is asleep, we want to know the great folks of the CIA are awake and watching because the threats that we face internationally are very real. I am glad Mike Pompeo is going to be at the watch. I look forward to voting for him in a very few minutes. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I wish to join Senator Alexander in discussing this overtime rule. As he mentioned multiple times, Senator Collins and I dropped a companion bill here in the Senate that was passed in the House that delays the overtime rule's implementation by 6 months. As he also mentioned, I am most certainly a cosponsor of his bill as well. That is another approach, and, quite frankly, we are all looking for different approaches to be able to accomplish something that needs to be done and needs to be done immediately; that is, to address a regulation which has been put in place that can have serious, I believe, unintended consequences but most certainly serious consequences across our economy. That is not an accusation that this administration wants to be able to damage the economy, wants to be able to damage small businesses, or wants to be able to damage universities and nonprofits. But I believe absolutely that is what is occurring. I am concerned, though, that the administration seems to have been deaf to the message that has come up over and over again from many of us in the Congress to be able to highlight that these are serious issues. Have you evaluated them? The Small Business Administration even has real concerns that the data they presented to the Department of Labor was not used, and the advocate for small businesses within the Department of Labor is challenging the Department of Labor to say: Why didn't you use the data that we provided to be able to evaluate this? There are a lot of questions about how the regulation itself was promulgated or what the end goal is, but let me tell you what the real consequences are on the ground. I will give a couple of hypothetical situations, and then I will go into some practical ones. Right now, a single mom with a couple of kids at home is able to telecommute into work a couple of days from her particular job as maybe a sales marketing manager. She can be in the office for 3 days, telecommute a couple of days, save child care costs, and this gives her some flexibility. Under this rule, those same places would not typically allow someone to telecommute because they have to see exactly the hours that someone is working. So she would have to physically be present in the office every day so the work hours could be tracked, removing that flexibility and causing her increased child care costs and actually moving her to more of a situation where she is in a more structured environment, less suitable for her kids. I will give another thought on this. What if we reach into a situation that many of us face as many of the millennials now leaving college are going into the workforce, well-trained, well-equipped, wanting to get an assistant manager's position or wanting to be able to work into a salaried position. It will be much more difficult for those individuals coming out of college now to land a salaried position because, overall, companies around the country that are hiring don't want to hire salaried positions anymore; they want to be able to hire hourly people. So it will be tougher for the generation coming out of college right now to be able to land in those early management positions. Is that a hypothetical situation? No. I would say it is already occurring. It is already happening around the country. When I was home in August, traveling around the State, this overtime regulation was the No. 1 question that came up when I talked to any business owner, any business person, any manager. The first thing they raised was the coming overtime rule, both in its complexity and in trying to figure out how to be able to actually implement this into the cost of their business. The conversations were already occurring with employees where they were moving someone from a salaried position to an hourly position, and their employees hated it because they liked working to a spot where they were in a salaried position. During the August time period, I had a conversation with a youth pastor at a church. That youth pastor said they had left a conversation with their pastor just a couple of days before in which their pastor said: You are going to have to start documenting your hours--each hour that you are actually working with kids, even your time at home that you are preparing a Bible study to actually teach the kids--because we can't afford for you to go over 40 hours. This is someone who feels a calling to be able to work with students, and literally their pastor has to tell them: I know you want to help. You can't help more than 40 hours. Most youth pastors don't go into youth ministry because they anticipate getting wealthy in it. They go into it because of a sense of calling and passion to be able to help students. This regulation is telling that person: Turn down your passion to work with the next generation. You are limited in what you can actually do, and, if you choose to volunteer beyond that, you put your employer, that church, at risk. The Osage Nation--their HR folks, William Scott Johnson, said this: I'm an HR professional at the Osage Nation and am concerned about the impact that changes to the overtime regulations will have on my organization and employees. NAFOA has heard from tribal governments who are concerned the use of a single national salary threshold would adversely affect already limited revenues, especially for tribes in rural areas. From the YWCA battered women's shelter: I'm a human resource (HR) committee member at the YWCA Battered Women's Shelter and am concerned about the impact that changes to the overtime regulations will have on this nonprofit organization and employees. All employees make less than $50,000 except top management. The impact of this new legislation could be catastrophic for payroll as employees will have to be moved from exempt to non-exempt status simply due to the salary base being proposed. The Counseling & Recovery Services of Tulsa, Oklahoma, wrote me: I am the executive human resource (HR) professional at Counseling & Recovery Services of Oklahoma, a nonprofit community mental health center, and am concerned about the impact that changes to the overtime regulations will have on my organization and employees. As a nonprofit, our agency is clinical staffing heavy; thus, about 80% of our workforce . . . will be impacted. The costs to meet the proposed regulations are expected to be in the 100s of thousands [of dollars] and will have a devastating impact to the community mental health industry overall. I received a note from a small business owner in Edmond, right in my hometown. They said: The proposed changes will require us to make significant changes [in the way we do business]. If the proposed salary threshold moves forward, we will be forced to change all our employees to hourly, which will result in the elimination of our bonus program. Our salaried managers make a significant amount of their income based on performance bonuses. Calculating bonuses for employees that have potential overtime is extremely complicated, labor intensive and opens up a huge liability risk if miscalculations occur. One of the universities in my State wrote me and said about this rule: Essentially, it would turn millions of dollars of professional, salaried jobs into hourly positions overnight, resulting in limited flexibility for workers and increased costs for colleges, universities, other nonprofits and public-sector employers that operate on very tight budgets as we attempt to keep the cost of education as low as possible for constituents. We do not disagree that overtime rules need to be updated to ensure the law remains relevant for today's workforce. But we're deeply concerned about the unintended consequences of a massive increase in such a narrow implementation window which will impose serious hardships on our students, employees and institutions. Last week, I met with leadership of the Department of Labor in a hearing. We discussed this exact issue. I talked about nonprofits and what a unique dynamic they really are. Nonprofits actually raise money based on their low administrative costs. They can tell donors: The money that you give will get directly to the individuals who need it most because our administrative overhead is low. This overtime regulation will increase their administrative overhead and will make it harder for them to raise money. When I raised that issue to the Department of Labor, the officials of the Department of Labor told me: We understand that, so we met with the leadership of some of the nonprofit foundations around the country and told them that they should donate more to be able to cover the increased costs. That has to be one of the most out-of-touch statements I have ever heard from someone in the Federal Government. In shock, my response was to say: Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of nonprofits are in the country? You met with a few foundations and told those foundations that they should donate more to be able to cover, when almost every church and almost every small nonprofit around the country that deals with mental health, that deals with domestic violence shelters are not tapping into big, massive foundations. They are individuals within communities that donate, and they anticipate their donations are going to help those of greatest need. The people who work in those nonprofits are most often volunteers, but the very few numbers of individuals within the nonprofits who are paid salaries make a meager salary because they choose to--because they have a passion for the work of helping in domestic shelters or helping at a church or helping reach out to people who are in poverty or helping with a clothing shelter or a food pantry. Now you are forcing those organizations to dramatically increase salaries, which will dramatically decrease services to those in greatest need across our country. I am astounded that the administration believes they can talk to a few people in a few foundations and just tell them: Donate more, and that will fix this. There aren't more donors to just donate more. There are real needs in a lot of communities around the country. Small business owners that I have spoken to of late all tell me about the complexity of this. It is not just a matter of every employee. There is a tremendous number of exemptions as they work through the process. They want more time, and they don't like the cost increase. They don't like what this is doing to their relationships within their businesses, and they do not like telling salaried employees: I'm sorry, you're going to have to move to hourly. All of this headache was created by an administration that knew all of this in advance. The letters that I read earlier--those letters that were written to me I presented to the Department of Labor a year ago. The Secretary of Labor assured me they would take those things into account. We have seen the final rule. I can assure you, they were not taken into account. As tuition goes up in universities, this administration needs to stop complaining about the high cost of tuition in higher education because this overtime rule will directly increase the cost of tuition in every university in the country. On the day the final rule was proposed, the first text message I received about it was from a university president who texted me and said: Don't blame me next year when tuition goes up. There is no way I can stop it now. I responded back to him: Don't blame me for this overtime rule. This is not one we put in statute. This is one the administration created. All of us want to see workers protected. All of us want to see things happen well in the United States. But the way this rule was implemented, the short period of time in the implementation, the size of the salary increase, and the few exemptions that are put into place have created an incredibly toxic effect for business across the country, whether it is a large business, medium business, small business, university, nonprofit--and I haven't even mentioned local government, which will be forced to raise taxes to be able to cover the cost of this. All of them are dramatically affected, and all of them are affected in a short period of time. This is why Senator Collins and I proposed a bill that lines up with what the House has already passed to say: Delay this 6 months. Most businesses are just trying to figure out what in the world they do with this and how they handle the implementation. Delay it for 6 months. I would say there is a tremendous amount we have to deal with on top of just the delay, but at a minimum let's delay it. There is no reason it has to go into effect right now, and it directly harms our economy in the days ahead. These are serious issues. I hope the administration will take them seriously and understand the effect on the coming economy. I am very well aware that this administration will be out of office when most of the economic effects will be felt. But the economic effects will most certainly be felt by this economy, and the long-term effects for those individuals graduating from college right now, trying to land their first job in management, will be even tougher based on this one rule. There is no reason to do that to the next generation of leaders. There is no reason to raise tuition in every college. There is no reason to do this rule right now. I would challenge it to be readdressed and, at a minimum, to be delayed for 6 months.

Mr. LANKFORD

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