Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we will have the opportunity in a few moments to vote on a friend and colleague, Jill Parrish, who serves currently on the Utah Supreme Court. She has been nominated by President Obama to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, replacing Federal Judge Dee Benson, with whom I have clerked. I can think of no one better to replace Judge Benson than Justice Parrish. She is a friend, she is a respected jurist, and she is a dedicated citizen. She is a friend to all who know her. I am honored to have the opportunity to vote for her today, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. I would like to be clear at the outset that while the Senator from Kentucky and I come to different conclusions with regard to the specific question as to whether we should allow section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to expire, I absolutely stand with the junior Senator from Kentucky and, more importantly, I stand with the American people. With regard to the need for a transparent, open amendment process and for an open, honest debate in front of the American people on the important issues facing our Nation, including this one--and I certainly agree with the Senator from Kentucky that the American people deserve better than what they are getting, and, quite frankly, it is time that they expect more from the Senate. On issues as important as this one, on issues as important as the right to privacy of our citizens and our national security, this is not a time for more cliffs, more secrecy, and more eleventh-hour backroom deals that are designed to mix conflict, mix crisis in a previously arranged time crunch in which the American people are presented with something where they don't really have any real options. It is time for the kind of bipartisan, bicameral consensus I believe is embodied in the USA FREEDOM Act. While I often criticize Congress for our economic deficits, our financial deficits, the core of this current challenge we face is centered around the Congress's deficit of trust--in this particular circumstance, the Senate's deficit of trust. Members of our body routinely tell the American people to just trust us. Trust us, we will get it right. Just trust us, we will appropriately balance all the competing concerns. I think it is time that we trust the American people by having an honest discussion with them emanating from right here on the floor of the Senate. It is time to discuss and debate and to amend the House- passed USA FREEDOM Act. I am confident that Senator Paul and others among my colleagues who have different ideas from mine will be happy to offer and debate amendments to improve it and make it something perhaps that they could even support. In fact, as far as I am aware, Senator Paul and others have amendments that they are eager and anxious and willing and ready to present and to have discussed here on the floor and voted on right here on the floor of the Senate. But first I am calling on my Republican and Democratic colleagues to help repair the dysfunctional legislative branch we have inherited, to rebuild the Senate's reputation as not only our Nation's but the world's greatest deliberative body, and, by extension, slowly restore the public's confidence in who we are and what we are here to do here in the Senate. The greatest challenge to policymaking today is perhaps distrust. The American people distrust their government. They distrust Congress in particular. It is not without reason. For their part, Washington policymakers seem to distrust the people. Almost as pressing for the new majority here in the Senate is that the distrust that now exists between grassroots conservative activists and elected Republican leaders can be particularly toxic. Leaders can respond to this kind of distrust in one of two ways. One option involves the bare-knuckles kind of partisanship that the previous Senate leadership exhibited over the last 8 years, twisting rules, blocking debate, and blocking amendments, while systematically disenfranchising hundreds of millions of Americans from meaningful political representation right here in this Chamber. But this is no choice at all. Contempt for the American people and for the democratic process is something Republicans should oppose in principle. In fact, it is something we oppose in principle. We should throw open the doors of Congress, throw open the doors of the Senate, and restore genuine representative democracy to the American Republic. What does this mean? Well, it means no more cliff crises, no more secret negotiations, no more ``take it or leave it'' deadline deals, no more passing bills without reading them, and no more procedural manipulation to block debate and compromise. These are the abuses that have created today's status quo--the very same status quo that Republicans have been elected to correct. What too few in Washington appreciate and what this new Republican majority in Congress must appreciate if we hope to succeed is that the American people's distrust of their public institutions is totally justified. There is no misunderstanding here. Americans are fed up with Washington, and they have every right to be. The exploited status quo in Washington has corrupted America's economy and their government, and its entrenched defenders, powerful and sometimes rich in the process. This situation was created by both parties, but repairing it is now going to fall to those of us in this body right now. It is our job to win back the public's trust. That cannot be done simply by passing bills or even better bills. The only way to gain trust is to be trustworthy. I think that means that we have to invite the people back into the process, to give the bills we do pass the moral legitimacy that Congress alone no longer confers. In order to restore this trust, Members will have to expose themselves to inconvenient amendment votes, inconvenient debate and discussion, and scrutiny of legislation we are considering. The result of some votes in the face of certain bills may, indeed, prove unpredictable, but the costs of an open source, transparent process are worth it for the benefits of greater inclusion and more diverse voices and views and for the opportunity such a process would offer to rebuild the internal and the external trust needed to govern with legitimacy. My friend and colleague, the junior Senator from Kentucky, has referred to a story of which I have become quite fond, a story that I have written about and talked about in various venues throughout my State and throughout America. It relates to a lawmaker, a lawmaker who served several hundred years ago, a lawmaker named John Wilkes--not to be confused with John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin. This John Wilkes served in the English Parliament in the late 1700s. In 1763, John Wilkes found himself at the receiving end of anger and resentment by the administration of King George III. King George III and his ministers were angry with John Wilkes. At the time, there were these weekly news circulars, weekly news magazines that went out and would often just extol the virtues of King George III and his ministers. One of them was called the Briton. The Briton was written, produced, and published by those who were loyal to the King, and they would say only glowing things about the King. They would write things about the King saying: Oh, the King is fantastic. The King can do no wrong. Had sliced bread been invented as of 1763, I am sure the Briton would have reported that the King was the greatest thing since sliced bread. All they could say were nice things about the King because they were written by the King's people. Well, John Wilkes decided to buck that trend. He started his own weekly circular called the North Briton. The North Briton took a different angle. The North Briton took the angle that it was supposed to be in the interests of the people that he reported the news and that he made commentary. So in the North Briton John Wilkes would occasionally be so bold as to criticize or question King George III and the actions of the King and of the King's ministers. This proved problematic for some in the administration of King George III. The last straw seemed to come with the publication of the 45th edition of the North Briton, North Briton No. 45. When North Briton No. 45 was released, the King and his ministers went crazy. Before long, John Wilkes found himself arrested. John Wilkes found himself subjected to a very invasive search pursuant to a particular type of warrant. It had become, unfortunately, all to common in that era, a type of warrant we will refer to as a general warrant. Rather than naming a particular place or a particular person where things would be searched and seized, this warrant simply identified an offense and said: Go after anyone and everyone who might in some way be involved in it. It gave unfettered, unlimited discretion to those executing and enforcing this warrant as to how and where and with respect to whom this warrant might be executed. So they went through his house even though he was not named in the warrant, even though his home, his address, was not identified in the warrant. They searched through everything. John Wilkes was, understandably, outraged by this, as were people throughout the city of London when they became aware of it. John Wilkes, while in jail, decided he was going to fight back. He fought in open court the terms and the conditions of his arrest. He ended up fighting against this general warrant. He eventually won his freedom. Over time, he was reelected repeatedly to Parliament. In time, he also brought a civil suit against King George III's ministers who were involved in the execution of this general warrant, and he won. He was awarded 4,000 pounds, which was a very substantial sum of money at the time. The other people who were subjected to the same type of search under the same general warrant were also awarded a recovery under this same theory, to the point that in present-day terms, there were many millions of dollars that had to be paid out by King George III and his ministers to the plaintiffs who sued under this theory that they were unlawfully subjected to a search under a general warrant. In time, the number 45, in connection with the North Briton No. 45-- the publication that had sparked this whole inquiry--the number 45 became synonymous with the name John Wilkes, and then John Wilkes in turn became synonymous with the cause of liberty. People throughout Britain and throughout America would celebrate the cause of freedom by celebrating the number 45. It was not uncommon for people to buy drinks for their 45 closest friends. It was not uncommon to write the number 45 on the side of buildings, taverns, saloons. It was not uncommon for the number 45 to be raised in connection with cries for the cause of liberty. So the number 45, the name John Wilkes, and the cause of liberty all became wrapped up into one. It was against this backdrop that the United States was becoming its own Nation. When it did become its own Nation, when we adopted a Constitution, and when we decided shortly thereafter to adopt a Bill of Rights, one of the very first amendments we adopted was the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment responded to this particular call for freedom by guaranteeing that in the United States we would not have general warrants. The Fourth Amendment makes that clear. It contains a particularity requirement stating that any persons or things subject to search warrants would have to be described with particularity. The persons would have to be identified or at least an area or a set of objects would have to be identified rather than the government just saying: Go after anyone and everyone who might be connected with this offense or with this series of events. At that time, there were no such things as telephones. Those would not come along for a very long time. They certainly did not imagine, could not have imagined, the types of communications devices we have today. Nevertheless, the principles that they embraced at the time are still valid today, and they are still relevant today. The principles embodied in the Fourth Amendment are still very much applicable today. The freedom we embraced then is still embraced today by the American people, who, when they become aware of it, tend to be offended by the notion that the NSA can go out and get an order that requires the providers of telephone services to just give up all of their data, give up all of their calling records, to give those over to a government agency that will then put them into a database and keep track of where everyone's telephone calls have gone. The idea behind this program is to build and maintain a database storing information regarding each call you have made and each call that has been made to you, what time each call occurred, and how long it lasted. This is an extraordinary amount of information, information that, while perhaps relatively innocuous in small pieces, when put together in a single database--one that includes potentially more than 300 million Americans, one that goes back 5 years at a time--can be used or could easily be abused in such a way that would allow the government to paint a painfully clear portrait, a silhouette of every American. Some researchers have suggested, for example, that through metadata alone, it could be ascertained how old you are, what your political views are, your religious affiliation, what activities you engage in, the condition of your health, and all other kinds of personal information. One of the reasons this is distressing is, that, unlike a program that would involve listening to the content of your telephone calls-- which, of course, is not at issue with respect to this program--all of this can be done with a high degree of automation, such that those intent on abuses could do so with relative ease, with the type of ease that they would not have access to absent this type of automation. Sometimes people are inclined to ask me: Where is the evidence that this particular program is being abused? What can you point to that suggests anyone has used this for a nefarious political purpose or for some other illegitimate purpose not connected with protecting American national security? I have a few responses to them. First and foremost, we do need to look to the Constitution, both to the letter and spirit of that founding document that has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. It isn't important for its own sake simply because we have taken an oath to uphold, protect, and defend it as Members of this body. The Constitution is an end unto itself. It is important that we follow it regardless of whether we can point to some particular respect in which this particular program has been abused. Secondly, even if we assume, even if we stipulate for purposes of this discussion that no one within the NSA is currently abusing this program for nefarious political purposes or otherwise, even if we assume no one within the NSA currently is even capable of abusing or has any inclination to abuse this program at any point in the future, I would ask the question: Can we say we are certain that will always be the case? Who is to say what might happen 1 year from now, 2 years from now, 5 years, 10 years or 15 years from now? We know how these things happen. We understand something about human nature. We understand what happens to human beings as soon as they get a little bit of power. They tend to abuse it. Remember the investigation brought about by Senator Frank Church in the 1970s. Senator Frank Church, when he investigated wiretap abuses-- abuses of technology that was still only a few decades old back in the 1970s when this occurred--the Church Committee concluded, among other things, that every Presidential administration from FDR through Richard Nixon had abused our Nation's investigative and counterintelligence agencies for partisan, political purposes to engage in political espionage. Every single one of those administrations from FDR to Nixon had done that. In that sense, we have seen this movie before. We know how it ends. We know that even though the people working at the NSA today might well have only the noblest of intentions, over time these kinds of programs can be abused, and we know a lot of people in America understand the potential for this abuse. Thirdly, I have to point out that the NSA currently is collecting metadata only with respect to phone calls. But under the same reading of section 215 of the PATRIOT Act that the NSA has used to collect this metadata--a reading with which I disagree and a reading with which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit disagreed in its thoughtful, well-written opinion just about 2 weeks ago--even though the NSA is currently collecting only telephone call metadata right now, there is nothing about the way the NSA reads section 215 of the PATRIOT Act--which is incorrect, by the way, an incorrect reading--but there is nothing about that reading that would limit the NSA to collecting only metadata related to telephone calls. So who is to say the NSA might decide tomorrow or next year or a couple of years from now--if we reauthorize this--or at some point down the road during a period of reauthorization, that the NSA will not decide at that point to begin collecting other types of metadata, not just telephone call metadata but perhaps credit card metadata, metadata regarding people who reserve hotels online, regarding emails that people send or receive, regarding Web sites that people visit online, regarding online transactions that occur. Those are all different types of metadata. Now, again, I disagree with the NSA's legal interpretation of section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. I think they are abusing it. I think they are misusing it. I think they have dangerously misconstrued it, just as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concluded a few weeks ago. But this is their interpretation. And if we reauthorize this, are we not reauthorizing, in some respects, or at least enabling them to continue this? I don't think we are validating or ratifying what they are doing. Their interpretation of it is still wrong, but we are enabling them to engage in a continued ongoing practice of abuse of the plain language of section 215, which requires that anything they collect be relevant to an investigation. Well, their interpretation of ``relevant to the investigation'' is we might at some point in the future deem this material relevant to what we might at some point in the future be investigating. That cannot plausibly, under any interpretation of the word ``relevance,'' be acceptable. And it was on that basis that the Second Circuit rejected the NSA's interpretation. In any event, that same interpretation will still be the NSA's interpretation if, in fact, we reauthorize this. There is nothing stopping the NSA from using that same interpretation--mistaken interpretation but an interpretation nonetheless--of section 215 in a way that would allow--there is nothing stopping them from using that same misinterpretation of a statutory language for the purposes of gathering metadata on credit card usage, on online activity, on emails sent online and received. From that you can discern even more information about a person's profile. You can come up with a very frighteningly accurate picture of anyone based on that kind of metadata, just as you can now, but that would give them an even bigger picture. That would be an even greater affront to the privacy interests of the American people. All of this relates back to the idea that the government shouldn't be able to go out and say: Here is a court order. We want all of your information. We want all of your data. Just give it to us because we might want it later. This type of dragnet operation is incompatible with our legal system. It is incompatible with hundreds of years of Anglo-American legal precedence. It is incompatible with the spirit, if not the letter, of the U.S. Constitution, and it is not something we should embrace. At the end of the day, we need to do something with this program. Not everyone in this Chamber agrees on what that something is, and not everyone in this Chamber who believes we need reform or who believes the NSA's program of bulk metadata collection is wrong agrees on the same solution. But the way for us to get to a solution must involve open, transparent debate and discussion, and it absolutely should involve an open amendment process. So if there are those who have concerns with the legislation passed by the House of Representatives last week by a vote of 338 to 88, I welcome their input. I welcome any amendments they may have. I welcome the opportunity to make the bill better, to make it more compatible with this or that interest, to make it do a better job of balancing the privacy and national security interests at stake. But we have to have that debate and discussion, and we have to have that process in order for the American people to be well represented and well served. We cannot continue to function by cliff. Government-by-cliff is a recipe for disaster. Government-by-cliff results in a take-it-or-leave-it, one-size-fits-all binary set of choices that disserve the American people. Government-by-cliff all too frequently results in temporary extensions rather than some type of lasting legislative solution that can help the American people feel more comfortable that they are being well represented. So I would ask my distinguished colleague, my friend the junior Senator from Kentucky, if there are not ways in which we could come to an agreement, if we as a body couldn't come to an agreement on how best to resolve this difficult circumstance, if the cause of protecting American national security is irreconcilably in conflict with the privacy interests that are part of the Fourth Amendment and, most importantly, I would ask my friend from Kentucky if privacy isn't, in fact, part of our security rather than being in conflict with it. I would be interested in any thoughts my friend from Kentucky might have on that issue.

Mr. LEE. I do. At the outset of my question, I would like to point out that while I disagree with you, Senator Paul, with regard to the specific question of whether we should allow section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to expire in its entirety, I don't believe we need to do that. I would prefer that we pass the USA FREEDOM Act as passed by the House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin of 338 to 88 last week. While we disagree on that issue, I absolutely stand with you, Senator Paul, and I believe with the American people, on the need for an open, transparent process and debate regarding this issue. I also stand with the Senator with regard to the belief that bulk metadata collection is wrong. It is not something that we can support. It is not something that the American people feel comfortable with and that it is incompatible with the spirt if not the letter of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that we have all sworn an oath to uphold and protect and defend. Let's remember the text of the Fourth Amendment. The text of this amendment, penned in 1789, ratified in 1791, says: ``The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. These are not idle words. They are not surplusage. They are not there just for ornamental purposes. They are there to put important limitations on the power of government, to make sure that when government goes after things--things that are important to our personal lives, things that are part of our houses, things that are part of our papers, our personal effects--those things cannot just be grabbed randomly by government. Government has to have a reason for going after them, and government has to be constrained in some meaningful way in the way it goes after them. When the government relies on a warrant, the warrant needs to describe the things or the places to be searched with particularity. The people subject to them need to be identified with some particularity. And, you know, these words were meant to be flexible. They were meant to be molded from time to time in different circumstances. They are not absolute in their terminology, and that is one of the reasons they have endured for well over two centuries and why they have been able to adapt to changes in technology. But there is not any reasonable construction of this language that I think can countenance what the NSA is doing and what we are talking about here, which is the bulk collection of telephone metadata. Now, what is happening is that the NSA is getting these orders, these orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and these orders basically tell the telephone service providers: Give us all your data. Give us all your records, all of them. We don't really care whether they are relevant to an ongoing investigation of a particular person or of a particular terrorism ring or a particular foreign intelligence group of activities. We want all of them. Send all of them to us. We are going to put them all in a database and we are going to search them when we feel like it. Now, I don't dispute the claim made by the NSA that there are a limited number of people who have access to this database, nor do I dispute, at least for purposes of this discussion I am not going to dispute--and I have no basis for refuting--the assertion that the people who work at the NSA are well intentioned, that they have our national security interests at heart, that they are there to protect us. But even if we don't dispute any of those things, even if we accept all of those things as a given, we have to acknowledge the very real risk that the same people who work there now might not be--in fact, we are certain they will not be--the same people who work there 1 year from now or 2 years from now or 5 years or 10 years or 15 years from now. And we know something about human nature, which is that humans, when given power, will sometimes abuse that power. Sometimes they will abuse that power to the detriment of others. Sometimes they will do it for personal financial gain. Sometimes they will do it for political gain. Sometimes they will do it in order to further certain agendas. That is exactly why it is so important to put boundaries around the authority of government. That, of course, is what the Constitution is. This is our set of boundaries. This is our fence around government authority. It is there for a reason. It is there to make sure the American people are protected against government. So, first, the Founding Fathers put in place this structure that explained how government would work. It established the government, and then it carefully positioned this series of fences around the government to make sure power wasn't abused against the people. It is interesting, when the PATRIOT Act was enacted and when it was subsequently reauthorized several years later, Congress put in place a relevance requirement. Congress put in place--in section 215 of the PATRIOT Act--a requirement that the business records that were obtained by the NSA, pursuant to section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, had to be relevant to an investigation, relevant to some things they were doing. Here again, as with the language of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, there is some play in the joints of the term ``relevance.'' Some things might be relevant in one situation and not another. Whether it is relevant is going to depend on a lot of facts and circumstances pertinent to the investigation in question, but it stretches the term ``relevant'' or the concept of relevance beyond its breaking point, beyond any reasonable definition. If you deem something to be relevant, so long as it might in some future investigation--one that has not yet arisen--become relevant, such that you had to gather every record of every phone call made in America, such that NSA wants to go after every record of every phone call made by every American going back 5 years, storing that series of records in a single database that can be queried for up to 5 years in advance. Let's just go through this exercise for a minute. Think to yourself, how many phone calls have I made in the last 5 years? How many distinct phone numbers have I called in the last 5 years? Well, if somebody has called 1,000 phone numbers--or, let's say, made phone calls to 500 phone numbers and received phone calls from another group of 500 phone numbers, for a total of 1,000 phone numbers over the last 5 years, then that is 1,000 numbers. Then the NSA goes out one hop beyond that and connects each person, each phone number with whom the original person had contact. Let's assume that each of those phone numbers had, in turn, contact with 1,000 phone numbers. You get to 1 million phone numbers pretty quickly. But each time the NSA collects these data points, each data point taken in isolation might not say much about that person. But as our friend and our colleague from Oregon noted a few minutes ago, it is by using that combination of data points, by aggregating all of those data points together, someone can tell an awful lot about a person. In fact, there are researchers who, having used similar metadata and similar sets of metadata in their own databases, have concluded that they can tell what religion a person belongs to, what political party someone belongs to, their degree of religiosity, and their degree of political activity. They can tell what someone's hobbies are. They can tell whether they have children, whether they are married. They can tell how healthy they are, what physical ailments they might suffer from. In many instances, they can tell what medications they are on. And all of these things are made more efficient by virtue of the automation in this system. So while it is true people point out that under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, under this particular program, the NSA is not listening to telephone conversations. They are not listening to them. Interestingly enough, this is very often a straw man argument that is thrown out by those who want to make sure that section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is reauthorized without any reforms. They claim that those who are opposed to this type of action are out there falsely claiming that the NSA is listening to phone calls over this program. Well, that accusation of falsehood is, itself, false. That accusation of falsehood is, itself, a straw man effort. It is a red herring. It is a lie. It is a lie intended to malign and mischaracterize those of us who have genuine, legitimate concerns with this very program, because the fact is we don't make that argument. The argument we are making is that the NSA doesn't even need to do that. The NSA can tell all kinds of things about people just by looking at that data. Because it is automated and because it is within a system that operates with a series of computers, they can tell very quickly it is a lot less human resource-intensive than it would be if they were having to listen to countless hours of phone conversations. It is a lot more efficient. Again, I want to be clear. I have no proof that the NSA is currently abusing this particular program. I am not aware of any evidence that such abuse is occurring. And I am willing to assume, for purposes of this discussion, that is not occurring, that the men and women who work at the NSA have nothing but the best interests of the American people and American national security at heart. But how long will this remain the case? And how safe, how fair is it of us to assume that will always be the case? We can scarcely afford-- for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and those who will come after them--we cannot afford to simply assume this will always be the case. We have to remember what happened a few decades ago when Senator Frank Church and his committee looked into wiretap abuses that had happened within the government. We have to remember the Church report that was released at the end of that investigation. That report concluded that every Presidential administration from FDR through Richard Nixon had utilized law enforcement and intelligence- gathering agencies within the Federal Government to go engage in political espionage. So that technology, which was then only a few decades old, had been abused. It had been abused for a long time. The abuse of this technology had gone, of course, unreported for many decades, but it had nonetheless been occurring. Again, I don't know, I can't prove it. I have no evidence that such abuse is going on right now. But I think all of us, in order to be honest with ourselves, would have to acknowledge that there is at least some risk that if it is not occurring now, at some point it will occur in the future. This temptation is simply too strong for most mortals to resist, particularly in an area such as this where there is, with good reason, very little ability for the outside world to observe what is going on inside that particular government agency. Now, that is exactly why I happen to support what was passed by the House of Representatives last week. What was passed by the House of Representatives last week in the form of the USA FREEDOM Act was something that would require the NSA to, instead of going out to all the telephone companies and saying, send us all of your records, we want your calling records, just give us your records, we don't care whether it is relevant to a particular phone call, particular to a specific number that was itself involved in terrorist activity or foreign surveillance activity, we don't care about that, just send it to us--far from doing that, what the USA FREEDOM Act would require is for the government to show that they needed records related to a telephone number that was itself involved in some kind of activity. They wouldn't have the ability to go to all the phone companies and just say send us everything. They would instead have the power to get a court order, to get those records of those phone calls that might well be connected to terrorism based on their contact with a phone number that was related to such activities or their contact with somebody else, with some other phone number that was, in turn, having some kind of communication with someone involved in those activities. Not all of us agree on this and, Senator Paul, you and I don't agree on this particular bill, but we do agree on the underlying issue. And we also agree that the Senate works best, that the Senate serves the American people well when it lives up to its self-described reputation as being the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. We would all be better off if we were able to put this bill on the floor right now--if this bill were able to come to the floor and it were subjected to open, honest debate and discussion so the American people could see we were debating this and so that you, Senator Paul, and some of our other colleagues who have ideas as to how we could make this legislation better would have the opportunity to introduce, in the form of an amendment, improvements to this legislation. I heard you outline quite articulately just a few hours ago some very thoughtful reforms, some very well-thought-through improvements, amendments that you would make to this legislation. I think we would all be better off if we took that kind of approach. Now, we have seen in the last few months what can happen. When we came back in January, we saw that the desks in the Senate Chamber had been rearranged. Many of us were pleased. We didn't shed a tear at the realignment of the desks, and we have noticed that this realignment of the desks reflected a change in the political attitude among Americans. But, more importantly for us, it was the precursor to some very positive developments in the Senate. We saw that within just a few weeks after this shift in power had occurred, we had cast more votes on the floor of the Senate than we had in the entire previous year. Within a few months, we had cast more votes on the floor of the Senate than we had cast in the 2 years previous to that. This was a good sign. This is a good sign. It is not just because we are here and we cast votes; it is because those votes represent something--they represent the fact that we are actually debating and discussing and we are allowing each Senator to have his or her views heard. We are putting ourselves on record as to what we believe represents good policy and what does not. I think we would be in a much better position to address the national security needs of our great country if we had such an opportunity with respect to this legislation. That is one of the reasons I came to the floor yesterday, along with one of our colleagues, the senior Senator from Vermont, and asked unanimous consent to bring this bill--the House-passed USA FREEDOM Act, H.R. 2048--to the floor and to have open debate and discussion and an open amendment process, with the understanding we would turn back to the trade promotion authority bill as soon as we had properly disposed of this legislation, as soon as we had finished debating and discussing it, voting on amendments and voting on the legislation. I am a big believer in free trade. I like free trade. I think free trade is good. I would like to see us get to both of these pieces of legislation. But importantly, H.R. 2048 is a piece of legislation that has kind of a fuse attached to it. Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is set to expire at the end of this month, and many of us believe we ought to at least have a debate and discussion before that happens, a debate and discussion about what, if anything, would take its place, about whether we need something to put in its place and if so, what that might look like. So that is why we made this request. This request we regarded as a very reasonable one was, unfortunately, one that drew an objection, so we were not able to bring it to the floor. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, based in New York, recently addressed this issue of whether section 215 of the PATRIOT Act can appropriately be read to authorize the NSA to engage in this bulk metadata collection program. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit answered that question in the negative and concluded there is no statutory authority for the NSA to collect this type of metadata. It doesn't have the authority. It cannot collect bulk metadata on this basis. As the Second Circuit concluded, the business records sought under that provision have to be relevant. There has to be some relevance to something they are investigating. And of course their only relevance here, under this program, is that they exist; it is that they represent phone calls made by someone in the United States, that they were made under a telephone network in the United States. That can't be the answer. That cannot reflect a proper understanding of this concept of relevance that is in section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. It can't, and it doesn't. This court ruling is one of the many reasons why we need to be having this debate and why we shouldn't be willing to simply reauthorize section 215 of the PATRIOT Act with the understanding that the NSA will continue operating this program as is if we reauthorize it. It is one of the reasons why I have been so insistent on having this discussion and so unwilling to support even a shorter term reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act--because they are interpreting section 215 in the PATRIOT Act beyond its logical breaking point. We have to remember that the Constitution is worth protecting. It is worth protecting even when we can't point to anything bad that is happening right now, even when we can't point to any specific abuse that is occurring. Bulk data collection is itself a type of abuse. There is a type of constitutional injury even though we can't point to anything secondary from that. We can't point to any horrible secondary effect from it; it is in and of itself wrong. The wrongness of this program can be illustrated when we take to its logical conclusion the very arguments presented by the NSA for this type of activity. Let me explain. The metadata that is collected by the NSA right now relates exclusively to telephone calls. The records they collect involve records of who you call, when you called them, who calls you, when they called you, and how long the phone call at issue lasted. That is it. But if the NSA is correct in its interpretation of section 215, which it is not, but if it were correct, there is absolutely no reason why the NSA could not also collect a number of other types of metadata-- metadata records, for example, involving the use of your credit card, involving hotel reservations, involving airplane reservations, metadata regarding emails you have either sent or received, who you sent them to and who you received them from, your Internet traffic, where you have purchased online, who has purchased something from you online, and all kinds of things. From that metadata, they could clearly paint a much more vivid picture of you, a profile built as a mosaic from a billion data points. They can tell everything about you from that type of metadata. Sure, the NSA is not collecting that type of metadata right now. They are not doing it right now. But if we reauthorize this without limitation, if we reauthorize section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and we don't include any kind of restriction on it, there is absolutely no reason why the NSA couldn't conclude tomorrow or next week or a year from now or later that it wants to collect this kind of data as well. I would suspect nearly all Americans would be shocked and horrified to think the NSA could and would and might at some point in the future collect that kind of information on where you shop online, your credit card bills, your hotel reservations, things like that, things that could easily be connected back to an individual and easily give rise to abuse either for partisan political purposes or for some other nefarious purpose. I also want to point out that those who are in favor of this program and those who vigorously defend its constitutionality routinely rely on a decision rendered by the Supreme Court in the late 1970s in a case called Smith v. Maryland. They point out that in Smith v. Maryland the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of some police activity that involved the collection of calling data. The Supreme Court concluded in that case that there was not a sufficiently significant expectation of privacy in records of calls that somebody had made and received such that the collection of that data would require a search warrant. I am not altogether certain that Smith v. Maryland was decided correctly, but let's assume for a minute it was decided correctly and just address the fact that it is a decision that remains on the books. It is precedent that is followed throughout the courts of the United States. That is fine. Let's just accept the fact that it is on the books. But it is very, very different--not just quantitatively different but also qualitatively different--when you are dealing not with one target of one single criminal investigation and not just with maybe a few weeks of calling records but when you are dealing with 5 years of calling records not on one person, of one target in one criminal investigation by one group of law enforcement officers, but 300 million people stretched out over 5 years. That calling data becomes more significant, moreover, when Americans become more attached to their telephones, when their telephone isn't something that is just plugged into the wall but something that is carried with them every moment of every day. This, by the way, adds to the potential list of metadata that could be collected because of course many people now have telephones that track their location. I don't see any reason why, based on the interpretation of section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that the NSA has put forward, they couldn't start collecting the location data as well, which would further undermine privacy issues. So Smith v. Maryland, whether you like it or not, is precedent. It is precedent that is followed by the courts in America, but it is not the end of the story. It certainly doesn't get you over the hump when it comes to this type of collection. Saying that what was covered by Smith v. Maryland is the same thing as what the NSA is trying to do here is a little bit like comparing a pony ride to a ride to the Moon and back. They both involve some form of transportation, but they are worlds apart, drastically different, and so much so that they can't really even be compared. Our technology has changed dramatically over the years--so much so that if we don't stop and think about it, we might not even recognize it. A few years ago when my son James was about 10 years old, he came up with a really good idea that he announced to us. He said: You know, I have been thinking about it, and I am going to invent something. We said: What is that? He said: Well, I am going to invent a telephone that is attached to the wall. It will be attached to the wall so it can't be removed. It will have a wire that runs into the wall, and that is how the telephone will work. We looked at him and wondered what gave him this idea and what gave him the idea that that was somehow unique. We said: Well, first of all, what makes you think that hasn't already been invented? And secondly, why would you want to do that? He said: Well, I think it is a great idea because it is the only way you wouldn't lose your phone. Only then did we realize what he was saying. Only then did we realize that what he was telling us was that during his lifetime, he had never seen in our home a phone that was attached to the wall. He had seen cell phones and he had seen cordless landline phones, and he had seen telephones get lost from time to time. So our technology does change, and as our technology changes, we have to take that into account. Well, our technology has changed now to the point where our government can learn all kinds of personal facts about us through metadata, through the type of metadata involved here, and it is only getting more and more this way every single day as we transact more and more of our day-to-day business over our telephones and as our telephones become more sophisticated, more portable, and more capable of processing more and more data. The text of the Fourth Amendment I quoted just a few minutes ago is still very relevant today. The fact that the Fourth Amendment refers specifically to the right of the people to be secure in their persons, their houses, and their papers and effects is still relevant today and should remind us of the fact that our persons, our houses, and our papers and effects more and more really become a part of this--they really become a part of our telephones. Our papers are not always physical papers. More and more, they are not. Increasingly, we are even asked to sign documents that previously would have been physically signed on a hard copy, a stack of papers-- increasingly you can do business transactions without ever handling a physical paper. Increasingly, you can do those things electronically. People often prefer to do it that way. It saves time. It saves money. But as more and more of our lives are played out on these portable digital devices, it becomes more and more important for us to be remember there are Fourth Amendment ramifications when the government wants to get involved in what we do on those same devices. That is why it is not really fair any more to simply rely reflexively on Smith v. Maryland to say this is all constitutional, nor is it fair to say that your phone company already has this record, so there is no reason why the government shouldn't have it. I actually don't even see that comparison. Some people think this is somehow persuasive. I don't find it persuasive at all. There is a world of difference between allowing a private business with which you have voluntarily chosen to interact to have your business records, particularly when it is a private business that you want to have that information so that private business can keep track of how much you owe them or how much they owe you--there is a world of difference between a private business entity having those records and the government having those records. The worst thing that a private business can do is perhaps send you too many emails that you don't want asking you for more business or maybe it can give some of your personal data to somebody else who will in turn make phone calls you don't want to receive or send you emails you don't want to receive. That private business has no ability to put you in prison. That private business has no ability to levy taxes on you. That private business has no ability to make your life a living hell in the same way that your government has the ability to do those things--not just the ability but, lately, with increasing frequency, with strong and seemingly irresistible inclination. This is not a victimless offense against the spirit and, arguably, the letter of the Constitution. These kinds of things have real-world ramifications. They ought to be troubling to all of us, and we ought to want to do something about them. So for these reasons, Senator Paul, I would ask you, don't you think it would be much better to put this bill on the floor now and allow for an open amendment process, one in which you and each of our other colleagues could have an opportunity to provide input, to try to improve the legislation, and to try to do something meaningful with this legislation, rather than just simply ignore it, pretend it didn't exist, sweep it under the rug or wait until we are up against a cliff-- this critical cliff between when the Senate, much to my chagrin and the chagrin of many of our colleagues, is set to adjourn and leading up to the moments when this program is set to expire? Wouldn't we be better off to take this up and debate this under the light of day, under the view of the American people?

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, free trade is of absolute importance in this country. We need free trade. I like free trade. I want trade to be as free as it possibly can be. It is not, however, as pressing as another matter that we should be considering now. Certain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act will expire a week from Sunday at midnight. This is an important issue, and it is one that deserves debate and full consideration within the Senate. I want to point out that we have had months and months to plan for this deadline--years, in fact. During these last several months, we have worked with House Members, members of the law enforcement community, and members of the intelligence community to create a compromise bill that now enjoys the support of the Attorney General of the United States, of the Director of National Intelligence, the telecom industry, the NRA, the tech community privacy groups, and 338 Members of the House of Representatives. This is a supermajority--a super-duper majority. We have had a week since the House passed this bill, and it is time that we take it up in earnest and give it the full attention and consideration of the Senate that it deserves. Then we can return to TPA and finish it without facing expiration of a key national security tool without anything to put in its place. This is a bill--the USA FREEDOM Act, as enacted by the House of Representatives--that represents an important compromise, represents a very careful and effective balancing between privacy and security interests, recognizing the fact that our privacy and our security are not in conflict. They are part of the same thing. We are secure in part because our privacy is respected. This bill respects both of those. We know that it is not easy to get to 218 votes for a lot of things on this issue in the House of Representative. In fact, we know it is impossible to get to 218 votes in the House of Representatives for a clean reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions in question. We know that a lot of other things would be difficult to impossible to pass in the House. We know that one bill does enjoy a supermajority in the House of Representatives, and that is the USA FREEDOM Act. We should be taking that up now. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate set aside consideration of H.R. 1314, the TPA legislation, and move to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2048, the USA FREEDOM Act, that the motion to proceed be agreed to, and that the bill be open for amendments; further, that upon disposition of H.R. 2048, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 1314.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend the colloquy for a period of an additional 15 minutes to allow a couple of other Members to participate in the colloquy.

Mr. LEE. I would like to now hear from my friend and colleague, the junior Senator from Nevada, Mr. Heller, and hear his thoughts on how people in his State--how people he knows across the country feel about this program and what we ought to do about it.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we would like to hear next from my friend and colleague, the junior Senator from Montana, on this issue.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend the colloquy by an additional 5 minutes so we can hear from my friend and colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am here to speak in support of the USA FREEDOM Act, a bill that would restrain the power of government to collect data on phone calls made by average, everyday, ordinary, law- abiding American citizens--300 million-plus Americans--without any suspicion that any one of them is engaged in any kind of criminal activity, any kind of activity involving the collection of foreign intelligence. I appreciate the support I have received for this bill, and I appreciate the opportunity to work with my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Vermont. Senator Leahy and I feel passionate about this issue. Although Senator Leahy and I come from different ends of what some would perceive as the political spectrum and although we don't agree on every issue, there are many issues on which we do agree. There are many issues, such as this one, on which we can say that these issues are neither Republican nor Democratic, they are neither liberal nor conservative, they are simply American issues, constitutional issues. They are issues that relate to the proper order of government. They are issues that relate to the rule of law itself. The Constitution of the United States protects the American people against unreasonable searches. It does so against a long historical backdrop of government abuse. Over time, our Founding Fathers came to an understanding that the immense power of government needs to be constrained because those in power will tend to accumulate more power and, in time, they will tend to abuse that power unless that power is carefully constrained. America's Founding Fathers were informed in many respects by what they learned from our previous national government, our London-based national government. They were informed, in part, by the story of John Wilkes. John Wilkes--not to be confused with John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln--John Wilkes was a member of the English Parliament. He was a member of Parliament who in 1763 found himself at the receiving end of King George III's justice. In 1763, John Wilkes had published a document known as the North Briton No. 45. The North Briton was a weekly circular, a type of news magazine in England--one that, unlike most of the other weeklies in England at the time, was not dedicated to fawning praise of King George III and his ministers. No. This weekly would from time to time criticize the actions of King George III and his ministers. At the time John Wilkes published the North Briton No. 45, he became the enemy of the King because he had criticized certain remarks delivered by the King in his address to Parliament. While not openly directly critical of the King himself, he criticized the King's minister who had prepared the remarks. For King George III, this was simply too much; this simply could not stand. So, before long, on Easter Sunday 1763, John Wilkes found himself arrested, and he found himself subject to an invasive search--a search performed pursuant to a general warrant and one that didn't specify the names of the individuals to be searched, the particular places to be searched, or the particular items subject to that invasive search. It said, basically, in essence: Go and find the people responsible for this horrendous publication, the North Briton No. 45, and go after them. Search through their papers and get everything you want, everything you need. John Wilkes decided that his rights as an Englishman prevented this type of action--or should have, under the law, prevented this type of action--so he chose to fight this action in court. It took time. John Wilkes spent some time in jail, but he eventually won his freedom. He was subsequently reelected to multiple terms in Parliament. Because he fought this battle against the administration of King George III, he became something of a folk hero across England. In fact, the number 45, with its association with the North Briton No. 45--the publication that had gotten him in trouble in the first place--the number 45 became synonymous not only with John Wilkes but also with the cause of freedom itself. The number 45 was a symbol of liberty not only in England but also in America. People would celebrate by ordering 45 drinks for their 45 closest friends. People would recognize this symbol by writing the number 45 on the walls of taverns and saloons. The number 45 came to represent the triumph of the common citizen against the all-powerful force of an overbearing national government. With the example of John Wilkes in mind, the Founding Fathers were rightly wary of allowing government access to private activities and the communications of citizens. They feared not only that the government could seize their property but that it could gain access to details about their private lives. It was exactly for this reason that when James Madison began writing what would become the Fourth Amendment in 1789, he used language to make sure that general warrants would not be the norm and, in fact, would not be acceptable in our new Republic. Ultimately, Congress proposed and the States ratified the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides in pertinent part that any search warrants would have to be warrants ``particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.'' General warrants are not the norm in America. General warrants are not acceptable in America. They are not compatible with our constitutional system. Yet, today, we see a disturbing trend, one that bears some eerie similarities to general warrants in the sense that we have the NSA collecting information--data--on every phone call that is made in America. If a person owns a telephone, if a person uses a telephone, the NSA has records going back 5 years of every number a person has called and every number from which a person has received a call. It knows when the call was placed. It knows how long the call lasted. While any one of these data points might themselves not inform the government too much about a person, researchers using similar data have proven that the government could, if it wanted to, use that same data set, that same database to discern an awful lot of private information about a person. The government could discern private information, including a person's religious affiliation; political affiliation; level of activity politically, religiously, and otherwise; the condition of a person's health; a person's hobbies and interests. These metadata points, while themselves perhaps not revealing much in the aggregate, when put into a large database, can reveal a lot about the American people. This database is collected for the purpose of allowing the NSA to check against possible abuses by those who would do us harm, by agents, foreign intelligence agents, spies. But the problem here is that the NSA isn't collecting data solely on numbers that are involved in foreign intelligence activity, nor is it collecting data solely on phone numbers contacted by those numbers suspected to be involved in some type of foreign intelligence activity. They are just collecting all of the data from all of the phone providers. They are putting it in one database and then allowing that database to be searched. This issue was recently challenged in court. It was challenged and was recently the subject of a ruling issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit based in New York. Just a few days ago, this last Thursday, the Second Circuit concluded that Congress, in enacting the PATRIOT Act, in enacting section 215 of the PATRIOT Act-- the provision in the PATRIOT Act that claims to justify this bulk data collection program--the Second Circuit concluded that section 215 of the PATRIOT Act does not authorize bulk collection. It does not authorize the NSA to simply issue orders to telephone service providers saying: Send us all of your data. The language in the PATRIOT Act permitted the government to access the records that were ``relevant to an authorized investigation.'' That is the language from section 215 that is at issue. The government argued in that case that the term ``relevant'' in the context of the NSA's work meant and necessarily included every record regarding every telephone number used by every American. By interpreting it this way, they tried to basically strip all meaning from the word ``relevant.'' If Congress had meant every record, Congress could have said every record. It did not. That is not to say it would have been appropriate for Congress to do so, and had Congress legislated in such broad terms, I suspect there would have been significant concern raised, if not in court then at least within this Chamber and within the House of Representatives. But, importantly, Congress did not adopt that statutory language. Congress instead authorized NSA to collect records that are ``relevant to an authorized investigation.'' The Second Circuit agreed that this is a problem, holding last week that the bulk collection program exceeded the language of the statute-- specifically, the word ``relevant.'' While ``relevant'' is a broad standard, it is intended to be a limiting term whose bounds were read out of the statute by a government willing to overreach its bounds. The proper American response to government overreach involves setting clear limits--limits that will allow the people to hold the government accountable. We must not permit this type of collection to continue. While it is true that a single call record reveals relatively little information about a person, again, the important thing to remember is that when we aggregate all of this data together, the government can tell a lot about a person. I have every confidence that and I am willing to assume for purposes of this discussion that the hard- working, brave men and women who work at the NSA have our best interests at heart. I am willing to assume for purposes of this discussion that they are not abusing this database as it stands right now. Some would disagree with me in that assumption, but let's proceed under that assumption, that they are law-abiding individuals who are not abusing their access to this database. Who is to say the NSA will always be inhabited only by such people? Who is to say what the state of affairs might be 1 year from now or 2 years or 5 years or 10 or 15 years? We know that in time people tend to abuse these types of government programs. We know from the Church report back in the 1970s that every administration from FDR through Nixon used our Nation's intelligence- gathering activities to engage in espionage. It is not a question of if such tools will be abused; it is a question of when they will be abused. It is our job as Senators to help protect the American people against excessive risk of this type of abuse. That is why Senator Leahy and I have introduced the USA FREEDOM Act. It directly addresses the bulk data collection issue while preserving essential intelligence community capabilities. Rather than relying on the government's interpretation of the word ``relevant,'' our bill requires that the NSA include a specific selection term--a term meant to identify a specific target--and that the NSA then use the term to limit to the greatest extent reasonably practicable the scope of its request. We give the government the tools to make targeted requests in a manner that parallels the current practice at the NSA--in many respects, a practice that is currently limited only by Presidential preferences. This bill would enable the court to invite precleared privacy experts to help decide how to address novel questions of law, if the court wanted input. The bill also would increase our security in several ways, including by providing emergency authority when a target of surveillance enters the United States to cause serious bodily harm or death and instituting the changes necessary to come in line with the Bush era nuclear treaties. This bill was negotiated in consultation with the House Judiciary Committee, the House Intelligence Committee, and the intelligence community at large. It is supported by the chairman and ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee, the House Intelligence Committee, and the Director of National Intelligence. It enjoys broad support from industry and from privacy groups. This is a compromise--an important compromise that will enable us to protect Americans' privacy while giving the government the tools it needs to keep us safe. This is a compromise that is expected to pass the House overwhelmingly, and it is a bill I think we should take up and pass as soon as they have voted. So I would ask my friend, my colleague, the distinguished senior Senator from Vermont, about his insights. My friend from Vermont has served his country well, having served a significant amount of time in the U.S. Senate. Prior to that time, he served as a prosecutor--a prosecutor who had to follow and was subject to the Fourth Amendment. I would ask Senator Leahy, in his experience as a prosecutor and as a Senator, what he sees as the major benefits to this legislation and the major pitfalls to the NSA's current practice of bulk data collection.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate the patience of Senator Hatch and his willingness to wait while we finished this exercise. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, each year members of Congress are authorized, under title 10 of the U.S. Code, to nominate a number of young men and women from their district or State to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy, and the U.S. Naval Academy. But receiving a congressional nomination is no guarantee of acceptance. To be admitted, each applicant must meet--on his or her own merits--the academies' rigorous standards. I am proud to announce the names of 20 outstanding Utahns who have met these standards and who will attend one of the academies in the summer of 2015. This is more than twice as many accepted applicants than I have ever seen in my 5 years in the Senate. Each of these 20 students is of sound mind and body. This will serve them well in Colorado Springs, West Point, and Annapolis. But to succeed, they will need more than this. The journey these young men and women are about to begin requires more than intellectual and physical fitness. It also demands strong moral character--leadership, courage, honesty, prudence, and self- discipline. And it calls for a commitment to service and a love of country. Today, I would like to recognize and congratulate each of these impressive students, all of whom embody, in their own unique way, the standards of excellence on which America's service academies are built. Cole Bennett Biedermann will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. Cole will be graduating from Skyline High School, where he was a member of the National Honor Society, captain of the track team, and president of the physics club. Dedicated to helping those around him and serving his community, Cole tutored his high school classmates and volunteered at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Jonsen Koy Crandall will be returning to the U.S. Air Force Academy after serving for two years in Taichung, Taiwan on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A graduate of South Summit High School, where he was a two-time State champion wrestler, Jonsen is currently attending Dixie State University, where he served as an outstanding intern in my St. George office. Thomas Abram Davenport will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Thomas will be coming to West Point from Brigham Young University-Hawaii, where he participated in the ROTC. Originally from Draper, UT, Thomas earned his Eagle Scout, attended Boys State, was a member of the National Honor Society, and toured with the service, singing, and performing group Clayton Productions. McKenna Elise Fox will be returning to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where she played on the women's soccer team, after serving in the Guayaquil North Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. McKenna graduated from Lone Peak High School, where she was recognized as an outstanding student and served as captain of the soccer team. Stephen William Kelly, from Juan Diego Catholic High School, will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Excelling in music, athletics, and academics, Stephen played in the drum line and steel band, was an award-winning pitcher for the baseball team, and never missed an honor role while in high school. Stephen also participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition and served as a volunteer for the Knights of Columbus. Paul Michael Lee will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. A graduate of Northridge High School, and currently enrolled in Northwestern Preparatory School, Paul participated in the Air Force JROTC and was a member of the National Honor Society. Having spent a portion of his childhood with his family on the Yongsan Garrison Army Base in South Korea, Paul would later become involved in Model United Nations. He is also an accomplished table tennis player. Brandon Arthur Lloyd will be returning to the U.S. Air Force Academy after serving for 2 years in Berlin, Germany on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A graduate from Highland High School and the Air Force Academy Prep School, Brandon earned his Eagle Scout, attended Boys State, and was named Wrestler of the Year while serving as team captain. Jace Aukela Miller, from American Fork High School, will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. A model student athlete, Jace was a member of the National Honor Society and captain, as well as most valuable player of the lacrosse team. In addition to working as a lifeguard at the American Fork Recreation Center, Jace volunteered his time teaching outdoor adventure skills to at-risk youth. Tanner Scott Munson will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. Tanner will be graduating from Lehi High School, where he was a member of the National Honor Society and captain of the soccer team. An exemplar of community service and civic participation, Tanner served as a member of the Lehi City Youth Council, an intern with Lehi Fire and Rescue, and a volunteer with special-needs children. Julia ``Genna'' Genevieve Murray will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A Utah State champion sprinter and captain of the track and field team, Genna will be graduating from Springville High School. In addition to serving as a volunteer with at-risk youth, Genna is an outstanding student and a member of the National Honor Society. Taylor Mize Porges, from Park City High School, will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. Excelling in academics and athletics, Taylor was a member of the National Honor Society, captain of the soccer team, and president of Park City Climbing Club. In addition to serving as a volunteer with Youthlinc in South America, he participated in the Park City Center for Advanced Professional Studies, where he helped create a 3-D model of the Heber Airport for flight simulation programs. Joshua Dalton Proulx will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. A graduate of Bonneville High School, Joshua is currently attending Greystone Preparatory School at Schreiner University. In addition to being an Eagle Scout, Joshua was a member of the National Honor Society and captain of the cross country and track and field teams. He also served as president of the Parent Teacher Student Association and participated in the Civil Air Patrol. Mormon Joseph Ephraim Redd will be returning to the U.S. Air Force Academy after spending the past 2 years serving in the Japan Fukuoka mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Originally from Farmington, UT, Mormon is the seventh brother in his family to serve in the Armed Forces. He graduated from Viewmont High School, where he was captain of the wrestling team and an honor student. He has also volunteered with the Youthlinc humanitarian programs. Corben David Ruf, from North Summit High School, will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. At North Summit, Corben distinguished himself in student government, as student body president; in academics, as a General Sterling Scholar and member of the National Honor Society; and in athletics, as captain of the football and wrestling teams. He also attended the Utah National Guard Freedom and Leadership Academy and won best supporting actor in the Utah Festival Opera. Matthew Walker Schvaneveldt will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Currently attending the Northern Utah Academy for Math, Engineering and Science, as well as Weber State University, Matthew is an Eagle Scout, attended Boys State, and was captain of the wrestling team. He also received the volunteer of the year award from McKay-Dee Hospital, and served as president of his school's National Honor Society. Parker Dawson Sharp, a graduate of both Wasatch High School and Northwestern Preparatory School, will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. In addition to earning his Eagle Scout, Parker has excelled in music, as an accomplished cellist, pianist, and vocalist. He also participated in Model United Nations, and is a Krav Maga enthusiast. Parker is currently attending the University of Utah. Dean Quentin Smith, from Timpanogos High School, will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As an Eagle Scout, captain of the wrestling and baseball teams, and president of the Chinese Club, Dean has been a leader in all of his pursuits. He was also a member of the National Honor Society, and he volunteered with special-needs children. Dietrich Gregory Streuber will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dietrich will be graduating from Morgan High School, where he was a member of the debate team and the National Honor Society, as well as captain of the football team. Dietrich also earned his Eagle Scout, attended Boys State, and participated in the Weber- Morgan Governing Youth Council. Christopher Mark Vincent, from Skyline High School, will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. A recipient of the Kiwanis Hope of American Leadership Award, Christopher is an Eagle Scout and captain of the Skyline High School debate team. He also attended Boys State and the Utah National Guard Freedom and Leadership Academy. Jacob Henry Witt, currently a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy. A graduate of Wasatch High School, Jacob was the captain of the tennis team and a member of the National Honor Society. He was a member of the Future Business Leaders of America, FBLA, State championship team, and he received first place in the Marine Corps essay contest for his writing on the U.S. Constitution and The Federalist Papers. It has been an honor and an inspiration to meet and to nominate each of these young men and women. Doing so has given me an unshakeable confidence in the future of this great Nation and the future of our armed services. But to these 20 students, and to all their future classmates from around the country, do not forget: this is but the beginning of your journey. You would not have arrived at this point were it not for your hard work and sacrifice. But what matters most now is not your accomplishments of the past, but what you have yet to achieve in the future.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendments and call up amendments Nos. 1141, 1145, and 1148 on behalf of Senator Rubio.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 139, submitted earlier today.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Gov. Norm Bangerter, who served as Utah's 13th Governor from 1985 to 1993. He was truly an extraordinary man and an exceptional leader. He passed away this past Tuesday, April 14, at the age of 82. He loved Utah, and he loved this great Nation. As a veteran, a business owner, an elected official, a father, and a man of faith, he led a life of service to his community, to his church, and to his country. Norm Bangerter once described himself as ``just an old farmer and carpenter.'' And he was those things. While the qualities of a farmer and a carpenter may seem far removed from business and political leadership, his farmer's grit and determination saw him through many tough political battles, and his eye as a master craftsman ensured every step along the way he could not only start a project, but he knew how to put a fine finish on that project and see it through all the way to completion. His willingness to get his hands a ``little dirty'' enabled him to tackle difficult issues, the kinds of issues that required hard work and heavy lifting far from the spotlight and limelight of public praise. And he was, indeed, a builder. He was a builder of business, a builder of the great State of Utah, and, as I personally experienced, a builder of people. I, like so many others throughout my great State and elsewhere, have been blessed by Governor Bangerter's vision for building other leaders. He stood with me as a young candidate and as a new Senator and provided priceless insight, wisdom, and perspective. He taught me that it was never about me but always about the State, about the Nation, and about future generations. He proved his commitment to this principle when he described his decision not to seek a third term as Governor. When he made that announcement, he said: We have not concentrated on image or on protecting our popularity in the polls. We have taken the problems as they came, head on, and we have proposed the best solution we knew regardless of political consequences. . . . I want to go down in history as the Governor who didn't spend eight years worrying about how he would go down in history. All of us in Congress could benefit from this kind of approach. All of us in Congress could learn a great deal from this man's extraordinary example. Governor Bangerter was one of the most unassuming, kind, honest, genuinely decent people I have ever met. He was the kind of man and was the kind of great Governor who, like a great farmer and a great carpenter, left the world much better than he found it. Like the farmer planting oak trees for the next generation or the carpenter finishing a finely crafted masterpiece that becomes a treasured heirloom for generations to enjoy, Governor Bangerter spent his life planting the seeds for the extraordinary State of Utah and crafted a legacy of leadership that will be remembered and will be followed for many decades to come. Governor Norm Bangerter's leadership will be missed, and his friendship will be cherished forever. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEE. I call up my amendment No. 1116, which is at the desk.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, just 2 weeks after the Senate passed a 10- year balanced budget, we find ourselves on the very brink of passing a bill that would promptly unbalance it. We find ourselves on the brink of passing a bill that would promptly unbalance the balanced budget we just passed to the tune of $141 billion over the next decade. This is exactly the kind of bait-and-switch behavior that has eroded the public's trust in Congress in recent years. To honor the promises we made to each other and that we made to the American people, my amendment would simply subject H.R. 2 to the same pay-as-you-go budget rules that cover other spending bills in Congress. Paying for the new spending in this bill is the right thing to do, and we just passed a budget promising we would do exactly that. My amendment does nothing more than hold us to this very promise. I implore my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we are here today because our Medicare status quo is not working and it hasn't been working for a long time. For decades, Medicare has been on a path to insolvency. In 1997, Congress attempted to impose some fiscal discipline on the program by creating the sustainable growth rate or SGR. This is a budget-enforcing mechanism that calls for annual adjustments to the amounts physicians are reimbursed for treating Medicare patients. The SGR was originally billed as a permanent solution to Medicare's unsustainable fiscal trajectory. The idea was to restrain Medicare spending by linking physician reimbursements to a target amount based on the general performance of the economy as a whole. While this may have seemed like a good idea at the time--when the economy was relatively strong and stable and growing--it quickly lost its appeal when we went into the 2001 recession just a few years later. The plan also suffered from the central planners' fatal conceit that trusts bureaucracies, rather than consumer preferences and real price pressures, to determine the cost of a particular good or service. As it turns out, the actual cost of medical goods and services and the practice patterns of physicians do not necessarily align with the health of the economy or the predictions of government bureaucrats. So each year since 2003, the SGR formula has called for cuts to physician payments, and each year--often several times each year-- Congress has passed legislation to temporarily prevent the reimbursement reductions from kicking in. While these so-called doc fix bills have yielded some modest savings as new spending has traditionally been offset with cuts elsewhere in the budget, they have not restrained the quickening pace of Medicare spending. While they have successfully avoided cuts to doctors' pay, they have put the Medicare system in a near constant state of uncertainty and instability, leaving Medicare doctors and their patients hanging in the balance. America's physicians and America's seniors deserve better than this, but they also deserve better than the bill before us today--H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. Congress has long wanted to repeal the SGR--and with good reason--but this is not the way to do it. Not only does the House bill double down on Medicare's broken price control model, but it does so, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while adding $141 billion to the Federal debt over the next decade. Let's look first at the policy implications of the underlying bill. The new payment scheme proposed in this bill is simply more of the same inefficient form of central planning that further embeds Washington bureaucracy into every aspect of our health care system. It continues the role of the Federal Government as price setter, rather than the price taker, in the free market. It also inflates the administration's power as the regulator and compliance officer. The principal change proposed by H.R. 2 is to move from a Medicare payment system based on volume to one based on bureaucratic measures of quality and value, but we already know this doesn't work because it is the same policy introduced under ObamaCare that requires physicians to comply with established government guidelines and stick to rigid, one- size-fits-all best practices or pay a penalty. Instead, we should be freeing the health care community from heavy- handed regulation and constant intrusive bureaucratic scrutiny. Doing so is the only way to allow doctors to develop individualized quality treatment plans for each of their patients and to unleash innovation in the delivery of health care. But with the current doc fix expiring tomorrow and Medicare physicians facing a 21-percent pay cut, there is not enough time to reopen the bill and rewrite it with better policies. But there is-- there is--enough time to address the fiscal irresponsibility of this bill. That is why I am offering an amendment to this bill that would simply require Congress to pay for that $141 billion under its normal pay-as- you-go budget rules--rules that this bill explicitly exempts itself from in section 525 of the bill. The pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, which share bipartisan support in Congress and the White House, wouldn't force us to offset the new spending immediately. Rather, we would have until the end of the year to find these savings and 10 years in which to achieve them. My amendment would not delay or change anything else in the bill. Doctors and seniors wouldn't notice any difference. It would just require Congress to budget for the costs, just as we promised we would. Indeed, just 2 weeks ago, the Senate passed a 10-year balanced budget, stating specifically that any SGR patch or repeal would not add to the deficit. So passing this bill in its current form would not only be irresponsible, it would be dishonest. It would be inconsistent with what we have just said with the budget. We have known for a long time that Medicare cannot survive without structural changes to its price control system, and we know this bill, H.R. 2, does not contain such reforms. They aren't there. According to a report issued last week by Medicare's actuaries, ``Under the new payment system, most doctors will see cuts in 2025.'' The only way to put Medicare on a sound fiscal footing is to make it work for America's doctors and for America's seniors. To do that, we need to work toward replacing the centralized price-fixing system of the status quo with a functional consumer market that empowers seniors' access to the high-quality, individualized health care they deserve, and that enables doctors to do what they do best, which is provide the very best medical treatment in the entire world. This is my goal. I believe this is a goal widely shared within this Chamber. But we can't deceive ourselves: To get there, we must be responsible with the public trust and we must be honest with ourselves. To that end, I implore my colleagues to support this amendment. To put it very simply, paying for this new spending is the right thing to do, and we just passed a budget promising that we would do it. My amendment does nothing more than hold us to that very promise. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess as under the previous order.

Mr. LEE

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