Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we received this 125-page bill yesterday evening. I have great appreciation and respect for my colleague, the Senator from Washington, and yet I can't look at this 125-page bill we saw for the first time yesterday evening without thinking that hardly enough time has passed since this legislation was introduced to even read the bill, let alone to mark it up in committee or bring it up on the Senate floor and have it passed here. Even though Congress has acted to provide emergency assistance in response to the current global pandemic, this legislation includes significant additional spending for a number of programs that have not been debated in the Senate. This bill would also create at least one new program, and I say ``at least,'' because, again, we are still trying to figure out what is in it. It creates at least one new program, the Community College and Industry Partnership Grants Program. I am sure this would do a number of good things, but, again, this thing is not ready for prime time. This program is, as far as I can tell, largely duplicative of existing programs. This legislation would provide $2 billion for it anyway. A bill of this length and a bill that provides for billions of dollars in new spending should not--I would hope would never--be passed this quickly. The Senate should take the time to thoroughly weigh the changes proposed in this legislation. Therefore, on behalf of Senator Alexander and myself, I object.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, reasonable efforts to protect those working on the frontlines in the middle of a public health crisis should certainly be applied. There are many individuals across the country steadfastly fulfilling their occupational duties to care for and otherwise help those who have the coronavirus. It is important that those individuals take precautions for their safety and for the safety of other people who happen to be around them. However, the bill under consideration, the bill that is the subject of this unanimous consent request, poses several problems. First of all, it does not respect the fact that States, localities, and businesses are far better suited than the Federal Government to determine what safety standards might be needed. Instead, the legislation forces State governments to adjust their current plans to protect workers to meet standards determined by some administrative bureaucracy in Washington. This action is burdensome, and a one-size-fits-all approach to protecting healthcare workers on the frontlines will not work. The reason it will not work is that our frontlines differ across the Nation. States must be permitted the flexibility to enact their own standards based on the needs of each State. Further, the temporary protection standards for the bill are not truly temporary. They are described as such, but they are not, as the bill calls for permanent standards to be made based on the initially temporary standards to be determined by OSHA. Finally, the bill broadly subjects all employees at risk of occupational exposure to the emergency standards to be promulgated by OSHA. This means that potentially every worker in every industry could be subjected to these requirements even though each industry has its own unique challenges that need to be addressed. So this broad-brush approach could limit the ability of certain individuals to work during this time even though they might actually be in a good position to do so safely. It is critically important for our healthcare workers to be protected in a time of crisis, but the most effective way to accomplish that is by continuing to allow States, localities, healthcare facilities, and businesses to set safety standards and to ensure that those who can safely work have the ability to do so. Therefore, on behalf of Senator Alexander and myself, I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. I call for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I am reserving the right to object. There is a single thread that runs through the Supreme Court's decision in the Bostock case earlier this week and all the way through the legislation now under discussion on the Senate floor, and that principle deals with nondiscrimination. It is a principle that, as Americans, we believe that people shouldn't be treated differently on the basis of factors, characteristics, and traits that have nothing to do with their job. I think most Americans can agree with that, and I think most Americans can agree that an individual shouldn't face such discrimination in the workplace based on his or her sexual orientation. The important thing that we have to remember is that much of where the law is found and much of what we can perceive from a position of justice and equality and fairness relates to where the exceptions are found. I have got two principal concerns with this legislation that are also shared by the Bostock ruling. The first relates to exceptions related to religious employers. Neither the Bostock decision nor the Equality Act takes the care to ensure that religious employers will be treated fairly under this approach. We need to be mindful of the need of a religious employer to maintain its doctrine and its teachings, not only in the hiring of its ministers but also in the hiring of other people who worked toward moving forward that religious institution's teachings in the way they live their lives, in their beliefs, and in their willingness to teach those things to others. This legislation doesn't do that. I think any legislation that we move forward on this needs to have it. Secondly, neither this legislation nor the Bostock decision takes into account some significant distinctions between sexual orientation on the one hand and gender identity on the other. In the case of gender identity, the law needs to take into account certain questions regarding what impact the law might have on girls and women's restrooms and locker rooms, girls and women's athletics, and single-sex safe places for people who are, for example, the victims of domestic or sexual abuse. This law, like the Bostock decision, doesn't operate with a lot of precision and sort of takes a meat cleaver to the issue without taking into account exceptions for religious entities and distinctions between sexual orientation and gender identity. On that basis, I have concerns. Knowing that I have some colleagues who want to speak to this issue, I decline to object as of this moment.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to honor 14 exemplary young Utahns who have answered the call of service to our country. Each year, Members of Congress are authorized to nominate a number of young men and women fro their district or State to attend our Nation's service academies: the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy, and the U.S. Naval Academy. The men and women whom I nominated on behalf of the State of Utah this year are some of the best and brightest in our country. Each of these students is of sound mind and body, which will serve them well in Colorado Springs, West Point, and Annapolis. But the journey on which these young men and women will soon embark demands more than strength of mind and strength of body. It demands strength of character. It requires qualities of leadership, courage, honesty, prudence, and selfdiscipline. It calls for a commitment to service and a love of country. And ultimately, it requires a willingness to give the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the safety and security of our Nation. These students have already displayed the qualities of character and the standards of excellence upon which our service academies are built. Today, I would like to take a moment to honor and congratulate these talented and generous young men and women. James Soren Beck has accepted an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He is a graduate of Lone Peak High School, where he was captain of the soccer team, a member of the National Honor Society, and CEO of his entrepreneur class. James is an Eagle Scout, a member of the Teenage Republicans, and has been a volunteer to serve veterans at the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City. Abigail Renee Belko graduated from Saint Joseph Catholic High School and will soon enter the U.S. Naval Academy. She has made it a priority to look for ways to help others and has completed over 100 hours of community service. She served as one of the school's student ambassadors and as a member of the National Honor Society, captained the track team, and played volleyball. Carson Shaun Cox, from Milford High School, has accepted an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The school's Sterling Scholar in Social Science, Carson also served as a class senator and founded the Tech Theatre club. He attended Boys State and was a captain of the two-time State champion football team and a member of the State champion baseball team. Alexander Javier Gustat accepted an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He is a graduate of Juan Diego Catholic High School, where he served as a student ambassador and as a senior class officer. He holds a number of records in swimming and was the 4A state champion in the 100m breaststroke. Alexander was the president of the Pre-Med Club, and a member of both the National Honor Society and the Social Justice Committee. Lily Faith Hawkins will be joining a family history of military service when she attends the U.S. Air Force Academy after graduating from East High School. She stayed busy as captain of the soccer team, where she was named to the All-State Soccer Team; running track; and playing rugby. She served as a member of the school's senate and participated in the National Honor Society. Lily lead her Youthlinc Humanitarian Team to both Thailand and Fiji, where they served local communities. Logan Keith Landrum accepted an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy. He knows the Air Force life well as the son of an Academy graduate. Logan graduated from Lake Braddock Secondary School in Fairfax Station, VA, where he was a champion swimmer and captain for multiple school and club swim teams. He participated in both Air Force JROTC and Army JROTC during his high school years and was a member of the JROTC Raiders. Isaiah Emmanuel Laureano, a member of the Utah Army National Guard, was proud to accept his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Isaiah worked hard and endured many challenges, which led him to Utah and to the Utah Military Academy, where he graduated as senior class president. He was a member of the National Honor Society, in addition to the cross country team, ranger team, and State champion AFJROTC Drill Team. Jessica Lynn Loyd, a graduate of the Academy for Math, Engineering and Science, will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. A standout athlete and leader, she served as captain of both her school and club swim teams. She carried athletes' voices to the Utah Swimming Board and U.S. Aquatic Sports Convention as the athlete representative. She is a member of the Civil Air Patrol and was an intern with the Salt Lake County's Sheriff's Search and Rescue Team. Richard Ashton Ottley will be attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A graduate of the Utah Military Academy--Camp Williams Campus, where he was JROTC Cadet of the Year, he focused on helping his fellow cadets as copresident of the Hope Squad. He volunteered as a tutor and served as captain of both the track and field and rugby teams. He honored our military veterans by volunteering with both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Wreaths Across America. Samantha Jimena Padilla will be continuing on to the U.S. Naval Academy after having attended the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School. A 2019 graduate of the Utah Military Academy, Samantha played soccer, basketball, ran cross country, and was a Tae Kwon Do instructor. She attended Girls State and was a member of the Civil Air Patrol, as well as the AFJROTC and U.S. Naval Sea Cadets. Matthew Andrew Sedillo will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy after graduating in 2019 from Juan Diego Catholic High School and attending the Air Force Academy Preparatory School. In high school, he was a member of the Student Senate and was a Senior Sancta Terra Retreat Leader. He was captain of his high school wrestling team and walked onto the USAFA Prep wrestling team. Douglas Cutler Smith, II has accepted an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As a graduate of Hillcrest High School, he challenged himself by taking part in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. He earned his Eagle Scout Award and served in leadership positions with his church youth group and as captain of both the baseball and football teams. Brayden Dern Whatcott, a Corner Canyon High School graduate, accepted his appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he is following in his father's footsteps. Brayden was a member of the Draper Youth City Council and attended Boys State. He founded and served as president of the Civics Club; was a member of the National Honor Society; and a member of Health Occupation Students of America, HOSA. As captain, he led the three-time State champion cross-country mountain biking team. Tyler Brandon Wright accepted an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy. A graduate of Farmington High School, Tyler served as a student ambassador and was a member of the National Honor Society and Spanish Club. He is an Eagle Scout who is a leader in his church youth council, volunteers as a tutor, and helped build schoolhouses in Peru with HEFY. Tyler serves as a member of the Civil Air Patrol and works with his family on their ranch. It has been my distinct honor to nominate each of these admirable young men and women. These Utahns give me great hope for the future of our armed services and the future of our Nation. To these 14 students and to all their future classmates from around the country, I thank you for your commitment to service and commend your achievements. While this is but the beginning of your journey, I urge you to remember the foundation of your success thus far. You would not have arrived at this point without the dedication and example of your parents, family, teachers, coaches, and mentors. Moreover, you would not have arrived at this point without your own sacrifice and hard work. Strive to continue on the path of strong moral character, and to keep love of country as a guiding principle. Look to the past with gratitude and to the future with conviction. If you stay this course, I have no doubt that your future holds great things in store. I wish you all the best as you embark on this journey. Thank you.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is telling that the bill we are considering this week called the Great American Outdoors Act was written behind closed doors and has now been hermetically sealed, walled off from amendments, by the people's elected representatives. Forget the theatrics in Seattle; this bill is the real Capitol Hill autonomous zone. In its current form, this bill enables the Federal Government, if it is enacted, to purchase new lands in perpetuity, without accountability and without oversight or any measures to make sure that it can actually care for the land that it owns, perpetuating and worsening our already highly problematic Federal public lands policy. This policy will have one overarching impact: to make life easier for politicians and bureaucrats and harder for the American people whom they, ostensibly, serve. This is not the way the Senate is supposed to run. The point of this body, its whole reason for existence, is to take imperfect bills, bring them to the floor of the Senate, and then come together so that we can hone and fine-tune them, so that we can debate them and discuss them, so that we can identify their weak points and make them stronger--or at least less weak. The Senate is supposed to have an open debate and amendment process precisely so that we can raise concerns and we can find solutions and arrive at genuine, rather than forced, compromise and consensus. This week, I have been encouraged to discover just how many of my colleagues want to do just that. Many of my colleagues from different States and from both parties are filing amendments in response to this bill. Some of those amendments would significantly change it; others would present simply small tweaks to tighten up the language or to provide for better congressional oversight so that the American people are guaranteed that what it says in the law is going to reflect what happens on the ground. These amendments have already been written. They are waiting for consideration. Anyone watching C-SPAN 2 today will notice there is nothing else happening on the Senate floor--I mean, literally nothing else happening on the Senate floor. In fact, I would note for the record that there are exactly three Members of the Senate in the Chamber right now--two on the floor and one at the Presiding Officer's desk. There is literally nothing else happening on the Senate floor. There is literally no other business with pressing deadlines pending before this body right now. The House of Representatives is adjourned and is apparently set to remain adjourned until June 30, so it is not as though we have any realistic deadline with the other side of the Capitol. The Senate, right now, would simply rather do nothing than vote on amendments that those of us from the West, Senators from the gulf coast and from various States around the country, would like to propose and have, in fact, proposed. I myself have proposed several. One of my amendments would require State legislative approval for any land acquisition proposed in that State so that land acquisition would be something Washington does with the States rather than to the States. Many people don't realize there is a big disparity among and between the States with regard to how much Federal land is owned. In every State east of Colorado, the Federal Government owns less than 15 percent. In every State Colorado and west, the Federal Government owns more than 15 percent. The average is more like 50 percent in the Western United States, and in many of those States, including my own, it is more like two-thirds of the land. In these States and particularly the rural communities and those rural communities in particular where there is the highest concentration of Federal land, there is also poverty--poverty that is not just correlated with or coincidental to the Federal land ownership, but it is causally connected to its widespread existence. Another of my amendments would require the Federal Government to dispose of current Federal lands before acquiring new ones, forcing land agencies to exercise fiscal responsibility and prioritize which lands they want to keep under their control. So getting back to referring a few minutes ago to those areas, particularly those rural areas in my State, places like San Juan County, UT--San Juan County, UT, happens to be the poorest county in the State. It is also a place where the Federal Government owns 95-plus percent of the land. This is not a coincidence. So there ought to be something in place that requires an offset so that when the Federal Government buys new land under the Land and Water Conservation Fund or otherwise, it has to offset it by disposing of land elsewhere. There also ought to be some mechanism in place so as to give the State's sovereign lawmaking body, the State legislature, the ability to accept or reject the proposed expansion of the Federal land footprint in that State. It is really easy for my colleagues from certain parts of the country--particularly those living east of the Rocky Mountains--to suggest that, you know, Federal land ownership is a great thing. First of all, a lot of people who say that do live east of the Rocky Mountains, and a lot of people who say that also incorrectly imagine that Federal public lands are more or less just national parks or declared wilderness areas. They are not. In my State, most of the Federal land is not a national park, is not a national recreation area, is not a declared wilderness area; it is just garden-variety BLM or Forest Service land that is chronically environmentally mismanaged, and that leads to chronic environmental and economic problems. I also have a number of other amendments that would reform the NEPA process--the process under the National Environmental Policy Act--to help address the maintenance backlog on neglected land that Washington, DC, already owns and controls from its perch generally thousands of miles from the land in question. Finally, I have an amendment to support Utah's interests under the Antiquities Act. Right now, other States have received protection and are protected from unilateral land grabs by the Federal Government for designation of national monuments. This is important, you see, because when they designate Federal land as a national monument, that changes the way that land can be accessed, the way it can be used. It goes from one Federal land classification to another. It is one of the strictest classifications in the sense that it is very, very difficult to use that land or for local affected populations to have influence over that land once it becomes a monument. This is significant for Utah because 28 percent of the national monument acreage designated within the 50 States over the last 25 years has been in Utah. My State is due for the same types of protections that are already in place in Wyoming and in Alaska. Those States in years past have received far too many monument designations against their will. Eventually, they received statutory protection. Utah has borne far more than its share of the burden in the designation of national monuments--monuments designated that way, by the way, by Presidents who were acting in open willful defiance of the will of the locally affected populations. I believe that this is one of the most important changes we need to see in Federal lands policy. I will continue to fight for it until we achieve justice for Utah. In fact, this change could be achieved through a single 1-page bill, one mostly consisting of two words. Inserting the words ``Or Utah'' enables Utah to receive the same protection from hostile designation of national monuments by a President not interested in the will of the local population. As important as all of these amendments are to me and my State, I am not even asking for the right to propose all of them this week. I am willing to set aside some of my priorities in order to help my colleagues pursue theirs and, most of all, to help the Senate as an institution to get back to the essential work that the Senate and the Senate alone can do. The Senate was created to be the place--the one place in our constitutional framework--where our diverse, divided Nation could come together, where we could air our disagreements and find common ground. Every time we have a national controversy, a lot of people throw around the word ``conversation.'' We need to have a conversation about race, about police brutality, about freedom of speech, about the environment, about the national debt. The list goes on and on. These are all things about which we need to have conversations. This isn't just a media trope. Senators say it too. I agree. We need to have conversations about each of these and so many other important national issues. Guess what. This, right here, is literally the room where America is supposed to have these conversations. This place right here, within these four walls, is where these conversations are supposed to happen. It is not supposed to be done only on Twitter. It is not supposed to be done only on cable news shows. It is supposed to happen right here on this floor. Yet here we are on a Thursday afternoon at 4:23, 4:24 p.m. Look around. Three Members are in the Chamber--two on the floor, one in the Chair. That is it. This is where the conversation is supposed to happen. It is not occurring--not this conversation, nor any other, not on the Senate floor, not in the middle of the week. With a whole lot of things going on in the world, we are not having it. We are not even having it on this piece of legislation, which, significant as it is, is dwarfed in comparison to the magnitude of many other issues that we have to deal with. That doesn't mean we don't need to deal with this legislation. We do. But as long as we are going to deal with it, as long as we are being asked to pass it, we need to at least have a conversation about it, and we are not doing that. The only reason that the U.S. Senate was given the powers that we have in this body by the Founders and by our constituents is to facilitate those vital conversations. This isn't the New York Times op- ed page. We are not supposed to be afraid of debate here. The Senate is here to provide the venue where all Americans and all views can be heard, to hash out our differences and arrive at a consensus and compromise in the public eye. It is especially important to do this in the Senate because this is the place where each State has equal representation. Big, heavily populated States have two Senators. So do small, sparsely populated States have two Senators. This, by the way, is the one type of change that cannot be made to the Constitution. It is the one type of constitutional amendment that is, itself, preemptively unconstitutional. You can't pursue article VI of the Constitution or amend the Constitution in such a way--even if you follow the article V amendment procedures, you cannot amend it in a way that changes the principle of equal representation in the Senate among and between the States. It is especially important to have these debates and discussions when it comes to legislation like this one, like the Great American Outdoors Act, that, while important to the entire Nation in many respects, affects some States differently than it does others. This bill has a very different impact in Utah than it does in Colorado or in Montana or in Tennessee or in Maine. It is very, very different. This is why we have the Senate--so that we can air out these grievances, so that we can air out our differences, so that we can make improvements to legislation. Perhaps we can't improve it. There are a lot of things about this bill I don't like. There are other things about it I can live with. Yet if we can't have the conversation, we don't have the ability to amend or improve the legislation. As a result, the conversation doesn't happen. And most of the American people are excluded from this debate and this discussion and this conversation entirely. This is where these conversations are supposed to occur, where we can arrive at consensus and compromise in the public eye. And this, I should note, is not for our convenience and comfort. Rather, the Senate's purpose as a deliberative body is to add another layer of republican and democratic legitimacy to the very laws we pass. The House exists to assert immediate public opinion on the basis of the proportional representation they have on that side of the Capitol. The Senate exists to identify broad-based compromise and consensus that is essential to the political legitimacy in a nation as diverse as ours, and to do so in a way in which each State is equally represented. That is why we require supermajorities to end debate here. That is why we have 6-year terms. It is not to serve us. It is, rather, so we can serve everyone else. But right now, we are abusing our constitutional privilege. We are willfully taking the powers of the American people--the powers that they gave us, that they have given us--to deny them their right to a diverse, deliberative, transparent, accountable process. We are doing this for no other purpose than for our own convenience. No wonder they can't stand us. But it is not too late. It is not even too late for this week. There is still plenty of time to salvage this process, to flex our badly atrophied legislative muscles and to get to work. After speaking with my colleagues all week, and, frankly, all of last week on these topics, I believe the consensus concerns about this bill are as follows: one, the inequity of natural resource revenue-sharing between the Federal Government and the States; two, the cost of the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund; three, the cost of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or LWCF; four, the implications of an ever-expanding Federal land ownership; and, five, transparency for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We could pick just one amendment for each of the aforementioned categories--just one for each of those categories. We could have just five amendments all together. By so doing, we could make significant progress on this legislation. More than that, we could strengthen our legislative muscle memory and take a step toward restoring the vital deliberative powers of this body. The Senate has long called itself the world's greatest deliberative body. These days, when it doesn't debate, when it shuts out amendments from individual Members--keeping in mind that this is supposed to be one of the two fundamental rules of the Senate, where each Member has access to unlimited debate and unlimited amendments--when it does this, it is neither great nor deliberative. It is not living up to its name, to its history, to its traditions, to its capacity, nor to its constitutional purpose. Five amendments are not a lot, especially considering this legislative text bypassed the committee process all together in the first place. This bill, as a bill, was never even processed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on which I serve. It bypassed that committee all together. It didn't go through it. Even if the Senate votes on these amendments and votes them down-- notwithstanding the fact that we bypassed the committee--it is here now. There is nothing in the Constitution that says it has to go through committee. It is better if we do. We didn't here. We can still deal with some of the concerns that individual Members have. This is the appropriate place to do that, after all, with or without committee action. Regardless of the outcome of those votes, even if the Senate votes those amendments down--every one of them--at least we will then be on record about our priorities and about our positions. At least then we have a chance to weigh in and say: Here is what I liked about the bill, and here is what I didn't like about the bill. That, in turn, helps us to communicate to the public about why we either do or don't support whatever legislation is intact at the end of that process. That, in turn, would strengthen the bonds of accountability between the government and the governed, and, I would hope, restore some of the public trust that Washington, DC, has squandered for the last several decades. If we require Senators to speak on their amendments and then move to a vote, we could dispose of all five of these amendments in just a few hours. We could do this today. We could have done it earlier today. We could have done it at any moment yesterday. It is just not too much to ask. We have to give this, like all legislation, the due consideration and the careful deliberation that it deserves and that the American people deserve. Now, more than ever, our country needs us to be able to come together, work together, and find solutions to the problems that we face. I believe this bill presents us with an opportunity to do precisely that. I am hopeful that my colleagues and I will get the chance to take it. This is what we need to do. We know that the Senate in the past has functioned in such a way as to allow every Member of this body to represent his or her State. We also know that can't really happen in a way that our system has always contemplated unless every Senator has a chance to weigh in on and to propose improvements to each bill and not be shut out of a process. What we get when we jettison that is, instead, a process by which a small handful of individuals will write legislation, that legislation gets airdropped on to the Senate floor in a hermetically sealed Chamber, and then Members are told: You have to vote for this entire package or against this entire package. You have a simple binary choice: Take it all or leave it all. That isn't fair. The American people deserve better. We have settled. It is time for us to no longer settle, but to expect more, to expect the Senate to do its work. Consistent with that, I think it is important for us to propose alternatives. I have nothing but a desire to see these things debated and discussed. In order to do that, I am proposing a solution Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendments and call up the following amendments en bloc: Kennedy amendment No. 1599, which would allow Gulf States to receive a greater portion of revenues produced from energy sources off their coast; Cruz amendment No. 1651, which would reflect honest budgeting practices, direct the Secretary of the Interior to sell off excess Federal lands to the public as the ``pay for'' for this legislation, subject all Trust Fund spending to congressional oversight through the appropriations process, and strike the provision that allows the Trust Fund to receive credit for interest that will not really be earned based on money that does not really exist; Braun amendment No. 1635, which would prevent unrelated spending increases in the future by reducing the discretionary budget limit by $450 million; Lee amendment No. 1647, which would prohibit the Federal Government from making acquisitions using LWCF funds until they have received from the State, where the proposed acquisition would be located, notice that the State has enacted legislation approving the acquisition; and finally, Lee amendment No. 1639, which would require reports to Congress on costs of acquisition, maintenance, and administration of lands obtained under the LWCF, reports to States and local units of government regarding lost property taxes due to LWCF land acquisitions, and reports to Congress on Restoration Fund projects to be funded, currently being funded, and the amount of money expended for that project, as well as an estimate of expenditures needed to complete each project. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the amendments in the order listed with no intervening action or debate, and that the amendments be subject to a 60-affirmative vote threshold for adoption; finally, that following disposition of the amendments listed, the remaining pending amendments be withdrawn, with the exception of the substitute amendment No. 1617, and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the substitute amendment No. 1617.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to note now for the record that there are exactly two Senators remaining in the Senate Chamber. It is now 4:38 p.m. Now we are three again--now four. We have four Senators in the Chamber at 4:39 p.m. on a Thursday. This is not the end of the week, unless perhaps you are in the U.S. Senate. There is no reason why the Senate shouldn't be convening and debating amendments right now in order to do this. There is no valid reason why Members who understand and appreciate the legitimate concerns that are the focus of this or any other piece of legislation ought not be able to raise concerns with that legislation and offer up amendments to improve the legislation in question, especially as is the case here. There are particular States, including my own, that would be disproportionately disadvantaged and harmed by this legislation. It is interesting to note that the Federal Government owns more of my State than in almost any other State, than it does in any of the States of any of the sponsors or prominent cosponsors of this legislation. Some of the cosponsors, in fact, are people who live in States where the Federal Government owns very little land. Look, I don't complain--no fault. In some cases our disagreements here represent differences in our background or differences in the preferences of our constituencies, but as much as anything, I think they stem from and reflect differences in the States that we represent, not just the preferences of the voters, but also the way the public land is owned--the extent to which Federal public land is owned and the impact that it has on our local economies. This is a big deal. So like I say, I don't fault them. I regard each of the people behind this legislation as beloved friends and colleagues and as people who I deeply respect and trust and admire. They are people with whom I have agreed and cooperated with on countless instances on many wide-ranging topics. They are not wrong to want to pass legislation that they believe is correct. They are, however, grossly mistaken in believing that it is appropriate in this circumstance to shut out Members of this body who have a different point of view, to exclude them from the debate process. One could argue and some might argue in connection with this: Fine, let's debate it. We are debating it right now. What is debate after all other than giving speeches in a legislative body? That is what we are doing, and that statement is true as far as it goes. Nevertheless, in order for that debate to have full meaning, we need to follow our own rules, and we need to allow Members, pursuant to our rules--and not just our rules, but also our precedents--our time- honored traditions and the spirit of comity that once inhabited and pervaded every corner of this room. It is that spirit of comity, those traditions, and those rules that really contemplate a much more collegial environment, one in which we don't come to the floor with legislation and say: That is it. There is no more. That is it. This legislation was written as if on stone tablets. There is no more to be written. This book is sealed. You can't have anything more to say. That is not how colleagues treat each other. That is how one would treat a subordinate, and frankly, I think it is insulting--not to me but to those I represent and to those represented by my colleagues doing it. What I find also offensive is the notion that it is so important somehow and so urgent to pass this legislation that we do so now, and that we not wait until next week to consider it. But it is apparently not important enough to allow individual Members to introduce amendments--even amendments crafted in good faith, amendments that wouldn't do any structural damage to the bill, amendments that may or may not pass, but that haven't been written by the principal authors and principal proponents of this legislation. This institution is better than that, and I thought we were. I think we owe each other more than that. Look, this isn't always going to be the case in every single piece of legislation. There are a number of things that are passed by this body by unanimous consent. Others that come to the floor will receive an overwhelming vote one way or another and don't necessarily, in every circumstance, trigger the need for amendments. Those are, in some cases, matters that are relatively noncontroversial. I see no reason for an open amendment process if we were, for example, to declare June 2020 to be National Sofa Care Awareness Month. I don't think anybody is going to care that much about that legislation, certainly not enough to care deeply about filing amendments. In other cases, some legislation might have been adequately vetted through a process of committee action and public debate to the point where maybe no one really sees the need for additional amendment by the time it gets to the floor. But that is not always going to be the case. It should come as no surprise with a piece of legislation like this one, sweeping in its effect, adding to our already unaffordable mandatory spending, putting Federal land acquisition on an equal footing with programs like Social Security and Medicare by making it mandatory. Any time you trigger any of these alarm bells, it ought to send a signal that this is not an appropriate moment to expect that no Member from any State will have any different perspective. It is not right. Deep down they know it is not right. I have seen each of my most vocal proponents of this legislation on the receiving end of this very kind of strategy. I have stood with them as they have stood against it, even when I don't agree with their substantive policy agenda, even if I don't agree perhaps with their strategic plan in question, but I stand with them anyway because they are my colleagues. They are my friends. It is what colleagues do for each other. You see, the difference between a colleague and a subordinate is that you don't purport to tell a colleague what he or she can do if you don't have the authority to do that. You don't act offended if your colleague doesn't agree with you, and you don't try to silence your colleague. That is how you treat a subordinate. It has happened for far too long here. I have been here for 9\1/2\ years, and I have seen it under Democratic leadership and I have seen it under Republican leadership. It is not how it used to work here. It is not how it should ever work. I find it revolting. It is one thing to say: I want to vote on this legislation. It is quite another thing to have the gall to say: I want to vote on this legislation, but I don't want anyone else to have any say on what this legislation says, and I don't care what this does to another State. I don't care that there are other parts of other States in the Union, represented by my friends and my colleagues, where people will suffer in this legislation. I don't care--not my problem. I so don't care that that is a problem for somebody else, that I am going to make sure that the other person can't care and that he can't even make changes to this legislation. If I were their subordinate, perhaps I would understand. As their colleague, I don't. This isn't how you treat a colleague. This isn't how colleagues interact in a body that considers itself deliberative and collegial. So say what they want about this being bipartisan, about there having been a collegial process about this bill's creation--let them say what they want about that. Make no mistake. This is wrong, what they are doing. I am not even talking right now about the merits of the bill. I disagree with the bill. I don't like the substantive policy end that it seeks to achieve, but I am not talking about that right now. What I am saying is wrong and even outrageous is the gall, the temerity that they have to tell colleagues that they don't have an equal seat at this table, that their election certificate somehow matters less. Sooner or later, I believe that our best days lie ahead of us. I am an optimist at heart. Optimism is something that is hard to have at a moment like this, when you have been completely shut out of a legislative debate. But the reason I am optimistic here has to do with a very simple reality. Sooner or later, in a system like this one, Members will find a way with the system of rules of the Senate and as authorized by the rules and procedures and traditions of the Senate. They will find a way to get around it, and I think you will see a growing dynamic in which Members will reach across the aisle in order to solve this very problem. This problem is not a Republican problem distinctively. It is not a Democratic problem distinctively. We have seen it under the leadership of both parties, regardless of who has the majority. This is a problem that Senators have among and between themselves, and I think in time you will see more and more Members coming to each other's defense, regardless of political ideology and regardless of the substantive ends that we achieve in a piece of legislation. I think the sun is setting or at least preparing to set on the days of locking out individual Members from the amendment process. It isn't right, and deep down we know it is not. I will note that other than the Presiding Officer, at 4:53 p.m. on a Thursday, I remain the only Member of the U.S. Senate within this Chamber--just the Presiding Officer and me. That is it. We could be voting now. We could have started voting hours ago. We could have started voting yesterday. We could have voted on all of these amendments. For all I know, all of the amendments that I am proposing could have been considered and voted down and they would have had their way. So what difference would it make? I am not certain whether they would all fail. It is not up to me for all to fail. Thirdly, even if they did all fail--every last one of them--at least then Members of this body would be able to face their constituents at the end of that process and be able to say: Look, I liked this legislation. Even though it had these problems, the reasons to support it outweighed those for opposing it. Or they would be able to say: Look, I tried to make it better. I failed. These problems remained. So I voted against it. That increases accountability, rather than decreasing. That is good. That is good for a constitutional republic like ours. It is essential for the U.S. Senate. It is how it is supposed to work. So we could have done that yesterday. We could have done that this morning. We could still do it right now. We could start that process right now in a matter of hours. We would have debated, discussed, and voted on these amendments. Then we could move on. We could put this whole thing behind us. We could do it right now. They are hearing nothing of it, which begs the question: Why? Who benefits from this? The only people who benefit are the small handful of individuals who, on any particular occasion, happen to be involved in this decision making and become more powerful. But they do so in a dishonorable way, at the expense of all of their colleagues, at the expense of their relationship with their colleagues, but most damning of all, at the expense of their relationship and obligations to the voters who elected them--and I mean those in every State. I am sure they think they are doing the right thing, that the end justifies the means. Nobody is immune to that line of thinking. It is something we have to be conscious of. The circumstance doesn't make it OK. This is wrong. We can do better. We can, we must, and together, we will. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, to most Americans, the so-called Great American Outdoors Act is a mistake. It is expensive, shortsighted, and it is wrong; but to those of us who live in the American West, it is a disaster. Despite its rosy claims, this legislation combines two bills that will only tighten the Federal stranglehold on our lands and drive us deeper into debt, to the detriment of our economy, our environment, and the livelihoods and the freedom of the American people. So just how, you might ask, does it do that? Well, let me explain. The first title containing an expanded version of the Restore Our Parks Act attempts to address the roughly $19.3 billion maintenance backlog on our Federal lands, concentrated primarily within national parks projects, which approach a $12 billion maintenance backlog just on their own, but it seeks to do so by spending $9.5 billion of Federal offshore energy revenues over 5 years, without any means whatsoever of offsetting those extra funds. Now, that, to be clear, is money that is currently going to the U.S. Treasury to pay for a number of other costs, a number of other expenditures--from aircraft carriers to Federal courts and everything in between--and will only add to our already ballooning national debt. It is, we have to remember, Congress's job to set priorities for the funds in the Treasury. If we prioritize something--if we prioritize one thing--we must either proportionately decrease the funding for something else or find another way to generate new revenue. This bill does neither. Furthermore, without any measures to prevent it, it guarantees that a similar backlog will only reemerge in the future. There are better ways to address this problem. For example, there are much better ways in a proposal that has been introduced by Senator Enzi in a bill called the REAL Act. The REAL Act would modestly increase park visitor fees by $5, businesses and tourist visa fees by $25, and a visa waiver program fee by $16--estimated to bring an additional $5.5 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. This, the REAL Act, introduced by Senator Enzi is a reasonable, practical solution to sustainably address the maintenance backlog on our National Parks, which is a problem. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with, and the REAL Act does it in a very responsible, sustainable fashion. What is more, the REAL Act would create a permanent and independent way of supplementing the funding for our National Parks and do so without adding to the national debt. The second title of this bill--of the Great American Outdoors Act-- creates almost $1 billion of mandatory spending every single year on new Federal land acquisition through the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In other words, it adds a new entitlement, adding to our already unaffordable system of entitlements. It puts it on a level playing field with things like Social Security and Medicare, other entitlement programs, the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Now, why would we do this when we are already on a collision course with our ability to fund Federal programs, including and especially those programs that America's seniors have paid for, for years, and come to rely on? Why would we do that for this program? Why make it mandatory spending and thus convert it into yet another unaffordable entitlement program? Let's talk a little bit about the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or LWCF, as it is known. This was originally put in place pursuant to a law passed in 1964, and the LWCF, as it was created and enacted into law back in 1964, was put in place in order to promote and preserve access to recreational opportunities on Federal public lands--on public lands generally, in fact. So the fund was set up to be the principal source of money for Federal land acquisition and to assist States in developing recreational opportunities on their own. Originally, it directed 60 percent of its funds to be appropriated for State purposes and 40 percent for Federal purposes. Unfortunately, the program has since drifted far from its original moorings and far from its original intent, and it has been rife with abuse. In 1976, the law was amended to remove the 60-percent State provision, stating simply that not less than 40 percent of the funds must be used for Federal purposes, while remaining silent on whether a State would receive a penny. Now, just over the last year or so, not less than 40 percent of the funds are dedicated to State purposes, so that still means that up to 60 percent of the funds can still be used for Federal land acquisition. The result? Well, it hasn't been good. It has been used more for Federal land acquisition than for improving access to or care of the vast Federal lands that we already own and manage--or in many cases, fail to manage. Sixty-one percent of the funds have historically been used for acquisition, compared to the 25 percent that have been allocated to State grants, spending close to $12 billion to purchase new Federal lands. So despite people's images of charming ribbon cuttings at local parks and scenic wildlife, the LWCF has functioned as the Federal Government's primary vehicle for Federal land grabs, resulting in a massive, restrictive, and neglected Federal estate. The Federal Government now owns 640 million acres of land--more than 640 million acres--within the United States. To put this in perspective, this amount--the more than 640 million acres of land currently owned by the Federal Government within the United States--is a total larger than the entireties of France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands combined. Now, I am not talking about the government-owned lands or the parklands within those countries. I am talking about the entirety of the countries themselves. The Federal Government owns more land than that. That is 28 percent of the total acreage within the United States, and more than 50 percent of the land in the West. This has proven to be far more land than the Federal Government is capable of managing responsibly. The condition of the vast Federal estate ranges from fair to poor to dismal. These lands face problems with rampant wildfires, soil erosion, mismanagement, and littering--with a staggering combined maintenance backlog of nearly $20 billion. Resources are only being spread thinner as they are being stretched to serve more and more lands--more and more lands that are now going to be bought with the new entitlement spending that we are putting in place with this bill should we enact this ill-conceived legislative proposal. On top of that, many of the LWCF funds have been diverted to a vague ``other purposes'' category that has, in many instances, little to do with access to outdoor recreation at all. In fact, many of the programs it has funded have, instead, aimed to pull land from public use, regardless of how the land in question is classified. So rather than increasing opportunities for hunting and fishing, snowmobiling, hiking, camping, mountain biking, or kayaking, the land policies in place have slowly been squeezing out recreational opportunities, and this has been going on for decades. And so, too, have these policies imposed severe economic restrictions. As the Federal estate has grown since the time the LWCF was established in 1964, natural resource production--including mining, energy, timber, and livestock raising--have sharply declined, depriving rural communities and their economies of crucial jobs and economic activity. Timber production, for example, has been cut by about 90 percent since the 1980s. So instead of providing sustainable, renewable, economically productive logging in the Northwest, these forests are now managed by catastrophic wildfire under the supervision--or I should say the failed supervision--of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. If you don't believe me, ask anyone who lives in the Western United States. Ask anyone who lives in the communities of Utah who have seen the environmental and economic devastation brought about as a result of failed land management policies. Now, some claim, rather audaciously, that the outdoor recreation economy is a major boon to these very same communities that are being impoverished by it. But usually, nearly always, people who say that aren't people who live in those communities. Seasonal tourism is not a sustainable core industry for most communities. Much of the money spent on outdoor recreation ends up going to apparel, equipment, and gear from large out-of-state companies. Rural public lands counties don't see a penny of it. This is especially true in those counties where the Federal Government owns not just 67 percent of the land mass, as is the case throughout Utah as a whole, but 90, 95 percent plus of the land in some counties. To make matters worse, Federal lands also mean a loss of property taxes and, as a result, a loss of huge sources of revenue and opportunities for States and for local communities. It is no coincidence that the poorest rural counties in the West are the very same communities, the very same counties where they have the most Federal land. The poorest counties are the counties with the most Federal land. Why is that? Well, there are a number of reasons, but one of the things that has to be taken into account is the fact that, without property taxes, schools are underfunded, local governments are crippled, fire departments are, ironically, depleted and, therefore, unable to properly take care of the lands they are charged to protect in the first place. This, by the way, says nothing of the loss of economic activity as a whole. I am just talking here about the lack of property tax revenue Now, there is a Federal program for this, the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program, also known as the PILT Program, as the abbreviation refers. This is a program that was intended to address this disparity by compensating counties and local communities for their loss of property taxes--that is the loss from property taxes that comes about as a result of significant Federal land ownership and the Federal Government's declaration, by law, that its lands may not be taxed. But PILT payments have provided only a pittance of what would be due to local governments were Federal lands not exempt from property taxes. In 2018, the Utah Legislature commissioned a state-of-the-art evaluation of 32 million acres of Federal land in Utah, excluding roughly 3 million acres of National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Now, this May, that same commission found that appraising these BLM and Forest Service lands according to their lowest use value would result in an annual property tax bill of $534 million. And this, by the way, in addition to excluding National Parks and Wilderness Areas from that equation, was a study that involved only those Federal lands extending to within 1 mile of any municipal boundary or of any city or town in Utah. So this fraction would produce $534 million annually in property tax revenue, even if it were taxed at its lowest value. In 2019, the PILT payments to Utah statewide totaled just $41 million, just 7.7 percent of the potential revenue from property taxes. Again, we are not talking about the National Parks or their National Wilderness Areas, nor are we talking about the lands outside of 1 mile beyond any municipal boundary. And while States and localities are the ones carrying the unfair economic burden, Washington only pours salt in these wounds by neglecting its oversight responsibilities. In May 2019, a GAO report found that BLM fails to maintain centralized data on lands acquired and that an increasing element of LWCF funds across agencies are being spent on acquisition projects that occur without and, in some cases, contrary to congressional approval. Not only that, but a December 2019 GAO report found that numerous agencies have blatantly disregarded LWCF requirements in order to illegally purchase more land. Yes. They are buying land, in many cases, contrary to their statutory authorization and limitations imposed by law. Under the original LWCF Act, no more than 15 percent of the land added to the National Forest System is to be west of the 100th meridian, essentially everything west of Oklahoma. But the GAO found that between fiscal years 2014 and 2018, the Federal Government had acquired more than 450,000 acres of land in the United States, more than 80 percent of which were west of the 100th meridian. In another recent review of land acquisition policies across the agencies conducted by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, officials said that 40 percent of the land acquired with LWCF funds were not even requested by the agencies--not requested in the first place, yet they were purchased in some cases contrary to an explicit statutory command. As it turns out, billions of LWCF dollars are being spent without the Congress and without the relevant agencies or the public being informed of where or why or pursuant to what authority they were made. Why, then, would it ever make sense to turn this into an entitlement program, to turn this into something that is self-perpetuating--into a self-licking ice cream cone--that needs no support or reauthorization year to year from Congress? Last year, the Senate permanently reauthorized this broken, harmful, dangerous, unaccountable fund without reform and without any incentive to offer future reforms, but as if that weren't bad enough, the legislation before us now proposes to make that funding mandatory. Before, Congress could at least appropriate varying amounts to be used from the fund. Now, this bill, if passed, would turn the LWCF into a true trust fund, automatically requiring that the full $900 million be spent primarily on Federal land acquisition each year in perpetuity without accountability and without oversight. The unofficial Congressional Budget Office score estimates that this bill, as a whole, will cost nearly $17.3 billion over the next 10 years, all for land projects that we cannot afford, let alone maintain. This is not how Congress was tasked with exercising the power of the purse. This is not how it is supposed to work--not in this country and certainly not in this legislative body. It is the tough business of Congress to set priorities and to decide which, among worthy causes, should receive our limited resources. These funds could be going to provide relief in the midst of the current pandemic or to our national defense or to shoring up benefits for veterans or to a myriad of other goals. Putting these funds into a direct deposit mechanism, however, means that we are not having those conversations and not actively evaluating how we can best spend those taxpayer dollars each year. No, no. Instead, we are going to put it on autopilot. That is what this bill wants to do rather shamefully. This provision of the bill automatically puts more funds toward the harmful cause of growing the Federal estate, putting us on an even worse path than we have already taken. In fact, the first provision of the bill is only evidence to the fact that we have bitten off far more than we can chew. We can do better. As it currently stands, we have nothing to gain from this legislation. The agenda of aggressively and endlessly growing our Federal estate has put us on a dangerous path with devastating effects for our lands and for the people who live, recreate, and survive off of them as my home State of Utah has already experienced far too well. If we do not change course, this path will only worsen for the rest of the Nation too. I want to point out something--a common misperception that people often have about Federal land and what it is and what it does. In many cases, if you don't live in the western United States, you are not necessarily aware of the fact that the overwhelming majority--not just most but the overwhelming majority of Federal land is not a national park. National parks are some of the few things people consistently like about the Federal Government. They are frequently the favorite thing about the Federal Government. We all love national parks. They are beautiful. They are fun, and they are something that the Federal Government does that everyone still enjoys and loves. But most Federal land is not a national park. The overwhelming majority isn't anything like a national park, and the way these lands are divided out really isn't fair. In every State east of Colorado, the Federal Government owns less than 15 percent of the land. In every State to the west of Colorado and including Colorado, the Federal Government owns at least 15 percent and, in many cases, many multiples of that. In my State it happens to be about 67 percent. A tiny segment of that land consists of national park land. Most of it is just land that you can't use for anything else. The local governments can't tax them, and people can't access them for economic or recreational purposes without a ``Mother, may I?'' from the Federal Government. That is what it is. Most of this land isn't even a national park or a national recreation area or a wilderness area or anything remotely worthy of that. This is just about Federal control, and most of it is not managed very well. The National Park System has been underfunded. They, in many ways, do the best job they can with what they have, but they have been chronically underfunded, and the national parks are quite well run compared to the vast majority of Federal public land we have, which is chronically neglected, environmentally mismanaged, often to the economic and environmental detriment of those States where there is a lot of Federal land. Take San Juan County, UT. The Federal Government owns somewhere along the order of 95 percent of the land in San Juan County. It also happens to be Utah's poorest county. These two issues are not a coincidence. The fact that they appear in the same land mass is not coincidental; it is causal. The Federal Government is the cause for the impoverishment of this county and other communities in Utah and throughout the United States. Why? Because people can't own the land, can't develop the land, can't tax the land to fund their schools, their search and rescue services, or any other government priority. Nor can they access it for most economic purposes. Finally, all of my other observations about this legislation notwithstanding, this is the Senate, and just like church is for sinners, the Senate floor isn't for perfect, hermetically sealed, finished bills. We are supposed to bring imperfect bills to the floor to debate and deliberate and amend and discuss and, ultimately, find consensus. That is why I and many of my colleagues have been trying to do exactly that in this very situation with this very bill. I have a number of amendments. Many western State Senators do as well. Several Gulf State Senators have their own concerns about this bill in its current form. The way the process is supposed to work is that we bring this and other bills like it to the floor, and we offer up changes and see where the Senate is, see where the process goes, using reason, gentle persuasion, and awkward improvements to each piece of legislation as our guide. That is how it is supposed to work. There are a number of Senators from western States, from Gulf States, and from States that really aren't in the West or the gulf that don't really have that much to do with Federal public land, but they can see the procedural and substantive defects of this bill. That is why many of us who really would like to make improvements to this bill have come together from different parts of the country. The process of actually legislating has gone out of fashion in Washington and, quite regrettably, out of this Chamber in recent years, but it is something that I think the whole Senate would like to get back to--and I mean the whole Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike. This is an issue that is neither Republican or Democratic; it is not liberal or conservative; it is not Libertarian. It is not an ideological viewpoint. I know people within this Chamber on virtually every point along the ideological political continuum who would very much like to see the Senate working as an actual legislative body rather than as a rubberstamp for whatever small handful of people happen to write out behind closed doors and decide must be the finished, perfect, hermetically sealed object of our vote. This is wrong. It is an insult, not just to the 100 Senators who are here. It is that to be sure, but nobody cares about that. It is more about those we represent, those who elected us. Those election certificates don't belong to us. They belong to the voters of our various States who expect us to represent them. Regardless of how we might vote on any particular piece of legislation, they expect us to have read it; they expect us to do our job by showing up and by offering to make it better where we see flaws and we see defects. There is no perfect bill, but we can still make legislation a lot less bad. We can make it better. We bring about actual consensus. Consensus is not found by ramming something through without an opportunity for amendment, debate, or discussion This is wrong. It has gone on for far too long. I have seen it under the leadership of Democrats and Republicans alike in this Chamber, and it has to end. It will end. The question is, How long is it going to take us and how much misery will the American people have to endure while most of their Senators are effectively locked out of meaningful legislative debate, discussion, and amendment? This is wrong, and it has to end. The debate on this bill has now been extended by a whole extra day. There is no earthly reason why we can't use that extra day to work through a handful of 15-minute votes on a handful of amendments. It is just not that hard. In the amount of time that I have been speaking tonight, we could have processed a couple of amendments. In the amount of time that will be devoted only to hand-wringing and dismissal of legitimate concerns with this legislation, we could process any amendment that anyone wants to introduce, and this legislation could still be passed weeks before the House of Representatives is even poised to return. So why are we not doing this? There is no persuasive answer here. We have to start doing our job. I look forward to working with our colleagues to get an agreement on some amendments so that we can give this legislation the due consideration and the careful deliberation that it deserves, that we deserve, that those who elected us deserve, and then move on to the important nominations pending before the Senate and to the National Defense Authorization Act that are next in line. In the meantime, I hope Democrats and Republicans alike can unite behind the fact that we can't skate forever under the mantra that the Senate is the world's greatest deliberative body when it does not deliberate. The good news is, it is entirely within our power to reclaim use of that title justifiably and with dignity. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. 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. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is with a very heavy heart that I stand today in the Senate to talk about the death of two Americans last week. One tragedy is tearing our communities apart. The other may well show us a path back toward unity. We all know about the brutal, senseless killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last Monday. There is no excuse for what the police did to Mr. Floyd. His killers are being brought to justice. His death, we hope, will not be remembered for the senseless violence launched falsely in his name but, rather, hopefully, in the long-term reform of policing policies across our country. In my home State of Utah, the city of Ogden is mourning another death, that of Police Officer Nate Lyday. On Thursday, May 28, a woman called 9-1-1 saying that her husband was threatening her life. Lyday and a group of officers arrived promptly at the house. The man began shooting at them from inside the home. Lyday was mortally wounded. He was just 24 years old. He was about to celebrate his fifth wedding anniversary with his wife Ashley. He had been on the job as a police officer for just 15 months. By all accounts, he did that job honorably and completely up to the last moment. Nate Lyday was an officer who sought to uphold justice and protect the innocent, even making the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of a threatened and fearful family. Nate Lyday was a ``son of Ogden,'' as Police Chief Randy Watt said. Ogden was where he was born and raised, where he went to high school, and where he worked on a regular basis at the Fresh Market on 20th Street and where he got his degree in criminal justice from Weber State University. And it was where he was proud to serve and protect his community as a sworn police officer. According to Lieutenant Brian Eynon, Lyday was an officer who ``worked over and above the call of duty.'' Eynon said that whenever he passed Lyday in the hallways, the young officer would always smile at him, even before he had a chance to smile first. As his colleagues, his friends, and his classmates remember him, Nate Lyday made everyone around him feel like a friend, no matter how well they knew him because they were indeed his friends. This Saturday, while far too many other communities throughout our Nation were tearing themselves apart, Ogden came together. Hundreds of Ogden residents gathered near the front steps of the Ogden Municipal Building to honor the memory of George Floyd and to call for nationwide police reform. But this was not a divisive event designed to make everyone choose sides between police and protesters. As Malik Dayo, an Ogden activist and organizer, said that day: This is a peaceful protest. . . . This is not an anti-cop rally. This is a solidarity rally. The protesters at the event honored George's memory, they condemned racism, and they called for policing reforms. They also thanked the officers who were there, the same officers there protecting them and protecting their First Amendment rights to speak freely and gather peacefully. And they honored the memory of Officer Lyday, who lost his life answering the call of duty just a few days before. ``I gave them my condolences for their fallen officer--our fallen officer--because we're all part of the same community,'' Dayo said of the police after the protest. And Dayo is right. Nate Lyday's loss is our loss. George Floyd's loss is our loss. And we ought to honor and remember them both. We must all work to uphold justice for all. Both of these tragic, horrific deaths last week show us just how far we still have to go to achieve this goal. It is work that must be undertaken by each and every one of us, each and every day. We cannot do that work by pitting ourselves against one another--race versus race, police versus protester. We will never move forward if we continue to reduce human beings to the color of their skin or the color of their uniform. We are all one Nation, and it will only be in standing and in working together, in peaceful solidarity, that we can finally heal the wounds in our Nation. What the people of Ogden did this weekend is an example for us all. And it is a reason for hope. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for a period not to exceed 5 minutes.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, it has been an honor and a privilege to work with my friend and distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Vermont, on this issue. Senator Leahy and I have, over the past decade, worked together on a number of projects including this one, including the USA FREEDOM Act. Senator Leahy and I come from different political parties and different ends of the political spectrum, and yet we share much in common, including a devotion to our families, a devotion to God, a devotion to this great country, and a devotion to the Constitution that has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. It is an honor and a privilege to stand with Senator Leahy in defense of the Fourth Amendment and the other rights articulated in our Constitution. Senator Leahy and I have confronted many opponents, and many opponents to the Lee-Leahy amendment have made arguments that I think need to be mentioned one final time before we vote on this matter. Many of them are arguing that this amendment would somehow hamper the ability of the FISA Court to approve applications quickly in the case of an emergency. This is simply untrue. In all these circumstances in which it would apply, our amendment would allow the FISA Court to issue a finding saying the appointment of amicus would, in that circumstance, be inappropriate. This the FISA Court could do in a single sentence. The FBI or some of its proclaimed self-appointed defenders also complain that this might make it harder for them to get surveillance applications approved. Let me just remind everyone that we are talking about the rights of U.S. persons--that is, of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States. These are rights that deserve to be protected. We have to remember that the purpose of the Constitution is not to make it easier to govern. The purpose of the Constitution is to provide structure and limitations on government because governments sometimes make mistakes. I find it especially tone deaf that the very agency--the very Bureau--that has now been found to have been in violation of its own policies and procedures--in not just one but two inspector general reports in the past year--for failing to follow its own policies is now the agency that many people are trying to defend in saying that we can't inform the American people of what is going on and we can't improve the process by which that agency operates. Power is always vulnerable to abuse. Warnings were made when this process was put into place, and exactly the kinds of abuses that we have now seen are the types of abuses that have occurred over and over or are the same ones that were foreseen. This isn't an indictment of any one agency or administration or person or political party. It is an affirmation of the Founding Fathers' trust in the checks and balances that they put in place in our founding document. James Madison so eloquently expressed this principle in Federalist 51: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: We must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. We cannot--notwithstanding the urging of many--simply wave our hands and say: No, we don't have to worry about this. It is OK because we have to worry about national security or it is OK because this is about foreign intelligence or this is about foreign intelligence gathering. We know that what the Lee-Leahy amendment is designed to protect are the rights of the American people--of U.S. persons--U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. Reforms in this amendment do not take anything away from the National Security Agency--nothing. We are just injecting greater fairness and accountability into this process. Insofar as we decide to have these programs, we have to have someone accountable in them. We have to have a process by which the information brought to bear within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court is accountable and reviewable by someone. It makes sense to expand incrementally, mildly, but necessarily, the amicus curiae provisions that were put in place 4 years ago with the USA FREEDOM Act. I truly believe that we can find a proper balance here between privacy and security. I also believe that our privacy and our security are not at odds. Our privacy is, indeed, a part of our security and our security part of our privacy. You cannot have one without the other. The Lee-Leahy amendment brings us closer to that balance. I invite all my colleagues to support it and look forward to the moment, not far from now, when we will pass it. I yield the floor. Vote on Amendment No. 1584

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 1584 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the Constitution of the United States contains a number of constitutional protections for the citizens of our great Republic. Among the many provisions that it contains, in addition to the structural safeguards of federalism and the separation of powers, separating out power along two axes--one vertical, which we call federalism, and the other horizontal, which we call the separation of powers--the Constitution also includes a number of substantive restrictions. These are things that the government may not do, and there are penalties attached to the government's doing those things. Among those many protections can be found the provisions of the Bill of Rights, including the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Fourth Amendment reminds us that it is our right--a fundamental, inalienable right--as citizens in a free republic, to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that any warrants issued under government authority have to be backed by probable cause, and any probable cause-based warrant has to include with particularity a description of the places and persons to be searched and to be seized. This is a tradition that reaches not just back a couple of centuries, but it reaches back much farther than that and has its origins not only in our own country but in our mother country, in the United Kingdom. By the time John Wilkes was serving in Parliament in the 1760s, there had been a long-established tradition and understanding. In fact, there had been a series of laws enacted to make sure that warrants were not abused and to make sure the rights of the English subjects would not be infringed. Among other things, there was an understanding and a set of laws in place that would make clear that those conducting searches and seizures would be subject to a warrant requirement. In other words, they would lose any immunity that they would otherwise have as government officials if they didn't obtain a warrant and if that warrant were not valid. In 1763, the home of John Wilkes was searched aggressively. John Wilkes, while serving as a Member of Parliament, had become critical of the administration of King George, and he had participated in the publication of a weekly circular known as the North Briton. Although the North Briton was not one likely to engage in excessive, fawning praise of the reigning Monarch, it wasn't until the publication of North Briton No. 45 in 1763 that the administration of King George decided to go after John Wilkes. His home was searched, and it was searched pursuant to a general warrant. A general warrant was something that basically said, in that instance: Find out who had anything to do with the authorship and publication of North Briton No. 45. You see, North Briton No. 45 accused, among other things, King George and those who served in his government of laying aggressive taxes on the people--taxes that they knew couldn't adequately be enforced or collected without intrusive measures that would involve kicking open people's doors, rummaging through their drawers, and doing things that couldn't be justified for the use of a warrant laid out with particularity. John Wilkes, in that circumstance, was arrested within a matter of a few weeks. He won his freedom, albeit on something of a technicality at the moment. He asserted parliamentary privilege and was released. Eventually, after becoming subjected to multiple searches using general warrants, Wilkes sued Lord Halifax and those who participated in the searches and seizures in question. He was able to obtain a large award, a large judgment consisting of money damages. John Wilkes, at the time, became famous, really, on both sides of the Atlantic. The name of John Wilkes was celebrated in taverns, saloons, and other public places in England and in the nascent United States of America, the colonies in North America that would later become the world's greatest Republic. John Wilkes' example was something that helped to solidify a long-standing legal tradition, one that would in time make its way into our Constitution through the Fourth Amendment. We have to remember that government is simply force. It is the organized collective official use of force. When John Wilkes and those who worked with him on the North Briton, culminating in North Briton No. 45, criticized the King too much, questioned excessively, in their judgment, the collection and imposition of taxes, the administration of King George decided they had gone too far and that it was time for John Wilkes to pay a price. Fortunately for John Wilkes and for people on both sides of the Atlantic, John Wilkes emerged victoriously. Today, we don't have general warrants, at least nothing masquerading under that title in the United States. The fact that we have a First Amendment is a test to his vigorous defense of the rights of English subjects. What we do have is something that ought to concern every American. We have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which we know has been abused, and we have known for a long time is ripe for opportunities for abuse among government officials. In fact, what we have seen is that the current President of the United States has, himself, become the target of abuse under FISA. Back in 2016 when this started being abused and when we saw the emergence of things like Operation Crossfire Hurricane, you had the campaign of a man who would become the 45th President of the United States targeted and singled out, quite unfairly, using these practices--these procedures that were designed originally for use in detecting and thwarting the efforts of agents of foreign powers. As the name of the law implies, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is not something that is intended to go after American citizens. It is certainly not something that is intended to be used as a tool for bullying a Presidential candidate. Now that it has been used to bully and incorrectly surveil the 45th President of the United States, we need to do something about it. That is what the Lee-Leahy amendment does. First, for a bit of background on this particular law, we have three provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that expired on March 15, 2020, just a few weeks ago. We have one provision known as section 215, another provision known as lone wolf, and another provision known as roving wiretaps. On March 16, the Senate passed a bill to reauthorize those provisions through May 30, 2020, which would give us a few weeks to debate and discuss reforms that need to happen under FISA. In order to pass this bill, the Senate entered into a unanimous consent agreement for votes on three amendments to the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill passed by the House of Representatives a few weeks ago. One of those amendments is the one that I referred to a moment ago, the Lee-Leahy amendment, introduced by myself and Senator Leahy from Vermont. Unfortunately, however, the House of Representatives never passed that short-term extension measure, so that the three authorities that I mentioned--lone wolf, roving wiretaps, and 215--have been expired now for almost 2 months. Now, this is not for lack of trying on the part of us--the part of those of us who really want to see meaningful FISA reform. In fact, just a few days before these authorities were set to expire, I came down here to the Senate floor and I asked a series of unanimous consent requests to consider the House-passed reauthorization bill with a handful of relevant and, I believe, very necessary amendments. Unfortunately, my friend, a distinguished colleague, Senator Burr, objected. The Department of Justice Inspector General Horowitz's December report on Crossfire Hurricane proved what many of us reformers have been saying now for years. In my case, I have been working on this and trying to call out the dangers inherent in provisions of FISA now for a decade. But what the Horowitz report in December demonstrated was that FISA really is ripe for opportunities for abuse. Inspector General Horowitz not only found evidence that the FISA process was abused to target President Trump's campaign. He found evidence that basic procedures meant to protect the rights of U.S. persons--that is to say, U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States--were not being followed. And so, just as we see that John Wilkes, through his publication of North Briton No. 45, solidified a preexisting set of rights available to all English subjects, we now see that President No. 45, Donald John Trump, has the opportunity to strengthen this right protected in our Fourth Amendment, harkening back to the example of John Wilkes in the publication of North Briton No. 45. My amendment with Senator Leahy would make reforms to applications for surveillance across the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including both section 215, the authority that recently expired, and under title I, which happens to be the authority that was abused in order to surveil President Trump's campaign. First, the amendment would strengthen the role of the friend-of-the- court provisions--the amicus curiae provisions that we adopted in 2015 in connection with the USA FREEDOM Act, which was introduced by Senator Leahy and myself back then. It would strength these amicus curiae or friend-of-the-court provisions and make them applicable in circumstances in which there are sensitivities inherently in play. Now, these amici curiae, or friends of the court, are people who, as contemplated under the proposed legislation, would primarily be experts and would have at least some knowledge or expertise of FISA and of privacy, civil liberties, secure communications, and other fields that are important to the FISA Court. They would also be people who would have clearance to review matters of concern from a national security standpoint. These amici are essential because, you see, the FISA Court is a secret court which, by its very design, operates on an ex parte basis, meaning without the presence of opposing counsel. You have government counsel and the judges themselves, and that is it. The friend-of-the-court provisions, the amici curiae I am describing, provide the opportunity for the FISA Court to hear from a fresh perspective--a neutral, trusted perspective--one that comes with some expertise in national security clearance but without presenting the threat to upending the national security investigations entrusted to the FISA Court. So that is why the amici are so necessary and so important. In the absence of opposing counsel, we have to strengthen the provisions that provide for these amici to ensure that there is some advocate somewhere in front of the court who is in a position to say: Wait a minute. What happens if we do this? Wait a minute. Is this really what the law authorizes? Wait a minute. Isn't there a constitutional concern implicated here, especially where they are dealing with the rights of American citizens. The December 2019 inspector general report on the surveillance of President Trump's campaign staffer Carter Page demonstrates the significant need for an outside expert legal advocate, especially when a FISA application involves a sensitive investigative matter, like the surveillance of a candidate for public office or an elected official or that official's staff. If the Lee-Leahy amendment were in statute, it would have required the FISA Court to appoint an amicus in the Carter Page case. If an amicus had been appointed in that case, would she have raised some of the issues that we now see regarding the credibility of the Steele dossier? Well, it is quite possible. In fact, I think it is quite likely. I think it is almost unimaginable that had there been an amicus curiae present in the FISA Court at that moment, somebody--likely, the amicus--would have said: Wait a minute. We have got a problem. Wait a minute. You have got evidence that is unreliable. Wait a minute. You have got huge credibility problems with the evidence that is backing up what you are asking for. Our amendment would require the FISA Court to appoint an amicus when an application involves ``sensitive investigative matter,'' such as the surveillance of candidates and elected officials or their staff, political organizations, religious organizations, prominent individuals within those organizations, and domestic news media. One of the arguments made by those who oppose FISA reform is that the appointment of an amicus would somehow slow down the surveillance and the FISA order application process, which, so the argument goes, could then harm our national security in those instances where there could be an imminent attack. Anytime this argument is made, it is important for the American people to listen and listen carefully. It is an important argument. It is not one that we want to treat lightly. At the same time, we have to remember the immense harm that has been inflicted, not only on our own society but elsewhere, when people simply suggest: Don't worry about this; it is a matter of national security. Don't worry about it; we have the experts covering it. Don't worry about it; your liberty is not to concern you. We know the risk. We know that we have to ask the difficult questions, and that is what we are doing here. In any event, the argument doesn't work here. The argument falls apart under its own weight here, you see, because our amendment allows for the FISA Court to have flexibility. In fact, the FISA Court, under the amendment, may decline to appoint an amicus if the court concludes it would be inappropriate to do so under the circumstances. All it has to do is make that finding. Is this too great an intrusion on the ability of the U.S. Government to collect information on U.S. citizens? I think not, especially as here we are dealing with this sensitive investigative matter, one involving an elected official or a candidate for elected office or religious officials or media organizations. We know in our hearts that these are areas where our foreign intelligence surveillance authority ought to give way, ought to at least recognize the rights of individual Americans. Our amendment also provides the amicus with more access to information regarding applications and requires the government to make available the supporting documentation underlying assertions made in applications if requested by the amicus or by the FISA Court itself. Now, this information is, to be sure, required by the FBI's internal operating procedures, including its so-called Woods procedures, to be maintained in a series of documents known collectively as the Woods files. But the FBI's failure to correctly maintain the supporting documentation or, in some cases, even to assemble it in the first place--the documentation underlying these FISA applications to surveil U.S. persons, that is--was itself the subject of the inspector general's most recent memorandum to FBI Director Christopher Wray. That memorandum proved, among other things, that the government's failure to provide all of the evidence, especially evidence that undermined the government's case before the FISA Court, when considering the application to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, was not an isolated accident. Quite to the contrary, after sampling 29 FBI applications for FISA surveillance of U.S. persons, the inspector general, Mr. Horowitz, found an average of 20 errors per application, with most applications having either missing or inadequate Woods files, leading the inspector general to conclude: ``We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods procedures in compliance with FBI policy.'' This is absolutely unacceptable in any free republic, but especially in ours, with the existence of the Fourth Amendment. We are not talking about the failure to create or maintain some obsolete piece of paperwork just for the sake of having it. No, no, no, this is much more than that. And we are not talking here about exculpatory evidence being withheld as to suspected foreign terrorists. These are applications to surveil U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, who themselves have constitutional rights and also have an expectation that their government will not secretly spy on them, in violation of that which is rightfully theirs under the Constitution of the United States. So you can't look at this and credibly, reliably, say: It is OK. Let the FBI take care of it. The FBI is working on it. We have been hearing that for years. I have been hearing that for 10 years--the entire decade that I have been at this business. And what has happened? Well, what has happened is that we have seen time and again that there have been abuses of the very sort that many of us have been predicting for a long time would inevitably and repeatedly arise in the absence of reform. This doesn't require us to undertake a dismal view of humanity. No, it is not that at all. It is simply that government is best understood as the organized, official collective use of force, officially sanctioned as part of a government. And, as James Madison explained in Federalist 51, if men were angels we wouldn't need government. If we had access to angels to run our government, we wouldn't need rules about government. But we are not angels, and we don't have access to them. So, instead, we have to rely on humans. Humans are flawed. They make mistakes, and they also sometimes decide for nefarious or political or other reasons to flout the law--hence the need for the night watchman, hence the need for rules that restricts their ability to do that. So I find it entirely unsatisfactory when people say: Just let the FBI deal with this, because, first of all, they haven't dealt with it. They haven't dealt with it even as abuses have become more and more known under various provisions of FISA and even as we are still coming to terms with language that was adopted nearly two decades ago that itself was overly broad at the time and has been abused since then. No, we are not going to just trust that an organization that is able to operate entirely in secret, with the benefit of protection of national security laws, with the benefit of over-classification of documents--we are not simply going to assume lightly that they are going to fix it, because they haven't and because they won't and because they don't want to. I understand why they might not want to. All of us can appreciate that when we do a job, if somebody else adds requirements to that job, we might be naturally resistant to it. But that doesn't mean that we don't need to do it here. That doesn't mean that our oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States doesn't compel us to do so here. We know that the FBI is not going to fix it because the FBI has in the past adopted procedures designed to prevent this kind of manipulation, this kind of chicanery from arising, including, most notably, the Woods procedures. Yet we know that the Woods procedures have been openly flouted. So can we walk away from this and pretend that the 45th President of the United States didn't have his own rights abused, his own campaign surveilled abusively by the FBI itself? No, we can't. And I don't know anyone--Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative or libertarian or something else--who could look at that and say: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense that we should just leave unfettered, unreviewable discretion in the hands of those who are able to operate entirely in secret. The Lee-Leahy amendment would require that the government turn over to the FISA Court any and all material information in its position, including information that might undermine its case as part of the FISA application. As I said earlier, this information would be made available to the amicus curiae upon request. As an added protection, our amendment would require any Federal officer filing an application for electronic surveillance or physical search under FISA to certify that the officer has collected and reviewed, for accuracy and for completeness, supporting documentation for each factual assertion contained in the application. If we are going to require people to go to the FISA Court at all to get an order, if we are going to call it a court, ought we not require that such evidence be assembled and at least be made available to those whose job it is to make sure that the job is actually being done? The Lee-Leahy amendment also requires these officers to certify in each application that they have employed accuracy procedures put in place by the Attorney General and the FISA Court to confirm this certification before issuing an order. Finally, the Lee-Leahy amendment requires the Department of Justice inspector general to file an annual report regarding the accuracy of FISA applications and the Department of Justice's compliance with its requirements to disclose any and all material evidence that might undermine their case. Now, while I have a lot of ideas for reform, many of which are included in the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act that Senator Leahy and I introduced a couple of months ago, we were limited in this circumstance for our purposes to just one amendment to the Pelosi- Nadler-Schiff bill. That is this amendment, the one that I have been describing, the Lee-Leahy amendment. We believe that our amendment is a very measured approach to enacting those reforms that we believe to be most essential to protecting the rights and the privacy of Americans from a system that, by its very nature and, in some instances, by design, is ripe with opportunities for abuse. It is not perfect, but it will go a long way, if we pass it, toward forestalling this kind of abuse. We have to remember that although we live in the greatest Republic ever known to human beings and although our rights are, by and large, respected in this country, we are by no means immune to the type of abuse that can take hold in any system of government, especially a system of government with a whole lot of resources at its disposal to gather information, including efforts to gather information on that government's own citizenry. If we remember, about 45 years ago, there was a committee put together, headed by a Senator from Idaho named Frank Church, that looked at abuses of telephone surveillance by the government and concluded that in basically every administration dating back to the rise of the common usage of the telephone, our intelligence-gathering resources within the United States had been utilized to engage in what was essentially political espionage. Since the late 1970s when the Church Committee issued its report, we have had exponential growth in the ability of government and the ability of everyone else, for that matter, to obtain and process data and information. In most ways, it has been a real blessing. It is a great thing. It is also important for us to keep in mind the extent to which our papers and effects are no longer found exclusively within physical file cabinet files within someone's home or office. In many instances, they can be found elsewhere in electronic form. Our security and our liberty need not and ought never to be viewed as irreconcilably at odds with each other. Many civil liberties and privacy experts joined together in an effort known as the PCLOB a few years ago--the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board--and concluded a few years ago that our privacy and our liberty are not at odds with each other. In fact, our privacy is part of our liberty. We are not truly free unless our personal effects and our private information can belong to us and not simply be open game for the government. It is sad and tragic that in order for this to come to light, it took an assault on freedom so bold and so shameless as to loop in the President of the United States. With this and other revelations that have come to light in recent days and weeks and months and over the last few years, we can't forget that these entities are still run by human beings with their own political views, with their own agendas. And in some cases, unfortunately--rare cases, I hope--people who are charged with protecting the people and their liberty may in some cases be inclined to be at odds with it. It is unfortunate that the 45th President of the United States has had, quite tragically, to become the victim of this. But I ask the question, what if your information were on the line? What if you had been targeted--maybe for political reasons, maybe for reasons that had nothing to do with politics, maybe for reasons that just had to deal with a personal vendetta someone had against any American. It is far less likely that the abuse would ever have come to light. In this circumstance, it did come to light. We can't ignore it, nor can we pretend that it couldn't happen to any one of us--and I don't mean as Members of the U.S. Senate; I just mean as Americans. In fact, each and every one of us is less capable of standing up to this and less likely to discover the abuse in the first instance. Not all of us happen to be the President of the United States. I am grateful that President Donald J. Trump has been willing to speak truth to power and has been willing to call out the flagrant abuse of FISA and of other procedures within the government. It is our obligation, it is our solemn duty, and it is my pleasure to do something about it. The Lee-Leahy amendment does something about it, and I invite all of my colleagues to join me in supporting it. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is with a heavy heart that I come to the floor of the Senate today. Over the last few weeks, I talked to countless people throughout Utah and across the Nation, but especially in Utah, about the troubles that they have encountered, about the profound sadness that the American people are experiencing right now, the frustrations that they have. This is something that we have never seen in this country, not on this scale, not during our lifetimes. My thoughts and prayers go out to my fellow Americans and my fellow Utahns as they are struggling to make ends meet, whether it is figuring out how to make payroll or keep food on the table at home or a combination of both, as it is for so many. I am mindful of them and of all the difficulty that the American people are going through right now. I want to begin by echoing something that Senator Schumer said a moment ago. We need to do what we were elected to do. Now, I don't agree with everything Senator Schumer just said--in fact, I would strongly disagree with a lot of what he just said--but I do agree with that. We need to do the job we were elected to do. Let's think about where we are right now and where we have been over the last few weeks. We have seen healthcare providers working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have seen the President and his staff at the White House working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. We have seen the Centers for Disease Control and members of the public health community who have continued to work tirelessly--farmers, truck drivers, grocery store employees, and pharmacists working to make sure that we continue to have access to the things we need in order to live. We have seen members of the news media working overtime, even if, as is the case for many of them, they do so only to blame all of this--rather unfairly in my opinion--on the President of the United States. We have seen parents working both their jobs--both of them--from home and simultaneously home schooling their children; yet Congress is in recess. This, Mr. President, is simply unacceptable. If COVID-19 requires Congress to act, then it requires Congress to convene. Now, look, I understand the need for distancing, and there are ways we can accommodate that here. Support staff can stay home. Policy experts can mostly work from home. Many of our meetings--most of them, in fact--can be conducted over the phone or by video conference. I have seen this myself in the last few weeks. I have been working as many hours as ever, just with a lot of meetings over the phone and through Zoom and platforms like that. The meetings can continue, but all the essential work of Congress-- that is, any steps necessary in order to enact legislation, the task of legislating itself--can be done only by Members who are voting and present in their respective legislative Chambers, either the Senate or the House of Representatives. This is a nondelegable duty. We can't delegate it to anyone else in government, and so we have got exactly two choices. We can choose to legislate, in which case we have to convene, or we can stay in recess and not legislate. Those really are the only two options. It is no coincidence, it is no accident that the very first clause of the very first section of the very first article of the Constitution says that ``all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.'' Article I, section 7 then goes on to prescribe the formula by which all Federal law will be enacted. This may happen only when the same discrete set of words presented in the form of a legislative proposal passes the House and the Senate and is then submitted to the President for signature or veto. Under our constitutional system, under any definition of the term, Senators are essential employees. We are being paid. We have a crisis to continue to work through. Our services are necessary. In order to perform those services, we have to perform them here in Washington. To be very clear about this, this isn't entirely a new thing. Sure, the most recent iteration of this is new and began when the COVID-19 crisis began about a month ago, but the fact is Congress has, in many respects, been shirking its responsibilities for years--for decades, in fact. For the better part of the last--I don't know--three, four, five, six decades, Congress has been sort of backing away from its lawmaking responsibilities. We have ceded voluntarily--sometimes willfully--the responsibility for making law, in some cases, to the courts--in many, many cases to executive branch agencies. This, for many, is a feature, not a bug, but it is an unconstitutional feature. It is something we should dismiss and render a bug. You see, we can't delegate that power. It is supposed to belong only to us, and that means we are not supposed to enact law saying, Entity X, Y, or Z shall enact good law in the area of expertise of that agency. But in this crisis, we have doubled down on that decades-long bad habit. In many cases, within Congress itself, we have empowered party leaders to negotiate in secret, sort of asking us to rubberstamp out these take-it-or-leave-it proposals without individual Members being able to read them, let alone have meaningful input in their negotiation, and reducing the role of each individual elected lawmaker in the law-making process through a series of tweets and press conferences. This isn't legislating. I was interested a few minutes ago when Senator Schumer was talking, as he was referring to provisions that were negotiated successfully just last night to add this or that provision into this deal. Well, most of us were not part of that process. Most of us saw this legislative package, this bill, only within the last few hours. That isn't a true negotiation, and it is not a true legislative process. Now, I understand that we are in unusual circumstances, but we can't let it happen this way again. This is not acceptable. We should not be passing major legislation--especially legislation providing nearly a half trillion dollars in new spending--without Congress actually being in session, without Members actually being here to debate, discuss, amend, and consider legislation and vote on it individually, rather than on an absentee basis, rather than by delegating that power to someone else. This crisis is too big to leave up to a small handful of people. Different parts of the country will face different kinds of threats and, therefore, have different kinds of needs. Different industries will need different kinds of help in order to recover the health of the economy. As long as Congress remains in recess, Democrats are free to politicize and stifle legislation with impunity as they did just a couple of weeks ago. Only returning to work and indeed actually working will give the American people the government they deserve. The American people need to know who is helping them and who is simply playing politics. We can't allow them to know that if we are not in session. We can't just spend another half trillion dollars every week or 2 or 3 and hope and pretend that it is going to turn out okay. The upcoming challenges are far too numerous and onerous and complex to leave up to just a few staff meetings behind closed doors. We have got issues involving testing, masks, healthcare policy, liability, leave, regulatory reform, immigration, and the judicial system, just to name a few. All of these things require serious legislative action. We can't just give those issues the attention that they deserve simply by sitting in our respective homes. Now, look, I am not saying that Members aren't working. I and most of the Members I know have been working as hard as ever in the last few weeks, but we can't do that which is uniquely our job--sure, we can have meetings. We can make phone calls. We can help solve problems just like any other American could, but we cannot do the job for which we were elected without actually being here. You see, the reason Congress works so little, even in moments like this one, is because Congress has chosen to prioritize its own convenience. The 3\1/2\-day legislative workweek, blocking tough amendment votes, nuclear options, things like this are all reminders of the fact that we have to get back to work, especially if we are going to have a debate about when everyone else will be able to return to work. If it makes anyone feel better, remember the Senate floor is often empty--just as it is at this very moment--making it perhaps the safest place in America. We can, in fact, structure our votes in such a way that we can distance ourselves. We have proven that in recent weeks. We can do it again. In closing, we have to remember that challenges don't, themselves, build character. They reveal it. Our character is revealed rather than built on challenging times. The character of our institution is on the line here. It is being exposed and revealed for all the world to see. COVID-19 certainly has revealed to us the character of the Chinese Government and its lackeys inside the World Health Organization. It has revealed the character of America's doctors and nurses, our priests and our pastors. Our families and our communities have pulled together. Many State and local leaders have proven themselves to be up to the challenge, especially, I say with great pride, both Democrats and Republicans in my home State of Utah. Congress stepped up before we recessed to appropriate money for workers and businesses who were facing an unprecedented monumental crisis, but that was weeks ago. That was literally 20 million lost jobs ago. There is more to do--there is a lot more to do--more than we have ever faced. The country is changing along with the rest of the world, and we need policy to change with it. Unlike millions of our constituents, Members of Congress are still receiving paychecks. It is time for us to earn them. It is time to do our job. It is time to return to Washington and get to work. We are not currently scheduled to come back until May 4. When we come back on May 4--which I hope we do--I hope the force will be with us, but we have got to get back together even sooner than that because we can't legislate without our Members here. We can't do that from recess.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I came to the floor several days ago in connection with the expiring national security provisions. We have three provisions of our national security system of laws that are set to expire and have been set to expire for a long time. In fact, they expired yesterday, the 15th of March. We have known that this was going to happen for a long time. When the USA FREEDOM Act was passed in 2015--a bill that I authored, along with my distinguished friend and colleague Senator Leahy from Vermont--we knew those three provisions known as lone wolf, 215, and roving wire taps would expire at the end of 2019. We got to the end of 2019, and we found ourselves up against a spending cliff, and the Senate decided, with the concurrence of the House of Representatives and the President, that we should postpone until March 15 the expiration of those three provisions that I just mentioned. I came to the floor on Thursday to raise concerns that we needed to be able to amend and reform these provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, for a number of reasons. Among other reasons, I noted that the President of the United States found that his own rights as an American citizen were abused, as this law was manipulated, was abused in an unholy alliance of partisan political interests against him. For that reason, the President of the United States has, quite thankfully, made this point clear to the American people. Even though the abuses that we know of that occurred with respect to the President of the United States were not themselves one of these expiring provisions, we note the law itself as a whole is subject to abuse and that at moments like these, when these provisions are expiring, it is appropriate for us to take a broader look at the overall legal framework in which FISA operates and to bring about reforms. I came to the floor on Thursday, and I asked that we simply reauthorize these three expiring provisions for a period of a few weeks--that we reauthorize them cleanly and without any modification to give us a few weeks to deal with the immediate crisis surrounding the coronavirus. I asked that, at the end of that period, we proceed with the understanding that the Senate be allowed to vote on a small handful of amendments--proposed reforms--to FISA. This, unfortunately, drew an objection, resulting in the expiration of these three provisions over the weekend. This was unnecessary. As I pointed out at the time, I and my bipartisan group of colleagues, who have been concerned about these and other foreign intelligence surveillance provisions, didn't necessarily want it to expire. In fact, we believed that this was an unnecessary step. It was unnecessary to allow the law to go through the uncertainty of an expiration without having something to put in its place. We could have and would have and should have done it differently. Fortunately, we were able to reach a deal--a deal that is still unfolding but a deal that is about to be announced on the Senate floor, whereby we will be extending for a few weeks these three expiring provisions, and, at the end of that time, we will be able to vote on a small handful of provisions, amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act framework. This is necessary. We ought not wait until the President of the United States himself becomes a victim of this. When he has been a victim, we should assume that there are other victims--people whose rights have been invaded, violated as the law has been abused. We know that to be the case. For that reason, we have negotiated this agreement, whereby we will be able to receive votes on amendments to improve and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I want to thank President Trump for bringing this issue to the attention of the American people and for reminding them of the importance of reforming this law. I want to thank the lead cosponsor of the legislation that I have filed in connection with this and of the amendments that we will be considering. Pat Leahy from Vermont and I have worked on FISA-related issues for basically the entirety of the 9 years I have spent in the U.S. Senate. I am grateful to him for working with me on this. I also want to point out that it shouldn't have to come to this. We shouldn't have to wait until the moment when we are on the eve of the expiration of some important legislation and where we have to wait for the President of the United States to weigh in and lean in and exercise as much leadership as he has to tell us that we ought to reconsider laws that we ourselves have enacted. From time to time, laws require revision, review, and reform. That always, necessarily, requires amendments, and we ought to be ready, able, and willing to vote on amendments as necessary. Finally, this has become all too symptomatic of a Senate in which amendment votes, while once the norm, have now become the exception. This is unacceptable. It is not a partisan issue. It is neither Republican nor Democratic. It is neither liberal nor conservative. It is simply an American issue. The American people, including each of our constituents from each of the 50 States that we represent, deserve and expect for us to be more than a rubberstamp. We can't justify our pattern of waiting for legislation to come over from the House of Representatives and then accepting the highly flawed proposition that the House must have gotten it right and we, therefore, must accept as a binary choice the entirety of what they have done, without considering or voting on amendments. This isn't acceptable. We can do better. I am encouraged that in this instance we have chosen to do better. I hope and expect and will continue to demand that we vote on more amendments and that this become the norm once again rather than the exception. Finally, I am grateful that Senate leadership--Republican and Democratic alike--has chosen to allow us to consider amendments here. We are doing the right thing, and I look forward to more of precisely this kind of activity, not just voting on amendments pivotal to FISA but also broader issues. This isn't just about FISA. This is about everything we do. The minute any of us ever hears an argument suggesting that we have to accept whatever a handful of Senators or a committee or the other House of Congress has proposed and we ought to accept it or deny it--lock, stock, and barrel--without amendments, that is almost always an injurious and a dangerous argument, one that runs contrary to the very purpose for which this body exists. I am grateful for this opportunity we will have to vote on these amendments. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to receive permission to complete my remarks before any vote is conducted.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, earlier today, when the President of the United States issued a statement about the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill purporting to but utterly failing to meaningfully reform the three expiring foreign intelligence surveillance provisions at issue, the President expressed grave concern over the process. He expressed grave concern over the content of the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill, which the Senate reviewed, voted on, passed without amendment, without adequate debate, violating the House of Representatives' own 72-hour rule in order to get there. Perhaps he was talking about that, or perhaps he was talking about the fact that the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill really doesn't fix the problem. In fact, look at the fact that there was overt, politically motivated targeting that took place against the President of the United States. Now, look, I know--I know--those were different provisions under title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I get that. But it is still part of the same legislative package. It is still part of the same set of laws we are concerned about here. The only time where we have the meaningful opportunity to take a deep breath and debate, discuss, and possibly amend these provisions is when they are set to expire. I referred earlier to the USA FREEDOM Act, which I authored and sponsored, along with my distinguished friend and colleague Senator Leahy, the senior Senator from Vermont, back in 2015. That was brought about as a result of and during the moment when we were approaching the expiration of these very same provisions. That is how we bring about reforms. In fact, we brought about some reforms in that very legislation that were outside the narrow context of the three expiring provisions in question. There is no rule, no law etched in stone, written into the rules of the Senate, the Constitution, or anything else that tells us that we cannot, that we may not, that we should not edit or amend or reconsider any provision outside the narrow expiring provisions that we are facing with FISA. Quite to the contrary, we have a pattern and practice in the past that has established that this is the way we do things. Look, in fairness, I wish we debated and discussed and amended these things a whole lot more because these laws are really messed up. We ought to be reviewing them and updating them a lot more often--not because the people implementing them are bad. Maybe some of them are. I don't know them. They have done some bad things, some of them. I am sure there are a lot of people who have access to these tools who are hard-working, well-intentioned, well educated, and highly specialized. I am even willing to assume most of them fit that description and wouldn't ever knowingly, intentionally violate that law. But the fact is, the law has been violated. There are very few instances that we actually know about. Why? Well, because this whole thing operates under the veil of secrecy. Sunlight illuminates and it also disinfects, and the opposite happens when a court--a court charged with the sacred responsibility of determining and in some cases limiting the rights of the American people, U.S. citizens--operates in secret. I devoted my career, prior to coming to the Senate, to litigation, specialized primarily in appellate litigation and dispositive motions in Federal court. One of the great things about the U.S. court system is the fact that, despite its flaws, I would put it up against any system of its kind anywhere in the world. The reason is, it is done, with very, very few, narrow, careful exceptions, under the light of day. Rulings, decisions, and judgments are made public and are subject to appeal, usually on multiple levels. That is not how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates. It operates in secret. So that is one of the reasons why we really ought to be reviewing and updating this stuff more often, especially when we know there have been abuses. We know from the sheer breadth of these statutes--some of which were written, by the way, in the immediate wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As I mentioned earlier, I was not then a Member of this body. I was not a Member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives. In fact, I have never served over there. The Senate is the first place and only place I have ever held elected office. I was an adult by then, and I was licensed--a practicing attorney by then. I remember watching as Congress was passing the PATRIOT Act and wondering why they were acting so quickly--so hastily--to put so many words and so many pages into a single bill. I remember wondering whether they might, in the process of doing that, trample over the fundamental rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution without the American people knowing it. This has come to fruition over time, and we have seen that it has been abused. We know the certainty is--sure as we know the sun will come up tomorrow in the East--that this will continue to happen. To what extent it continues to happen or how long it is allowed to is, in many respects, up to us. As I said earlier, governments are run by human beings. Human beings, while redeemable, while generally good, are flawed, and they make mistakes. But they are much more prone to make mistakes when they can do so under cover of darkness, when they don't have to answer to anybody. That is what is going on here. That is why I am so concerned about this one. That is why I consider it--I guess I would say disappointed. It is disappointing that this body, some of the most talented people I have ever had the pleasure of working with--100 Members, from 50 different States, each with his or her own story or his or her own unique perspective--should be asked to succumb to a process that doesn't allow us to have any input into a bill like this. In this case, it arose in connection with the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill--a bill that I consider inadequate. It draws near to the Constitution with its lips, metaphorically speaking, but its heart is far from it. It pays loose homage to the notion that American citizens have rights worth protecting. Yet its provisions are malleable and easy to circumvent. It functions in much the same way as carbon monoxide might operate in the human bloodstream, where the human body might recognize something, mistaking it for oxygen. That, by the way, is--I am told--why carbon monoxide is so deadly. Your body will tend to recognize it mistakenly for O2 and in some ways prefer it to O2, thus, starving the body of actual oxygen. When we accept something that looks like it does the job--and it, in fact, doesn't--it can do a lot of harm in the process. Why? Because the American people and their elected Representatives in the Senate and the House and in the White House then have the opportunity to say: Well, it looks like that was fixed; we can go on to look at something else. It is easy to do here because, after all, we have no end to problems that we can be worrying about. Even if this problem disappeared--and any of five others that are at the top of the list--we would still have thousands of others we could worry about. That is exactly why it is such a problem. To have a bill like the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill rammed down our throats and to be told that we have to accept this, told that the President of the United States, who himself has had his rights violated, who himself was politically targeted under the FISA framework--it is insulting to every American that after something like that happens--we know it has happened; we know it continues to happen; we know it will continue to happen--to tell us that we have to accept the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff response to that is simply insulting. We shouldn't put up with it. President Trump shouldn't put up with it, and the American people shouldn't. It is not just Republicans, and it is not just Democrats. This is no respecter of persons or of political parties. In fact, many of my best allies on this issue are, and have been, Democrats. Democrats were pretty early to acknowledge the flaws in the PATRIOT Act and in provisions of FISA. Ever since I got here in 2011, I have been working across the aisle with Senator Leahy, with Senator Durbin, and with others to try to find solutions to these problems. One of the things that has happened in the intervening years--this is my 10th year in the Senate--is that this really has become a bipartisan issue. It used to be me and a handful of Democrats and Senator Paul who worried about this. We now have a broad coalition of Republicans and Democrats who are concerned about this. They are worried about it because if it can happen to the President, it can happen to anyone. The American people have been influenced in so many ways by our own history, and our own history extends back many centuries, not just on this continent but in the United Kingdom. After all, it hasn't been that many years since we became our own country. We existed as colonies for almost the same period of time that we have existed as a free, independent constitutional Republic. In both sets of experiences and in experiences even predating the American experiment in its entirety, we have seen there are good reasons to require things like search warrants. When the government wants to get information from you, when it wants to search through your papers, your possessions, your personal effects, or when it wants to seize you or your possessions, the government really needs to get a warrant; it needs to establish probable cause supporting that warrant; and it needs to outline with particularity the things that it wants to search or seize. It needs to do so from an independent magistrate. All of these things matter. They matter not just because they are in the Fourth Amendment, not just because they were a good idea when they were put in there in 1791, but because long before we became a country, these were part of the rights of English subjects, part of the rights that American colonists had as English subjects and that English subjects had even back in England. They, too, had a government that was run by mere mortals. The divine right of Kings notwithstanding, the mark was also mortal, as were the persons occupying positions in Parliament and officers elsewhere in the government. That is why, from time to time, these rights would be abused. We saw instances of English patriots--like John Wilkes--whose rights were violated and who sought legal recourse after he was subjected to unreasonable, warrantless, open-ended searches and seizures. John Wilkes became respected on both sides of the Atlantic because he didn't put up with it, even though it cost him dearly in financial terms, socially, even politically. Even though it caused him great pain, he fought; he aggressively litigated what had happened to him. That is one of the reasons he became a hero on both sides of the Atlantic. We look to heroes on both sides of the Atlantic--people like John Wilkes who, notwithstanding the fact he was an English subject, not an American, he understood the English Bill of Rights; he understood core rights that were incorporated as if by reference by the Fourth Amendment but that were preexisting long before then. In fact, things like the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment are rights that everyone should be entitled to in every country. It violates logic and reason and principles of decency and kindness to suggest that a person can be arrested or have his or her house or effects searched or seized without due process of law and without a validly issued warrant bearing particularity backed up by probable cause. What, then, does this have to do with FISA? It has everything to do with FISA. It has a lot to do with it. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as the name suggests, was created not to go after U.S. citizens but to go after foreign spies and terrorists--not Americans. Sadly, over time, as a result of the advocacy of people who weren't all that afraid of Big Government--the advocacy and defense of people like Jim Comey and Robert Mueller--we got a sort of morphing of FISA into something that wasn't focused entirely, necessarily, anymore on foreign intelligence gathering, on agents of a foreign power, on terrorists, but could be used even with respect to U.S. citizens. This isn't right. In our hearts, we know it is not right. In our hearts, we should certainly know that it is not right when we have the opportunity to consider some amendments--one of the amendments that I have proposed--and a key part of the Lee-Leahy reform. We provide something that I don't think would be shocking to any American citizen. In fact, I think any American citizen would be shocked not by the fact of its being introduced but by the fact that it is not already law. It would say that if they want to go after an American--if they know that the subject in question, the target of their investigation is, in fact, an American--there ought to be added procedural protections attached to their investigation of that person; that if they get a court order under section 215 allowing them to search for and gain access to any ``tangible things''--any of a whole category of business records--they really ought to have to satisfy a different, slightly higher standard than they would if the person were a spy from a foreign country or a foreign terrorist or something like that. There are certain rights that do inhere in the fact that you are an American. That is not unreasonable. In fact, I am not sure I know any American citizen outside of Washington, DC, who would even have a moment's pause with that, other than to say: Why on Earth is that not already law? I am also convinced that most Americans would respond to the beefed- up amicus curiae provisions. Remember, ``amicus curiae'' is a Latin term that means friend of the court. It refers to the fact that within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, you have no jury, you have no opposing counsel, you don't have a court reporter who is going to report anything in public. You, instead, have total secrecy. Our FISA provisions would expand our amicus curiae provisions, would expand the circumstances in which the FISA Court must appoint a friend of the court--or amicus curiae--just to argue the other side. This doesn't even really limit their power. It just says: Let's bring somebody else into the room--somebody else who can be trusted, who has security clearance, but who can provide a different perspective. Most Americans--in fact, I would say probably every American I know outside of Washington, DC--would say there is nothing unreasonable about that. In fact, what is unreasonable is the fact that that would require an amendment--a change--to existing law. Another one of the provisions that we want to amend deals with what we call exculpatory evidence. When applying for a court order from the FISA Court under section 215, the government should have a responsibility to disclose evidence that would be exculpatory or would show that the person being investigated might not have actually done the thing they did or that they might have flawed information on their hands. We know that some of this has occurred or government agents have gone before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and failed to disclose meaningful material facts that, if known, would have at least been material to the court and probably been determinative and resulted in the court's unwillingness to issue the order in question. I don't think I know anyone outside of this town who would say that is unreasonable to request. Senators Paul and Wyden have a few other amendments. One deals with limiting the government's ability, through section 215, to gain access to your browser history and another addressing the power of the Attorney General to make some of these approvals. Those are amendments that have been proposed by Senators Wyden and Daines. Then we have an amendment from Senator Paul that would propose that across the board in all of the different provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--whether it is 215 or 702 or title I or some other provision--that if you are investigating a known American citizen, you have a higher standard, and you probably need to go to a regular court rather than a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which, in most respects, doesn't even meet the definition of court. In response to some of these, opponents--defenders of the deep state--might well glibly conclude: Well, there is no reason for you to impose a higher standard or for you to impose anything remotely resembling probable cause because, after all, in other contexts, the government can gain access to business records without showing probable cause. While this is true in many circumstances, first of all, it ignores the fact that recent jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of the United States--including from the Carpenter case--makes clear that just because something has a business record maintained in the ordinary course of business, that doesn't mean the person to whom it pertains has no reasonable expectation of privacy in it. In some cases, it doesn't. We are no longer dealing with the old jurisprudence of Smith v. Maryland, unadorned by more recent developments like Carpenter. Under Smith, they were dealing with the collection from a pen register--the collection of an old-style landline telephone that spat out the numbers that were called and being called to and from the number of the line in question. Modern business records disclose a heck of a lot more personal detail than that. I suspect if Smith v. Maryland--the one dealing with the pen register and the landline telephone business records--if that were decided today, it might well have been decided very differently today than it would have been then, but, certainly, with respect to many categories of business records, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. There is some expectation of some privacy buried within that, and we can't conclude otherwise. Secondly, separate and apart from developments in the law that ought to cause us to view with some suspicion the government's open-ended ability with a mere subpoena to show relevance to and therefore access to certain categories of business records--unlike those circumstances where someone could go into a regular court, whether a civil or a criminal proceeding, and get a subpoena based on a mere relevance standard without probable cause--in those circumstances, at least, there is more of an opportunity for somebody to respond. In many cases, that somebody might be the custodian of the records of the business entity in question, whether it is the mobile telephone services operator, the internet service provider, or the owner of the car rental facility, the storage unit facility--whatever it is, there is some opportunity for that business enterprise to go into court to try to quash the subpoena, to argue that the government doesn't, in fact, have a need for it; that it doesn't need to produce it to defend its own business interests, if not those also of its own customers. In some circumstances, there is also an opportunity for the person in question to be notified independently to object to or in other ways-- one way or another--respond to the government's desire to gain access to those business records. By contrast, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, you don't have that ability. That is why we need special protections here. Look, it is not hard for the government to have to follow basic principles of due process. It is not hard for the government to have to show probable cause. In most circumstances, this can be done in a manner of minutes. No one has ever demonstrated, to my satisfaction, why--especially where, as in the case of my probable cause amendment, with the requirement that they satisfy that standard only when they are in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and they are going after a record pertaining to a known U.S. person--it would still allow them to go after other records pertaining to other people without that knowledge and, if they didn't know someone was a U.S. person, they wouldn't have to satisfy it. But even that is apparently unacceptable to the self-proclaimed masters of the universe who now dominate the Senate and refuse utterly to recognize the article VI-mandated expectation and constitutional mandate of equal representation among the States in the Senate. This is unacceptable. We have reached a point where we don't have the expectation that we can rely on what comes out of committee because, very often, what comes out of committee isn't even what is considered here. We had this Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill come out Tuesday night. It was passed the next day by the House of Representatives. I understand why a simple majority of the House of Representatives might well decide to defer to Speaker Pelosi and Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff. After all, Pelosi and Nadler and Schiff, themselves, run a very substantial portion of the Democratic Party's operations in the House of Representatives. I understand why a whole lot of Members would like to defer to them. What I don't understand is, No. 1, why Republicans in the House of Representatives would want to defer to Pelosi and Nadler and Schiff, nor do I understand why--even if some Republicans in the House of Representatives would foolishly defer to Pelosi and Nadler and Schiff-- why that in any way, shape, or form binds me or anyone else in this body to do what Pelosi, Nadler, and Schiff decided to do. We are not a rubberstamp. We are not a rubberstamp for the House of Representatives. We are certainly not a rubberstamp for the deep state. This gives me some hope, I suppose. This gives me some hope that, given the fact that the President of the United States is willing to acknowledge that FISA isn't perfect and that the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill passed by the House of Representatives yesterday--without having gone through any terribly thorough process and without Members of the House of Representatives having had access to it for more than about 24 hours when they passed it--the fact that the President of the United States was willing to openly, publicly, today call into question the wisdom of the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill gives me some encouragement. It gives me some encouragement that some of my colleagues here in the Senate might see fit to claim the privileges attached to their election certificate, to recognize that we are not all just functionaries of our respective party leaders in the House and in the Senate; that we are answerable to our own constituents to defend the Constitution in the manner we deem appropriate and necessary under the circumstances. I hope--I expect that this body will do the right thing. I think it would be a shame--I think it is a shame to let three of these three provisions expire and just let them hang out there with the uncertainty that Senator Burr so thoughtfully pointed out will be the product of these provisions expiring. We don't need to do that. We have had years and years and years to address this, and we have refused--we have deliberately declined; we have been recklessly indifferent with respect to the need to reform these provisions. If not us, who? If not now, when? I have no interest in continuing to punt this thing over and over again. This is like Charlie Brown going after that same football with the same Lucy, who moves the darn football every time he gets close to it. This isn't acceptable. I have great confidence in my colleagues that a few of us--Republicans and Democrats alike--will come forward and say: No, not on my watch, not anymore. This is not how the Senate is going to operate. This is just within a few days when we have seen a few unfortunate things happen--things that are themselves symptoms of the same underlying problem. I don't mean FISA, specifically. I am talking about something much broader than FISA. I am talking about the deviation from the norms of courtesy that have come to define this body over the centuries. My friend, the distinguished colleague from Louisiana, Senator Kennedy, had an amendment he wanted considered and voted on last week in connection with the Energy bill. I disagreed with that amendment. I would have voted against it. In fact, I would have voted against it and spoken against it on the floor. I really didn't like it, but he had an amendment he wanted considered. He was shut out unfairly and unreasonably. He was denied the opportunity to have that amendment considered. He wasn't even given adequate notice of his procedural rights that would come into play when the person--the Senator who had introduced an amendment--came down to the floor to amend her previous amendment and to use it as basically a managers' package, keeping Senator Kennedy's amendment out of that package, thus effectively denying him the opportunity to receive adequate consideration of his own amendment. He wasn't given notice. Because he wasn't given notice, he missed out on the opportunity to do what he inevitably could have done and would have done, so long as he could have come down here with 10 other Senators--a combined total of 11 Senators--sustaining him for his procedural right to call for the yeas and nays on the original amendment introduced by Senator Murkowski. We could have voted on that amendment, and she wouldn't have been able to insert that managers' package on her own without that intervening call for the yeas and nays on her original amendment. This is one of many examples that--while probably painfully boring to the average American--should be deeply disturbing to any American who knows about, who cares about, who yearns for the freedom that comes from our representative government; that expects that people elected to make laws will actually be participating in that process and not simply dictated to by two leaders--one Republican and one Democratic--in each House of Congress. Yet another manifestation of that--one that has sadly become sort of one installment in many series, like a set of sequel movies--is what happens basically every time we have a spending bill. To cite one example that occurred nearly 2 years ago, for many months we had been waiting to see when we would have the opportunity to debate, discuss, amend, and vote on a spending bill in the early months of 2018. It would be the first real spending bill that we had the opportunity to consider since the 45th President of the United States was sworn in, in January of 2017. We had been told by our respective party leaders in both Houses of Congress to wait for it; you will get the chance to review it; you will get the chance to debate it and amend it. Then, one evening on a Wednesday in March of 2018, I received an email. It was 8:37 p.m. That email was from Republican leadership addressed to Republican Senators, saying: Attached is a spending bill that we are going to be addressing. I thought: Good. This is what we have been waiting for, for months. I finally get to see it. I opened it up. It was 2,232 pages long. It spent, as I recall, $1.2 or $1.3 trillion. I immediately distributed it to members of my staff who worked through the night, splitting it up, figuring out what each provision meant--recognizing that a 2,232 page Senate appropriations bill doesn't read like a fast-paced novel. It doesn't read like a newspaper. It is a very slow and cumbersome process, one that involves countless cross-references to statutory provisions that wouldn't be recognizable to most ordinary Americans, so it takes a lot of time to review it. My staff, after working on it through the night and through the next day, was as shocked as I was to see that the House of Representatives passed that bill--the same 2,232-page-long bill that most Members saw for the first time at 8:37 p.m. the previous night. The House of Representatives passed that bill before lunch the next day. The Senate--this body--convened in the middle of the night the following evening and passed it with not one amendment, not one change from one Member of this body. When we outsource things to the so-called four corners--the Republican and Democratic leaders of both Houses of Congress--everybody else gets shut out. This might be really good for you if you are from one of those States represented by one of those four corners, but it is really bad for everybody else. I don't mean that it is bad for the Members; I mean every single person represented by someone else other than those people. At the end of the day, it is not their fault. It is not the fault of the four corners so much as it is our fault. They are doing what they have to do. They are doing the job the way they know how do it, the way they have learned how to do it, the way we have trained them to do it, sadly enough. We have let them do it that way, so they do. I am sure it is not easy to do it that way, but it is probably less hard than every other way out there. In that respect, I don't blame them for doing it that way. I blame us. Shame on us for passing that bill without any one of us having had the opportunity to read the whole darned thing except for maybe four Members. Between 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, you maybe had 4 Members total who knew what was in there and had control over it. Shame on us for passing it anyway. After those in the House of Representatives see for the first time the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill less than 24 hours before they vote on it and pass it--a bill purporting to reform FISA while failing to actually do so in a meaningful way--shame on them. If we pass it over here, shame on us. The shame is especially acute if we don't even try, which is what we are being asked to do here. We are being asked to defer, to let somebody else do the legislating. By the way, just as we were told when approaching that spending bill, as with most other spending bills in the 9 years I have been here, that we have to leave them to the experts--don't worry about this; this is for the Appropriations Committee's chairman, for the subcommittee chairmen, for the majority and minority leaders from the two Houses of Congress and basically for no one else; leave it to the experts--we are now being told to leave it to the experts here, which begs the question: What meaningful role do we play? Have we really rendered ourselves that insignificant that we are not even willing to defend our own right to raise our own ideas and our own concerns with something as profoundly significant and potentially impactful on the liberties of every single American--old and young, White and Black, male and female and of any station, rich or poor? These provisions--make no mistake-- have the potential to affect every single one of us. Shame on us if we don't even try to make it better. So I am not going to blame this one on Pelosi, Nadler, and Schiff. They can choose to pass an unwise bill, if they want to, that doesn't fix the problem, but I don't work for Pelosi or Nadler or Schiff. I work for the people of Utah. I was elected by the voters in the sovereign State of Utah, who expected me to come here and represent them. By the way, this is an issue that is neither liberal nor conservative. It is neither Democratic nor Republican. This is not a partisan issue. In fact, the amendments that I am talking about here are bipartisan. This is simply an American issue. It is a constitutional issue. It is an issue pertaining to and inextricably intertwined with the basic dignity of the eternal human soul. We can't pass this thing while pretending to be concerned about the rights of the American people, not unless we at least try to pretend like we are doing our job, not unless we at least try to pretend like we are trying to make it better. Even if you don't think FISA has been abused--if you do, by the way, that is absurdly, insanely naive, but I respect your right to be wrong; I respect your right to agree with Pelosi, Nadler, and Schiff on that front if that is how you feel--there have to be other ways in which you might acknowledge you can make this bill better. Maybe you are somebody who trusts the government way too much. Maybe you are somebody who thinks the government ought to be given more power. Maybe you are somebody who trusts the government when it makes allegations that somebody is an agent of a foreign power or is working for an agent of a foreign power or is a terrorist or has had some unkind thoughts toward another person. Even if you trust the government that much, you shouldn't, and what you would be suggesting would be unconstitutional. Yet, even if you were, then shame on you for not wanting to make this bill even more aggressive toward giving the government power. It is simply too grand a proposition to suggest that it is mere coincidence that the exact, magical combination of factors, of provisions that should have been included in this law--in the minds of every Member of the U.S. Senate--happened to materialize under the umbrella of the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill that was passed by the House of Representatives yesterday. That is just absurd. I mean, come on. Are you telling me that you can't find a single provision that you think couldn't have been written better? Some in that position of still opposing it might say: Well, yes, but we have other things to do. That is true. That is exactly why I am trying to provide 45 additional days for us to debate and discuss other issues first and then to fix FISA later. I would be willing to cleanly reauthorize the three expiring provisions so that nobody would have to deal with any uncertainty and so that the American people would not have to be put in jeopardy, neither their security nor their privacy, both of which are part of the same cohesive, continuous whole. Neither one of them has to be undermined. Yet that is what they insist we do. They insist that. So the argument might go: We have other things to do. Well, if you have other things to do, then let's punt this for 45 days, and let's just agree that we are going to vote on some things. Yet that is too much for them to suggest. To the extent their argument is that we are too busy to do this right now, then I would ask this question: Why? What are you doing right now? What better thing does any Member of the U.S. Senate have to do right now, at this moment, at 4:54 p.m., than to stand up and defend and debate the rights and the significance of the rights of the American people? I mean, I genuinely would like to know what is so compelling that makes it so that we can't even debate these things right now. In fact, in the time I have been speaking today, we could have easily voted on these very same amendments. We could have brought them up. We could have, and I would have agreed to have limited our debate to only a few minutes apiece. As we saw during the impeachment trial a few weeks ago, we are actually capable of casting votes and completing them within 6, 7, 8 minutes if we stand at attention or sit at our seats and listen as our names are called and then vote. What, I would ask, is so compelling? Do people have appointments for haircuts or manicures? Do they have to go to the dog groomers'? I really would like to know what is so compelling that makes it so we can't debate something as fundamental as how to improve the safety and privacy of the American people. I close by pointing out something that my friend and distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from North Carolina, said a few minutes ago about the fact of his almost ensuring that the program at issue-- the program supported by the three expiring provisions--will go dark by his objecting to my series of unanimous consent requests and about the fact that, as a result of his objection, not only is he essentially guaranteeing these programs will now go dark, but he is also guaranteeing, when we come back in just a few days from now--because whatever it is that we have to do in the next few days is apparently so important, and I really would like to know what that is that is so important that we can't do this--we are going to have to turn to this when we could have gotten it done today instead of turning to other pressing issues in front of us, issues dealing with emergencies created by the coronavirus. We could have, should have, would have otherwise been able to have turned to those things immediately. Instead, we will be stuck on this for days. I mean, this can end up taking many days--a week or so--if it is drawn out sufficiently. The program goes dark, and we lose the opportunity to debate, discuss, and enact other legislation--all because we have colleagues who decide they know better. It is not so much that they know better but that Representatives Pelosi, Nadler, and Schiff know better. It is their bill. Everybody else just voted for it. Now we are all asked to vote for it, and we are told to mind our own business, to butt out, because our Big Brother--the brooding, omnipresent Federal Government--knows better. It can be trusted. Trust Big Brother. Sure, he is going to spy on you, but his intentions are good. Sure, he is going to spy on you, but he is really just hoping to go after the bad guys so that you don't have to worry about the fact he is spying on your neighbor, on your constituents, on innocent Americans. Even if I am wrong--let's say, for a minute, that somehow I am mistaken in concluding that any of this will ever be abused--you can't really get around the fact that it has been abused. We know of circumstances in which it has been. We know that the President of the United States has himself been the target of abuse under this. Yet set that aside for a minute. Even under the absurd proposition that none of this will ever be abused again and that Pelosi and Nadler and Schiff have somehow found the magical formula that will forever guarantee these expiring provisions from being abused again, why wouldn't you still want to make the bill better? Why would you be willing to let those provisions go dark? Why would you be willing to postpone the consideration of other pressing business before the U.S. Senate? Is it really that important to shut out of debate your opponents who happen to disagree with you? What does this say about the next thing we will consider or the next thing after that? This doesn't end well. We know it doesn't end well. It never, ever works to push U.S. Senators to the point that they are told they are not entitled to their own opinions; that to the extent they have them, they may express them but only in a brief period of time; and that they then have to run off and be good little boys and girls and let the adults take over. No. I know that this is the way it has been working for a while, but it is not going to anymore. It is not going to anymore because the American people are demanding more. They are demanding better. Things sometimes have to get a little worse before they get better. Unfortunately, that is the position in which we now find ourselves. They have gotten worse, but they have gotten worse in a way that the American people are now noticing and are going to say: Don't do this anymore. Don't lock us out of the process. Don't tell us we don't matter. Don't tell us that our own elected Senators can't have a voice and that they won't get a vote and that they cannot debate it. The President of the United States has been targeted unethically, unlawfully, unscrupulously by the deep state. We have the opportunity to fix that, to make sure it doesn't happen to this President or any future President or any U.S. citizen regardless of how rich or poor or powerful or powerless. We must fix it. Shame on all of us if we don't. Our oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States requires this. The American people deserve more, and they deserve better, and we must provide it. (Mrs. FISCHER assumed the Chair.)

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this is the natural product of the American people being asked again and again to simply accept that this is how things will operate. The American people are told to just settle--to settle for budgets that don't balance or come anywhere close to it; to settle for a government that spies on you, that lies to you, that overreaches, and a legislative branch that is somehow all too content and seemingly eager and willing to allow and perpetuate and even expand those authorities. This is unacceptable. We shouldn't settle. We shouldn't settle for an overreaching government. We should expect a government that respects the letter and spirit of the Fourth Amendment. We shouldn't settle for a Senate in which the rights of individual Senators--a bipartisan group of Senators that has been trying for years to just have a vote on a few reasonable amendments--would be shut out. We should expect an open, robust debate, discussion, and amendment process. Don't settle for any of this. You should expect more. We should all expect freedom. We should all expect debate and liberty and the protection of your fundamental rights as American citizens. So we will try this again, rolling the number down to an absolute bare minimum number of three amendments. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Senate bill at the desk providing for a 45-day extension of FISA. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; further, that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 6172 and that the only amendments in order be three amendments offered by the following Senators: Senators Lee, Leahy, Daines, Wyden, and Paul. I further ask that upon disposition of the amendments, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read a third time and that the Senate vote on the bill, as amended, if amended, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, you might notice a pattern here. This pattern is going to continue. This pattern is going to continue because this is unjust. This is unrealistic. This is unsustainable. This used to be a body that prided itself on being the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. It is a body that has its own unique protections attached to it. Article I of the Constitution sets out the parameters of the Senate, and it makes clear that it will consist of exactly two Members representing each State. The one and only kind of constitutional amendment that is preemptively unconstitutional, that cannot be adopted, is that type of amendment that would undo this fundamental, sacred principle of equal representation among and between the States in the Senate. You cannot do that. They did this with a distinct purpose in mind: that we would have the ability to represent the States as States; that we would not be just a roving commission on what was satisfactory or whether the House of Representatives had done its homework but that we would be our own independent legislative body. We would be betraying our oath to the Constitution and those whom we represent if we didn't do this. This used to be a place, for that very reason--in fact, until quite recently, it was a place where any Senator could have any amendment considered on any legislation. Basic standards of collegiality, of decency and respect for each other and for the rule of law itself convinced Members over centuries--literally centuries--to defer to each other in at least their opportunity to propose and vote on amendments. In recent years, we have seen this deteriorate. We have seen it deteriorate, sadly, under the leadership of Republicans and Democrats alike. We have seen it deteriorate at the expense of the representation of each individual State. This simply isn't acceptable, that we would get to this point in legislation and we would be unable to vote on or consider basic amendments to so important a law. They are asking us to reauthorize these expiring provisions--provisions with profound implications not only for national security but also for privacy, which are part of the same cohesive whole--and they are asking us to reauthorize those until December of 2023 with only minimal reforms--reforms that, I would add, are modest at best, that are perhaps well-intentioned in some ways, but the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill doesn't cut the mustard. It doesn't do the job. I have just asked for six amendments. That was too many. And I have asked for five amendments, and that was too many. Surely they are not suggesting that we can't ask for any amendments, because if they did, that would be patently ridiculous. That would be uncollegial. That would be uncivil. It would be unsenatorial. So we will try this again. We will see what we can do with four. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Senate bill at the desk providing for a 45-day extension of FISA. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. Further, I ask that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 6172 and that the only amendments in order be four amendments offered by the following Senators: Senators Lee, Leahy, Daines, Wyden, and Paul. I further ask that upon disposition of the amendments, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read a third time and that the Senate vote on the bill, as amended, if amended, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, they spied on the President of the United States. They used the apparatus of the U.S. Government's superb intelligence gathering agencies to spy on then-Candidate Donald Trump, now President of the United States. They did so in a way that was entirely predictable, entirely foreseeable, and in some ways avoidable, if, in fact, we had the right laws on the books. We don't. That needs to change. That is why this moment is a pivotal moment when three provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are about to expire this coming Sunday, March 15. We have known that this day was coming for many years. In fact, it was in 2015 when Congress last reauthorized the three expiring provisions on any long-term basis. The three expiring provisions are, of course, known as Lone Wolf, Roving Wiretaps, and 215. It is to the last of these three sections, 215, that I am directing most of my remarks today. Now, 215 is only the beginning and not the end of the portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as FISA, that needs reform. We need reform across the board, but the expiration of 215 gives us a unique opportunity to do that. We reauthorized it in 2015, knowing that it would come back again for reauthorization in December of 2019. In December of 2019, we were in the middle of doing other things, so an agreement was made within this body that we would extend 215 and the other two provisions until this coming Sunday, March 15. So absent action by this body between now and Sunday, March 15, those three provisions of law will expire. Those three provisions of law should not have to expire because we ought to be able to reform FISA. A number of us have been working on this not just for days or weeks or months but, literally, years. I am now in my 10th year in the U.S. Senate. Basically, the entire time, I have been working on reforms to FISA, figuring out where its weak spots are, and warning my colleagues years in advance that at some point this would be abused. We have to remember what happened with the Church Committee. The Frank Church Committee, a few decades ago in the U.S. Senate, looked at the use of intelligence gathering and concluded that in every administration--basically from Wilson through Nixon, who was the President immediately before the Church Committee did its investigation and issued its report--U.S. intelligence gathering agencies had abused their authority for partisan political purposes basically to engage in political espionage. We know that this is dangerous. We know that this is bad. We also know that this is just the beginning and not the end of the opportunities for abuse. Consider this: Given the breadth and the wide scope on the authority provided under FISA and given the fact that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is able to operate in secrecy and, for the most part, without any type of appellate review and any type of judicial review, these are provisions that are, in fact, vulnerable and susceptible to abuse. So it is not just the President of the United States who has reason to be concerned about this. If the President of the United States has reason to be concerned about it, as he does--he reminded us just in the last few hours, issuing a statement this morning indicating that he still has concerns with FISA and that many Senators are pointing out the flaws in the reform package passed by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives earlier this week and that many have encouraged him to veto that legislation on that basis. But if the President of the United States himself has reason to be concerned about FISA, what about the rest of America? This is just the episode that people know about in connection with the abuse that took place in the Carter Page investigation. Had Donald Trump not become President of the United States, we might well still not know about this particular instance of abuse. Because of the secret manner in which this law operates and the failure to provide special protections for known U.S. citizens, we all stand vulnerable--every American citizen, whether they hold office or not, whether they are famous or not, whether they are rich or poor, regardless of their culture, their background, or what part of the country they hail from. So what we are seeking here are a few modest reforms to make sure that it is a little bit harder to abuse this law. We know human beings are flawed and fallible, and we have to rely on human beings to run governments. It would be nice, as James Madison said, if men were angels because, as Madison wrote in Federalist 51, if men were angels, they wouldn't need a government. And if we had access to angels to run our government, we wouldn't need all these rules surrounding the extent of the power of government to protect us from the inherent risk associated with the unjust, excessive accumulation of power in the hands of a few. But, alas, we are not angels, nor do we have access to angels to run our government, so we have to rely on rules. The rules we are proposing are not excessive. They are not extreme. They are actually very mild. Among other things, we would like to see more robust amicus provisions, meaning provisions allowing for a third-party advocate in the FISA Court to be called in, under certain circumstances, especially involving a sensitive investigation--involving, for example, a political campaign or a candidate, an office holder, a church, a media establishment, something like that that operates with express constitutional protection. An amicus ought to be appointed to represent an absent contrasting viewpoint, to represent American citizens where American citizens' rights might be in jeopardy. Understanding, as we have since 2015, that these provisions would be expiring first in December of 2019 and then we reauthorized them for a short period of time to give us more time to address these amendments, I have, for years, been working on proposals and revisions to FISA with this specific expiration deadline in mind. I have not been, nor have any of my colleagues who have concerns about this, unreasonable or extreme in our demands. In fact, for me, personally--and I will not purport to speak for anyone else in this-- for me, personally, I would be fine with two of the three provisions being reauthorized without any further modification. Lone Wolf and Roving Wiretaps--let them get reauthorized; that is fine. Let's deal with 215 separately. Incidentally, section 215--if Sunday comes and passes, 215 doesn't go away. It just reverts back to a previous version of 215--a previous version that still gives the government the ability to gain access to some business records associated with FISA-ordered targets. It is just a narrower category. Now, we can argue about whether that earlier provision would be adequate. Incidentally, inspectors general have looked at this and concluded that the 9/11 attacks were not the fault of the inadequacy of 215. They were the result of mishandling of information that they did, in fact, gather and were able to gather. In any event, I would love to be able to have that conversation separately with regard to 215 without all three of these provisions being held hostage simultaneously. I have made that offer. That offer has been rejected. I also think another appropriate approach in this circumstance might well be to give ourselves a 45-day extension. A 45-day extension would give us a little bit more time to deal with the coronavirus-related crises that we face right now and then consider and debate and vote on some additional amendments--some amendments that have never had the opportunity to see the light of day. Keep in mind, this provision--getting back to the expiring provision that I have concerns with, section 215--existed prior to the moment when it reached its current formulation. When it existed in that formulation, it really did what the government needed it to. No one really argued that it had been inadequate. There were some people, I am told--I wasn't in the Senate or in Congress at the time that it came to be. I am told that its advocates included Robert Mueller, Jim Comey, and others, who just thought it would be a good idea to give the government more power. We have seen since then what happens when you give Jim Comey and Robert Mueller and other people in the government more power, and we have seen that there are some risks associated with this, not just if you are a President of the United States or a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, but we know that all Americans are potentially vulnerable. So we fast forward to earlier this week, less than 48 hours ago. We received legislation, the legislation that was passed by the House of Representatives yesterday. That legislation was negotiated without involvement or without direct input from anybody in this body. The majority leader himself has stated publicly that he was not involved in the negotiation of that measure. That measure was passed within about 24 hours after it was introduced. It is now coming over here. Now, I am not saying that it shouldn't be considered. In fact, I am kind of saying the opposite of that. I am saying, I am happy to consider it, but we need the opportunity to actually consider it. The world's greatest deliberative legislative body or so it calls itself-- the Senate--is supposed to be the cooling saucer, the cooling saucer where the hot tea spills out and is allowed to cool before it is consumed. In these circumstances in particular, where rights are at stake, rights are at stake that are potentially threatened by provisions under this bill--this bill introduced by Representative Nadler, and supported by Representatives Schiff, Pelosi, and others--which hasn't had the opportunity to be independently reviewed in the Senate or to be debated or discussed or amended in the Senate. That is all I am asking for here. All I ask is to give us a few weeks. Let's take 45 days. Give the Senate a chance to deal with the immediate crises associated with the coronavirus and then a chance for us, in a timely fashion, to review the Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff bill and consider our own amendments to it-- bipartisan amendments from people who have reached across the aisle in an effort to make this bill better. So it is for those reasons that I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Senate bill at the desk providing for a 45-day extension of FISA. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; further, that at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 6172 and that the only amendments in order be six amendments offered by the following Senators: Senator Lee, Senator Leahy, Senator Daines, Senator Wyden, and Senator Paul. I further ask that upon disposition of the amendments, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read a third time and the Senate vote on the bill, as amended, if amended, with no intervening action or debate.