Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss my friend, my former colleague, and soon-to-be confirmed Federal District Judge David Barlow. Last night, the Senate voted to invoke cloture as to Mr. Barlow's nomination. We will be voting later today to confirm him. Based on the support we have, I expect the vote to be overwhelming, and with really good reason. David Barlow is someone I have known for a long time. He is someone I have known, in fact, for more than 30 years. David Barlow and I first met when we were both in high school. Oddly enough, we met in Washington, DC, while we were both participating in an event known as American Legion Boys Nation. We had both attended Boys State in our respective States--I in Utah and he in Idaho--and we were both selected to go to Boys Nation to represent our respective Boys States. Shortly after we convened as Boys Nation senators, David Barlow was elected to be the President pro temp of the Boys Nation senate. As a result, when we visited the White House a few days later, it was David Barlow who got to stand right next to Ronald Reagan as he greeted us in the Rose Garden and addressed Boys Nation. David Barlow was someone who seemed to have been born for public service, and he was born for public service for all of the right reasons, in all of the right ways. He had a certain enthusiasm about the workings of government--not in a partisan way, not in a self- interested way but in a way that was infectious and made all around him want to build a better country, want to find common ground, and want to come to know more about our country's rich histories and tradition. Mr. Barlow and I became reacquainted about a year after we first met, when we first enrolled as freshmen students at Brigham Young University in the fall of 1989. David Barlow was there on a full academic scholarship and did not disappoint with his academic performance. As I recall, he graduated with a 4.0 grade point average from Brigham Young University with highest honors. Here again, David was smart but in a way that didn't make other people feel less smart. He made other people feel smart and eager to learn more, eager to be more enthusiastic about the academic process. He isn't someone who would have ever talked to other people about his outstanding grades or about his wonderful accomplishments. A few years later, we both graduated from BYU. He graduated in 1995 from Brigham Young University and enrolled at Yale Law School, where he received his jurist doctorate degree in 1998. After he graduated, David Barlow started his legal career as an associate at the law firm then known as Lord, Bissell & Brook in the firm's Chicago office. Just a couple of years later, David joined Sidley and Austin LLP as an associate in the firm's Chicago office. He later became a partner starting, I believe, in 2006, and he remained a partner at Sidley up until 2010. During much of that time, I was an associate at Sidley and Austin in the firm's Washington, DC, office. I got to know David again through this process, this time as a lawyer, as a professional. Although we worked in different offices, as part of the same firm, we knew the same people. The network of lawyers with whom I worked quickly identified David Barlow as one of the lawyers in the firm who could be trusted with everything, one of the lawyers in the firm who, even as a young associate, could be given any task, and any lawyer giving him that responsibility could do so with the full assurance that the client would be well served, that no ball would be dropped, and that every stone would be turned over in an effort to properly handle the case. Mr. Barlow worked on a wide variety of litigation matters, including complex civil litigation, class actions, and products liability cases. He also handled a number of domestic violence cases on a pro bono basis. Among many of his clients, David Barlow became known as Dr. Barlow. It was a name assigned to him by some of his clients when he was working on some liability cases involving the medical field. He became so immersed in the subject matter of the litigation that over time he acquired more knowledge in some cases than some of the doctors who were consulting with the client on that same matter. To this day, I occasionally refer to him as Dr. Barlow just for fun. In 2011, shortly after I had been elected to the U.S. Senate, David Barlow joined my team as my chief counsel and chief staffer on the Judiciary Committee. He is someone who had never worked in the U.S. Senate prior to that time but, literally, within a matter of weeks, had learned the ropes of this body to a degree sufficient that no one would have been able to discern the difference between Mr. Barlow and somebody who had worked in the Senate for many, many years. He quickly became a favorite within my office. David Barlow was someone who we could always turn to in a moment if someone had a question. In a moment of crisis, he would figure out how to solve it. In a moment where we needed an answer to a legal question, he either knew the answer or, if he didn't know the answer, he could find it in a short period of time, and we could proceed with the correct understanding that, when he gave us an answer, it was right and we could rely on it. The fact that he was so beloved within my office extended far beyond his legal acumen or his professional abilities. He is also just a delight to be around. He is really funny, and he is equally conversive in a wide variety of material, from Shakespeare to Chaucer, from the Old Testament to old episodes of ``30 Rock'' and Saturday Night Live.'' He had a sophisticated sense of humor that managed to be outrageously funny, while never inappropriate. That is a skill that we in Utah particularly strive to attain and very few are able to achieve. Later in 2011, President Obama chose David Barlow to serve as the U.S. attorney for the District of Utah. This was a bittersweet moment for me and my staff, having learned to rely on his skill, but we were very happy for David and especially happy for the people of Utah, who were the beneficiaries of his outstanding service as the U.S. attorney. Having previously worked in that U.S. Attorney's Office myself as an assistant U.S. attorney, I stayed in contact with many of my former colleagues, all of whom came to absolutely love this outstanding public servant. David served as U.S. attorney through 2014, at which point he returned to his partnership at Sidley Austin and worked in the firm's Washington, DC, office. In 2017, he joined Walmart as vice president over compliance for the company's health and wellness business. I still remember the moment when someone reviewing him for that position, prior to the time he had been offered the job, called to ask me what I thought about his qualifications for that job. I explained at the outset to this reviewer that my comments regarding David Barlow would be so overwhelmingly positive that she would think I was joking. I was, in fact, not. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to deliver my remarks to an extent not to exceed 4 minutes.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, needless to say, he got the job. He flourished there as he has everywhere else. Then, in 2018, David Barlow, to the great happiness of many of us in Utah who know and love him, decided to return to Utah, and he joined Dorsey & Whitney, LLP, as a partner in the firm's Salt Lake City office. For the past several years, David Barlow has had a practice that has focused on handling government enforcement actions and internal investigations, which have typically been large multijurisdictional matters. He is someone who knows how to handle complex litigation. I would also like to note that since I first met David Barlow, I have also gotten to know David Barlow's family. They are extraordinary people--David's wife Crystal and their children. David's parents, Bruce and Emily Barlow, in fact, used to live just a couple of doors down from me in Utah. They are as kind and decent a people as you could ever hope to meet. While one's parents certainly can't independently qualify one for service in a lifetime article III judicial appointment, if ever one could qualify through that route, that would probably qualify him here simply because Bruce and Emily Barlow are perhaps the most kind and decent people I have ever met and the warmest and loveliest neighbors anyone could ever hope to have. For all these reasons, and based on Mr. Barlow's mastery of the law, his professionalism, his kindness, his demeanor, his collegiality, which I have never heard questioned or in any way called into question, David Barlow is qualified to be a U.S. district judge, and I am grateful that he will be serving once he is confirmed as judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah. I urge my colleagues to support his confirmation and look forward to voting for him later today.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, as more Americans enjoy longer lives than ever before, it is more crucial than ever that retirement plans and the policies that govern them keep pace with healthcare innovation and demographic change. That is the reason why a bipartisan coalition in both houses of Congress has proposed the SECURE Act, to modernize retirement savings policies. For the first time, it would give businesses the option to band together to create pooled retirement plans for their employees, helping them save time and money and expanding access to millions of workers to an indispensable job benefit. This would especially help small businesses who would love to offer their employees retirement plans but simply cannot afford it on their own. It would allow graduate and postdoctoral students to save for their retirements by contributing income from their stipends and fellowships to Individual Retirement Accounts. And it would allow parents to withdraw retirement funds, without penalty, for the birth or adoption of a child, providing special help to younger families when they need it most. I support all of the above provisions, and to see them enacted, I am willing to accept multiple provisions in this bill that I oppose. Unfortunately, one provision goes over the line, would hurt the very workers it purports to help, and would set a dangerous precedent for Federal policy. This measure would allow a handful of select businesses to cut their required contributions to their workers' pension plans, while still promising those workers full benefits. Under current law, if a pension plan fails to meet its funding target, the plan sponsor must eliminate the funding shortfall through additional plan contributions, plus interest, over 7 years. The bailout in the SECURE Act, however, would extend that period to 30 years for only a handful of struggling newspapers. Additionally, it would entitle them to legally assume a higher return on investment than other businesses must use. This would reduce the amount that certain community newspapers are required to contribute to their employees' plans each month and, given the longer payback window, would also make it less likely that these bailed out companies would ever make up the shortfall. In other words, this bill grants a special bailout to a handful of community newspapers by allowing them to shortchange their workers' pensions. This is bad policy and bad precedent. This short-sighted strategy might prolong the life of these community newspapers for a while; that is what short-sighted strategies do. But it would only do so at the expense of their employees because, when these newspaper pensions inevitably become insolvent, which is the trajectory they are already on, they will most likely end up in the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The PBGC is a federally-chartered business that provides pension insurance through premiums paid by private companies. In other words, all the companies required to pay into the PBGC, but that do not receive a special bailout, will be forced to pay the price. This is the opposite of ``secure.'' We ought not provide special treatment to a select group of community newspapers in the first place. And we certainly shouldn't set the precedent that those bailouts entitle recipients to raid their workers' pensions and then force more prudently run businesses to pick up the tab. This is why I have an amendment that strikes this pension bailout provision out of the bill. A few weeks ago, Senator Toomey offered a reasonable path forward for the SECURE Act. He suggested allowing the Senate to consider the SECURE Act with five Republican amendments and five Democratic amendments of their choosing. Unfortunately, Senator Murray refused to accept that proposal, claiming that the amendments are ``not in the interest of hardworking Americans.'' I respectfully disagree. In addition to my amendment, which would stop corporate bailouts and protect workers from corporate raids on their pension funds, Senator Cruz and Senator Braun have amendments to expand 529 savings accounts. Under their proposals, parents and grandparents could save money for the educational expenses of children with disabilities, for homeschooling, and for apprenticeships and training programs. All of these amendments are ``in the interests of American workers.'' The Senate should consider each of them. I hope my Democratic colleagues will recognize the need to put this bill on the Senate floor so we can vote on the underlying text, as well as the reasonable amendments that have been proposed.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I now wish to speak briefly regarding a tragedy that occurred just in the last 48 hours--a tragedy that occurred in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, a tragedy in which a handful of U.S. citizens--the precise number of victims still not known--but a number of U.S. citizens were murdered in cold blood. This attack was inflicted in a most gruesome manner and was carried out against a group which included men, women, and children. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of the victims. My thoughts and prayers are also extended to the administration of President Lopez Obrador in Mexico, whose inauguration I attended just a few months ago. This is a sobering task to have to identify the source of such a heinous and barbaric crime. I have every expectation, every hope, and every confidence in those who are assigned on both sides of the border to investigate this crime, figure out who did it, and to bring those responsible to justice. Mexico is a good neighbor to us. We have about $1.6 billion or $1.7 billion every single day that crosses over our shared southern border. Mexico has been a good neighbor, a solid trade partner, and a country with which we share many interests. It is a country that desperately needs our prayers right now and our help and assistance. It has been publicly reported that President Trump and his administration are eager to help President Lopez Obrador in combating and detecting whoever was responsible for this heinous crime and bringing them to justice. I hope and implore the Lopez Obrador administration to accept President Trump's generous offer to help. This is not an easy task. If, in fact, this was an act, as it appears quite possible to have been, of a Mexican-based drug cartel, this is a big problem. It is a big problem either way. These drug cartels are no small threat to the safety and security of not only the people of Mexico but also the people of the United States. Think about it. Imagine someone sees in their next-door neighbor's backyard a poisonous snake--a poisonous snake that is big and that is headed toward his property. Is that neighbor going to stop and ignore that snake? In many circumstances, that neighbor is going to take action. He might not wait until his neighbor comes home to give the go- ahead to take care of that snake. Why? Because that snake is headed toward his own backyard where his own children are playing. This is not something we can trifle with. This is a matter of utmost seriousness for the safety and security of the Mexican people and also the people of the United States. I applaud the Lopez Obrador administration for its efforts to root out corruption and to bring justice to the drug cartels. This brazen attack within the last 48 hours signals a need to do more. This is why I am so grateful to President Trump that he was willing to reach out and offer the assistance that can be provided by the United States. I urge President Lopez Obrador to accept it and to do so very soon.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I rise to honor Utah's valiant citizen, MG Jeff Burton, adjutant general of the Utah National Guard, and to pay tribute to him for his many years of devoted service to our Nation and to the great State of Utah. As General Burton closes a long chapter of 37 years of military service, he leaves behind a tremendous legacy as an American patriot and as a true servant-leader. So I would like to take a moment to talk about General Burton today. From a young age, General Burton knew that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of a number of his family members by serving both his faith and his country. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a Canadian Indian reservation, braving harsh conditions that would well prepare him for his future of military service. As soon as he returned home, he enrolled at Brigham Young University, where he enlisted in the National Guard as an artillery field soldier. He joined BYU's ROTC Program, receiving a commission as second lieutenant in 1984. He completed tours with the U.S. Army Military Police Corps in Alabama; with the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, CO; and with the 7th U.S. Corps in Germany, where he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1991, General Burton left the Army and returned home to join the Utah National Guard, where he served in a variety of distinguished leadership positions over the next decade. Chief among them was a position that involved commanding the 1457th Engineer Combat Battalion during Operation Iraqi Freedom as part of the initial ground war in that conflict. He and his troops were tasked with searching for and eliminating explosive devices, improving Embassy security, and improvising whenever necessary to strengthen security in and around the U.S. Embassy, and of course responding to bombings and other acts of terror. They were often the first ones on the scene of an explosion. In honor of his heroic service there, he was awarded the Bronze Star. General Burton was appointed assistant adjutant general of the Utah National Guard in 2008, promoted to brigadier general just a few months later, and then made major general and adjutant general in 2012. In this role, General Burton has trained and equipped over 7,000 soldiers under his command and helped them to prepare to respond to challenges in both military life and in their personal lives. He has prepared them not only to fight our Nation's wars and provide military support to our troops throughout the world but to combat wildfires, respond to natural disasters, and ensure law and order in our communities. Under his leadership, they have performed at an absolutely remarkable and, indeed, exceptional caliber. When the 100,000-soldier surge in Afghanistan ended in 2012, General Burton was also responsible for overseeing the needs of the soldiers returning home from war. He rose to the challenge, tending to both the physical and emotional needs of those warriors and their families with the utmost care. As he himself has once said, ``May we make a silent promise to keep the faith with our battle buddies and wingmen. . . . May we be strong for one another, and unashamedly rush to the aid of those in need. May we remember those who have suffered grievous physical wounds in the defense of liberty, and may we never forget those who have given the ultimate sacrifice within our formations so that we might live in freedom.'' General Burton has lived by these words over his long and dedicated career. Every day he keeps a note tucked in the band of his hat. That note contains the list of the soldiers who were killed in combat or during 9/11 under his command. He has led by example, never asking of his soldiers something that he himself has not done. He has led in order to serve, striving always to protect the welfare of his command, of our country, of the U.S. Constitution, and of the freedoms it protects. So it is only fitting that we honor him today. On behalf of our Nation and all Utahns, I thank MG Jeff Burton for the sacrifices he and his family have made to secure the freedoms we hold dear. I congratulate him on this occasion and wish him many happy years ahead with his wife, Charn, and their children. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I would like to speak briefly about an issue important to me, about an issue important to many Americans, and I would like to speak briefly about Senator Durbin's recent request for a hearing concerning the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is a bill that many Senators have worked for, for nearly a decade, and it has long been a top priority of mine. I have introduced this bill in every single Congress, ever since I was first elected to the Senate back in 2010. During that time, it has been a subject of widespread debate and discussion. There has been a period of time in which a lot of people have learned a lot about this area. The debate and the discussion has occurred both on the Hill and off the Hill throughout the United States. Other Members, including Senator Schumer, have sought to pass the bill, as I am doing. Whether that passage occurs by unanimous consent or through some other form matters less to me than that we get it passed, but we do need to get it passed. This year, we have come closer to making this important and bipartisan reform a reality, closer than we have ever come before at any point over the nearly decade that this has gotten a lot of attention. In early July, the House of Representatives passed the bill on the Suspension Calendar by a wide bipartisan supermajority vote of 365 to 65. Around that time, I negotiated an agreement with Senator Grassley to help advance the bill by adding provisions drawn from the Durbin- Grassley H-1B reform bill. Senator Grassley has for many years, openly and publicly, made it known that he had concerns with the bill. I was therefore very pleased that we were able to sit down and work out an agreement to address those concerns, while keeping the bill narrow and focused on the immediate problem that it is trying to solve. That is eliminating the country of origin discrimination in our employment green card system. I thank Senator Grassley for working with me on that. The process by which I have tried to advance this bill through Congress has been open, transparent, and straightforward. I have sought and continue to seek unanimous consent to pass the bill on the floor. If any Member has raised concern about the bill, I have been willing to work with them quickly and in good faith to address their concerns. That is why, after reaching an agreement with Senator Grassley, I also worked with other Members to resolve their concerns. For much of the past few months, I simply didn't know who, if anyone else on the Democratic side of the aisle, might have had concerns with the bill. We were told that there might be holds on the Democratic hotline, but we were not told who exactly might be holding the bill, and no one approached me with objections. I certainly had no reason to think that Senator Durbin would have concerns with the bill. As I have explained before, he was a leading cosponsor of the bill in a previous Congress. What is more, the only substantial difference between the bill he supported and the bill I put forward in this Congress is the addition of the amendment that I negotiated with Senator Grassley, which is drawn almost entirely from provisions of the Durbin-Grassley H1-B reform bill. In September, I learned that Senator Durbin did in fact have concerns about the bill in this Congress. As I have with other Members and as I have expressed the willingness to do with other Members, I am ready and willing to work with Senator Durbin in good faith to quickly and reasonably resolve any objection he may have, while preserving the bipartisan support that this bill has long enjoyed and that it deserves to enjoy. As I have said before, I don't believe that any further factual development concerning this bill is necessary. Indeed at this point, I believe a hearing can serve no purpose other than to delay speedy action on this important reform and jeopardize our ability to act before the end of the year. For that reason, I do not support Senator Durbin's calls for a public hearing. Every day that we delay action on this bill is another day that suffering experienced by immigrants stuck in the green-card backlog continues and indeed intensifies. That is precisely why I will continue to work to pass this bill at the earliest possible date. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act arguably has wider and more bipartisan support than any other immigration bill that has been considered in this body in recent years. The reason for that is that it is focused on a single, serious, solvable problem that I think we can all agree needs to be solved. Whatever other reforms you think might need to be made to our immigration system, with good reason, we can all agree that America should not treat immigrants differently based on their country of origin. There is no reason for this bill to become yet another casualty to the polarized, partisan divisions that plague immigration policy. I look forward to working with Senator Durbin to resolve the concerns he may have about this bill. I reiterate that, once again, this is a narrowly focused bill, one that focuses on a simple but long-standing problem, a problem that subjects some immigrants to needlessly lengthy delays for no reason other than their country of origin. This is from a bygone era that we shouldn't be perpetuating in this country. We need to fix the problem. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act would do that, and I encourage all of my colleagues to join me. We are almost there, but we need to get it over the finish line. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume consideration on the motion to proceed on H.R. 2740.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be 2 minutes of debate between each vote in this series and that all votes after the first be 10 minutes in length.

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, there is no doubt that we are blessed with beautiful, useful, and productive lands in our Nation. And there is no doubt that some of them should be preserved as what they are, which happen to be national treasures. But, unfortunately, the Federal Government owns far too much land. It owns far more of these Federal public lands than it should own and far more of these lands than it can possibly take care of. Let's take a look at this map, for example. This shows in red the land that is owned by the Federal Government in parts of the United States. The Federal Government owns most of the land. This is certainly the case in my home State of Utah, where the Federal Government owns two-thirds of the land. Notice, by the way, that in every State east of Colorado, the Federal Government owns less than 15 percent of the land--in most States, significantly less. In every State west of Colorado, the Federal Government owns more than 15 percent of the land, and in many cases, a whole lot more than 15 percent. The sheer volume of land that it owns is nothing short of staggering. In fact, the Federal Government owns 640 million acres of land. This is a total larger than the entireties of France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands combined. That is how much land the Federal Government owns just in America. With such a vast estate, it is no wonder that there is currently a $19.38 billion maintenance backlog on those lands. Of that backlog, $11.92 billion is on lands owned and managed by just the National Park Service. In fact, there are National Park Service backlogs in every single State in the country, as this map demonstrates. I see here that the question is not whether a particular State has a National Park Service backlog within its State; the question is, How much? In some States, it is very severe. In some States, it is significant but not yet severe. But there is a National Park Service maintenance backlog in every single State. Many of my colleagues--especially those from the Midwest, as this map shows--don't have a whole lot of Federal land in their States. They have a whole lot less Federal land to maintain, and therefore they have less of a maintenance backlog. They should thank their lucky stars for that. That is a position to be envied. On one end of the spectrum, there is a $1.3 million backlog on National Park Service properties in Delaware. The backlog for the parks in Rhode Island is just under $1 million. But at the other end of the spectrum, California alone has a whopping $1.8 billion maintenance backlog just on its national parks alone. That is in just one State. What does that mean? That means the damage from wildfires, ill-kept roads and trails, and neglected facilities have actually kept citizens from accessing our national treasures--national treasures like Yosemite and Yellowstone, our National Mall and the Grand Canyon. Visitors who come from far and wide to see them are either unable to see them at all, or perhaps they make it, but they don't have a good experience when they do. All the while, Washington continues to purchase ever more land, so the maintenance backlog continues to grow. This must not continue. This staggering, stunning maintenance backlog on the Federal land that we own--the Federal land that is more than all of the long list of European countries I mentioned just a minute ago-- can't continue. If we continue on this path, we will only do greater disservice to our citizens and to the lands themselves. That is why I have introduced an amendment that would stop the Federal Government's use of taxpayer dollars to acquire more lands in the next year. Specifically, it would prevent the money currently going to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Range Improvement Funds, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service from being used to acquire new lands that the Federal Government cannot properly care for. It is important, when describing a piece of legislation--in this case, an amendment to another piece of legislation--to explain both what it does and what it does not do. Let me be very clear in telling you what this amendment does not do. This amendment would not reduce the dollar amount being given to any of these programs--not one of them, not by one dollar. It would simply reauthorize the money to ensure that it is being used to care for the lands we already own and lands that need to be cared for so desperately. While some of my colleagues may disagree with me and may believe that we should continue growing the Federal estate, I ask that, at least for this year, we think of our current lands and our existing national parks and that we think of those States where there are a lot of them and States where the maintenance backlog is especially staggering. These lands won't be national treasures for everyone if we don't, can't, or simply won't properly care for them. If we continue in this pattern of neglect, there will be treasures for no one. If we continue with this pattern of neglect, we will continue to inflict significant environmental harm that, in addition to being stunning in and of itself, may, in some cases, be difficult or impossible to reverse. If you support the environment, if you want to protect the environment and the natural wonders and beauties with which this land has been blessed, if you want to protect our national treasures, then you should vote for this amendment. Voting against this amendment means you are willing to have the gluttonous Federal Government continue to acquire more land, even while it refuses to and professes itself to be utterly incapable of maintaining the land it has. For now, at the very least, we ought to ensure that these lands are safe and accessible for generations to come. Our lands, our citizens, and our environment deserve nothing less. Amendment No. 1209 to Amendment No. 948 (Purpose: To prohibit the expenditure of certain amounts from the Land and Water Conservation Fund for land acquisition.)

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1209.

Mr. LEE. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I will be brief. Just as the per-country cap system is a quintessential example of the poorly designed, broken system and of what a poorly designed broken system looks like, the objection that we have heard today is, I fear, emblematic of the broken state of affairs that we face when it comes to the immigration process. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons this bill has been able to achieve as much support and as many cosponsors as it has and why it was able to pass the House of Representatives with 365 votes is that we have avoided poison pill efforts. The adjustment of the overall numbers that my friend and distinguished colleague from Illinois has proposed would doom this bill. He knows that it would doom this bill. To what avail? To what end? What good would it do to doom this bill? The fact still remains that regardless of where we put the overall number for employment-based green cards, we still have a problem in that we are treating people from India unfairly, arbitrarily, and discriminatorily. This has impacts everywhere. In Illinois today, there are over 40,000 green card applicants, plus their spouses and children, who are stuck in an interminable green card backlog that is morally indefensible. We must change this. I hope and I encourage my colleague to change his mind. We can pass this today. We could make our country a better place as a result. Thank you.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I want to make sure I understand that the Senator wants to make his live UC request after the rollcall vote.

Mr. LEE. There is no objection.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise yet again today to speak about an issue near and dear to my heart and an issue that has become the focus of many of my passions here in the Senate, and that is the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. This is an important and overwhelmingly bipartisan piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that passed the House in July by an overwhelming vote of 365 to 65. Two of these things should strike the American people as remarkable: No. 1, that something with that much of a bipartisan margin passed in the House of Representatives, and No. 2, that it deals with immigration, and it was still that overwhelmingly bipartisan. As I explained in this Chamber before, the concept of this legislation is simple. Our current method for allocating green cards caps the total number of green cards that nationals of any one country may receive. In practice, this results in severe de facto discrimination on the basis of country of origin. Immigrants from countries with large populations are restricted to receiving the same number of visas as immigrants from smaller countries. Their wait times have ballooned, in some cases stretching out literally for decades. The problem compounds over time, and it has become even more unfair than it was many decades ago when it was first enacted into law. I repeat, this happens for absolutely no reason other than the country in which the immigrant was born. Let's say that two immigrants--one from India and the other from Germany--with the exact same skills, the exact same degrees, and the exact same job experience apply at the same hour of the same day for an employment-based green card. The German might wait maybe 12 months to receive a green card. Well, the Indian applicant will almost certainly wait a decade or far more. This kind of system is antithetical to American values and to the interest our country has in recruiting the very best and the very brightest from around the world irrespective of race, religion, or country of origin. It is simply unacceptable that in 2019 our immigration system still contains country-of-origin discrimination as a defining feature. The per-country caps simply must go. They are wrong. They were never good policy. Whatever policy they might have had in mind decades ago, it escapes me--except, in fact, that the policy itself was wrong at the outset. It has become more wrong over time as these problems have compounded. The obviousness of the moral error embedded within this legislation is more profound and easily visible today than it has ever been. If you were to describe this to anyone, they would scratch their head and say: Why would you want to do that unless you are engaging in some type of discrimination that we as a country understandably abandoned a long time ago and should no longer embrace? The harm inflicted by any kind of invidious discrimination, whether it be on the basis of race or sex or country of origin, does not exist simply in the abstract, in the ether; the human suffering caused by it happens to be real and heartbreaking. Although, in the time we have here this afternoon to discuss this, I am sure I can't come anywhere close to doing justice to all the people who are being harmed by the per-country cap system, I would like to share at least a few of their stories so that you understand how this law operates. I find that when you tell stories about a law, people understand the law and they understand what needs to change about the law a lot more than they would have otherwise. Agna Hingu is a registered nurse who lives in South Jordan, UT, currently working at a nonprofit healthcare organization in Utah. She received her bachelor's degree in this country. She has lived in this country for the past 10 years. Languishing in the decade-long backlog, she is now being forced to consider leaving the United States due to the continuous uncertainty of her immigration status and the incessant renewals of temporary visas. If she leaves, she will take her talents and her training with her, depriving Utah's residents of a smart, skilled, kind, and caring nurse. Ashish Patel first came to Utah legally in 2005 on a temporary high- skilled work visa. Since that time, he has worked hard at his job, paid taxes, followed the law, got married, and had two kids, both of whom were born as American citizens. In February of 2011, Mr. Patel's petition to earn a green card was approved. Despite this and despite the fact that 8, going on 9 years have now elapsed, his green card remains unissued. Why? Well, solely because of the arbitrary, wrong, discriminatory per-country caps. Ashish Patel is still in the backlog even as immigrants of other countries who have applied years and years after he did and years and years after he received his approval have already been granted permanent resident status. If Mr. Patel had emigrated from any country in the world other than India, he would already have his green card today. Dr. Chaitanya Mamillapalli is an endocrinologist who has been serving in central Illinois for the past 9 years. He came to the United States in 2007. He will likely not receive his green card for at least another decade. His daughter was 1 year old when she came with her parents to this country. In a few years, she will age out of her temporary visa, and Dr. Mamillapalli will face a decision that confronts many people stuck in the backlog community: Does he separate from his daughter as she loses her temporary status, or does he abandon his life in the United States in order to keep his family together? Dr. Priya Shanmugam lives in Louisiana and is an aerospace engineer who studied at the University of Alabama and at UCLA. She dreams of working for NASA. After 13 years in the backlog, she is still waiting for a green card. As a result of that, she cannot fulfill her dream of joining America's space team and helping put the first person on Mars. Until she finally gets her green card, our country will continue to lose out on her talent. Dr. Krishnendu Roy is a professor of computer science and head of the Department of Computer Science at Valdosta State University in Georgia. He studied for his degree in Louisiana and has lived in the United States for over 16 years. During that time, he shaped the lives of countless students in Georgia through the classes he teaches by organizing computing camps for K-12 students and by mentoring the robotics team in his community. He has followed the law, and he has done exactly what is required of him under our immigration system in order to earn his green card. Yet he remains stuck in the backlog, with no end to his wait in sight. Dr. Sri Obulareddy is an oncologist working just outside Dickinson, ND, who came to the United States in 2006. She moved to North Dakota because the area is experiencing a shortage of specialized physicians. Her impact on the community has been invaluable. Recently, she tried to return from a trip to India, but approval for her visa was delayed for 6 weeks, forcing her patients to travel as far as 100 miles as they scrambled the find a temporary physician. The pain this caused her patients would never have come about if she had not been subjected to an arbitrary, discriminatory cap based on her country of origin and had already received her green card. Ash Kannan lives in Oklahoma. His story is a heartbreaking example of the devastating effects of the long wait for a green card and the effects that a family can endure under this system. Ash and his wife lost their toddler son to a congenital disease about 3 years ago. The illness that took their son could have been treated had they been able to move to a different home, one closer to the medical facility that provided the necessary treatment. They were unable to do so, and their son was thus unable to receive the care he required, that he needed, because Ash was forced to remain with the same employer while he waited in the green card backlog and, consequently, was unable to move. These are just some of the names and stories of some of the hard- working, law-abiding immigrants who have come to the United States to build lives and to contribute to our communities but who have been told that because of the countries in which they were born, they have to wait decades in the green card backlog before they can start living the American dream. These stories stir us to action, and they darned well should. They should remind us that while policymaking is often messy and complicated, it is sometimes simple and straightforward because sometimes you stumble across something that is a good idea. Sometimes you stumble across something that was a bad idea that was put into law decades ago that should be taken out of the law. Sometimes the solution to our problems is clear and beyond question. In those cases, all we need is the will to act. I have yet to hear someone offer a reasoned defense of the per- country caps as meritorious or sound public policy on their own terms, and that is because there is no such defense, at least not one that anyone would be willing to defend in public. Country-of-origin discrimination, whether it be in our immigration system, in our justice system, in the employment context, or in housing, is wrong and inconsistent with the values upon which our country was founded. It becomes even more repugnant when its human consequences are as obvious and tragic and focused on people of a particular country of origin as they are here. With respect to the ancestors of the people now serving in this body, what if there had been something in place that had arbitrarily and unfairly discriminated against people from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Denmark, or other countries from which people have been immigrating to America for centuries? We should think about that for a moment and think about how we would never have been able to have enjoyed the blessings of America. I think it is equally wrong for us to identify a single country that we punish, that we exclude uniquely against other countries of origin in the context of employment-based immigrant visas. I understand and recognize that while the per-country caps themselves are completely indefensible--and they are--some people have concerns about how eliminating the caps might impact fraud and abuse within the H-1B system. That is a legitimate concern. To address those very concerns in this Congress, I have negotiated with Senator Grassley an amendment to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act to include some new protections for American workers in how we process applications for H-1B visas. The amendment does three things. First, the Grassley amendment would strengthen the Department of Labor's ability to investigate and enforce labor application requirements. In addition, it reforms the labor condition application process to ensure the complete and adequate disclosure of information regarding the employers' H-1B hiring practices. Finally, it closes off loopholes by which employers could otherwise circumvent the annual cap on H-1B visa workers. These are important and worthy reforms that I was happy to add to the bill. Indeed, we saw an example just last month of the positive impact these reforms would have. In September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a $2.5 million settlement with an Indian consulting firm for H-1B visa fraud. That firm was exploiting the so- called ``B-1 in lieu of H-1B'' loophole. One of the new provisions we added to the bill this Congress would help close that specific loophole. Importantly, the Grassley amendment, like the underlying bill, consists of provisions that have long enjoyed support from Members of both sides of the aisle. They are drawn primarily from an H-1B reform bill that has been championed by both Senator Grassley and Senator Durbin. They are also modeled, in large part, on an amendment to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act that Senator Schumer negotiated with Senator Grassley in a previous Congress. I am grateful that Senator Grassley was able to come to the table and work with me and others in good faith on a reasonable compromise to this bill. I believe the deal we struck is a fair and even-handed way to address longstanding concerns about our H-1B system, while eliminating country-of-origin discrimination in how we allocate skills- based green cards. As I have said in the past, there is no question that immigration, if not the single most politically fraught issue, is one of the most politically fraught issues in Congress right now. That makes it all the more important for us to at least come together to get something done in those areas in which we can find common ground. It is a little bit like eating an elephant. You can't swallow the whole thing at once, either the elephant or the donkey. You have to do it one bite at a time. Why not start with an area in which there is broad-based, bipartisan agreement? That is what this bill is. The Fairness for High- Skilled Immigrants Act is an important step toward common ground. Unquestionably, there are broader debates on immigration policy being had in Congress and across the country right now. Some wish to reform our immigration system by increasing the number of green cards we issue while others wish to move to a more merit-based system. That debate is almost certainly not going to be resolved this day, today, or this month or this year or, perhaps, even during this Congress. Notably, however, many Senators on both sides of that debate--ardent champions of both liberal and conservative immigration reforms, who ordinarily could not be farther apart when it comes to immigration policy--are cosponsors of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. The reason this is the case is that they recognize that regardless of what else we might do to reform our immigration system, country-of- origin discrimination is outdated, outmoded, immoral, morally indefensible, and inconsistent with our values. It is also a problem that we can solve right now. The other reason the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act has been so successful in attracting support from both sides of the aisle and from every end along the political continuum is that we have scrupulously avoided the typical poison pill provisions that so often doom attempts at immigration reform. We have also quite carefully avoided this becoming about so many things that it is going to become controversial no matter what. This bill is not comprehensive immigration reform. It is not anything close to that. That is, in fact, why this bill is something that we can get done right now. It is the reason it was able to pass the House of Representatives with 365 votes. While it does not fix many of the other flaws that plague other components of our broken, outdated, outmoded, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly-era immigration law system, it is a great and important step toward reform. If we are ever going to have a chance at modernizing and repairing our immigration laws, we need to recognize that we cannot necessarily solve all of our problems at once. The fact that this is the case should not stand in our way of starting the work the American people sent us here to do. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1044 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the Lee amendment at the desk be agreed to, that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I applaud President Trump for the restraint, the resolve, and the commitment to constitutional principles that he demonstrated when he decided not to have the United States go into Syria, not to continue to involve our troops in a looming conflict in Syria. I agree that it is a horrible situation. I agree that we have people running both Syria and Turkey who are not our friends and who have shown significant hostility toward us. It is precisely because of that and not in spite of it that we shouldn't be there, especially when you take into account that we do not have a declaration of war relative to Syria. We do not have an authorization for the use of military force with regard to Syria. Under our system of government, the U.S. Constitution placed the power to declare war or otherwise authorize the use of military force in Congress. This was no accident. It is the branch of the Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. This was a significant break from our previous system of government-- the one that was based in London. In Federalist No. 69, Alexander Hamilton explained that this was no accident, that under the British model, the King, as the chief executive, had the power to take the country to war. It was Parliament's job, then, to follow along, to figure out what to do about it and how to fund it. This would not be the case in the American Republic. This is not the case under our Constitution. Yet, sadly, for decades we have had a Congress consisting of Republicans and Democrats, Senators and Representatives who have allowed the legislative muscle to atrophy, who have refused and declined to exercise the power to declare war. In that context, I have heard Republicans and Democrats, Senators and Representatives alike, defer again and again and again to Presidents of every conceivable partisan combination, saying: Let the President decide what we do. Through our own inaction, we have essentially relinquished the power to declare war. Why does this matter? This is the only connection the American people have to the power to declare war. When we send their brave sons and daughters into harm's way, we owe it to them to have an open, public robust debate and discussion in which we make a deal with them, in which we outline the terms for our engagement. We don't have that in Syria. There are those who are upset that we don't, and I understand that they are upset that we don't. If they are upset that we don't, it is not as though we are a victim. We are the actor, not the acted upon. We have the power right here and right now to bring up a proposal. If they want to declare war with regard to Syria, let's have that discussion. I am not a fan of war. I am not a fan of war starting on behalf of the United States anywhere in the world right now, but if somebody wants to make that discussion, let's have it, and let's debate it. But what people shouldn't be doing is criticizing President Trump, who has shown restraint and shown deference to the American people, who wants to protect our sons and daughters who would be protecting us. He is saying: Maybe, just maybe, when you have a bad guy in Turkey, wanting to do some things in Syria with regard to the Kurds, maybe, just maybe, when you take into account the fact that Turkey is, in fact, a NATO ally and we have a NATO article 5 obligation to do something about that, that is going to lead to full-blown war. We should therefore respect him. We should be grateful to him for taking that step of restraint. This President has been unique in modern history in not blindly deferring to the military industrial complex. I thank him for that and salute his willingness to stand behind our brave men and women.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I thank and commend my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Wisconsin, for her work on this effort. I am not familiar with this legislation. I don't serve on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I have friends who do. I have friends who couldn't be here today but who have asked me to voice objection on their behalf. On behalf of the senior Senator from Tennessee, Senator Alexander, I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the request the Senator is describing is not one that can pass the body and certainly is not one that can pass this body unanimously. He is absolutely right. My friend and distinguished colleague from Illinois is correct in noting that I have had conversations and negotiations with Republicans, and I have also had conversations and negotiations with Democrats. I have been working on this for nearly 9 years. At every moment, we have made concessions to people on both sides of the aisle. I wish the solution he is offering today were something that could allow us to pass the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Alas, it is not. I would note that it is not as though this is something new or objectionable or even something that the passage of which would amount to a concession on his part. For one thing, the Fairness for High- Skilled Immigrants Act is a bill that he was an original cosponsor of in a previous Congress. This is his bill. You might ask what is different about the bill he championed a few years ago and the substitute amendment I put forward earlier today. The answer is that, aside from a short subsection that temporarily alleviates nursing shortages in parts of this country, the only thing we have changed is that we have added a variety of new provisions to combat some abuse in the H-1B program. As I have said, these provisions are drawn almost verbatim from the Durbin-Grassley H-1B reform bill, of which my colleague from Illinois has long been the lead Democratic cosponsor. The only other thing that has changed from the time when the Senator from Illinois would have stood by my side instead of in opposition and helped to pass this bill is the problem that he sought to solve when he supported this bill. That very same problem still exists and has gotten worse. As I indicated earlier, there are 40,000 green card applicants in Illinois alone, plus there are thousands of children stuck in this awful backlog. These are individuals whose children are aging out of their temporary visas, and they are forced to return to a country they left behind long ago--a country that, in many cases, their children don't know and have never known. To repeat, the amendment that I offer today and that has been the subject of some of my colleague's remarks this afternoon in his unanimous consent request consists of nothing more than the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, of which my colleague from Illinois was once a leading sponsor, and a series of H-1B reforms that he himself has long sought to enact. If passed, it would provide relief to many hard-working families from both his State and for mine. Yet he objects. As he objects, he offers up something else that he knows cannot possibly get close to passing this body by unanimous consent. Yet we can do that today. We can do that right now if he would lift his objection. He knows that I cannot, and I will not, and on that basis, I object.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the Senator from Illinois, and I appreciate his dedication to detail and to the hard work he has put into the area of immigration and reform. Yes, you are right. That was a difficult process. It went through 6 years ago, and I commend you, even though you and I reached different conclusions as to the ultimate outcome of that legislation. My point there is simply to say: It is, and properly should and always is, going to be the case that it can be easier to get something done that is more narrowly focused. In this case, we have a bill the Senator from Illinois has himself cosponsored in the past. It has been modified by another provision that he has also sponsored in the past. We should be able to do this one. It is not my place to commit on behalf of the Committee on the Judiciary or its chairman whether we are going to have hearings. I reiterate my view that no further factual development of this is necessary. I don't believe a hearing is necessary. I am never going to object to simply holding more hearings on it, and if that is what the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary is inclined to do, I am certainly not going to interfere with that. In the meantime, I am going to continue to do everything I can to get this thing passed. It is ready to pass. It is ready to pass right now. I am going to continue to find every way possible to get this the consideration it deserves.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his constructive observations there. With respect to the Gang of 8 legislation, yes, it passed through this body, and, yes, I voted against that, as did a number of my colleagues. My view is, that was a piece of legislation that while it entailed a lot of work by a lot of people who were trying to make things better, it was doomed at the outset for failure because the message of that bill and of those who were pushing it was essentially you either pass all of this bill and all of its reforms--a large number of which and the majority of which I agreed with--or you pass nothing. We were literally told that. It is either this entire package or it is nothing. We spent weeks in the Committee on the Judiciary debating it and discussing it. I personally proposed dozens of amendments to that. What emerged at the end of that from the committee was a--this has been 6 years, so my colleague will forgive me if I don't remember the exact numbers. It was about a 700-page bill. When we got to the floor, what we debated and discussed was substituted out at the last minute. What we ended up getting was another bill that was, as I recall, 1,200 pages long. It was a different bill. The message was the same with both of them. This is a package deal. You either reform all of what this bill reforms and do it at once or you get none of it. Many of the sponsors of that legislation made clear that they would oppose any smaller effort. I believe this is exactly the opposite of the type of solution that will work. What is going to work here is if we start with incremental, step-by-step legislation. If we start with something the Senator from Illinois has himself in the past sponsored, both as to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act itself and as to the substance, the nuts and bolts of the Grassley amendment--he has been on the cutting edge of supporting both of those things. If not here, where? If not us, who? If not now, when? This is what we need to do. I am going to continue to come to the floor. I am going to continue to seek unanimous consent and to pass this every way I can. As to my colleague's suggestion with regard to a committee hearing. This hasn't, of course, been the topic of committee hearings in the past, and it has been fully discussed. I would, of course, welcome any further committee action that the chairman might choose to hold, and I would be happy to have any committee action that, of course, isn't mine to offer or give, but I would always prefer more consideration of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act than less. So if that is what we have to do, great, but I don't believe any further factual development is necessary here. Just for the record, I want to state this bill is ready to pass right now. This bill has 365 votes on the House floor right now. This bill would become law right now, would pass out of the Senate and would pass out of the Senate in a form that would be passed out of the House of Representatives, ultimately, right now but for this objection.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1044 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the Lee amendment, No. 939, be agreed to, that the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.