Mike Lee

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, reserving the right to object, this is an issue on which Congress needs to act. Congress does, in fact, have authority to pass laws governing immigration and naturalization within our system, but this particular unanimous consent request represents an attempt to pass a major piece of legislation without any opportunity for debate, any opportunity for input from the American people, or any opportunity for amendments by individual Members. If we pass it this way, we will be cutting the American people out of the debate. Moreover, we also need to address the draws for illegal immigration. If we are going to address the needs of those who have been brought here unlawfully by no fault of their own while they were infants or minors, we need to make sure that we are not going to continue to draw people in unlawfully and that we are not going to continue to have people in various parts of the world sending their children here unlawfully, unaccompanied on many occasions and being subjected to sexual assault and all other kinds of abuse in the process. We do need to fix the underlying problem. For that reason, I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I come before you today to recognize seven exemplary young men and women from the great State of Utah who have answered the call of service to our country. It is a great privilege to represent these exceptional Utahns in the U.S. Senate, who will attend the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy, and the U.S. Naval Academy. Each year Members of Congress, under title 10 of the U.S. Code, are authorized to nominate a number of young men and women from their district or State to attend the country's service academies. I am proud to honor these Utahns as they undertake this calling. Each of these students is of sound mind and body, which will serve them well in Colorado Springs, West Point, and Annapolis, but to succeed, they will need more than this. In addition to mental and physical aptitude, the journey upon which these young men and women will soon embark demands strong moral character: leadership, courage, honesty, prudence, and self-discipline. It calls for a commitment to service and love of country. These students have already displayed these qualities of character and standards of excellence upon which America's service academies are built. Today, I would like to recognize and congratulate these dedicated and generous young men and women. Delia Margene Cheney will be attending the Air Force Academy after graduating from the Utah Military Academy, where she served as commander of the largest Air Force JROTC program in the western United States. She was captain of both her school's academic team and volleyball team and served as a member of their State champion drill team. Delia was also a delegate to Girls State and served as an intern for two sessions of the Utah State Senate. She stayed active in her community through service with the National Honor Society, as well as her choir and church youth group. Daniel Scott Dwyer, from Bingham High School, accepted an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. Daniel serves in the Boy Scouts as a senior patrol leader and earned the rank of Eagle Scout with a project that entailed sending care packages to marines serving in the Middle East. He ran with both the Bingham Miners' track and cross-country teams and was a member of the JROTC. He also served his peers as a volunteer with special needs youth, all while taking rigorous classes and maintaining a high GPA. Talmage Cragun Gaisford will be attending the U.S. Military Academy. As a graduate of Orem High School, Talmage was a member of the National Honor Society and received high honor roll awards. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts and served as a volunteer in Accra, Ghana, where he worked to build an orphanage. In addition to serving as a leader in his church's youth organization, he served on the Orem City Youth Council and is an avid mountain biker and hiker. Gage Geoffrey Maki attended the New Mexico Military Institute after graduating from Park City High School. He worked hard and earned an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy. Gage, whose parents are both graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, was a leader in both the Air Force JROTC and the Civil Air Patrol. He attended Boys State and earned the rank of Eagle Scout, where his ambitious project led to the replanting of hundreds of trees in an area devasted by a forest fire. Gage has trained as a skeleton athlete with the Junior Development USA Bobsled/Skeleton Team. Malachi Kay Ruf will be joining his brother at the Air Force Academy. Malachi graduated from North Summit High School and has been attending Utah Valley University. He served as drumline bass captain and the congress debate captain, as well as vice president of the debate team and the Leos. He was honored to attend Boys State and was a member of his school's State champion swim team. Malachi sought opportunities to serve others as a volunteer for Primary Children's Festival of Trees, collecting prescription glasses with the Lions Club, volunteering for local triathlons and races, and playing cello at church and community events. Tasia Stevens accepted an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. She graduated from Murray High School where she was captain of both the soccer team and basketball team, where she was named MVP. A model student-athlete, Tasia maintained a 4.0 GPA while excelling in sports and volunteering hundreds of hours at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium. She provided additional community service with the National Honor Society and was a member of high school German club. Sariah Kim Watchalotone will be attending the Air Force Academy. A graduate of West High School, Sariah was president of both the DECA and horticultural clubs and vice president of Panther Pals. She captained both her high school volleyball team and the High Country Volleyball National Team. Sariah volunteered with the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake City, Community Animal Welfare Society, and with University of Utah Health Care. Her grandfather, who served in the South Korean Army, has instilled in her a love of country, and inspired her to enter the military and live a life of service. It has been my distinct honor to speak to and nominate each of these admirable young men and women. These Utahns give me great hope for the future of our great Nation and the future of our Armed Services. To these seven students and to all their future classmates from around the country, I commend your achievements. I urge you to remember the foundation of your success thus far: hard work and sacrifice. Strive to continue on the path of strong moral character and to keep love of country as a guiding principle. If you stay this course, your future will hold great things in store. I wish you all the best as you embark on this journey. Thank you.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, later today this body will vote to confirm my friend Jim Bridenstine to be the next NASA Administrator. In that position, he will be in charge of rebuilding a space program that reflects the pioneering spirit and determination of the American people. I have known Congressman Bridenstine for a long time, and I know he is just the man for this really important undertaking. Let us review his record. The record shows that Jim Bridenstine's service to our country is matched only by his eagerness to press the boundaries of sky and space. Jim Bridenstine is a veteran Navy pilot who flew combat missions in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He logged 1,900 flight hours over his 9 years of Active service, and he is still a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Following his military service, Jim Bridenstine worked as the executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. He even owned a team in the ambitious but short-lived Rocket Racing League. Since his first term in Congress 6 years ago, Congressman Bridenstine has served on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. From that position, he has been a thoughtful leader on American space policy as it relates to national security, commerce, and weather forecasting. The name of his latest bill on these subjects speaks to Jim Bridenstine's ambitious vision for the future: the American Space Renaissance Act. If ever there were a need for a renaissance in space, it is now because who can deny that ever since Neil Armstrong's fateful ``one small step'' in 1969, America has, in some respects, been retreating from space? Just 12 years separates the start of the space race from man's first footfall on the Moon. It has been almost 50 years since then, and it is unclear that we could go back to the Moon if we wanted to in a short period of time. As Vice President Pence pointed out recently, we have not sent an American beyond low-Earth orbit in 45 years. In a humiliating reversal of sorts, America now relies on Russia to carry our astronauts to the International Space Station because we shuttered our own shuttle space program in 2011. In other words, after America won the space race and after America won the Cold War in one fell swoop, we gave away the distinction of manned space flight to the second-place finisher. NASA's decline and disrepair is a great tragedy, but it is not all I see when I survey the horizon, and I know this is true of Congressman Bridenstine as well. I see no reason why America, in all of her ingenuity and might, cannot be the dominant leader in space once again. Indeed, I see plenty of areas where this transformation is already underway. In government, President Trump has signaled his commitment to American leadership in space by relaunching the National Space Council, which met for the first time last fall. Outside of government, private enterprise is pressing the boundaries of commercial space flight every single day. In the deserts of Utah, innovators like ATK are pioneering the next generation of rocket engines and space superiority capabilities. Just yesterday, the world watched in awe as a SpaceX rocket flung a planet-hunting NASA satellite into orbit. Its mission complete, the rocket booster piloted itself back to Earth for reuse, landing nimbly on a drone ship floating out in the Atlantic Ocean. Achievements such as these prove that Americans are still awed, still starstruck, by space exploration and all the opportunities it provides. A new era of leaders can restore this sense of ambition in government. In the halls outside this Chamber, the Senate has a constant reminder of the importance of the space program. I refer to the commemorative mural this body commissioned in the wake of the Challenger disaster. The mural depicts the crew looking expectantly, hopefully, off into the future. Behind them is the shuttle that carried them to Heaven, and the world is in their hands. The Challenger Seven gave their lives in order to advance America's space program. They knew the risks--greater practically than those associated with any other profession on Earth or beyond it--but they also knew the mission was worth it because it contributed significantly to their Nation and to all mankind. What will it say about us if we fail to carry on the mission they undertook, if instead of exploring the infinite frontier, we remain here below, passing the torch of exploration to some other power? I don't want to contemplate that future, and I don't want to believe the American people do either. Claiming our right to a place in the stars will require an effort spanning many years and several Presidential administrations. We can begin that undertaking today by confirming a leader with a remarkable record of service to our country, a vision for the American space program that is big not small, and a genuine faith in his country that is as boundless as the heavens. That man is Jim Bridenstine. Let's confirm him. Let's confirm him today. I urge my colleagues to confirm Jim Bridenstine without obstruction, without delay.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I wish to speak for a few minutes about Ryan Nelson, who has been nominated by the President to serve as the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior. Ryan is a fantastic choice for this position at Interior. As a native and current resident of Idaho Falls, he is a fellow westerner who understands the issues confronting the West, confronting the region, confronting the entire country as it relates to the U.S. Department of the Interior. Ryan would not just work on behalf of the West. I know he is someone who is going to serve honorably on behalf of the American people as a whole. In order to do that, he first has to be confirmed. By my count, it has been 232 days since Ryan Nelson was nominated. There should be no further delays. The American people deserve to have qualified professionals in the executive branch, and Mr. Nelson is qualified, to put it very mildly. He is someone who has worked in notable posts of responsibility in all three branches of government. During the George W. Bush administration, Ryan worked as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources division. In that position, he personally argued 13 appellate cases. He also oversaw 700 attorneys and staff, who touched on all aspects of energy and environmental issues within the Department of Justice. Later, Ryan worked in the White House as deputy general counsel for the OMB and as special counsel to then-Senator Jeff Sessions. That is just his experience in government. Ryan has acquired senior management experience in the private sector as well. For the past 8 years, he has worked as general counsel for Melaleuca, which is a very successful billion-dollar Idaho business. Ryan does not just know what it is like to work in government, what it is like to work in Washington. He knows that, but he also understands the challenges that businesses and workers face in the modern world. I have known Ryan for many years. Ryan and I got to know each other while we were both in law school at BYU. I got to know Ryan and his wife Barbara, who have 7 lovely children. After law school, I ended up recruiting him to work at the law firm where I was then employed, Sidley Austin. After pulling all-nighters alongside Ryan, I can confirm what nearly 50 of his former colleagues wrote about him in a recent letter of support: He is an excellent choice to serve as solicitor. Ryan has outstanding analytical skills, and he pays immense attention to details. These are qualities that will serve him well as the Department of Interior's top lawyer. As you know, this administration has made it a priority to repair the relationship between the Federal Government and the Western States, where the Federal Government owns so much land. Too many workers in the West still don't feel as though they are treated fairly by their government. We can help restore that trust by confirming impartial, well-qualified nominees. Ryan Nelson is such a nominee. We need him at the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Interior Department needs to have a Solicitor. Ryan Nelson is an exceptionally qualified nominee for that position. Let's confirm Ryan Nelson today. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the issue we are confronting today is one that deals with the separation of powers outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Our system of government was set up in such a way as to protect the people from the dangers associated with the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of a few. We knew from our experience under British rule that bad things happen, especially at a national level, when too few people exercise too much of the power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the war power. In fact, much of the Revolutionary struggle that led to the creation of our Nation resulted from wartime activities undertaken by a Monarch thousands of miles and an ocean away. It is important today that we remember those same concerns and the constraints placed in our Constitution as we run our government nearly 2\1/2\ centuries later. I am happy to be here with my colleague, Senator Sanders, to file a discharge motion for our resolution, S.J. Res. 54. Whether you are present in the Chamber today, physically with us, or whether you are tuning in at home, I hope you will listen closely so that we can fill you in on the unauthorized Middle East war that your government--the government of the United States of America--is supporting and actively participating in as a cobelligerent. This war in Yemen has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians--human beings, lest we forget--each one of them possessing innate, immeasurable worth and dignity. This war has created refugees, orphans, widows; it has cost millions of dollars; and, believe it or not, at the end of the day, it actually has, quite arguably, undermined our fight against terrorist threats such as ISIS. I will expand on these unfortunate facts in a moment, but for now, let's just focus on one thing. Our military's involvement in Yemen has not been authorized by Congress as required by the Constitution. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution states that the Congress shall have the power to declare war--Congress, not the President, not the Pentagon, not someone else within the executive branch of government, but Congress. Yet in 2015, then-President Obama initiated our military involvement in Yemen and did so without authorization from Congress. The current administration has continued Obama's war. Senator Sanders, Senator Murphy, our cosponsors, and I are now giving Congress a chance to fix this error by debating and voting on our Nation's continued involvement in this unauthorized, illegal war in Yemen. If, as our opponents claim, this war is necessary, then surely they can defend that argument before this body and before the House of Representatives and, ultimately, secure authorization from Congress, just as the Constitution demands under article I, section 8. But if, on the other hand, they cannot defend this war and they cannot persuade a majority of the Members of this body and a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives that this is a war that needs to be fought, then it needs to end. Let's have an honest reckoning about this war today. Before this debate gets underway in earnest, there are a few points that I would like to clarify. First, let's talk about Iran for just a moment. Yes, the Houthis did fire on a U.S. Navy vessel. This only reinforces the fact that Yemenis view the United States as a participant in this war, regardless of whether or not Congress wants to acknowledge that participation or approve it, as the Constitution requires. But overall, there are conflicting reports about the extent of Iranian support for the Houthi rebels. What we do know is this: The Houthis are a regional rebel group that does not itself threaten the United States. While the Houthis are no friends of ours, neither are they a serious threat to American national security. The longer we fight against them, the more reason we give them to hate America and embrace the opportunists who are our true enemy in the region--Iran. And the more we prolong activities that destabilize the region, the longer we harm our own interests in terms of trade and broader regional security. The bottom line is this: We are spending a great deal of time and treasure to defeat a regional rebel group with no desire to attack the homeland and unclear ties to Iran. Iran's influence is much clearer in other parts of the Middle East with other groups--for example, with the murderous terrorist group, Hezbollah. If we want to counter Iran, let's have that debate in Congress and vote to equip this administration with the necessary authorization to use our vast and fearsome military resources to defeat its proxies--not to create new proxies by turning rebel groups against us. Let's talk about ISIS for a moment. Our resolution would not impede the military's ability to fight terror groups, like ISIS, inside Yemen. The resolution itself requires the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities in Yemen, except--except, and I quote--``United States Armed Forces engaged in operations directed at Al Qaeda or associated forces.'' That is a direct quote from the text of the resolution itself. It should put to rest the notion that this would somehow jeopardize our ability to fight terrorists. The Pentagon and the executive branch have long insisted that they have adequate authority under the authorization for the use of military force enacted in 2001--adequate authority under the 2001 AUMF to fight against ISIS. If those at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the executive branch or any of my colleagues now claim that this resolution specifically needs to exempt operations against ISIS, then what are we to make of their previous confidence in the 2001 AUMF? Have they suddenly lost faith in that document overnight or are they merely using this argument as a pretense to oppose our resolution? I personally believe that the 2001 AUMF has been stretched too far. Our resolution, however, is completely agnostic on this point. It is entirely agnostic about whether counterterror operations against al- Qaida and ISIS can proceed in the wake of the resolution. Our resolution is specific, and our resolution relates specifically to the Houthis. Nothing in this bill may be interpreted as an AUMF. Lastly, with regard to Saudi Arabia and the ongoing visit of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in Washington, DC, at the moment, I have been deeply concerned about our illegal war in Yemen since its inception and have taken steps to end our involvement in that war. I presented questions to our combatant commanders on the topic, just as I have for other unauthorized operations in the past. I had hoped the new administration might take prompt action to end our unauthorized activities in Yemen. Sadly, that has not occurred. Last fall, after countless missed opportunities and some broken assurances, my colleagues and I decided it was time to take matters into our own hands. By ``matters,'' I mean those matters that are specifically already in our hands, those matters that are already granted to the Congress and to no other branch of government. There may be some short-term impact on the U.S.-Saudi relationship, but overall the Crown Prince should understand that this protracted and clearly nonconclusive war only hurts his government's stability and legitimacy. He, too, should want a quick end to this conflict. Saudi Arabia is an indispensable partner in the region, without which the United States would be less successful. But the Saudis themselves are at an inflection point within their own government. Working with the United States should be a goal for the Crown Prince and should be a credibility-lending endeavor. The resolution before you is the product of years of effort. It was not timed in any way, shape, or form to coincide with the Crown Prince's visit. It was drafted with one thing in mind, which is to make sure that before we put U.S. blood and treasure on the line, before we put the sons and daughters of the American people who have served in harm's way into an area in which hostilities are ongoing, to get involved in combat capacities in an area where conflict is brewing, we owe it to them, we owe it to their parents, we owe it to their families, and we owe it to ourselves, having taken an oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, to do it the right way--not just because the Constitution requires that but also because of the reasons the Constitution requires that. It makes sense that when we are doing something that has a greater capacity to impact our government, our standing in the world, our own security, and the lives of those who were sworn to protect us, we do it in the right way, not just through the appropriate branch of government but through the appropriate branch of government in part because that is the only place where an open, honest, public debate can occur. It is one thing to make a decision somewhere within the military chain of command on whether to undertake a particular action, but this is one of the reasons why, in order to declare war, in order to get us involved in a war in the first place, it requires action by Congress, because this is the branch of the Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. Over the course of many decades, under the leadership of Congresses and White Houses of every conceivable partisan combination, we have seen a gradual shift of power in a number of areas--including regulatory policy, trade policy, and the exercise of the war power-- over to the executive branch of government. When we don't exercise that power, it starts to atrophy; the Constitution means less, and it is less able to protect the American people. That is why this resolution matters. That is why I urge my colleagues to support this resolution. Let's do this the right way.

Mr. LEE. I would certainly agree that the answer is yes in response to that question. It is Congress that gets to decide whether we go to war; it is not the executive branch. For that very same reason, when we have brought up this resolution calling into question whether we have authorized that war and whether we should continue in the absence of an authorization for that war--if we are asked to table that, that very request amounts to a request for abdication of our constitutional responsibility. A favorite song of mine called ``Freewill'' by the band Rush came out several decades ago, and it says: ``If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.'' If we choose in this moment to table this resolution, we are making a choice to be willfully blind to the exercise of a power that belongs to us, to allow someone else to exercise it without proper authority. That is wrong. That cannot happen, not on our watch.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, some of our colleagues from time to time may ask us how we would define the term ``hostilities'' and what the United States might be doing that triggers that definition. I welcome that discussion. It is important to note that the U.S. Code is somewhat vague on that question, defining ``hostilities'' broadly to mean any conflict subject to the laws of war. I don't necessarily view that broad definition as problematic. It is something that allows Congress to assess the unique circumstances in each instance on specific grounds at each point in time. Our involvement in war and in conflict has greatly changed over the years, and it will continue to change as the nature of international relations changes and as the technology we use in war changes and develops. It doesn't mean we are not involved in hostilities. I welcome further discussion on this matter. Let's look at the facts of our involvement in Yemen today. Since 2015, U.S. forces have aided the Saudi coalition with midair refueling and target selection assistance, or, as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in December 2017, our military is helping the Saudis ``make certain [they] hit the right thing.'' In other words, we are helping a foreign power bomb its adversaries in multiple ways. If that doesn't include and amount to and itself constitute hostilities, then such words have lost their meaning. There are those within the executive branch of government who would define the term ``hostilities'' so narrowly that it would apply only when our armed services personnel are on the ground firing upon or being fired upon by an enemy force. It is understandable in some respects that they would want to define it that way because if they define it that way, that puts the executive in power. That is one of the reasons we have to remember that there is a natural tension built into our constitutional structure to make sure that not all power is concentrated in any one branch of government. It is one of the reasons Alexander Hamilton pointed out in Federalist No. 69 that war power would not be exercised by the Executive in our system of government. In this instance, as in many others, the Executive in our system of government would differ from the monarch under the old system, the one that was based in London. The King had the power to take Great Britain to war. The King didn't have to seek a declaration of war from Parliament; the King could act in and of himself to decide when to take us to war. It is one of the reasons why it matters here. When we see the definition of ``hostilities'' narrowed to the point that it very often will not exist given the way we engage in hostilities today, given modern technologies that frequently allow us to engage in acts that anyone would have to acknowledge amount to combat, amount to conflict, amount to hostilities, they can still explain it away as something the Executive can do independently of Congress. This resolution will not do anything, according to some, because we are not engaged in hostilities in Yemen. I am building upon this argument that is based upon a very narrow, cramped, distorted interpretation of the word ``hostilities.'' When people ask what we think the resolution would do if it were to pass--first of all, it is clear that we are engaged in hostilities because when we are involved as a cobelligerent, involved in midair refueling in combat flights, when we are identifying targets for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen against the Houthis, those are combat operations, and those are clearly hostilities. But even if we were to suppose that U.S. activities in Yemen somehow did not constitute hostilities according to the War Powers Resolution, the text of our resolution is crystal clear about what constitutes ``hostilities'' for its purpose; namely, ``aerial targeting assistance, intelligence sharing, and mid-flight aerial refueling.'' Our resolution would end those very specific activities against the Houthis in Yemen-- nothing more and nothing less.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, Senator Sanders mentioned some previous wars and how this may or may not relate to those previous wars. One of the other questions we get from time to time is also a related question: How does this impact or influence operations somewhere else in the world where the United States is engaged? Would the passage of this resolution mean that every other type of operation anywhere else in the world would have to stop too? What about our global counterterrorism activities? We sometimes get those questions. The main reason we drafted this resolution was to bring our activities in Yemen into line with our laws as expressed in the Constitution. So if we are fighting unauthorized wars in other places around the globe, then those wars need to be authorized by Congress, or else they would need to end. Importantly, however, this resolution does not itself make law or set precedent for other operations. This resolution applies just to this conflict in Yemen against the Houthis. Each conflict or operation ought to be evaluated on its own merits and measured against our national interest and any existing authorizations for the use of military force. We can't evaluate this resolution as being something that requires us to swallow the entire elephant at once. This is just focusing on one issue in one part of the world. We need not take any kind of a ``sky is falling'' approach that will say this will immediately jeopardize everything else we are doing in any and every other part of the world. Global counterterror operations under title 10 or title 50 involve U.S. action but arise in different ways, and any other activity that we undertake or authority that we cite in introducing our armed service personnel into hostilities cannot serve as a substitute for congressional action as contemplated by the Constitution. The power to declare war belongs to Congress and not to the Executive. Just because government breaks the rules often--and sometimes with impunity--it does not mean it has the right to break the rules, nor does it mean, certainly, that we shouldn't call out rule-breaking when we see it going on, but that is a debate for another day. The resolution before us today is specific to our activities against the Houthis in Yemen. It does not authorize or deauthorize military force in any other part of the globe or against any other foe. In fact, the resolution specifies that it does not interfere with existing operations against al-Qaida and its affiliates. Our resolution is narrowly tailored to end our efforts to assist forces that are fighting against the Houthis. It is deliberately narrow in order to address a black-and-white situation that is clearly not covered by any existing authorization for the use of military force. Counterterror operations that are supported by the 2001 AUMF and other legitimate authorizations would not be affected by this resolution. I yield to Senator Murphy.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand to urge a ``no'' vote on the motion to table. We are involved as cobelligerents in hostilities in someone else's war--in a civil war in Yemen. It is very difficult to dispute the contention that there is no decision made by a government that is more severe, more serious, that carries with it more dire consequences than sending brave young men and women sworn to protect us into harm's way, into battle, into hostilities. We have been faced with the debate here about what amounts to hostilities. We have the executive branch of government that understandably has defined that term narrowly but in this case so narrowly as to obliterate any meaning behind that word, basically suggesting that we are not in hostilities unless we have people on the ground firing upon an enemy and being fired upon. That is not always the way modern warfare is conducted and hasn't been for some time. The fact is that we have our uniformed military personnel who are engaged in things like midair refueling on combat missions, refueling the combat aircraft of another country when those combat aircraft are in route to a battlefield, to a theater of warfare. If those aren't hostilities, I don't know what is. We have been told that we need to do this in regular order. Let's talk about regular order for a minute because, as I mentioned a moment ago, there is nothing more serious than sending our uniformed military personnel into hostilities. We have in this body adopted laws and procedures making it possible for us to receive fast-track consideration of measures that indicate that the executive branch of government has overstepped its power. We are in our third year involved in this civil war in Yemen--3 years--and yet this hasn't come up for a vote; 3 years and we haven't had anything come out of committee and voted on the Senate floor. Three years ought to be long enough. In fact, the War Powers Resolution gives us expedited consideration. It gives the committee 10 days to consider that. The committee has now had more than twice that time to consider that, and the committee has not put anything out. This is why we are well within our rights, well within the boundaries of what is appropriate, in fact, and well within what the Constitution already grants us, which is the power to declare war. That power, with good reason, was not vested in the executive branch of government. It was vested only in Congress--that branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. The reason this is so important is that before we send our young people into a place where they could die, we want to make sure that an open, honest debate is held in public view, not behind closed doors at the Pentagon or at some other government office building, but right here on the Senate floor and in the House of Representatives. We cannot exercise that power capably, we cannot claim to be mindful, and we cannot be deemed faithful to our oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States if we don't look out for our authorities and if we don't make sure that someone else isn't exercising authority that was granted to this body. That authority belongs not to any one person; it belongs to the people. If we refuse to take this vote today, if we choose instead to table this measure rather than to allow it to come up for a vote on the Senate floor, we are choosing not to decide, and we will still have made a choice--a choice to abdicate our responsibility. If we make that decision today, then shame on us. It is our prerogative as a coequal branch of government to make sure that we do our job, to do that which only Congress can do. This is, in fact, a war. There are, in fact, grave humanitarian concerns presented by that war, and that makes it all the more important, not less important, for us to debate this and for us to discuss this under the light of day, in public, and on the Senate floor. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms I am capable of communicating to vote against the motion to table. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank Senator Sanders for his leadership on this issue. It is an honor to be here with my friend and colleague, the Senator from Vermont, to talk about our joint resolution to force a vote on U.S. military involvement in a civil war that is going on in Yemen. Whether one is present in the Senate Chamber today or whether one is tuning in from home, I hope you will listen closely for the next hour or so, so we can fill you in on the unauthorized Middle East war that your U.S. Government is supporting. This war in Yemen has killed tens of thousands of innocent victims-- human beings, lest we forget--each with immeasurable, innate, God-given dignity. This war has created refugees, orphans, and widows. It has cost many millions of dollars. Believe it or not, at the end of the day, according to at least one U.S. Government report, it has, arguably, undermined our fight against terrorist threats, such as ISIS, rather than to advance those efforts. I will expand on these uncomfortable facts in a few minutes, but, for now, let's focus on just one thing. Our military's involvement in Yemen has not been authorized by the U.S. Congress as is required by the U.S. Constitution. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution is pretty clear on this point. It reads that Congress shall have the power to declare war--Congress, not the President, not the Pentagon--Congress. This is the branch of government that is most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. It makes sense that this power would only be granted to that branch of government. Yet, in 2015, President Obama initiated our military involvement in Yemen without having permission from Congress, without having an authorization for the use of military force, without having a declaration of war. The current administration has continued Obama's war. Senator Sanders and I, along with Senator Murphy and our six other cosponsors, are giving Congress a chance to fix this error by debating and voting on our Nation's continued involvement in this illegal, unauthorized war in Yemen. Now, as our opponents claim, if this war is necessary, then, surely, they will be willing to come down to this floor within the Senate Chamber and defend it. Surely they will be willing to come onto the floor of the Senate and onto the floor of the House and seek authorization from Congress as the Constitution demands. Let's have an honest reckoning about this war today. At this very moment, a tragedy is unfolding in Yemen. Very sadly, it is a tragedy for which our Nation shares some blame. Here are just a few facts about this war in Yemen, which is now approaching its third year: Fifteen million human souls in Yemen lack clean water and sanitation, and 8 million are at risk of starvation. The Yemeni people have been visited by the worst cholera outbreak in recorded human history--over 1 million cases. Every 10 minutes, a child under the age of 5 dies of preventable causes. A total of 10,000 civilians have been killed in this war, and 40,000 more civilians have been wounded in this war. I think it is important to discuss the human toll this war is inflicting. I think it is especially important to have discussions like this one at the outset so that as we go into a conflict, the stakes are clear. For thousands of human beings, the decision we make in this Chamber will make the difference between life and death. This is one of the many reasons it is so important to keep reminding ourselves that the Founding Fathers were very clear about this. They didn't leave any ambiguity in terms of identifying who has the power to make decisions like this one, who has the power to decide when we go to war. Article I, section 8, says that Congress shall have the power to declare war. From time to time, I hear it argued that declarations of war are somehow antiquated, that they are outdated, that they are anachronisms akin to ceremonial relics like powdered wigs or a key to the city, akin to a society whose principal mode of transportation involved a horse and a buggy, but that isn't true. These principles are as true today as they were then. Nothing about those principles has become outdated. If you read the Founding Fathers, it is very clear that they thought the power to declare war was, in fact, important. They deliberately considered the matter and withheld it from the President for a reason. They did not vest this power in the Office of the Presidency, and that was a conscious, deliberate, and I believe wise choice. To quote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 69, the Founding Fathers wanted their President to be ``much inferior'' in power to a King. Kings declare war unilaterally. They can make life-or-death military decisions--on a whim if they want to. They don't need to go and seek support from the public before doing so. In our system, Presidents, by contrast, have to garner support from the public and the legislative branch before initiating war--far from a unilateral decision. The decision to go to war in America is supposed to be based on collaboration and consensus so that our Nation will be united to the greatest degree possible when we go through trying conflicts, at that moment when unity is what is so badly needed. So which does the modern Executive resemble more today--a President as the Founding Fathers understood that term or a King? The answer is uncomfortably clear from the string of unauthorized military excursions that Presidents from both political parties have initiated in recent decades. Of course, some people claim that the President has broad constitutional authority to make war as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. They are absolutely right. The President of the United States is, in fact, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, but this is not the beginning and the end to the question. This does not mean the President may authorize at will military excursions around the globe for any reason or no reason at all without authorization from Congress. It does not mean that. It means nothing close to that. Only Congress can authorize a military campaign. Once Congress has done so, then the President has broad authority, vast discretion to decide how specifically to command the Armed Forces to victory. There is one important notable exception to this big principle, and that exception arises specifically in the event of an attack on the United States. The Founders were wise. They anticipated that there could be threats to the homeland so serious that it might be physically impossible for Congress to respond quickly enough, so they preserved to the President the power to ``repel sudden attacks,'' in the words of James Madison. Clearly, this strategy--we might describe it as a ``break glass in case of emergency'' kind of strategy. It is that kind of power. It is a ``break glass in times of emergency'' kind of power. It is supposed to be used only under extreme, extraordinary circumstances where Congress cannot convene in time to save the Nation. The Founders did not intend for the Commander in Chief's power to be used to justify military intervention in civil wars 8,000 miles away. That authorization can come only from this body in the form of a declaration of war or in the form of an authorization for use of military force. To date, we have not considered either one of these, much less voted on them and passed them in the case of this civil war in Yemen. So I would ask my colleague, Senator Sanders from Vermont, how long the American people can be expected to ignore our involvement in a foreign war.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to display an oversized visual display.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont. I appreciate his remarks and his leadership on this, and I appreciate the remarks that Senator Durbin and Senator Murphy have added to this discussion. I want to close by pointing out that in addition to being unlawful and in addition to being unconstitutional, our involvement in Yemen is unproductive in the fight against terrorism. The Houthis we are fighting are a regional force--one that doesn't harbor ambitions of attacking the U.S. homeland. While the Houthis are certainly no friend of ours, neither are they a serious threat to our country. Yet we are diverting considerable resources to fighting the Houthis, resources that would be better spent fighting more substantial threats--threats that harbor, rather openly, ambitions of bringing down the United States, of attacking the United States. These are threats like al-Qaida or ISIS. On that point, the best evidence we have suggests that their involvement in Yemen has arguably undermined our fight against ISIS. The State Department's most recent study, its most recent ``Country Reports on Terrorism''--which, by the way, happens to be the authority on that subject for Congress and the American people--says that we have inadvertently strengthened ISIS by killing off its antagonists, the Houthis. This just reinforces the farcical character that our military excursions in the Middle East have the potential to undertake. We bomb with one hand; we give humanitarian aid with the other hand. We whack a terrorist from one group, and another springs up in its place. Defenders of our efforts in this war in Yemen often claim that the real reason we are fighting the Houthis is that they are a proxy for Iran, which is the true threat to our Nation and to the world. This would be perhaps a reasonable rationale, but there are conflicting reports about the Houthis and their ties to Iran. Iran has expansionist views; the Houthis do not. Hezbollah is an officially listed as a foreign terrorist organization; the Houthis are not. The Houthis may be a rogue non- State actor, destabilizing their own country, but they are not a threat to America--at least not yet. By helping the Saudis bomb them, we only give the Houthis reasons to start to hate us. Our involvement in Yemen detracts from our ability to be a diplomatic resource and the peacemaker in the region. In closing, the substance of the resolution offered by Senator Sanders and cosponsored by Senator Murphy, me, and others is simple. It puts our war against the Houthi rebels to a vote. It concerns the Houthis and only the Houthis. If Members are convinced that our fight against the Houthis is worthwhile, then so be it. Congress will have done its part and the fight will go on, but if Members are not willing to pay the heavy pricetag for this war, calculated in dollars and in innocent human lives, then our resolution will bring U.S. operations to a close. This resolution is an opportunity for Members of Congress to stand up and be counted on a matter of life and death. It is an opportunity to end the Executive's unconstitutional dominance over matters of war and peace and restore in its place a collaborative process whereby Congress declares war and Presidents wage war. I thank Senator Sanders.

Mr. LEE. I am not sure what constitutes oversized, but I have it on good authority that the ordinary Senate rules don't allow for a picture this big without unanimous consent. So, therefore, I sought it. The picture itself paints an image and leaves an impression that itself is oversized and that demonstrates the humanity of this conflict. You see a child standing in what appears to be a school in an ordinary learning environment that has been rendered unusable by the devastating impact of war. Now, war does happen. Conflicts do arise. This is one of the reasons why it was built into not only our system of laws but our foundational governing structure in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers understood that war would arise from time to time, but they carefully divided up the power, recognizing how devastating its implications could be, recognizing that bad things are a little bit less likely to happen if you don't allow too much power to be concentrated in the hands of a few. Over time, Congress and the Presidency have had a little bit of a tug-of-war, as I referenced earlier, about where the Commander in Chief power ends and the war power begins. In 1973 Congress reasserted its constitutional role and tried to clarify some of what had been described as a gray area by passing the War Powers Resolution. The crisis that led Congress to create this important law in many ways was reminiscent of the conflict that we are discussing today. The War Powers Act was passed in response to the Vietnam war. That war began with the insertion of just a small handful of U.S. military advisers in 1950, but their ranks grew and grew gradually but steadily, so that our commitment in Vietnam spiraled into a decades-long, bloodied conflict. Presidents from both parties abused their authority in order to wage this far-off war. Finally, in 1973, Congress decided it was time to bring our boys home. So it repealed the limited legal authority for the war it had granted to then-President Johnson 7 years earlier. In defiance of Congress, President Nixon continued the war, citing his authority as Commander in Chief. So Congress drafted the War Powers Resolution to give itself a way to remove our armed services personnel from unauthorized, unlawful, and unconstitutional war zones. The War Powers Resolution states that the President must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing American troops to ``hostilities'' or ``imminent hostilities.'' The War Powers Resolution goes on to provide that the President must remove troops from the conflict if Congress does not authorize their presence within 60 days or a maximum of 90 days in the case of certain emergencies. Congress's passage of the War Powers Resolution was a bold assertion of its constitutional responsibility in the face of a chronically overreaching executive branch. In fact, Congress's desire to uphold the Constitution was so strong that it actually overrode President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution. Members of Congress today could certainly learn a thing or two from their predecessors' commitment to constitutional duties and to the limited power possessed by each branch of government. Since the War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973, defenders of a royal executive have tried to go around it and tried to circumvent it altogether by claiming that their unauthorized wars somehow do not qualify as ``hostilities.'' We heard this claim by President Obama in response to Libya, and we heard it again in response to Yemen. It is the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense that we are not engaged in ``hostilities'' in Yemen unless our troops ``are actively engaged in exchanges of fire with opposing units of hostile forces.'' To translate, the U.S. Government really claims that it is not engaged in hostilities unless U.S. troops are on the ground being shot at by the enemy. It stretches the imagination, and it stretches the English language beyond its breaking point to assert that our military is not engaged in hostilities in Yemen. Consider for a moment what it is that the U.S. military is doing as part of the Saudi-led coalition effort against the neighbors of Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni neighbors. U.S. military personnel are assigned to the joint combined planning cell in Saudi Arabia, where they are sharing military intelligence with the Saudis and helping to target enemies within Yemen for attack. Our forces are also refueling coalition bombers in midair on combat missions. If sending our military men and women to foreign lands to fuel a country's bombers and handpick its targets does not qualify as ``hostilities,'' then those words have lost their meaning. What does the word ``hostility'' mean if it cannot be said to encompass that? As it happens, the War Powers Resolution was designed to stop secret and unauthorized military activities such as these. So Congress is well within its right to vote on whether these activities should continue. That is why this joint resolution that is authored by Senator Sanders and cosponsored by Senator Murphy, myself, and six others represents a big chance--a significant chance, a constitutional moment--for Congress to do the right thing, for Congress to do its job, and for Congress to represent the American people. After all, this is their blood and their treasure that are being put on the line. That is why the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution alike contemplate actions by Congress and not solely unilateral action by the executive branch. I ask my colleagues Senator Sanders and Senator Murphy: Isn't it arguable that by overreaching in this instance, we might in fact be making matters worse? Couldn't we be putting our country in a position of less security rather than more?

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, 200 years ago this month, a man was born into slavery in a cabin not far from here in Maryland. The child knew his mother only briefly; they were cruelly separated when he was young. He knew his father only by the rumors. He didn't even know the exact day of his birth. Yes, even his birthday-- for many of us, that foundational aspect of identity--was denied him by the cruel master of slavery. This slave was whipped and beaten. His days were filled with toil. His nights were filled with restless turning on a packed dirt floor. But that is not where the story ends--no, it is only the beginning of the incredible life of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, orator, and one of the greatest Americans ever to live. As Douglass would later write in his memoirs, ``You have seen how a man was made a slave. You shall see how a slave was made a man.'' For all its terrible might--its bloodhounds and its implements of torture--slavery was not built to withstand Frederick Douglass, just as it was not built to withstand the universal desire for freedom that lies within the heart of man. Douglass knew that the first step to freedom was education, so he taught himself to read in secrecy because slaves were punished for learning to read. Around the time he was 12, he got hold of an old textbook called ``The Columbian Orator.'' Little did Douglass know that around that same time, the same textbook was being studied on the Illinois prairie by a young man named Abraham Lincoln. In that textbook, Douglass found speeches by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin--men who revolted against tyranny to claim their liberty. In that book, he also found a fictional dialogue between a slave and his master where the master brought forward ``the whole argument in behalf of slavery . . . all of which was disposed of by the slave.'' Douglass wrote: This exchange ``gave tongue to interesting thoughts of [his] soul.'' It kindled his burning conviction that slavery was wrong and he must escape it. From that moment on, Douglass was a grave threat to the very institution of slavery itself. He was free in his own mind. Douglass' journey ``from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom'' would go through many dramatic twists and turns before its conclusion. When a notorious slave breaker tried to beat him for disobeying orders, Douglass wrestled him into submission. He insisted on being treated as a man, and from that day forward, he was never whipped again. Douglass' first attempt at escape was a failure, thwarted at the last minute by a betrayal of confidence. He did not fail a second time. In 1938, traveling in disguise under an assumed identity, Douglass took a steamboat north to the blessedness of freedom. At this point in the story, you might expect Douglass to fade from history, to enjoy a modest and tranquil life with his wife and his children. But no--the former slave, who taught himself to read through the words of Cicero and Washington, went on to be history's most eloquent witness against slavery. He denounced the bloody institution in 1,000 speeches and from the pages of his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, and he denounced slavery firmly from inside the American tradition. Like many radical abolitionists, at times Frederick Douglass was profoundly ambivalent about his own country. Indeed, there was a time in his early adulthood when he affirmatively hated the United States, preferring disunion to union with slaveholders. But Frederick Douglass later came to a different conclusion about America. When he read the Nation's founding documents, he did not find codified defenses of slavery; to the contrary, he found that the compromises the Founders had made to slavery were meant to undermine that institution over time, not to sustain it. What Douglass found in the Founders was quite different from what he had expected to find. He later said: Their message ``is `We the people'; not we the white people, not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people.'' Douglass was an activist, yes, a militant, yes, who led recruiting drives for Black soldiers during the Civil War. But for all of his righteous anger, he did not want to cast aside the principles of his country. Douglass knew that the most powerful antidote to injustice was found within the American tradition, with its insistence on natural rights for all men. Douglass wrote: From the first, I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen. . . . The liberties of the American people [are] dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country. Frederick Douglass has many lessons to teach us if we are willing to listen. I would like to highlight just one more, which I think is especially relevant to us today. At the end of his famous autobiography, Frederick Douglass contrasted two societies: the slaveholder society he was born into and the northern society where he was reborn in freedom. The slave society he described was built on force and fraud. Its religion had been perverted to serve earthly idols. Its families were torn apart at the auction block. Its workers toiled to no reward. This society had been poisoned by its rejection of the American creed, by its insistence that all men are not created equal. Indeed, it had become an authoritarian society that policed movement, association, even intimacy. And for what? To protect a hideous falsehood. The free society Douglass described was different. Here, a man could hold an honest job, and he worked because his work was rewarded, not because he feared punishment. Here, a runaway slave could make a name for himself, rising to a position of esteem in his community through his service. Here, a family could put down roots and flourish. Those are two very different societies, guided by very different beliefs. One is a weak community hiding behind a show of strength. The other is a strong and free community with absolutely nothing to hide. Today we are blessedly free from the institution of slavery, but our communities have their own problems. The American family is in crisis. Our prisons are full, and our pews are empty. Heroin and opioids enslave millions. Many more are killed before they even get the chance to live. Yes, we have our own battles to fight. In too many ways, we have fallen short of the high principles upon which our Nation was built. That ultimately is why the legacy of Frederick Douglass is so very important. He implored his generation to heal itself of its greatest disease. He calls upon us to do the same. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate the keen insights of my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Maine. I would point out here that there was a process on the tax bill. It may not have been perfect--in fact, it wasn't--but there was a process. We had amendments. We were allowed to offer them, to have them considered. We did, in fact, take votes. There is no process on this. I have been told by some of the Members of this body--some from my party, some from the other party--that there is a process because members of the Appropriations Committee have had input on this. That isn't a process that belongs to the Senate; that is for one committee. It is not a substitute for floor consideration. There is a provision in the U.S. Constitution that makes certain kinds of amendments to the Constitution patently unconstitutional. That provision says that you can't do anything to alter the equal representation of the States within the U.S. Senate. Consistent with the spirit of that provision, we have to make sure we don't make changes to Senate procedure in a way that creates a super class of Senators. We don't want to get to a point, to paraphrase George Orwell, where we say all Senators are equal but some are more equal than others. The process within the Appropriations Committee is not Senate process. We did, in fact, have a process on the tax bill. It was not perfect, but it was a process. Here, there isn't a process. Here, there is not an opportunity for amendments. There is not an opportunity for a single amendment. That is a material distinction, and it is one worth noting here. It is also worth noting here that we have done this over and over and over again. What is this--the fifth continuing resolution of this fiscal year alone? This is happening over and over and over again, so much so that many Members of this body have never seen it operate any differently. That is a sad state of affairs and one that ought to be troubling to Members of both political parties and to Members of this body from every part of this great country. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we find ourselves in another position like those we have found ourselves in before. We find ourselves in a position in which the government's spending authority is set to expire in just a few hours. We have known this was coming for weeks, just as we did with the last continuing resolution and the one before that and the one before that. As Jacques Cousteau once observed: ``We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.'' Every time, we approach this as if it were somehow going to be different this time. We quibble from time to time about this or that policy. We quibble from time to time about the price tag. Sometimes we are so focused on the policy and the price tag that we forget about the process. It is primarily to this subject, the process, that I would like to turn my attention for the next few minutes. You see, the process is important around here. We come from different backgrounds. We come from different States. We represent diverse interests across this great country. We are not going to agree on everything. In fact, there are a lot of things on which we strongly disagree. That is why we have processes. The Constitution is, itself, all about the process. In fact, the Constitution is more or less agnostic as to the substantive policy outcome. It is all about connecting the American people to their government, which is there to serve them. It is all about making sure that there is responsiveness and accountability from the government to the people, making sure that the government serves the people and not the other way around. It is for this reason--and it is very important--that each Member who holds an election certificate in this body or in the body just down the hall from us in the House of Representatives is allowed to express his or her opinions and have them matter. Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to spending bills. You see, it is in spending bills that we have the opportunity to exercise oversight over the Federal Government--a government that requires the American people to spend many months out of every year working just to pay their tax bills, a Federal Government that imposes $2 trillion every single year in regulatory compliance costs on the American people, a government that has the power to destroy a business or a livelihood or, in some cases, lives. It is important that we exercise this oversight, and without spending constraints, there can be no meaningful oversight. Without an adequate process, the Republican form of government cannot fulfill its role. The American people are no longer in charge of their government when this happens. For this reason, it is a little disturbing that a government that spends nearly $4 trillion every single year makes its spending decisions in one fell swoop as it does. You see, whenever we pass a continuing resolution, what we are doing as a Congress is effectively pressing a reset button. It keeps current spending levels intact, in place, unchanged, as if there were no reviewing body, as if there had been no election, as if the American people didn't matter at all to the process by which they are governed. This is an abdication of our role as the people's elected representatives. It disconnects the American people, and we wonder--we wonder why it is that this is an institution, Congress, that enjoys an approval rating somewhere between 9 and 14 percent, making us slightly less popular than Fidel and Raul Castro in America and only slightly more popular than the influenza virus, which is rapidly gaining on us. It is for this reason--because we have disconnected the American people from their own government, and one of the ways we do that is when we pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels without any additional changes. When these things are offered, it is often within just hours of the expiration of a spending deadline. We have a bill before us that is quite lengthy and that we have had access to for only about 24 hours--a little bit less than that--and we are asked to make a binary choice as to that legislation, yes or no. Vote for it and, in this case, there are some things that you get. You get $90 billion in emergency spending. You get an increase of spending caps of about $300 billion over 2 years. You get in excess of $1 trillion in new debt. Some have estimated it could be more like $1.5 trillion, but we will be talking about a $22 trillion debt by the second quarter of 2019 as a result of this bill. When we received this bill, we were told: You have two options. You can vote yes and accept all of those things or you can vote no, and there is no opportunity for anything in between there--no opportunity to amend it, no opportunity to improve it. If you think about it, there is really not a meaningful opportunity for debate if you don't have a meaningful opportunity to amend a legislative provision once it is introduced. Members are told over and over and over again: You are either going to vote for this and accept the government as is, with no changes or with changes that you might find incredibly disturbing, or you will be blamed for a shutdown. Why is this OK? One of the things that we hear from the American people, quite understandably, quite justifiably, is why can't you all just get into a room and come to an agreement? Well, this is that room. There are two such rooms here in the Capitol. One is in the Senate, and one is in the House of Representatives. This is the room where that is supposed to take place. There are mechanisms by which that is supposed to occur. Through the amendment process, people offer up legislation, and they offer to improve legislation. If they have concerns with it, they can offer up amendments. When Members are denied that opportunity, the American people are disconnected yet again from that process. Who benefits from this? Well, it certainly isn't the American people, who find that their government gets bigger and more expensive. It does so at their expense, at the expense of the American people. Every time we undertake this process again--we pass another continuing resolution--we suggest that it is somehow OK to fund the government this way, with one decision affecting every aspect of government, in one vote put forward under sort of extortive circumstances in which Members are told: You have to do this, or the government is going to shut down, and you will be blamed for that if you vote against it. This isn't right. Why couldn't we bring legislation to the floor not hours but weeks or even months before the deadline? Why couldn't we allow that to occur, to allow the debate, the discussion to occur under the light of day rather than having this legislation negotiated under cover of darkness, behind closed doors, where the American people are left out. I have thought about this on many occasions, and there are very few circumstances in our day-to-day lives that are like the way Congress spends money. It has occurred to me that it is as if you moved into a new area, a very remote area, and you had access to only one grocery store for many, many miles, many, many hours away. You were on your way home from work and your spouse called you and said to stop at the store and pick up bread, milk, and eggs. You go to the store and get your grocery cart. You go to the bread aisle and put a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, and a dozen eggs in your cart. You get to the checkout counter, and you put out your bread, milk, and eggs. The cashier rings those things up and says: I am sorry, you may not purchase bread, milk, and eggs unless you also purchase half a ton of iron ore, a bucket of nails, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album. In fact, this is a special kind of store where you have to buy all of those things. In fact, you have to buy one of every item in this entire store in order to buy any of these things, including the bread, the milk, and the eggs. That would start to approximate what it feels like to spend money in Congress, where we are told: You can't fund any part of government unless you are willing to fund all of government, subject to such changes as the few people who write the continuing resolution might insert. And you, by the way, having been duly elected by the citizens of your State, will be left out of the process other than to exercise the binary choice of yes or no. So we have seen that this is how we get to be $20 trillion in debt, soon to be $22 trillion in debt. We don't get to be $21 trillion, soon to be $22 trillion in debt without a whole lot of agreement on the part of a whole lot of people to do that. It is a bipartisan exercise, to be sure. Bipartisanship is necessary, but the fact that it is bipartisan doesn't always make it holy. You don't get to be $20 trillion in debt without a whole lot of Republicans agreeing with a whole lot of Democrats that we are going to do precisely that. It might inure to the benefit of a few people who stand to benefit every time the government gets bigger or more expensive, every time we do things this way, but it hurts everyone else. So process matters. The fact is, we will not always come to an agreement as to how much we ought to spend. We will not always come to an agreement as to those things on which we will be spending, the requisite amount of money. But I think we should be able to agree that the American people deserve a process, one that allows them to be heard through the people's own elected representatives. If not us, who? If not now, when? At what point are we going to start appropriating funds through this government, through a process that is open, that is transparent, that can be observed by the American people and through which the American people can be heard? At the end of the day, we must remember that we are great as a country not because of who we are but because of what we do. To the extent that we have recognized as a nation that the dignity of the human soul matters, that the rights of the individual have to be taken into account, and that the government works for the people, we have prospered and will prosper in the future. But we have to be willing to respect the American people, and we should not be surprised--when we ignore them over and over again and when we shut them out of a process that directly and materially impacts their lives, we should not be shocked when they respond with horror. We shouldn't be surprised when wave election after wave election signals dissatisfaction with this very body, with this very entity that serves as the legislative branch of our Federal Government. Each time we are presented with one of these continuing resolutions or with a one-size-fits-all spending package where we are told that we have to either vote for it, all of it, with no opportunity to improve it, or we have to vote against it, I have concerns with that. I have significant concerns with this particular legislation, and I will vote no. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, there is good news, there is great news, and then there is the story of Lucas Warren of Dalton, GA. I don't personally know Lucas. In fact, he is only 18 months old. So he, of course, has the good sense not to engage with or get to know politicians, especially in Washington. But like so many millions of Americans who have not met Lucas, I will never forget him. Yesterday, the Gerber baby food company selected little Lucas as its ``Gerber Spokesbaby'' for the year 2018. Lucas' winning photograph, sent in by his parents Jason and Cortney, was selected from more than 140,000 entries. Even at a glance, it is not at all hard to see why. This picture deserves much more than just a mere glance. I don't just mean because of the bow tie. You see, Lucas Warren was born with Down syndrome, which is to say that Jason and Cortney Warren are among those Americans blessed to know, to love, and to be loved by someone with Down syndrome. According to the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, only 38 percent of Americans are so lucky. Those of us who are so lucky know the warmth and the tender cheer of individuals with Down syndrome--the warmth and tender cheer they carry with them everywhere they go. With little more than a smile, like Lucas' in this picture, they make gentle the life of the world. All of us are born with that mission, but we don't always fulfill it. Children like Lucas and parents like the Warrens don't just carry their share of that burden. They carry some of ours too. We owe them more than we can possibly know. ``I am a child of God,'' begins a children's song of my faith. And He has sent me here, Has given me an earthly home With parents kind and dear. I am a child of God, And so my needs are great. Those lyrics take on a particularly special poignancy when you know families with special needs children, for children with special needs not only deserve special love; they give it. They give it unceasingly and unreservedly, just like the God who first knitted them together in their mother's wombs. We should all commend the Gerber baby food company for its choice of its new spokesbaby and especially thank the Warrens for the gift of little Lucas. In Washington, we are often reminded of the old maxim that there are no solutions in this life, only tradeoffs. Sometimes, it is tempting to believe that this is true, but this photograph proves otherwise. In this fallen world of ours, that smile--that little boy--is pure good, a blessing to us all. Yesterday, after the announcement, Lucas' mom Cortney said: He may have Down syndrome, but he's always Lucas first. . . . we're hoping when he grows up and looks back on this, he'll be proud of himself and not ashamed of his disability. So should we all hope for Lucas and for the rest of the world too. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to honor the memory of a dear mentor and friend, Elder Von G. Keetch, who passed away suddenly on January 26 at the age of 57. Elder Keetch was a brilliant attorney who used his gifts in the service of God. As chief outside counsel and public affairs director to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder Keetch had the immense responsibility of representing his faith in the public square. As an ardent supporter of religious freedom, he also had the privilege of defending others' ability to worship according to the dictates of their conscience. ``Religious liberty is a God-given right,'' Elder Keetch said. ``It is essential to all men and women exercising their agency and learning to choose between right and wrong.'' Elder Keetch had deep respect for our constitutional rights because of his profession, but as a man of faith, he knew that conversions of the heart occur through personal encounters. Mindful of this truth, Elder Keetch strove to imitate Jesus Christ in all aspects of his life. He encouraged his fellow Christians to do the same, even during contentious public debates. ``Ask yourself how you can best teach and defend the doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ while also showing love, kindness, and understanding,'' he wrote. Elder Keetch was born in Provo and lived for much of his life in Utah. He earned his bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University and his law degree from BYU's law school. During this period, he clerked at the Supreme Court for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia, where he worked on pivotal religious liberty cases such as Employment Division v. Speech, 1990. As he came up through the ranks, Elder Keetch caught the attention of prominent legal minds, including my father, Rex Lee, who mentored him during law school. Years later, Elder Keetch would return the favor by mentoring another young BYU law student--me. I still remember the enthusiasm that Elder Keetch brought to his class on the First Amendment. He wanted to impress upon his students the importance of these old court decisions to our lives. At least in my case--and I am sure in countless others--he succeeded. After Elder Keetch graduated from law school, he could have worked at his choice of law firms in Washington, DC, or New York. Instead, after prayerful consideration, he returned to Utah to work at Kirton McConkie, a law firm that works closely with the LDS Church. Soon, Elder Keetch was an advocate in some of the highest profile public debates of our time, defending religious liberty against coercion and the institution of marriage against attempts to redefine it. At the same time, Elder Keetch was called to positions of leadership within the LDS Church. He was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of the Church on April 4, 2015. So tireless was Elder Keetch that, when he was called to a full-time position in the LDS Church, two attorneys were assigned to take over his work. In spite of these important and time-consuming responsibilities, Elder Keetch made family his first priority. Elder Keetch is survived by six children and his wife, Bernice, who has been his steady companion and sweetheart since she invited him to a dance in high school. His family surrounded him with love as he battled cancer, the illness that eventually took him away from us. It is hard to grapple with the unexpected death of a mentor, father, husband, and leader like Elder Von Keetch, but we should take heart from words that Elder Keetch himself spoke before a General Conference audience in 2015. He said that trials were to be expected if we want to follow the One who suffered for us on Calvary. We represent the love and faith of Christ, Elder Keetch taught, ``in situations where we don't fully understand the reason for God's command.'' I don't know why my dear friend and mentor was called home so soon, but I can take inspiration from his spectacular life. I still recall a phone conversation with Elder Keetch many years ago, when I was finishing a clerkship with then-Judge Samuel Alito. Elder Keetch was by then a prominent attorney. By contrast, I was a kid fresh out of school looking for life advice. Still, he took my call, listened with great care and attention, and gave wise counsel that served me well down the line. Undoubtedly, Elder Keetch's time could have been spent better elsewhere, yet he chose to spend it on me. That is what I will remember about Elder Keetch. He brought the same enthusiasm to pivotal court cases and seemingly unimportant phone conversations. He knew that matters large and small can be used for the glory of God. In all things, Elder Von Keetch modeled the words of Paul in his letter to the Philippians: ``For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,'' Philippians 1:21-23, KJV.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the United States is just one of seven countries in the entire world that currently allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and we are not in good company on that list. Of the other six countries that allow elective abortions at that very late stage of the child's development, half of those countries have authoritarian governments--communist governments with horrible records when it comes to human rights. Yes, our abortion laws are as extreme and inhumane as the abortion laws in Vietnam, China, and North Korea. It pains me--and it should pain all Americans--that the United States lags so very far behind the rest of the world in protecting the unborn, protecting human beings, simply because they have yet to take their first breath. Twenty weeks is the fifth month of pregnancy. Think about what that means. At that stage, the unborn child is about 10 inches long from head to toe. He or she is roughly the size of a banana. A baby at this stage sleeps and wakes in the womb. She sucks her thumb, makes faces, and, in some cases, might even see light filtering in through the womb. By 20 weeks, if not before, science suggests that the baby can also feel pain. Each year in this country, more than 10,000 abortions occur after this point in the baby's development. Today, we have a chance to stop this grave injustice. Moments ago, this body voted on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would prohibit abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. This is a commonsense restriction that is supported by a majority of Americans. More than 6 in 10 Americans support a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, according to a Marist poll conducted earlier this month. Not only that, but a majority of Democrats--56 percent--said they would support an abortion ban at 20 weeks. Yes, this bill does, in fact, have widespread support, and it would bring America back into the mainstream of nations. More importantly, this bill is just. It is humane. It is the right thing to do. It is the natural outcome of any question asked with a degree of moral probity: Is this right? The reason we signed up for this job is to fight for what is right. And it is wrong--self-evidently wrong--that our country allows 5-month- old unborn babies to be killed. We, in this body, have a moral duty to protect those vulnerable human beings, but I have no illusions that this will be easy. We have to overcome the misinformation of the abortion industry. This is a powerful special interest group that wants to keep abortion legal right up to the moment of birth. The abortion industry is attacking this bill by denying that there is any evidence that unborn babies can feel pain at 20 weeks. The linchpin of its argument is a 2005 study that claimed unborn babies could not feel pain until the 30th week of pregnancy. What the abortion industry never mentions, of course, is that this study was written by individuals with significant and, I would add, undisclosed ties to the abortion industry itself. As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the study's lead author, who was not a doctor but a medical student, previously worked for NARAL. Another of the study's authors actually performed abortions as the medical director of an abortion clinic. How convenient that the abortion industry's denial of fetal pain rests on a study by its own employees. If I recall, the tobacco industry tried something similar when they denied that cigarettes cause cancer. As always, the antidote to misinformation is more information, and the antidote to bad science is good science. I have three studies that address the topic of fetal pain specifically. They were all published after the abortion industry's favorite study--the one they prefer to acknowledge to the exclusion of all others. Unlike that study--the one they prefer to the exclusion of all others--none of these studies are compromised by a conflict of interest. This one is by the International Association for the Study of Pain. It concludes: ``The available scientific evidence makes it possible, even probable, that fetal pain perception occurs well before late gestation.'' The study pinpoints fetal pain to the ``second trimester'' of pregnancy, ``well before the third trimester.'' Here is another study by the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. It concludes that ``the basis for pain perception appear[s] at about 20 to 22 weeks from conception.'' Finally, here is a 2012 study published in the Journal of Maternal- Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. This paper states that there is evidence that unborn children can feel pain beginning at 20 weeks. The authors note that at this stage, unborn children have pain receptors in their skin, recoil in response to sharp objects like needles, and release stress hormones when they are harmed. They conclude: ``We should suppose that the fetus can feel pain. . . . When the development of the fetus is equal to that of a premature baby.'' I could go on, but I think that is enough for now. The takeaway is this. The science at a minimum suggests that unborn children can feel pain around 20 weeks. It can feel the abortionists' instruments as they do their grisly work. These children feel until they cannot. That possibility alone--the mere possibility--should be chilling to us, and that possibility alone should have us rushing to ban abortion at 20 weeks. I implore my colleagues who didn't vote for this to reconsider and, the next time they have an opportunity to support it, to vote yes on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. A vote for this bill is a vote to protect some of the most vulnerable members of the human family. And yes, we are talking about members of the human family. The life form we are talking about is not a puppy; it is not some other form of animal. This is a human being we are talking about. This is something that instinctively calls out for us. We think about the needs of the most vulnerable among us, and we should be eager to protect them. Together, we can move our country's laws away from those of North Korea and China and toward our most fundamental belief that all human beings are created equal and that they have an unalienable right to life. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, Senator Coburn said this is the ``gateway drug'' for big government. That is such an appropriate analogy. It reminds me of a news clip that I saw a couple of years before I ran for the U.S. Senate, when there was coverage of a very large spending bill that came up short--and those on the news commented at the time: Well, it is well understood in Washington that what is now going to have to happen is they are going to have to add probably tens of billions of dollars to this bill, which they will do, and they will end up getting it passed by adding these ``sweeteners'' as they call them--earmarks, essentially--in order to get people to vote for them for the same reason that Senator Flake just mentioned. The dangers of bringing back earmarks are numerous, and it is my strong view that we should not do that. We should avoid this like the plague. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, if you have been following the circus in this town long enough, you probably remember earmarks, the infamous special interest spending provision that party leaders used to sprinkle over unpopular legislation, sort of like heavily subsidized sugar. Even if you aren't familiar with this concept, you may be familiar with specific wasteful earmarks, such as the infamous $223 billion ``bridge to nowhere'' in Alaska or the $3.4 million turtle tunnel in Florida, which was precisely what it sounds like, a 13-foot-long underground tunnel that was intended not for people, not for automobiles, not for train traffic but for turtles, or the so-called ``monuments to me,'' buildings that politicians named after themselves. Earmarks were everything Americans couldn't stand about Washington, DC. They enabled corruption, and they facilitated waste. They wreaked of entitlement. They were the swamp, and then they went away for 7 wonderful years and counting. They went away because Republicans banned them after the 2010 election cycle, when the tea party wave rolled through Washington, lifted by an anti-cronyism message. Now some politicians in the House of Representatives are trying to bring earmarks back. Now, I have heard some bad ideas in my time in the Senate, but this one takes the cake. Just like in a horror movie, the swamp thing is coming back to life-- or at least it is trying to--even after we hit it in the face with a shovel. Earmark fans never left Washington, of course. They have just been lying low, waiting for memories of their waste and abuse to somehow fade from our public consciousness, from our awareness, and our discussions about Washington. Now, 7 years later, these politicians and their special interest pals think they have found a nifty argument to rehabilitate pork-barrel spending. They point to the dysfunction in Congress and say earmarks would somehow make all of that better. It is a little bit like saying: There is a fire over here, let's pour some gasoline on it and see what happens. Sure, these offenders admit earmarks are frequently unseemly. They have to acknowledge that. There is no getting around that point, but they claim earmarks are a kind of industrial lubricant for the sausage- making factory that is Congress. According to them, bringing earmarks back will get the machine churning out sausage again, just like before. Like many terrible political arguments, this one has some acknowledgeable, superficial appeal. Congress is, indeed, dysfunctional, and earmarks probably would make it easier for some people in Congress, some party leaders and others, to buy votes for their bills, but why should we believe our problems would be solved if we just hand more power over to the already powerful few in Congress, if we make it easier for them to pass unpopular bills like ObamaCare or massive amnesty? It was the elites from both parties who reduced Congress to its present lowly state. The public despises Congress, and it certainly is not because we killed earmarks. It is because the public distrusts the elites who rule them and the awful unrepresentative laws they passed with the help of earmarks, no less, prior to the 2010 election cycle, when the American people said: Enough is enough when it comes to earmarks. Now, the fight over earmarks is really a fight over two very different, competing visions of how Congress should govern. The Washington establishment likes the current system, where just a few lawmakers negotiate and write bills behind closed doors. This system, itself, works great for the swamp. If you like the swamp, then you probably love earmarks. It keeps cash flowing through certain offices and their alumni's lobbying shops on K Street. There are tough decisions made in secret without any accountability or fidelity to the public, to the people we represent. This corrupt system excludes all but a handful of well-positioned Representatives and Senators. So it effectively disenfranchises hundreds of millions of Americans whose representatives have little say over what actually passes into law. Bringing back earmarks would only make that situation worse. An alternative system would be one of transparency, of decentralization, of legislative accountability. Representatives and Senators would write legislation collaboratively in the open for all to see, forcing popular compromises and, yes, from time to time, taking tough votes. The reason Congress doesn't work like this right now is because the establishment is afraid of what the public might see and how they might vote in response to what they see. Governing out in the open would require Members to do the hard work of learning about issues before forming coherent positions. The present broken system is much easier, at least in this critical respect: It lets a small handful of lawmakers do all the thinking and the scheming, and it rewards docile lawmakers with the occasional earmark to tout to their constituents back home, to tout to them as if to ask: Aren't I wonderful? Earmarks would make life better for politicians, in other words, but it would make life worse for the country, much worse. That we are even considering such a bargain; that it is even being discussed as a serious matter in the House of Representatives is an insult to logic and is exactly why Congress is held in such widespread public disdain. Eventually, I believe, Congress will reform itself. As the old adage goes: ``If something cannot go on forever, it won't,'' but it will take a lot of painful decisions before we get to that point. We will have to struggle hard to extricate ourselves from the mess. Bringing back earmarks would represent a step backward in this struggle--back to cronyism, back to waste, and, yes, back to the swamp. This is something we cannot allow. This is something that cuts against our very interests as Americans and as Members of an institution that has called itself the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. So I would ask my friend from Arizona, Senator Flake, for his thoughts on the matter and what he thinks about the wisdom, or lack thereof, in bringing back this horrible tradition.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with Mr. Flake, the Senator from Arizona.