Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am grateful for the work that has been done by the Senator from Arizona on this topic. One of the first times I remember seeing the Senator from Arizona on TV, many years before I was elected to the Senate, was while he was serving in the House of Representatives. I saw him interviewed on national television, talking about this issue--talking about the corruption that inevitably flows from a system that allows for favors like these to be handed out. I remember the immense respect I had for this man whom I did not yet know and wouldn't come to know for another decade or so, but who was willing to call out something that he believed was contrary to public policy, contrary to any system that would result in a good consequence, a good outcome for the American people. I also appreciate the comment he made a moment ago about a familiar refrain by defenders of earmarks. Senator Flake mentioned that over time people would point out that earmarks were, even during their heyday, maybe representing a couple of percentage points of total Federal spending. Well, that may be true, if you want to put it that way, in those terms, as they inevitably did at the time, quite persistently. But it overlooks a few things. It is a much larger percentage, of course, of discretionary spending, and of domestic nondefense discretionary spending could even be a larger percentage. But more to the point, something that is only 2 percent doesn't necessarily mean that it is having a favorable impact and that it is not having an impact that is itself very significant. When you look at a mile-long train, the engine car might represent only about 2 percent of the total length of the train, but it is what is driving the train. It is what is determining where the train goes, and if that train is going in a wrong direction, that can be very bad. So I have always found unpersuasive the initially persuasive argument that this is just a tiny segment of Federal spending. At the end of the day, earmarks represent everything that we are uncomfortable with about Washington. Moving back to them would represent a departure from a very favorable reform that we had in this body 7 years ago. So I would ask Senator Flake, who has served in Congress longer than I have and who has seen this, to tell us what he fears most about bringing back earmarks.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, today hundreds of thousands of Americans from all walks of life will participate in the 45th annual March for Life. This begs the question, Why do all these citizens march year after year? It certainly isn't for their health or for the media coverage. No, these Americans march on behalf of those who cannot. They march for uniquely vulnerable members of the human family. They march for the unborn, for those threatened by abortion, and for the countless millions of innocent lives already lost. These Americans march to protest the legal regime that sustains abortion. The cornerstone of that crumbling edifice is Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that invented a right to abortion in the Constitution, and in so doing, it stripped the unborn of their right to life. The principal effect of Roe v. Wade on our culture has been to cheapen the value of humanity itself. Roe has insinuated into the law a poisonous notion, the notion that some human beings may be treated as things, as objects to be discarded when they are inconvenient. We have seen this before in human history, but an unintended effect of Roe has been to kick-start a movement that has lasted four and one-half decades. Roe did not resolve the abortion debate, although it tried to. Rather, it intensified that very debate. The Nation's conscience was not deadened by Roe's euphemisms and evasions. Rather, it was brought to life. Like a firebell in the night, Roe awakened a generation of Americans to the injustice of abortion. Countless thousands of them are marching in Washington, DC, in Salt Lake City, and in cities all across the country today, but the institution of abortion still has its stalwart defenders--vociferous defenders even. One may ask, Why does this issue arouse such anger and such passion, as it so often does? I argue that it is because the pro-life and pro- abortion movements offer competing and mutually inconsistent visions, moral visions for our society; indeed, competing arguments about human dignity and even about what it means to be human in the first place. Both moral visions are, in one sense, as old as the Nation. They have appeared in various guises throughout American history. There is a consistent trend in how the clash of visions has played out in every era. The vision advanced by the pro-life movement has inspired righteous protests. The other vision has been used to rationalize hideous injustices. The pro-life vision embraces our country's noblest truth. The pro-abortion vision twists it. Let me explain what I mean. Our Declaration of Independence contains some of the most succinct, profound, and revolutionary statements in human history. ``We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'' We know the United States has not always acted on this high principle. It has not always behaved in a manner consistent with it. We have, at times, denied life, liberty, and opportunity to our fellow beings in countless cruel and unfortunate ways, but even in the darkest times, patriots and reformers have looked to this passage as a guiding light because it is, in many respects, the conscience of our Nation. Abraham Lincoln referred to the Declaration of Independence constantly in his speeches, calling it the ``sheet anchor of American republicanism'' and the ``Father of all moral principle.'' He called the Declaration of Independence a statement on human equality, the ``electric cord'' that links Patriotic Americans through the ages. Now that electric cord has reached us. It is a direct line that runs from the founding generation to the very heart of the pro-life movement today. The core conviction of the pro-life movement is that ``all men are created equal'' and that all have a right to life. We believe that every human being has dignity and merits protection simply by virtue of being human. You will often hear pro-lifers emphasize the human features of unborn children, as well we should. We point out that the human heart begins to beat as early as 16 days after conception. We point out that the unborn child can yawn, react to pain, and even suck her thumb. We point out that the thumb even has a unique one-of-a-kind fingerprint. We don't mention these characteristics because they are what give children their worth. It is not our fingerprints or even our beating hearts or our ability to yawn that make us human, that make us people. Rather, we point to these characteristics because they in turn point to something far more fundamental. They point to the inescapable fact that the unborn child is a human being, just like us. It is that endowment, it is that shared humanity that gives us all moral worth. To summarize the pro-life position, we have only to repeat those five words in the Declaration of Independence: ``All men are created equal.'' All, therefore, are entitled to life, but to be sure, not everyone shares all men are created equal. At various times, this very belief that is so much at the core of who we are and what we believe as Americans has been called an ``erro[r] of the past generation.'' It has even been called a ``self-evident lie!'' Few today would denounce the Declaration of Independence in such terms, but defenders of abortion still repudiate the declaration by their very actions and by the arguments they advance to protect abortion. Defenders of abortion no longer dispute that unborn children are living human beings. How could they? Science testifies unequivocally to our shared humanity. Most sophisticated defenders of abortion do not even dispute that abortion is a violent act. If you don't believe me on this point, perhaps you will believe Ronald Dworkin, a prominent apologist for the pro-choice position: ``Abortion,'' Dworkin writes, ``[is] deliberately killing a developing human embryo.'' He goes on to describe abortion as a ``choic[e] for death.'' If abortion defenders do not deny the humanity of the fetus, and if they do not deny that abortion kills the fetus, how then do they defend abortion? In short, they do it by segregating the human family into two classes: human beings who are worthy of life--sometimes called human persons--and human beings who are unworthy of life, human nonpersons. According to this view, human beings do not deserve protection on the basis of their humanity alone. Rather, they acquire the right to life when they attain certain characteristics--usually some level of cognitive ability or bodily development. Since the unborn lack these magical personhood qualities, they lack the right to life and may be dismembered in the womb. They are human nonpersons or so the argument goes. There are many problems with this chilling view. It has been rebutted at length by smarter men and women than I. For the purposes of today, it is enough to point out the track record of this argument is dubious. It just so happens that every time mankind has been artificially divided into classes, into persons and nonpersons--based on their race, sex, genetic fitness, or any other attribute--the result has been calamity, which leads to a very simple question that has never been satisfactorily answered by abortion defenders: Why should we believe that this time is any different? Abortion is a very difficult subject matter for so many reasons, but on another level, it is really quite simple. Our society has to choose between the two visions of human dignity described above. Put simply, do we believe that all men are created equal or that some, perhaps, are somehow more equal than others? This simple question deserves a simple response. We must choose the first of these options and affirm that all human beings are created with dignity, and we must reject all attempts to separate the human family into higher and lower classes. Let us see these attempts for what they are--cruel fictions that cheapen life itself. Just as there is no such thing as life unworthy of life, there is no such thing as a human nonperson. There are just people, and we are each fearfully and wonderfully made. Yes, dignity was ours before we stirred in the womb. It is stamped onto the very fabric of our genome. It is printed onto our souls. This is the truth so brilliantly proclaimed in our Nation's founding documents, even as it is denied by our legal system, starting with Roe v. Wade. Yet, even though the laws of man are against us for now, the truth is with us, and the truth can erode even the most formidable edifice of lies. So, on this 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, let's respond to Roe as Frederick Douglass responded to a similar indignity in Dred Scott v. Sandford: ``Happily for the whole human family,'' Douglass thundered, ``their rights have been defined, declared, and decided in a court higher than the Supreme Court.'' Those words are as true today as they were when they were spoken. They call on us to continue the winding march for justice and for life until the unalienable rights of every human being are respected in our land. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Madam President, the Founding Fathers knew and understood well what it was like to live in a dangerous world. When America was founded, we were threatened by foreign adversaries. The military might of the United States was feeble compared to the great powers of that day. Yet the Founders insisted on a Constitution that would protect the civil liberties of the American people. They knew it was possible to defend the homeland and Americans' rights at the same time. It still is. The War of Independence was fought in part because King George III abused general warrants that let his officers snoop through the papers and property of law-abiding subjects. The abuse of general warrants and the use of things like writs of assistance prompted the American people into action, representing that their fundamental liberties were at stake. That is part of what ushered in the American Revolution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was put in place specifically to protect these very kinds of liberties and to protect the American people against this very type of snooping. The Fourth Amendment does this by prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures of Americans' persons and property. The very wording of the Fourth Amendment itself recognizes that this is part of what our security means. It is not just that we are protecting privacy; we are protecting privacy by protecting our security, to make sure that we are secure in our persons, our papers, houses, and effects. The Fourth Amendment also requires search warrants to be limited in scope and to be based on evidence producing probable cause that a crime has been committed. Those warrants also have to be particularized so that they are not open-ended, so that they can't be applied to any and every circumstance. Critics of the Fourth Amendment complain about it. They complain about it from time to time as if it were somehow an annoyance that has to be dealt with, ultimately circumvented. Some people refer to it even as something of a security threat in and of itself. This is wrong. Our Nation's history should itself be enough to convince us that the Fourth Amendment is no annoyance. It is an essential safeguard of our liberty in the face of a vast, powerful, and frequently overreaching government. Just think of how much more powerful the government has become in the age of supercomputers and the internet. The kinds of abuses endured by the founding generations will be repeated on an even greater scale if we are not vigilant in checking the power of government. Last night, this body--the U.S. Senate--voted to close debate on a bill to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This program may sound dry. It may sound inconsequential or even uncontroversial to many people's lives. But supporters and critics who are familiar with it often agree that it is anything but. FISA's section 702 authorizes the intelligence community to spy on suspected foreign terrorists. Not many people are troubled by that aspiration. The intelligence-gathering that this authorizes is a valuable task, and it is one that helps protect the homeland from bona fide threats from outside the United States. However, FISA 702 also allows the collection of incidental intelligence about American citizens who communicate with foreign suspects. Once the intelligence community has collected this incidental information about Americans, domestic law enforcement can access the information for their own investigations without first obtaining a search warrant, as contemplated under our constitutional structure. In other words, FISA 702 opened a backdoor to government spying on American citizens. This incidental spying is a different matter altogether, and it does implicate the Fourth Amendment--certainly the spirit of the Fourth Amendment if not also the letter thereof It is profoundly worrying that the government maintains vast collections of information about American citizens, no matter how that information is collected, incidentally or intentionally. It is likewise worrying that the government cannot or will not say, specify, list exactly how many Americans have been subjected to government snooping under this provision. Surveillance programs like this one may be implemented with the best of intentions--and I am willing to assume for purposes of this discussion that they are with the best of intentions here--but they themselves provide the raw material that overzealous bureaucrats can use to snoop on anyone the government doesn't like. When we speak of the United States, when we speak of our government agencies, we are not speaking of an omniscient force, something that can only act for benevolent reasons. Our governments, by necessity, are run by fallible, mortal individuals. No matter how patriotic might be the goals underlying this law or the agencies that implement it, at the end of the day, a human being is in control of each and every action taken under this law. So maybe, you might say, the subjects of this type of government surveillance are in fact overwhelmingly threats to the public. But can you guarantee that is the case? And if it is the case today, can you guarantee it will always be the case? Can you be so sure that tomorrow or the next day or the next year or in a few years from now or decades from now, that will also be the case? What if the next time, the subject is a critic of the government, or perhaps the subject is a petty political enemy of someone charged with implementing this statute? History cannot reassure us that this or any other surveillance power will always be used for good. It is not difficult, for that matter, to fathom hypothetical scenarios in which this could come about. Imagine, for example, a political candidate disliked by someone with authority to do a so-called backdoor search of a section 702 database. Imagine that someone with that authority dislikes that political candidate and decides to go looking for dirt on that political candidate, finds dirt on that political candidate, and then perhaps decides to leak that same information--unlawfully accessed by this individual acting pursuant to this program. This might be against all sorts of department protocols. It might be against the policy of those same agencies charged with administrating this statute. But the fact that we can't rule it out, the fact that it is not clear that this couldn't happen, ought to be concerning to every single one of us. The only check on this frightening power is the FISA Court, which rules in near total obscurity about what the government is allowed to collect. I say the FISA Court is the only check because Congress certainly isn't acting like a credible check on this authority. Not long ago, the House handed us a bill that would reauthorize FISA section 702 for another 6 years, and I am sorry to report that many of my colleagues in the Senate are forcing this bill through as is, in the same condition as we received it from the House of Representatives, without a single change from the bill the House sent us, without any amendments to protect Americans against warrantless, backdoor searches by the government about U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. I believe that Americans' Fourth Amendment rights are worth much more due diligence than that. Instead of simply rubberstamping FISA 702 through the bill that the House sent us, this body could have strengthened it by voting against cloture, which would have opened up the bill for amendments. To be clear, a vote against cloture would not have been a vote against FISA section 702. It would not have ended the program or jeopardized our Nation's ability to spy on suspected foreign terrorists. In fact, as far as I know, not one of the Members of this body who voted against cloture would even support such an outcome. Not one of us, as far as I am aware, would like to see FISA end. What we would like to see is for amendments to at least be considered, to be debated, to be discussed by the people's elected representatives in this body to make sure that we have achieved the proper balance between the power the government desires and the security and privacy of the American people. A vote against cloture would have allowed this body to improve FISA section 702 through a legitimate amendment process--one that we, unfortunately, are being denied this week. You see, one of the reasons why it is important, as we consider this, to allow for amendments is that this law comes up for reauthorization only so often. I think the American people legitimately would expect that when it comes up, we would actually have an open, honest debate and discussion; that we would do more than simply rubberstamp what the other Chamber has already passed; that we would ask some difficult but important questions about the rights of the American people relative to this program. Had we voted down cloture, had we decided not to vote to end debate, this would have given us an opportunity to protect Americans' safety and their constitutional rights, not one or the other. It wouldn't have put us in this awful Hobson's choice scenario, where you have to choose to protect one or the other. What, you might ask, may some of these possible changes to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act have looked like? They would look a lot like the provisions contained in the proposed USA Liberty Act, which Senator Leahy and I introduced last year. The USA Liberty Act would tighten this standard the government must meet in order to collect and access information on you, pursuant to section 702. This safeguard, and any of the other provisions contained in the USA Liberty Act, would be worthy additions to FISA 702. These changes would not restore respect for the Fourth Amendment overnight. I believe it will take many more battles with the entrenched interests within government to achieve that, but they would be steps in the right direction. If history is our guide, any unlimited, unaccountable power we hand to the government ultimately will be used against the people. In FISA section 702, the government has a vast grant of power--a digital-aged general warrant--to hoard untold terabytes of information about American citizens. I hope we can work together in the coming months to improve this surveillance program and vindicate what the Founders so clearly knew; that our safety does not have to come at the expense of our rights; that our security and our privacy are not at odds with one another but that our privacy and our security are one and the same. Our security is part of our privacy and vice versa. We can protect both. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can honor the Constitution and protect the rights of the individual while simultaneously protecting the security of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. We can do better, and we must. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to complete my remarks, notwithstanding the previous order.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life of a truly remarkable man: Thomas S. Monson, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On Tuesday night, at the age of 90, President Monson was called home by his Heavenly Father. I expect that his reunion with his wife Frances was a joyous occasion, and I am confident that this reunion will provide comfort to his three children and eight grandchildren. But President Monson's legacy is far greater than his family, even though that was of paramount importance to President Monson and his wife Frances. President Monson's legacy also includes the countless men and women whose lives were touched by him, as well as the confident, global church he helped to shepherd, to expand, and to strengthen. Consider this: In the 54 years Thomas Monson served as an apostle, church membership swelled from 2 million to 16 million. That accomplishment is a blessing from God, but it was realized by saints like President Monson, who devoted their lives to serving Him--in his case, starting at an exceptionally young age. Thomas Monson was born and raised in Salt Lake City in a large and devoutly faithful family. He attended Utah State University. He served with honor in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and he worked for a time in printing, including for the Deseret News. By the age of 22, he was the bishop of a ward, a local congregation in Salt Lake City, charged with guiding over 1,000 people in their walks with Christ. By 36 he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the youngest people ever to receive that special calling. But Brother Monson did not give in to hubris as a result of those unexpected and, in many cases, early promotions. Quite the opposite, he was humbled by the very heavy mantle that had been placed on his shoulders with each of these callings. Members of President Monson's ward remember the young bishop as a steady companion to people who were enduring struggles and hardship. There were 80 widows in his ward, and Bishop Monson took the time to visit every single one of them on a regular basis. Also in his ward were 18 servicemen fighting in the Korean war. Every month, he sent letters to those 18 men to remind them that they had not been forgotten, and even decades later, he would speak of these servicemen and widows during the church's General Conference meeting. His love for them could still be felt by those in attendance. Those stories illustrate the kind of man President Monson truly was. I can testify to this fact through personal anecdotes of my own, including the fact that in 2010, shortly after I had been elected to the U.S. Senate, President Monson invited me, along with my wife Sharon and our three children, to visit with him in his office in Salt Lake City. He prayed with us, encouraged us, and offered us counsel. As much as anything, we just felt honored that he would take the time to meet with us and show interest in our lives. This is perhaps the single most consistent thread in President Monson's life. He was someone who at every step of his life, at every stage of his service, was always willing to reach out to others, to visit them even without anyone else expecting it. He was known--famous, in fact--for routinely interrupting his daily routine just to visit someone who happened to be sick, who happened to be in the hospital, who happened to be going through something difficult. President Monson didn't always know the reason why he needed to visit the person in advance; he just knew it needed to be done, and he always did. There are lessons that we can learn here in the U.S. Senate about this type of service--this type of service that is selfless, that is eternal in its scope and in its reach, this type of service that blesses the lives of other human beings without any expectation of remuneration. He was a leader who understood how even small, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness could affect people's lives in profound, lasting ways. He always urged his brothers and sisters within the church and elsewhere to be on the lookout for signs that God was calling them to help. ``Never fail to follow a prompting of the Holy Spirit,'' he would say, and on a regular basis, he did just that. This could mean visiting a relative in the hospital or delivering a meal to a coworker who was mourning a loss or just checking in on a friend he hadn't seen in a while. For President Monson, it was always about taking time for that personal connection. President Monson knew that little encounters build strong relationships--and strong saints. In 2008, President Thomas S. Monson was called to lead the church. He proved to be a good steward of the church in a fast-moving world and in an expanding, growing faith community. Many obituaries have already noted how in 2012 he lowered the age requirement for missionaries, a decision that increased the missionary force in short order from 52,000 to almost 70,000. That is almost 20,000 more young people to spread the Gospel and daily serve in those communities around the world. But President Monson did far more than that to strengthen the church's commitment to caring for the least in our community. Under his leadership, the church expanded its poverty and disaster relief programs. He even added ``caring for the poor and needy'' to the church's official mission statement. President Monson lived in Utah almost his entire life, but his heart was with the church spreading throughout the world. During the depths of the Cold War, he helped lead the Latter-day Saints trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Mormons in the Soviet Union were poor just like everyone else. They didn't have a temple, and their governments forbade them from traveling abroad. As a result, they didn't have access to temple ceremonies that are central to our faith. That didn't sit well with President Monson. As he told his brothers and sisters from the pulpit during a trip to East Germany, he wanted them to share in ``every blessing'' of the faith. So he gave everything he had to help those people, even the shirt off his own back--quite literally. He returned from one trip to the Soviet Union in his house slippers because he had given his spare clothes to the less fortunate, a funny story that brings to mind the words of the Savior: ``[For] I was a stranger, and ye took me in: [I was] naked, and ye clothed me.'' Around that time, President Monson began two decades of quiet diplomacy with the Soviet authorities, including with Erich Honecker himself. His labor reaped a tremendous harvest. In a regime that was hostile to religion and to outsiders, he won approval for Mormon missionaries to come and spread the Gospel. In 1985, he won an even bigger triumph when a temple opened behind the Iron Curtain in Freiberg, Germany. Ninety thousand East Germans attended the dedication of that temple. He had followed a prompting of the Lord. The result was nothing less than that dramatic, impactful tear in the Iron Curtain, one that had stifled religious belief, but religious belief was facilitated by this noble servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are just a few stories from President Monson's life that I have shared, and I would like to conclude with just one more. Not long ago, President Monson was asked what he wanted for his birthday, which was coming up. Here was his simple response: Do something for someone else on that day to make his or her life better. Find someone who is having a hard time, or is ill, or lonely, and do something for them. That's all I would ask. President Monson was always looking for little ways to help other people. That wish is as true in death as it was in life. In lieu of flowers for his funeral, the church has requested contributions be made to the church's Humanitarian Aid Fund. President Monson's legacy will outlast his death because he chose to follow the One who conquered death, taking upon Himself the sins, the transgressions, the pains, the miseries of all mankind so that we, too, might return to live with Him. President Monson will be missed. President Monson, God be with you until we meet again. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn, be recognized at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, earlier today, the FCC voted to reverse a major impediment to a free and open internet--the title II internet regulations that were imposed under President Obama in 2015. These regulations are commonly referred to as net neutrality. For the sake of convenience, that is what I will call it. I want to congratulate FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for his brave accomplishment today. He has fought for what he knows is right, and he has done so in the face of tremendous pressure and, at times, overwhelming opposition. I also want to use this opportunity to correct the record about what it is that the FCC has actually accomplished. There is an astonishing amount of misinformation about this issue, and there is a lot of hyperbole surrounding it. If you believe the passionate voices defending these regulations, then you may believe that the FCC just jeopardized the entire internet as we know and love it and sometimes loathe it. These activists tend to paint a scary vision of America without net neutrality--a vision in which large internet service providers prey on ordinary consumers and startup businesses, a vision in which internet access would be rationed or bundled up in very expensive, unaffordable packages. One viral tweet even suggested that Google would start charging two bucks apiece for internet searches. These are falsehoods, every one of them, and they will be exposed as such in the coming days, weeks, and months, when the internet hums right along just like usual and skyscrapers in all of our major cities remain standing. In the wake of that, we are going to look back at these dire predictions, these mere hysterics, like the Y2K bug or the Mayan apocalypse of 2012. In the present, these exaggerations have real-world consequences that go far above and beyond scaring the public. In the last 6 months, Chairman Pai and his family have been attacked in the grossest and most unacceptable terms. Even his children have been singled out for intimidation. These kinds of attacks have absolutely no place in our public discourse. Why don't we tone down the rhetoric and see if we can get to the truth about net neutrality. We can start with a little background. In 2015, the Democratic-controlled FCC issued the so-called open internet order. This order made dramatic changes to how the internet is classified for purposes of Federal regulation. Until 2015, broadband internet was classified as an information service. As such, it was subject to light-touch regulations that allowed innovators to build without seeking permission from the Federal Government. This classification reflected common sense, and it reflected the intent of Congress. The internet is a fast-moving information superhighway. If slow- moving government regulators had gotten involved decades ago, it could have inhibited innovation--the same kind of innovation that keeps service fast and keeps prices low for all Americans. Not only was this a commonsense arrangement, it facilitated a virtual renaissance of innovation and discovery in this increasingly important part of our economy. This renaissance gave us things like smartphones, ridesharing, and super-fast fiberoptic internet services. It gave us 3G, 4G, and then, soon, 5G wireless service. This period also gave us Twitter. One could argue that maybe this wasn't all good but mostly good. Overall, the light-touch regulatory arrangement works pretty well for ordinary users, big companies, and entrepreneurs who are just starting out in their garages. Contrary to net neutrality's most aggressive defenders, the internet of 2014 was not some sort of hopeless hellscape; it was actually pretty awesome. The FCC threatened all of that in the early weeks of 2015 when it reclassified broadband internet as a ``telecommunications service.'' This innocuous-sounding change subjected the internet to a whole host of regulations that were originally meant for New Deal-era telephone monopolies like Ma Bell. In essence, the government imposed 1930s-style regulations on 21st-century technology. This outdated arrangement has worked about as well as one might expect. Broadband internet investment has fallen significantly since the net neutrality regulations were proposed in 2011. Dr. George Ford of the Phoenix Center estimates that between 2011 and 2015, just the threat of internet regulation scared off $200 billion in investment. Since the regulations were imposed in 2015, broadband internet investment has declined by 5.6 percent. That is billions of lost dollars over just 2 years. As Chairman Pai has noted, this is the first ever decline in broadband investment outside of a recession, and this recession just happens to be self-imposed. It may not seem like a big deal to you that government is squeezing out billions in internet investment, but it hurts you and it hurts your fellow citizens in material ways, in ways that might not always be obvious. Less investment means less fiber optic cable, fewer towers, and fewer wi-fi hotspots. This translates into spottier coverage and slower speeds for Americans, especially those living on the periphery of society, in poverty, or in rural areas. FCC regulations make it harder for these Americans to have equal access to the internet. These regulations have also entrenched the market power of large internet service providers while hurting their smaller competitors. By their very nature, regulations impose conformity on a market. They limit companies' ability to distinguish themselves from their rivals by offering innovative services. This works out fine for the companies at the top. They have already made it. In fact, it can work out really well for some of them. They can kick back without worrying about some young punk coming along and changing the game. It works out less well for the young punks, the startups who want to win customers away from old-school companies. That is how it works in theory, at least, and there is good evidence that this is exactly what is happening in practice. Small ISPs have been far more critical of net neutrality regulations than large ISPs. A group of two dozen small internet providers recently wrote that the regulations hang like a black cloud over their business, slowing or even halting their deployment of new technology. Likewise, 19 municipal internet providers told the FCC that they ``often delay or hold off'' on introducing new services because they cannot afford a potential complaint. Internet providers that serve predominantly rural areas have voiced similar concerns, reporting that they have reduced network expansion in parts of the country that are already underserved. These examples show that net neutrality regulations are harming competition and increasing the consolidation of power in the internet industry, not decreasing it. Internet regulations have, in effect, sheltered large ISPs from competition and from the need to change. Be sure to think about that the next time you are on hold with customer support. As Americans chart a path forward in the coming years, we will face an important choice: Do we want an internet that is run by regulators or do we want an internet that is run by innovators? The innovators have had a really strong track record over the last 30 years with regard to the internet. So they are the ones I am siding with, not with the regulators. How can we empower the innovators? More importantly, how can we empower the millions of families who rely on fast and reliable internet service each and every day? The FCC did its part by repealing net neutrality regulations and returning to the regulatory framework that governed the internet-- successfully, I would add--until 2015. This move reclassifies the internet as an information service, but it goes well beyond that. The FCC will require every ISP to disclose information about its network management practices. If these companies block or throttle web traffic, rest assured that the public will know about it. Importantly, this order restores enforcement power to the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive practices. The FTC had policed the internet successfully for years prior to 2015. Now the cop is back on the beat. The FCC's action today is a return to normalcy for the internet, but we should not rest easy. A future administration could undo all of Chairman Pai's hard work at a moment's notice if Congress doesn't act to solidify his accomplishment. Over the summer, I introduced legislation entitled the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which would prohibit the FCC from imposing utility-style regulations on the internet ever again. Passing this act would give companies the regulatory certainty they need to invest in improvements for their customers. We should not discount how important Congress can be in determining the success or in directing the failure of things like the internet. In 1996 President Clinton and Congress inaugurated the light-touch regulations of the internet. They wanted the information superhighway to be unfettered by Federal or State regulations. They were rewarded-- and we were rewarded--with a tremendous outpouring of innovation that has improved the lives of, basically, all Americans and people throughout the world. I say that we emulate their wise example and see what free men and free women can invent in the next 20 years. Thank you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand in support of the child tax credit. It is something that this bill goes a long way toward promoting. This is a great day in the sense that the Senate is moving forward with promoting the interests of the American family, doing something to weaken, to soften the impact of a little known feature called the parent tax penalty. A lot of people are familiar with the marriage tax penalty in the Tax Code. It is a pernicious feature, one that punishes people for getting married, one that can produce a series of adverse effects simply by saying ``I do.'' That is wrong. Most Americans acknowledge that it is wrong. This bill goes a long way toward undoing that. There is a different thing called the parent tax penalty that, like I say, is less understood, less frequently discussed than it should be. Here is how the parent tax penalty works. It is a basic function of the interaction between the Federal income tax system on the one hand and our Federal senior entitlement programs, on the other--Social Security and Medicare. Here is how it works. Imagine two hypothetical couples, couple A and couple B. Couple A and couple B are identical in every respect but one, and that is that they are identical in their income patterns, charitable contributions, mortgage interests, so on and so forth, except for one characteristic. Couple A has four children, and couple B chooses to remain childless. Over the course of their lifetimes and while raising their children, couple A will, on average--according to what some have described as lowball estimates produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture--incur around $1 million in childrearing expenses, just the cost of raising their children. Couple B, of course, being childless, will not incur those same expenses. At the same time, they are paying more or less at the same tax rate. There are a few differences in the existing Tax Code, but nothing to offset the disparity between the two couples in the sense that couple A, while incurring this $1 million in childrearing expenses while they are raising their children, is also paying into Social Security and Medicare. They are also paying taxes, and they are not having their contributions to this solvency of Social Security and Medicare adequately taken into account. In other words, because Social Security and Medicare are funded on a pay-as-you-go basis, we have to remember that it is today's workers who are paying the retirement benefits of today's retirees. It is today's children who will be tomorrow's workers who will be funding the requirement benefits under Social Security and Medicare of today's workers and tomorrow's retirees. This is what the parent tax penalty is all about. You see, the Federal Tax Code doesn't adequately take into account the enormous contribution of working parents and contributing toward the solvency and sustainability of Social Security and Medicare. This is why a little over 4 years ago, back in 2013, I started pushing this idea of the need to increase the child tax credit to help soften the impact of the parent tax penalty. This is not, to be sure, something that is intended to incentivize or compel parenthood. That is not our purpose at all. This is not social engineering. It is one thing for the government to tell people they have to do something or to incentivize them to do another. It is quite another thing to simply tell people: We are going to punish you less for bringing about the possibility of sustaining Medicare and Social Security, for bringing children into this world, and raising tomorrow's generation of workers who will pay for the Social Security and Medicare benefits of today's workers and tomorrow's retirees. This is important, and this is something that I am thrilled to see as part of this tax reform package. This tax reform package does, in fact, increase the child tax credit to $2,000 per child. What I would like to see, and what I have been working on with Senator Rubio, is also to increase the refundability of the child tax credit, to move that refundability all the way up to $2,000 per child and make it refundable up to the amount of taxes paid, including payroll taxes--in other words, up to 15.3 percent of earnings. What this would do is it would result in an effective cut in the payroll tax liability of middle-class, hard-working American moms and dads, some of whom might see their payroll tax liability exceed their income tax liability. They are still paying taxes. Tell a construction worker or a secretary or a police officer that he or she is not paying Federal taxes simply because their biggest tax liability is found in the payroll tax. In this circumstance, this amendment is needed in order to give these people significant tax benefits under this bill. It is important to remember that some 70 percent of the benefits under this bill go to America's corporations and 30 percent to individuals. It is our desire to help spread out some of the benefits of this and to help spread it out, in particular, to America's hard- working middle-class moms and dads. Now, the Rubio-Lee amendment, in its current formulation, would involve a very slight adjustment to the corporate tax rate, taking it from 20 percent to 20.94 percent. This is not an enormous difference. This reminds me a little bit of a story that I first heard told by Emo Philips. Emo Philips described himself as walking across the Golden Gate Bridge one night very late. He was alone on the bridge, or so he thought, until he got to about halfway across the bridge when he discovered he was not alone. He found somebody else standing on the outside of the guardrail of the Golden Gate Bridge. Emo said: I could tell right away that this man was in trouble, and the thought occurred to me that maybe this man is thinking about taking the unfortunate step of ending his life by jumping off the bridge. Emo said: I stopped and asked the man the first thing that came to mind: Do you believe in God? The man said: Yes. Emo said: Me too. Are you a Christian? The man said: Yes. Emo said: Me too. What denomination are you? The man said: I am a Baptist. Emo said: Me too. Are you a northern Baptist or a southern Baptist? The man said: I am a northern Baptist. Emo said: Me too. Are you a northern fundamentalist Baptist or a northern reformed Baptist? The man said: I am a northern fundamentalist Baptist. Emo said: Me too. Are you a northern fundamentalist Baptist, conference of 1857 or a northern fundamentalist Baptist, conference of 1812? The man said: Northern fundamentalist conference of 1857. Emo said: Die, you heretic. And he pushed him off the bridge. The point here is that sometimes we have to acknowledge that very minor differences between us do not make us heretics. There is a very minor difference between a corporate tax rate of 20 percent and a corporate tax rate of 20.94 percent. But that minor difference would make all the difference in the world to America's hard-working moms and dads, many of whom are on the very cusp of where many parents find themselves, especially while their children are young. Imagine the construction worker, police officer, or school teacher who are just making ends meet and who realize that if they were to take themselves out of the workforce, they might be able to receive government benefits that they are currently not receiving. They might, in some ways, find their quality of life going up, at least in the sense that they wouldn't have to go to work. We don't want them to have to do that, you see, because when they get into that circumstance, they might forgo other career opportunities. Without that job, there will not be the next job, the next promotion, and the next promotion after that. They might find themselves trapped in a web of poverty, held down by the very government programs that are there to help them. That, in turn, might contribute to this growing expanse of the Federal Government and might inhibit economic growth. You see, sometimes we have to remember that America's ultimate and most important investor class is not necessarily just those people gathered around the boardroom. They are often in maternity wards or at the altar in a church saying ``I do.'' Sometimes the most important investments we make are in those children whom we rock to sleep at night, whom we raise to be the next generation of taxpayers, the next generation of contributors to our great society. This is why making sure that the child tax credit is there for them, is available to them, and is refundable up to the amount of taxes paid is so important. These are not freeloaders. These are not people who would be seeking a welfare benefit, because the only benefit available to them under this child tax credit would be there for them only to the extent that they have been working and paying taxes, paying into the system. This is an imminently reasonable request. In any event, this is a great moment in the very sense that we are having this conversation, in the very sense that we are poised right now to increase the child tax credit to $2,000 per child. This would go a significant way toward offsetting the parent tax penalty. It is my hope and my humble request that my colleagues will heed this call to make it even more meaningful by making the child tax credit refundable up to the amount of taxes paid, including payroll taxes. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am grateful to my colleague, the distinguished Senator from Florida, for his work on this issue. He noted a couple of issues that we focus on in this amendment. He noted, among other things, the marriage tax penalty. That is a more obvious defect within our Tax Code. There is another defect he also mentioned that doesn't get as much play as it should. It doesn't get as much play, especially considering the amount of damage it does. It is called the parent tax penalty. Here is how it works. We have American parents from one end of the country to the other who are essentially propping up and securing the future of our senior entitlement programs, not just once but twice and in a pretty unfair way. They prop up Social Security and Medicare two times--first, as they pay their taxes, and secondly, as they incur the substantial costs associated with child-rearing and thereby prop up and secure Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are paid for on a pay-as-you-go basis. Many of today's workers pay for the benefits of today's retirees. Today's children are tomorrow's workers who will, in turn, be working to pay the taxes to fund the Social Security and Medicare retirement benefits of today's workers, who will be tomorrow's retirees. Those costs add up over time. According to one very lowball estimate--an estimate that doesn't include a lot of things that it probably should, such as education, higher education, and so forth--a family raising three children can reasonably expect to incur $700,000 in child-rearing costs as they raise their three children. Those three children are going to go on to be tomorrow's workers, paying the Social Security and Medicare benefits for today's workers, tomorrow's retirees. This is important. We need to end the marriage tax penalty. We also need to end this parent tax penalty. The best way to do that is to make sure that we increase the child tax credit up to $2,000, as the current Senate proposal would do, but just as importantly, we need to make that sum refundable up to $2,000, up to the total amount of taxes paid, including payroll tax liability--in other words, up to 15.3 percent of earnings. If we do this, it is not going to end the parent tax penalty altogether, but it is an important first step. I also want to echo something said by Senator Rubio a moment ago, and I think it is worth mentioning. This is not a handout. This is not a welfare benefit. This is money they are making. It is not welfare when you say that the government's not going to take away something that you have worked hard for, that you have earned. We should at least be doing that for those people who are America's ultimate, most important entrepreneurial class, America's most cherished group of investors. The most important investment decisions are not necessarily those made around the boardroom. They are made at the altar. They are made in delivery wards in hospitals throughout America. They are made when a couple says ``I do'' and they agree to raise children. Those are the investors we need to be encouraging and certainly not punishing. We can fix this problem. We need to do it by passing the Rubio-Lee amendment and increasing refundability so that we can all benefit from this and so that America's families can stop being punished as a result of the interaction between our Tax Code and our senior entitlement programs. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I wish to speak for a few minutes about the Senate blue slip. As my colleagues know, when the President nominates someone who will be processed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, home State Senators receive a letter informing them of the nomination and asking whether they approve of the nominee in question. The letter is printed on blue paper--thus the name. That is why we call it the blue slip. The question on the table is, What should happen if one or both of the home State Senators do not approve the nomination? In previous years, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has treated the blue slip as a de facto veto, but that is not how the blue slip originally functioned. Between 1917, when the blue slip was first used, and 1955, the blue slip was never treated as a veto. Instead, it gave the home State Senators a special ability to state their objections about a nominee during a hearing. The committee could then decide how to proceed. When James Eastland, a Democrat from Mississippi, became chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1955, he took a different approach. Why did Eastland implement this new policy? No one knows for sure, but one scholar has written that Eastland, an ardent segregationist, might have been trying in part to ``keep Mississippi's federal judicial bench free of sympathizers with Brown v. Board of Education.'' We are evaluating the strength of a custom. It is a custom of relatively recent vintage, and its origin story surely matters in how we evaluate its ongoing relevance to the Senate today. Eastland kept that policy in place for the whopping 22 years he served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. When Senator Ted Kennedy took over from Eastland in 1979, he immediately changed the status and functioning of the blue slip procedure. As the Congressional Research Service reports, Kennedy determined that the blue slip ``did not have the same power to automatically stop committee action as before.'' Rather, Kennedy affirmed his right to move forward with a nomination regardless of the blue slip. To make a long story short, since 1955, there have been eight chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Eastland. By my count, two have treated the blue slip as a veto; the other six have either said the blue slip was not a veto or have at least not treated the blue slip as a veto. What to make of this history? For one thing, we often hear that the blue slip is a 100-year-old tradition. In my view, it should be equally powerful to note that the blue slip originated 128 years after the first Congress. That is part of the Senate's history, too, and that, too, shouldn't be ignored. But there is an even more fundamental point, and that is that even in modern times, there isn't exactly an unbroken and lengthy practice of treating the blue slip procedure as if it were a veto. The practice is even sparser when you consider that the blue slip takes on a different function depending on whether the President's party is in control of a majority of the seats in the Senate. When the President's party does not control the Senate, the blue slip is an efficient way to negotiate with the opposition party, which, after all, can vote down the President's nominees. When you look at the relevant circumstances, here is what you find: The blue slip has been treated as a veto for a grand total of 28 years when the President's party controlled the Senate. Fourteen of those years occurred under Senator Eastland, who was waging a personal vendetta against civil rights, including with respect to judicial nominees processed by the Judiciary Committee. So if the Senate blue slip procedure is not a veto, what function should it play? As I have said, the blue slip is the chairman's prerogative. But if I were advising the chairman, here is what I would say: The blue slip should not be a veto of a nomination so long as the executive branch has sufficiently consulted with the home State Senators in advance of making this nomination. That rule is consistent with the appointments clause of the Constitution, which establishes joint shared responsibility for appointments to Federal office. It is important to note that, contrary to what some of my colleagues have suggested, the appointments clause does not grant individual Senators the right to pick nominees, whether processed by the Judiciary Committee or otherwise. That rule is also consistent with the best reading of Senate custom. It is roughly consistent with the practice that unfolded between 1917, when the blue slip was first adopted, and 1955, when Senator Eastland brought about some changes. It has at least as much support in modern practice. What counts, then, as sufficient consultation? It is hard to come up with a precise rule, with a single mathematical definition, but in my view, the White House has an obligation to let the home State Senators know whom the White House might be considering for a vacancy. The home State Senators have the right to review the candidate's record and share any concerns they have about the candidate. Qualifications count. Character counts. Home State ties and ties to the community count. I don't think home State Senators have the right to demand someone who shares their particular approach to the law necessarily, but they do have the right to insist that the candidate believe in the law as something independent from politics, particularly where the candidate is being nominated to a life-tenured position in an article III court. There is a final point to make. As we move forward, my colleagues across the aisle will charge us with hypocrisy just as predictably as our prediction that the Sun will come up in the east tomorrow. There are two things to say about this. First, my approach to the blue slip has remained consistent since I took office. I have followed the approach that I have just described. Second, until 2013, the blue slip was a lot less important because the minority party could filibuster. That is no longer an option because the Democrats changed the rules in 2013. When you change the rules--the actual written protections upon which we rely--when those are changed, then you are left reliant on customs. Customs can always be changed. In this case, the custom we are dealing with isn't even a particularly strong one. It is not even a particularly long-lasting one. More broadly, in the Senate we are trying to figure out how to process the President's nominees. We have improved the pace of confirming nominees recently, but we are still significantly behind in modern historical terms from where we should be and from where other Senates have been during the first year of other Presidential administrations. We need to find a solution to improve the pace, including by remaining in session longer so that we can complete this important work. It is essential that we understand the difference between, on the one hand, the Constitution and, on the other hand, the rules; and, on the one hand, the rules and, on the other hand, the custom. There is a significant difference here. In this case, the custom isn't even all that long, not nearly as long as some have suggested, and it certainly hasn't been consistent. We can do better, and do better we must. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Madam President, as we speak, our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico, Texas, and Florida are recovering from a series of devastating hurricanes. Over 100 people have lost their lives because of these terrible storms, and many more are struggling to get by day to day. The crisis is perhaps most acute in Puerto Rico, where 35 percent of the population still does not have access to safe drinking water and four out of five Puerto Ricans do not have power. The people of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Texas have responded with great tenacity and admirable creativity to this disaster. I wish the same could be said of the politicians here in Washington, DC. Once again, this body is poised to fail the American people. Instead of helping the victims of these disasters through responsible aid paired with lasting reform, Congress has rushed to its favorite so- called solution--billions of dollars in new spending with little accountability or meaningful oversight. If this $36.5 billion aid package passes, it will mean even more money and more power for government programs that in some cases left us vulnerable to these disasters in the first place. If it passes, the politicians and lobbyists will pat themselves on the back for doing a good deed and then move on to the next multibillion dollar spending opportunity. Meanwhile, the people of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Texas will be left to pick up the pieces and to deal with the disastrous consequences of this approach. Puerto Rico, in particular, has to contend with the effects of a devastating storm and decades of malfeasance that has left Puerto Rico with $74 billion of debt. This crisis calls for emergency aid, yes. More than that, it calls for true lasting reform, the type of reform that is noticeably absent from this measure. That is why I am voting no on this shortsighted bill, because it is easy to caricature a vote against emergency aid as calloused or cruel, but it is hard to do the real work that is necessarily required by real, lasting, meaningful reform. It is harder still to defend these packages when their contents are exposed fully to the light of day. If you were evaluating an emergency aid package, you might reasonably expect it to direct all of its spending to programs that actually help the people of Florida, of Puerto Rico, of Texas, but this proposal does not even come close to directing all of its money to broad-based recovery efforts. Just under half of the $36.5 billion in new spending would bail out the National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. In the Houston area, just 17 percent of homeowners were enrolled in the NFIP. In Puerto Rico, the numbers are even more sparse. Just 5,600 Puerto Ricans are enrolled in NFIP, less than 1 percent of homeowners. That means 99 percent of Puerto Ricans will not get anything at all from the $16 billion to NFIP. But then again, it is not clear that NFIP recipients get much from NFIP to begin with. The National Flood Insurance Program represents the triumph of good intentions over sound public policy. Its generous subsidies were supposed to reduce the need for Federal aid after massive storms. Instead, NFIP encourages thousands of Americans to live in some of the most dangerous real estate in the country. NFIP sells flood insurance at rates well below that of any reasonable private insurer. As a result, its policies do not accurately reflect the risk of living in manifestly flood-threatened, flood-endangered areas. These government policies encourage Americans to live in precisely those areas where their livelihoods--and, in fact, even their lives--can be swept away in an instant. Economists refer to this perverse incentive as moral hazard, and, in more senses than one, that is just what the National Flood Insurance Program is--a hazard to Americans. It is distinctly immoral for the government to subsidize housing in the Nation's flood plains--deep within the flood plains--or on the edges of its coast. Instead of building your house on a rock, the government wants you to build it on the sand. NFIP pays out claims for properties that have been swept away not once, not twice, but many, many times before. Homes that have been flooded multiple times make up just 1 percent of NFIP policyholders, but they account for more than one-third of its claims. This has cost taxpayers more than $12.1 billion in payouts according to the Congressional Research Service. When Hurricane Harvey swept through Houston last month, it submerged a house that had been flooded 22 times since 1979. The house is valued at about $600,000. The government has spent $1.8 million to rehabilitate it. No private insurance company would ever offer insurance on the terms that NFIP offers. Such a company would endanger its policyholders, and it would run out of money. That is precisely what has happened under NFIP. The program is $25 billion in debt and routinely blows through its statutory debt limits. The emergency aid package Congress is considering today would cancel $16 billion of NFIP's debt--no questions asked. Congress isn't making NFIP bring its actuarial practices in line with reality or into conformity with free-market forces. No, it isn't even appropriating new funds for another failed program. That, at least, would be business as usual in Washington. Instead, Congress is effectively giving a debt amnesty to the National Flood Insurance Program. It is absolving NFIP of its sins and making American taxpayers do the penance. So that is an example of what is in the bill. Let's consider a little bit of what is not in the bill. If we want to be responsible leaders in a moment of crisis like this one, we need to provide long-term reforms in addition to any short-term assistance. We need to provide a full meal to those affected by these storms and not just a temporary, passing sugar rush. But this bill does not include any reforms that would help Puerto Rico attain long-term stability or climb out from underneath its $74 billion debt. It doesn't even attempt to reform the dysfunctional electrical utility program which, through a combination of neglect and profiteering, has left millions of Puerto Ricans in darkness. Without electricity, Puerto Rico can't power hospitals, clinics, food banks, or even sewage systems. And it doesn't repeal the Jones Act, the protectionist regulation that kept foreign-flagged relief ships out of Puerto Rican harbors for precious days after Hurricane Maria and for a long time has forced Puerto Rican consumers to pay significantly higher prices on just about everything they buy. Simple reform measures such as reforming PREPA, the electric utility company I mentioned a moment ago, or repealing the Jones Act would provide very meaningful, lasting benefits to Puerto Ricans long after the public's attention has drifted and the relief money has dried up. But Congress, true to form, would rather double down on broken laws and broken programs rather than fix them, and Congress would rather take on more debt than spend according to what we have and prioritize in order to get there. None of this $36.5 billion in emergency spending is offset by spending reductions on other programs--none of it--not a single dollar. That is the sad irony of this bill. If the trend of deficit-fueled spending continues, one day soon we will wake up to the cries of our fellow Americans and we will have nothing to give them in support. Again, this bill doesn't take care of those programs, and it is not as if there aren't solutions out there. One of my colleagues, Senator Paul, has effectively been blocked from introducing an amendment that would call for offsets to this spending. Another one of my colleagues, Senator Flake, has tried to introduce an amendment, of which I am a cosponsor, that would bring about some of these other reforms I have described--reforms to the State-owned utility company, to the Jones Act, and reforms to the way that we spend money through the Federal Government in Puerto Rico. I hope my colleagues will work with me on a more responsible, sustainable, meaningful way to help our brothers and sisters in areas affected by the recent hurricanes. Congress has the authority to lead, especially over Puerto Rico, where we have plenary power that exceeds the authority we have in other parts of the country within States. In this hour of crisis, especially with regard to Puerto Rico, we are the only ones who indisputably have this power, and we are the ones who must act if we are going to achieve meaningful reform. If we can only offer money and a pat on the head, it will be our fault when the American people continue to suffer as a result of failed programs that haven't worked and call out to us through their failures for reform. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend debate by 30 seconds.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, our constitutional structure puts in place a Federal Government with powers that James Madison described as ``few and defined'' and those reserved to the States as ``numerous and indefinite.'' Among other things, the Constitution gives powers to the Congress to regulate interstate commerce, trade or commerce between the States, with foreign nations, and with Indian Tribes. It does not give the Congress the power to regulate any and every activity occurring intrastate. Yet, for the last few decades, under the Endangered Species Act, this very power has been abused to regulate species that exists only in one place, only within one State, never crossing State lines, never forming any part of any channel or instrumentality of interstate commerce. This is wrong, it is unconstitutional, and it eviscerates and circumvents the meaning of the 10th Amendment. We need to liberate this country from the dictates of a few bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who have overextended their authority under the Endangered Species Act. My amendment fixes that, and I urge my colleagues to support amendment No. 1429.

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am offering this amendment to pay back western communities for the loss that occurs to them as a result of the widespread ownership of Federal public land. As I have long stressed, Federal land is often a bad bargain for State and local governments, like those in Utah, where almost two- thirds of the land is owned and controlled by the Federal Government, thus prohibiting local governments from taxing that land. Not only does Federal ownership reduce economic opportunity on that land, not only does it rob local residents of local control, but it also shrinks the property tax base that Utahns rely on to fund essential community services. The Payments in Lieu of Taxes Program, or PILT, was designed to address this very inequity by paying States for the property tax revenue they lost as a result of Federal land ownership, but the current formula for PILT does not adequately compensate local governments for this loss. In fact, it doesn't even come close. My amendment offers these predominantly rural communities a revisited, revised, and improved PILT formula to compensate them for these very losses. I encourage my colleagues to support it, and I request a voice vote.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 seconds.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am offering amendment No. 1430 to repeal ObamaCare regulations that are wreaking havoc on our health insurance market. Healthcare costs are rising dramatically, unsustainably, and unaffordably. Healthcare costs are rising as a result of ObamaCare's despotic regime of aggressive healthcare regulations. Countless working families are treading water just to try to stay afloat. A good chunk of these costs also can be pinned directly on the burdensome ObamaCare regulations. According to one HHS study, ObamaCare regulations caused premiums in the individual market to spike an astounding 105 percent, and a study by Milliman showed that the guaranteed issue regulation alone caused health insurance premiums to rise by an average of 45 percent. This amounts to $106 per month. That is thousands of dollars per year for working families. That is money that they could be spending on groceries, on housing, on braces, or on their child's education. Congress has done very little in the last few years to alleviate the burdens faced by these working class families. I urge my colleagues to act now by supporting this amendment.

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise in support of this amendment. This would correct a great defect in our Tax Code--the parent tax penalty. We have been punishing parents for decades because of the way our Federal tax system and our senior entitlement programs--Social Security and Medicare--interact. We have to end this tyranny and end this now. This amendment does that, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague, the Senator from Wyoming, chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Enzi, for allowing me, as the vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, some time on the Senate floor to discuss the budget. Our budget process is important, and it has long been in a period of neglect. It needs reform. That is what I am here to talk about today. There are so many areas that are affected by our budgeting process or, at least, that should be. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of any aspect of the Federal Government that couldn't be or shouldn't be addressed through the budgeting process. When we look at the budget process, it is important for us to focus, to one degree or another, on the Budget Act of 1974. This is an old law. Forty-three years in statute has not exactly improved it. It hasn't matured into something better. In other words, rather than a piece of art that has appreciated in value over time, this is something more akin to the 8-track tape player that you might have purchased in 1974 to go inside your Ford Pinto, which would explode upon impact. This is something that didn't really improve in the 43 years since it was passed, especially not the way we have followed it or, better said, the way we have utterly failed to follow it. One of the best ways to describe the budgeting process, prescribed by the Budget Act of 1974, is that it is nonbinding. It is less legislation than it is legislative fiction. It is aspirational in the sense that it aims for what could be and what should be, except no one actually aspires to it. In Congress, we don't get to the aspiration, basically, ever. It is reminiscent almost of the immortal words of St. Augustine. When he was undergoing his transition to Christianity, he famously said: ``Lord, grant me chastity . . . but not yet''--always wanting to restrain oneself later and not now, even though the need for restraint, the need for reform is present now, is calling out for reform right now. That is why it is important to remember that what comes next is important, and next is now. We are discussing the budget this week, and it is important that we focus on these issues right now. We do have a system that has to be kept carefully in balance. That balance depends on Congress keeping the national interest front and center. It depends on Congress being willing to restrain itself and follow the dictates of our constitutional structure. We have failed on these scores. Congress collectively, actively, almost defiantly avoids the very type of accountability built into our constitutional structure--the type of accountability called for by article I of the Constitution. Article I, the very first clause of the first section of the first article of the Constitution, makes clear that if you are going to make policy within the Federal Government, if you are going to establish norms that will be enforceable as generally applicable laws within our Federal Government, you have to go through Congress. ``All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.'' Article I, section 1 tells us that. Article I, section 7 tells us that in order to make a law in our Federal system, you first have to pass something through the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then you have to submit it to the White House. You cannot make law without going through that process. That process is also worked in for a budgeting process. The way the Budget Act of 1974 is supposed to work, the way our budget process is supposed to operate is that we will pass a series of laws appropriating money in various aspects of the Federal Government. We have a budget that gets passed first, which is an aspirational statement not submitted to the President. It is a resolution passed jointly by both Houses of Congress that sets budgeting priorities. Then, following from those priorities, there are supposed to be 13 separate appropriations bills that spend money, that allocate the scarce resources of the Federal Government, understanding that they are finite to each of the major areas of government spending. There will be one bill, for example, that funds National Defense. There is another bill that will fund our Justice Department or Federal court system. There is another bill that will fund, for example, our national parks, and so on and so forth. When you follow that formula, you avoid the kind of circumstance in which we push all spending decisions into one legislative package, setting up a potential for disaster. A common analogy that I sometimes use to describe this is, imagine if you live in an outlying area, in an area where there is only one grocery store for 100, maybe 200 miles around. Upon moving there, suppose, on your way home from work, you receive a phone call from your significant other telling you to stop by the store: Don't come home without bread, milk, and eggs. You don't need everything else. Just get bread, milk, and eggs. You go to the grocery store. You get your shopping cart, and you put in your bread, milk, and eggs. You get to the checkout counter. You put out your bread, milk, and eggs. The cashier says to you: Excuse me, there is a problem. You can't buy just bread, milk, and eggs. This is a special kind of store where you can't buy bread, milk, and eggs unless you also buy a bucket of nails, one-half ton of iron ore, a Barry Manilow album, and a book about cowboy poetry. In fact, for that matter, this is the kind of store where you have to buy one of every item in order to buy anything else. That is kind of what it is like every time we pass a spending bill lately because, even though the Budget Act of 1974 contemplates 12 or 13 separate appropriations bills, each addressing one discreet aspect of the Federal Government's spending, we end up, more often than not-- in fact, basically every single time for the last 6 of \1/2\ years I have been serving here, and even longer than that, we end up passing either a continuing resolution, which basically is a reset button saying that we will continue to spend next year at the same rate we have been spending this year, subject to these minor exceptions or, alternatively, we might pass an omnibus spending bill, which can be 1,000, maybe 2,000 pages long, sometimes longer, and identify all the areas in which we will be spending but put into one unified bill. The problem with these bills, the way we have tended to do continuing resolutions and omnibus spending bills, is that we tend to consider and pass them under a compacted time agreement in the final hours or minutes before a cliff. By ``cliff,'' I mean an arbitrary deadline, after which a spending measure already in place will expire. So if there is a spending bill that expires on September 30 of a particular year, it is not uncommon for us to address a spending bill on September 30, sometimes late in the day on September 30 or in the days leading up to it. It is not uncommon for Members of Congress to be told at that moment: You have two choices. You can either pass this as is and have everything funded more or less as it has been or you can shut down the government. Nobody really wants to cause a government shutdown. Certainly, nobody wants to be accused of shutting down the government. Most Members tend to vote for it, and then the American people continue to get what they have been getting. They continue to operate a Federal Government that spends about $4 trillion a year, with little or no control, even by the people's own elected Representatives in Congress, whose job it is to do these things over their own government. This is wrong. We shouldn't be governing this way. Yet there is a touch of irony in this in that we govern this way, I think, at least in part, because of a fear of public outcry against the process or criticism about the process in which we might engage. Yet, as we undertake this process, which undercuts that process altogether and sidesteps it, as we have avoided that studiously in order to avoid criticism, we have seen Congress's approval rating plummet. In fact, if you look at most opinion polls these days, it puts our approval rating as an institution right around 10 percent. The last time I checked, in the United States of America, that makes us less popular than Fidel Castro. It makes us only slightly more popular than the influenza virus, which is rapidly gaining on us. If what we are wanting to do is avoid criticism, then the last thing we ought to do is continue to do what we have been doing, which is to consolidate all spending decisions into one legislative package to be addressed at the end of the fiscal year, telling Members they have to either vote for it or be blamed for a government shutdown. That is wrong. That shuts out the American people, and it makes their government unaccountable to them. In the process, we avoid reforming a lot of programs that need reforming. Among other things, we avoid reforming entitlement spending. It is important when we think about entitlement spending and how it needs to be reformed to remember the immortal words of President John F. Kennedy, who said that ``to govern is to choose.'' But today, to budget is not to choose or to choose in advance not to choose, to avoid choosing altogether. We are $20 trillion in debt, and we choose to ignore that. Twenty trillion dollars is an enormous amount of money, as is the interest we pay on that sum every single year, which is about $250 billion a year-- an enormous sum of money in and of itself. But that isn't the scary part. The scary part is that $250 billion, which is what we spend every year on interest on our national debt, is roughly the same interest payment we had about 20 years ago. I believe our national debt was one- sixth or one-seventh of its current size. The only reason it is even that low is because our Treasury yield rates--the interest rate at which the U.S. Government pays its creditors--is at an all-time historical low. Laws of mathematics are such that what goes down must inevitably come back up. As soon as it does come back up, even if it comes up only to its historical average and doesn't rebound above that average, in a short period of time, within a few years after that, we will find ourselves going from about $250 billion a year in interest on debt to about $1 trillion a year in interest on debt, leaving ourselves with the uncomfortable, darned-near impossible prospect of having to cover a $750 billion shortfall--this on top of our existing sprawling national deficit--without any clear means of doing so. Congress, in many cases, fears reform, but reform remains necessary to make programs structurally reliable and fiscally sustainable. In other words, we are fearing the wrong thing. A lot of people in my home State of Utah fear snakes, understandably. We have rattlesnakes in parts of Utah. Rattlesnakes can do a lot of damage to you if they bite you. You don't want to mess with a rattlesnake. But sometimes we fear the wrong things, at least in the sense of, in addition to a lot of rattlesnakes, we also have a lot of deer. They should actually fear deer more than rattlesnakes. More people die in the United States every year as a result of deer causing automotive accidents than they do from rattlesnake bites altogether. Sometimes we fear the wrong things. We fear making reform. But reform is not what we should fear; we should fear the consequences of failure to do that. In some ways, the central unifying problem isn't just about the debt or dysfunction but the distrust. Congress has squandered the trust of the American people, and we as an institution have a responsibility to work hard to win back that trust. The only way to win back that trust is through real reform. We have to put the national interest ahead of our own interests, our own political interests and the special interests that are constantly moving here in Washington, DC. That work can begin with this very budget. It should begin with this budget. Budgets provide us with an opportunity to discuss our priorities. Those priorities always need to be all about reform. This budget is far from perfect, but in understanding that it is not perfect, it is a vehicle to begin the real process of reform. Nowhere is this more important than with tax reform, and this will set in motion those events that can culminate in real, genuine, and much needed tax reform. There are a couple of odd quirks within our Federal Tax Code. First of all, its sheer length and complexity are a problem. Arthur Brooks from the American Enterprise Institute said that complexity is itself a subsidy--a subsidy that disproportionately benefits the well connected, the wealthy, the well educated, the specialists who handle the complexity and profit from it. One hundred years ago, our Tax Code was only a few hundred pages long. Today, our Tax Code, depending on what you count, can fairly be described as much closer to 100,000 pages than to a few hundred. Among the many problems we can find in the Tax Code is the marriage tax penalty, which many Americans are familiar with, whereby a hard- working American couple might pay higher taxes only because of the fact that they happen to be married. This is wrong, and it needs to be fixed. There is a related point--a related flaw--that is much less well known than the Tax Code marriage penalty, and that is the Tax Code parent penalty. Let me explain what that is. Imagine two couples-- couple A and couple B. Imagine that couple A and couple B are identical in every respect but one. In other words, they both have the same income, they both have the same pattern of charitable contributions, mortgage interest, State and local taxes, and so forth. Everything that affects their taxes is the same except one thing: Couple A has three children and couple B chooses to remain childless. Because of the way our Tax Code interacts and intersects with our senior entitlement programs--namely, Social Security and Medicare--we end up penalizing parents, creating this parent tax penalty. Let me explain that a little bit. Let's call couple A--the couple with three children--Jack and Julie. According to very modest assessments made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Jack and Julie, with their three children, will incur costs of about $700,000 as they raise their children. These are the costs of raising children. I believe it is a little faulty--there are a number of things it doesn't include--but it is an estimate produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Jack and Julie, our hypothetical couple A, will spend $700,000 raising their three children to maturity. It doesn't take into account the non-economic costs associated with parenting or the myriad benefits that go along with that--but $700,000. That is the amount they will put into raising these three children. That cost doesn't benefit just Jack and Julie, it doesn't benefit just their three children--no, the way our system works, the way Social Security and Medicare work, it also goes to stabilize, to shore-up entitlement benefits for tomorrow's retirees, because Social Security and Medicare operate on a pay-as-you-go basis. Today's retiree benefits are paid by today's workers. Today's workers will be tomorrow's retirees. Today's children will be tomorrow's workers and will be paying the retirement benefits of today's workers, tomorrow's retirees. Let's look at couple A, back to Jack and Julie. Jack and Julie operate solely with Julie's income. Jack is a stay-at-home father. Meanwhile, Julie has a good job that pays $75,000 a year. As you look at this chart, it shows how the pay stubs Julie receives twice a month might look. I would imagine many Americans look at this the same way I do. People approach their pay stubs with a degree of trepidation. It is almost easier not to look at it when you see all the things the government does to your paycheck each time it goes through. Jack and Julie look at Julie's pay stub when it comes out twice a month, and they see a few things, including the fact that, in addition to the $205 that is withheld from her Federal income tax twice a month, she also sees $41.84 withheld for Medicare, $178 withheld for Social Security, and $144 withheld for State income tax. So when we look at Julie's pay stub, we see that what Julie is paying into Social Security and Medicare is roughly the same as what we will see from couple B, who chooses to remain childless. Couple B has every right not to have children. We don't want to penalize anybody regarding their decision on whether to have children. But the point here is that the investment Jack and Julie are making into the Social Security system comes twice--first as they pay their taxes, including their Social Security and Medicare taxes--and with Social Security taxes, by the way, that is also going to play a role in determining the Social Security benefits for which Jack and Julie will one day be eligible when they retire. Yet the Tax Code doesn't adequately take into account the $700,000 they are investing into their own children and that those children will make it possible for couple B to receive their Social Security and Medicare benefits when they retire. That is why we need to fix the parent tax penalty. The parent tax penalty consists of this unique interaction between our tax system and our senior entitlement programs and doesn't take into account the intense investment in financial terms that America's moms and dads make in their children. By increasing the child tax credit, we could offset this penalty. One of the proposals out there would involve raising it to, say, $2,000 per child. I think that would be great. I could even go higher than that, but $2,000 wouldn't cover the whole problem, it wouldn't undo the whole penalty, but it would go a long way toward offsetting that. I would welcome that. That would be a good development. There are people just like Jack and Julie Jones all over this country who would benefit from that, and the American people as a whole would benefit from it. Social Security and Medicare would be more stable and made more sustainable by this change. The next step we need to make with tax reform involves making the Tax Code more pro-worker. A lot of people criticize the Tax Code for the fact that it has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at 35 percent. I believe that the best reform we could achieve would be substantial. There are a lot of people who are talking about reducing the corporate tax rate to maybe 15 percent or 20 percent. I hope we can get to something like that, and that would be a great first step. What I would really like to do is to bring that down not to 25 percent or 20 percent or 15 percent, I would like to see it brought down to zero. Let me explain why I believe that. A corporation consists of and is animated by two things: capital and labor, investors and workers. Investors and workers join together and form partnerships to make profits. Both of them pay a share of the corporate tax. In the United States, forces of globalization have benefited from this arrangement between workers and investors. The forces of globalization have benefited the investor class more than the workers. In this new global economic environment, we need to think about how to increase the returns to workers. Globalization has helped the investors, and policy now needs to go out of its way to help the workers. One way to do that would be to eliminate the corporate tax altogether and tax investment income the same way we do regular income. That would shift the worker share of business tax to business owners. This would immediately do two things: It would give a raise to American workers, who really need it, and it would turn the United States into an irresistible magnet for foreign investment in the United States of America. In one stroke, the most profitable, favorable tax strategy in the global economy would be creating American jobs. The current code gives preferential treatment to U.S. investors sending their money overseas. While this is their right to do, this is not something we should be incentivizing and pushing them into, which is exactly what the status quo does. Reform would give preferential treatment to international investors coming here, which is, after all, what we want. Let's level the national playing field between the working class and the investor class, while tilting the global playing field toward the United States rather than pushing it outward, away from our great country. If these tax reforms could be set in motion through this budget or at least set in motion indirectly if not directly, the Tax Code would finally start working again for American families and finally start benefiting hard-working American mothers and fathers. Another issue that we struggle with significantly in the Federal Government involves Federal regulations. This, too, is something we could start to address through the budgeting process. Our Federal regulatory system is economically damaging. This is something that strangles small business. It inherently--by its very nature, it inures disproportionately to the benefit of large, established, incumbent businesses, those that can afford an army of lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, and compliance specialists, that benefit from a heavy system of regulation, which is often made heavier still at the urging of the largest, wealthiest, most established companies because these Federal regulations provide a natural restriction on entry, a natural barrier that disincentivizes and in some ways disables would-be competitors from joining and entering into the marketplace. One thing we know about competition is that it brings down costs and it raises quality, and that is a good thing. Federal regulations also create a sort of constitutional distrust. They themselves represent a harsh deviation from the natural constitutional order. I mentioned a few minutes ago the provisions of article I. Article I, section 1, and article I, section 7 require that Federal laws be passed by Congress. Federal regulations get around that. Sometimes Congress chooses voluntarily to delegate to someone else the task that we, by operation of the Constitution, are supposed to perform and not to delegate to someone else. This administrative action makes things easier on occasion for Congress, but that is a bug, not a feature. The Constitution never was intended to make life easier for Members of Congress. Let me explain how this happens and how it shows up here. It happens sometimes with good intentions. Congress wants to approach a particular issue, solve a particular problem without necessarily having to go into the difficult, painstaking, line-drawing process that inevitably is brought into question anytime we are trying to solve a problem through lawmaking. In other words, Congress will identify a problem and pass a law that says, for instance: We shall have a good law in area X, and we hereby delegate to agency Y the power to make and enforce rules carrying the force of generally applicable Federal law that will carry out the objectives we have outlined in our legislation. In other words--let's get to something more approximating a real example. Congress, for instance, passes a law that says: We shall have clean air. We hereby delegate to the EPA the power to decide what clean air is, what pollution is, what acceptable limits on pollution might be, and what penalties will befall polluters. And then those same regulators, those same people at that same agency who made all the rules defining pollution and defining acceptable limits for pollution, prescribing penalties, they are the same people who also enforce them. You have the lawmakers who are also the law enforcers, and none of them are subject to an election. Now, I don't mean to disparage the character or the capabilities of any of the fine people who work at the EPA or any of our other Federal bureaucracies. For the most part, these are well-intentioned, hard- working, well-educated, and highly specialized public figures or government employees, we might say, but there is a difference. People in Congress are not magically empowered with any gifts for coming up with good legislation any more than any other American is, but there is a difference. We are elected, and we are subject to the people at regular intervals. You can fire your U.S. Senator every 6 years, you can fire your Representative every 2 years. You cannot fire a government bureaucrat. As Ronald Reagan said, the closest thing we see to eternal life on this Earth is a new government program. The closest thing you can find to a lifelong career is in government, in many government bureaucracies. What this has produced is a profound proliferation of Federal law. We have been able to make more things Federal, and we have been able to make more Federal laws as a result of the fact that Congress now delegates away far more of its legislative power than it actually exercises. Let me explain what I mean. I keep in my office two sets of documents. I welcome any of you to come by. In my office, we serve Jell-O every Wednesday at 3:30. For reasons I don't entirely understand, Utah consumes more Jell-O than any other State in the Union on a per capita basis. The Utah Legislature has actually designated Jell-O as Utah's official State snack. Now, I will be clear that these are not Jell-O shots. They are not tainted with alcohol or anything like that, but we serve Jell-O every Wednesday at 3:30. You are all invited to join us any time you would like. If the Senate is in session and if it is Wednesday at 3:30, it is time for Jell-O. When you come by my office for Jell-O Wednesday, you will see two stacks of documents that I have represented in this graph. One stack of documents is a few inches tall, it is about 3,000 pages long, and it consists of the laws passed by Congress last year. The other stack is 13 feet tall, it is about 96,000 pages long, and it consists of last year's Federal Register. For those of you who are fortunate enough not to know what the Federal Register is--and I really do envy you--it is the annual index, the compilation of Federal regulations. First is their release for public notice and comment, and then later is their finalized Federal Register. These are laws. These are not just rules exclusively deciding what time the lights will go on and off at the Commerce Department or what times the gates will be staffed at this or that Embassy. No. Many of these are regulations that impose affirmative obligations on the American people, sometimes with criminal penalties, often with substantial civil penalties attached to them, and yet they are not passed by anyone who is elected. In many cases, they are not even written by people who are accountable to anyone who is, in turn, elected. This is a problem. During 2016, Congress enacted 214 laws; whereas, the agencies issued 3,853 rules. Those are 18 rules that were put in place by Federal agencies for every 1 law that was enacted by Congress. This is not without consequence. This is not just an abstract constitutional violation. This costs the American people a lot of money, and it costs them money in a way that is kind of invisible. You have the Tax Code. You have your pay stub. I showed you that chart earlier from Julie's pay stub showing how much the government takes out of each paycheck. That is visible. That is tangible. That is something she can see each week. There is another bite that gets taken out of each and every one of her paychecks that is invisible, and that bite is taken out by these Federal regulations, meaning everything that Jack and Julie, everything that every one of you, everything that every American purchases, every good or every service is made more expensive by these Federal regulations. In fact, it is fair to say really that the costs of compliance with these Federal regulations are passed on disproportionately to America's poor and middle class who pay for those regulations through higher prices on goods and services, diminished wages, unemployment, and underemployment, and it is not insignificant. Twenty years ago, when I first started studying this problem, I was shocked to learn that this backdoor, invisible, highly regressive form of tax--that is the cost of compliance with Federal regulations--stood at $300 billion a year. That was astounding to me, stunning. Today that number stands at about $2 trillion a year. In 20 years, we have seen the cost of complying with Federal regulations multiply nearly sevenfold. That is troubling. If the cost of complying with U.S. Federal regulations were a country, if it were the GDP, the $2 trillion in compliance costs, that is roughly the same as the gross domestic product of India and Italy. The cost of complying with Federal regulations is slightly less than the GDP of India and slightly more than the GDP of Italy. That is sad, that is stunning, that is a constitutional problem, and it is a public policy problem. The 2016 Federal Register contains 95,894 pages--the highest level in its history and 19 percent higher than the previous year of 2015, which contained 80,260 pages. In the absence of trust, we need an abundance of transparency, and that is what constitutional lawmaking is all about. We need to restore that constitutional order by passing reforms like the REINS Act, which would require congressional assent before major rules are put into place. It would require Congress to affirmatively enact a regulation into law before an economically significant regulation could take effect. There are some other areas where we need transparency--in higher education and healthcare. These things appear to have little in common at the outset, and yet, in many ways, they have a lot in common in that they are two areas where there has been a lot of Federal involvement where there probably shouldn't be and where that Federal involvement has made things more opaque and less transparent and resulted in higher costs. In higher education, I highlighted the need in the last Congress for reforms through my introduction of the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act, which would have opened up the accreditation process. Currently, the higher education system in America has been commandeered by the iron triangle, consisting of the U.S. Department of Education, Federal accreditation bodies, and institutions of higher education in this country. Unless you are part of that iron triangle, you can't really break into the higher education market because you can't get Federal higher education assistance. As a result, things like apprenticeships, distance learning, massive open online courses--or MOOCs, as they are sometimes described--suffer. They get left out. The upshot is, if we reformed this area, we would have more opportunities to get postsecondary skills and training, we would lower the cost of higher education, we would save money for both borrowers and taxpayers alike, and we would have more people able to pursue their chosen vocation. With healthcare, as in higher education, Federal influence is driving up prices while outcomes are flatlined. In 2009, Congress doubled down on what wasn't working when they passed ObamaCare. The results were instability, lost coverage, new plans, higher premiums, and higher deductibles at the same time. Meanwhile, you had a whole lot of concentration of market power in a few companies. The top 10 health insurance companies in 2008--the year President Obama was elected President--had combined profits of about $8 billion a year. Last year, that number skyrocketed to $15 billion a year. The difference was ObamaCare. ObamaCare made it easier for those companies to see their profits skyrocket, but they did so on the backs of America's poor and middle class. With ObamaCare, we also had the unsustainable expansion of Medicaid, a failed program we should be trying to rescue people from, not trap them in. We need to repeal and replace ObamaCare. As we look toward reform, a guiding principle should always be restoring the constitutional principal of federalism or some might call it localism or the principle of subsidiarity. The idea is that you should govern locally, as locally as possible. There is a reason for this. The Constitution requires it, but it is also the case that we all benefit when we follow that constitutional system. It allows more Americans to get more of the kind of government they want and less of the kind of government they don't want. Bad things happen when we ignore federalism, as we have over the last 80 years and increasingly so over the last decade. There are some examples of that. One involves transportation. Our Interstate Highway System was created by the Federal Government in the 1950s under the leadership of President Eisenhower. He acknowledged that for national security and interstate commerce reasons, it would be a good idea to have an interstate highway system. So we proposed--and Congress passed into law--a gasoline tax that would fund the establishment, the creation of an interstate highway system. The idea was always to hand that interstate highway system back over to the States after the project was completed, which it has been now since the 1980s. Yet we are still collecting a Federal gasoline tax--18.4 cents per gallon, to be precise. Yet that 18.4 cents per gallon still doesn't ever seem to be sufficient, even though the Interstate Highway System has been completed since the 1980s and even though, stunningly, you could maintain the existing Interstate Highway System for about 4 cents per gallon. So where is the rest of it going? Well, it is going to purely local projects: surface roads, bike paths, all sorts of other things, many of which might well be worthy but aren't necessarily Federal in nature. Another example involves public land. A lot of people were surprised to learn this--especially people from the East--but the Federal Government owns and controls about 30 percent of the land in the United States. A lot of people in the East aren't aware of this because, in every State east of Colorado, the Federal Government owns less than 15 percent of the land. In no State west of Colorado does the Federal Government own less than 15 percent and, in many States like my own, that number is much larger. In fact, in my State, the State of Utah, the Federal Government owns 67 percent of the land. Let's set aside the question, for a minute, of why the Federal Government needs to own that much land at all and why it needs to own 30 percent of the landmass in the United States. If it is going to own that much, why does it disproportionately own so much land in States like mine, especially when that harms people in States like mine? You see, in Utah--this map shows Federal land. Anyplace you see white, that is non-Federal land. If you see any of these colors represented here, that is one type of Federal land ownership or another. Where you see color on this chart, that is where the Federal land is owned and controlled by the Federal Government and the local taxing authorities can't tax it. As a result, people have to go to the Federal Government for a ``Mother May I'' in order to even cross the property or utilize the property for some legitimate business or personal need, and the local taxing authorities can't tax it. This harms westerners disproportionately, and it is wrong. We need reform in this area. We also need to get the Federal Government out of the business of thinking it needs to own this much land and into the business of thinking, if it is going to own that much, then it needs to allow taxing authorities to collect at least a rough equivalent of property tax. Also, in the area of primary and secondary education, because public education is so important, the Federal Government needs to stay out of the K-12 education arena. In other words, what is taught in the K-12 classroom needs to be decisions made by teachers in consultation with parents, principals, local school officials and, in some cases, State officials, not from Washington, DC. That is not an appropriate decision to make from Washington, DC, unless you are talking about educational experiences perhaps in the District of Columbia or a U.S. territory or on a military base or something like that. The Federal Government should have no role in K-12 public education. That is not our job. We have to remember the text of the 10th Amendment echoing the structure of the original Constitution: that powers not granted to Congress and not prohibited to the States are reserved to the States respectively or the people. That has to mean something. In order for it to mean something, there has to be some limit to what powers are, in fact, granted to the Federal Government. Over the last 80 years, we gradually drifted away from this idea. We concluded that every problem in society is a government problem and that every government problem is a Federal problem. That is wrong. That has harmed the American people. We need to restore federalism, localism, and subsidiary. This will free the people of the tyranny they feel as the result of a lost election. At any given moment in America, there are people who are disappointed about the last election, especially so with House elections, Senate elections, and the occupant of the White House. At any given moment, the people who feel as if they are not well represented in Washington--either at the U.S. Capitol or at the White House or both--can be counted in the tens, if not hundreds of millions. We will end this tyranny if we return a lot of that power. In other words, let's say someone living in Connecticut might not quite be on the bandwagon of ``make America great again.'' If they don't want to make America great again, they can want to make Connecticut great again. In other words, federalism allows more people in America to get more of the kind of government they want and less of the kind of government they don't want. It allows more people to have more of a say because local governments, while not perfect, are more responsive to their local constituencies. It better protects both the minorities and majorities. It lowers the temperature of our national politics. One of the reasons national politics have become so contentious is because everything has been centered in Washington, DC. There is no reason it has to be that way. In fact, the Constitution says it should never be that way. Finally, with regard to federalism, there are a few things that only the Federal Government can do. Those things include national defense, establishing a uniform system of weights and measures, coming up with a uniform system of laws governing immigration and naturalization and a uniform system of laws governing interstate and foreign trade or commerce. Those things that can be done only by Congress must be done well. When we are so busy doing the things we are not supposed to do, we fail to do those things that only we can do. That is yet another reason to restore federalism. Then, whatever is left over, whatever remains, whatever we can't bring back, needs to be fixed. It needs to be made to work. Whatever we don't return to the States can be made more effective and more efficient, and we should do that. The 1974 Budget Act, as I explained at the outset of my address today, is outdated. We have to reform it. The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation use formulas that are opaque and unknown, that are effectively a black box. This is wrong, and we have to get rid of those. That is one of the reasons I introduced the CBO Show Your Work Act, so they can't just tell us anymore: You can't know why we reached the conclusions we reached that have stunning implications for law and public policy. From budget, to taxing, to spending policy and policymaking, the constant theme is inertia. One could argue that the consistent theme is nostalgia. We are stuck in that era of the Ford Pinto and the eight- track cassette player. Americans are being held back, not only by outdated policies but by a process that is out of date too. We met the challenges of the 20th century with policies that met the moment, but we have to be constantly updating, constantly overseeing and tweaking and improving. Government may well move at the pace of a turtle, but it can move, nonetheless, and move it must because the only way to get to next is to focus on now. In our increasingly personalized, customizable society and economy, government's obsession with centralization is making these things worse, not better. We need to govern locally and not nationally in every single instance. We need to empower individuals and local communities. In Washington, we have to embrace accountability, especially the kind of accountability prescribed by the Constitution. We can do better, but we have to first recognize the need to do so. The budget is indicative of all the problems we face in Washington. It is also indicative of Congress's authority and its ability to create solutions. We can do this. We can. We must. And together, we will. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LEE

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