Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, just to clarify. We have two committees, one in the Senate and one in the House, looking at the possibilities for reforming this program. I am confident we can find agreement on how this program ought to be reformed. That is my goal, and I will continue to work toward that end. I want to make sure we have reforms put in place as we reauthorize this. In the meantime, I want to be clear: This doesn't do anything to halt the program as a whole. This just deals with the accrual of revenue to a fund that has an accumulated unappropriated balance of $20 billion. We certainly have time. This shouldn't be rushed through. We need to give the committees the time they need in order to work out the reforms needed. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I want to be very clear about what it is we are talking about today. We are discussing the expiration of the Land and Water Conservation Fund's ability to accrue additional revenues to the fund and nothing more. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Land and Water Conservation Fund currently has an unappropriated balance of around $20 billion that can be appropriated in implementing LWCF projects. If you assume the current rate of appropriations is roughly $300 million per year, it would take around 60 years before that fund is exhausted. Meanwhile, we have both the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and its House counterpart, the House Natural Resources Committee, working on reforms to the LWCF to address some of the issues that are causing a lot of people to be concerned with the LWCF. These issues involve, for instance, the maintenance backlog that we have with regard to many of our national parks and public lands and also with regard to the manner in which the Federal Government acquires new land. This is of concern to many of us, especially those of us who come from a State like mine where the Federal Government owns nearly 70 percent of the land. On that basis, Madam President, I object.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the junior Senator from Colorado be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or joint resolutions on Wednesday, September 30.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I wish to point out the Federal Government currently owns over 600 million acres of land throughout the United States. In the opinion of many Americans, that is way too much. Some of my colleagues are pushing a piece of legislation that would reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund--or LWCF--a program that is primarily used for land acquisition, and they want to do this without making a single reform to that same program. Before taking such a drastic and I believe misguided step, I would ask my colleagues to examine the Federal Government's current landholdings and in particular evaluate the manner in which they are being maintained. In many Western States, the largest landholder is the Federal Government. In my home State of Utah, the Federal Government owns close to 70 percent of the land within the State. This reality is hard for a lot of my colleagues from States east of the Mississippi River to even comprehend. Imagine if the Federal Government could tell your constituents where they could live, recreate, hunt and fish, and how they could earn a living. Imagine that the Federal Government used its vast landholdings to block developments of the valuable natural resources. Imagine further that the Land and Water Conservation Fund was used to acquire privately held lands from your constituents. Given how much land the Federal Government owns, it is not surprising to find out that much of it is rather poorly maintained. Specifically, the Department of the Interior currently has a maintenance backlog on Federal public lands with an estimated cost between $13.5 and $20 billion. Instead of looking to acquire even more land through the LWCF, the Federal Government should focus on properly managing the land it already owns. Make no mistake, LWCF is a land acquisition program. According to a Congressional Research Service report from October 2014: ``The $16.8 billion appropriated throughout the history of the LWCF program has been unevenly allocated among federal land acquisition (62%), the state grant program (25%), and other purposes (13%).'' Today we are talking about the expiration of the LWCF's ability to accrue additional revenues to the fund--nothing more, nothing beyond that, just that. According to CRS, LWCF currently has an unappropriated balance of around $20 billion that can be appropriated to implement LWCF projects. If we assume the current rate of appropriations, roughly $300 million per year, it would take around 60 years before that Fund was exhausted. At full appropriation, $900 million, it would take about 20 years. When we wake up tomorrow after allowing LWCF's authorization to expire, nothing will have substantively changed. Both the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee are working to reform the LWCF to address the numerous issues I have raised. I know I speak for many of my colleagues in the West when I say that LWCF reform, especially with regard to Federal land acquisition, is a necessary condition of reauthorization. On that basis, I object.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Elder Richard G. Scott, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who passed away September 22, 2015, at the age of 86. Richard G. Scott had the razor-sharp mind of an engineer, fused with the tender softness of a disciple's soul. A graduate of George Washington University in mechanical engineering, who did post-graduate training in nuclear engineering, he had a brilliant mind with an uncanny capacity for formulas, projections, and calculations. Yet he became known throughout the world for an enormous heart with an equally uncanny capacity to love and to have empathy for people from every walk of life. Elder Scott's gentle voice invited all who had lost their way, who had given up hope or had wandered far to come home, home to the faith, family, and community that would bring them real peace and lasting, genuine joy. Countless individuals around the world heard his invitation to come home and rightly felt that he was talking directly to them. Ever in search of the one who was lost--Elder Scott's words and witness of Jesus Christ served as the lower lights upon the shore to gently guide many a wanderer home. Elder Scott had an extraordinary depth of empathy, particularly for those who silently suffered and anxiously sought for relief, redemption, and renewal in the midst of life's storms. He, himself, was a man acquainted with grief, having lost two young children and later his wife Jeanene to untimely deaths. He also seemed to intimately understand the feelings of deep discouragement, overwhelming uncertainty, as well as the crushing avalanche of personal inadequacy that can descend upon the human soul during difficult days and trying times. Yet he continually stood as a beacon of hope to those who struggled because he knew with an absolute certainty to what source we should look for strength and security during such days and at such times. His complete love for and belief in the divine potential of each and every soul led him to speak plainly, powerfully, and often with tender, heartfelt, personal feelings. He urged the struggling as well as the faithful to cast aside any behavior, habit or belief that weighed them down or kept them from living up to their full potential. Members of the LDS Church all around the world often felt, as they watched him speak, that he was not only speaking specifically to them but also that he was looking straight into their souls. In truth, he was just speaking with such love, empathy, and genuine compassion that he empowered his listeners to look into their own hearts and see what their Savior saw in them. Elder Scott saw people not for where they were currently positioned on the road of life but for the potential each person had to do, be, and become more. He once declared: ``We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.'' Elder Scott's vision extended far beyond the struggles of mortality; he focused on raising our sights to higher things, grander places, and more noble thoughts. The role of the family as the bulwark of society was paramount in his life and teachings. Elder Scott often expressed his belief in the unparalleled power and influence that a man and a woman, equally yoked as husband and wife, could have on children and communities. He taught that in marriage oneness is not sameness and of the vital importance of valuing our differences. To illustrate, he once declared: ``I may not know what it means to be a woman, but I do know what it means to be taught by one and to love one with all my heart and all my soul.'' His love for his wife Jeanene was legendary and was forever sprinkled into his sermons. I take comfort in knowing that after nearly 20 years, Elder Scott has gone to that Heavenly home he so often pointed to and is once again united with Jeanene. One of Elder Scott's colleagues described him as a clever teacher. His formula for teaching was not of the engineering variety but rather followed a pattern described in a hymn by Lorin Wheelwright entitled ``Help Me Teach with Inspiration,'' which says: Help me teach with inspiration; Grant this blessing, Lord, I pray. Help me lift a soul's ambition To a higher, nobler way. Help me reach a friend in darkness; Help me guide him thru the night. Help me show thy path to glory By the Spirit's holy light. Help me find thy lambs who wander; Help me bring them to thy keep. Teach me, Lord, to be a shepherd; Father, help me feed thy sheep. Elder Richard G. Scott was indeed an inspired teacher, a leader, and lifter of people. His amazing mind and compassionate soul enabled him to help engineer a path for all of us to return home.

Mr. LEE. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from Arizona for his kind remarks regarding Elder Scott. I would also remark, just briefly, that my late father, himself an Arizonan, would be pleased to hear me referred to as a Senator from Arizona, given that I was born there.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, it is customary when rising in support of legislation to speak in gracious terms about the opportunity to vote for the legislation in question. This is a good day for the Senate. The American people can be proud. This bill represents legislating at its very best. That is what we say. I have said it in the past myself many times. While I will soon join the majority--though maybe not the necessary supermajority--of our colleagues voting to take up the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, it is a tragedy that we should have to. That late-term abortions, abortions after children are viable and their nervous systems can feel pain, are legal in this country, is itself an affront to American democracy and a stain on America's great history. It is not the fault of the American people, who, like the rest of the civilized world, are appalled by the violent extremism of aborting viable unborn infants. Rather, in 1973, it was originally the fault of a constitutionally unhinged and scientifically illiterate Supreme Court majority. Four decades on, the fault is now fully shared by a Democratic Party so corrupted by special interest politics that it has forsaken the one principle--standing up for the little guy--that once earned them all Americans' gratitude and respect. Our friends on the other side of the aisle still claim that surrendered high ground, but that claim gets harder to take seriously every time they not only abandon but deny the very humanity of the littlest guy or girl of all. Let's not forget that the Democratic Party today is not just the party of taxpayer- subsidized, late-term abortion on demand; it is also the party of taxpayer subsidized, late-term, sex-selective abortion on demand. Seven or eight or nine months along, with eyes and a nose, a full head of hair, with a beating heart and a perfect smile and late-night hiccups, they think it should be legal for a doctor to take her life, just because she is a girl or just because she may have Down Syndrome or a cleft palate or any reason really. To the Democratic Party today, there is no reason so superficial or bigoted that it shouldn't negate the right to life of an unborn child or a born child, for that matter. As was confirmed by the recently released video testimony of abortion industry insiders, some abortion clinics--clinics funded by the Federal Government--kill infants that are born alive. There is a word for that, and it isn't ``health care.'' Yet even though Philadelphia abortionist and serial infant killer Kermit Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder for doing just that, physician-assisted infanticide is something like a stated principle of the Senate Democratic caucus. Remember, it was on this very floor a few feet from here that in 1999, one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said that legal protection of a child should begin only ``when you bring your baby home.'' When we get down to it, what difference does a few centimeters make, anyway? Why should it be legal to kill a perfectly healthy 8-month-old, 6-pound little girl right here and illegal to kill her over here? After all, abortion is not the first peculiar institution that has arbitrarily dehumanized certain Americans based on geography, especially with such a high progressive principle at stake. As a Supreme Court Justice, of all people, put it in a 2009 interview with the New York Times, describing the social, political, and moral attitudes that led to the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, ``Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.'' As chilling as that sounds--and one certainly must wonder which populations liberals wanted to cull--to me, the most important part of that statement is not the hint toward genetic cleansing at the end; rather, it is the word ``frankly'' at the beginning. That was a window into the soul of abortion extremism, and we see it again and again and again. On the rare occasions when we hear abortion advocates speaking frankly, it terrifies us, and duly so. The conspirators exposed in the Center for Medical Progress videos are only the most recent example. Watch the videos, listen to what they say, and pay attention to how they say it. In their detached, dehumanizing euphemisms and stomach- turning humor, they speak not like fairy tale monsters, but the real thing--the rational, rationalizing men and women with prestigious degrees and cultivated tastes who hide their barbarism in bureaucracy. But we can rest assured, there will be no such talk here today. There will be no such talk here tomorrow. There will be no frank, candid public discussion of late-term abortions because that might eventually lead us to the truth--and only one side in this debate is interested in that. When it comes to the reality of abortion, pro-choice politicians choose not to debate; they choose to deceive. They will come down to this floor for the next 2 days not to defend what we all know is indefensible, rather they will try to cloak their extremism in a fog of denial and distraction. Politicians who defend the right to kill born- alive little girls will, with straight faces, rail about a war on women. Politicians who defend lax, unsanitary clinic standards will, with straight faces, lecture us all about their commitment to women's health. Politicians who resurrect embarrassing, medieval superstitions about when life begins will, with straight faces, thunder against the scourge of Republican science-deniers--as if none of us has touched a pregnant mom's tummy and felt a little kick, as if those grisly Planned Parenthood videos didn't exist, as if none of us took high school biology. But they know the truth. In unguarded moments, as we have heard, they speak the truth and one day the truth will set us all free and the Democratic Party will stop taking its problems out on the kids. We are not there yet, but as the desperate tactics on the other side of the question reveal, we are getting closer and closer all the time. Truth doesn't wait on partisanship. The truth is, a ban on late-term abortions after 5 months should be the law of our land. The truth is that unborn children can feel pain after only 2 months of development. In the words of University of Utah Professor Maureen Condic, with whom I met last week, ``Based on universally accepted scientific findings, the human fetus detects and reacts to painful stimuli as early as eight weeks following sperm-egg fusion.'' Now, for our unfrozen cavemen Senators on the other side of the aisle whose primitive minds are confused and frightened by modern science, sperm-egg fusion is when biology tells us that human life begins, on day one, a fact that is neither a mystery nor above the pay grade of a curious seventh grader. At 8 weeks, we know a fetus can feel pain. That is not just scientific consensus; it is ``universally accepted,'' ``entirely uncontested'' in Dr. Condic's words. Why then does the bill before us allow abortions even up to 20 weeks? Because that is where the science is directly observable. That is how modest a compromise this bill is. As Dr. Condic puts it, ``Fetuses at 20 weeks have an increase in stress hormones in response to painful experiences that can be eliminated by appropriate anesthesia.'' In other words, at 20 weeks, an unborn child can feel pain. We can see them feel it. We can observe them as they feel it. That is also the age, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, at which an unborn child is viable outside the woman. Prenatal surgeons can now treat unborn children as young as 16 weeks, and with every innovation and advance in perinatology, modern medicine stretches its miraculous light further and further into what used to be ``the valley of the shadow of death.'' These are the facts: At 20 weeks, a little boy or a little girl has a chance to seize the great adventure of life, and they feel pain when that chance is violently taken away from them, just like any child would, just like our own would, just like we would. We owe it to them to give them that chance. The science actually goes much further. This bill is only the least we can do right now. Our generation doesn't yet know what chapter we are writing in America's long struggle to defend the equal dignity of all human life, but we all do know--even our friends on the side of the aisle, I think--that this story has a happy ending. Like generations past that overcame ignorance and bigotry to welcome marginalized Americans into our hearts and our society, we, too, shall overcome, because even though the unborn don't have a voice, they do have an unflinching ally: the truth, not just the philosophical truth expressed in our Declaration of Independence but the biological, medical, and scientific truth that unborn children are children. There is no us and them, just us, and deep down we all know it. We know that children are a gift and deserve our protection. We know mothers are heroes and deserve our support. The bill before us would provide them a little bit more of both. Despite its majority support, this bill might not pass this time, and America's moms and children waiting for the laws of the United States to catch up to the justice and compassion reflected in the laws of nature and of nature's God will have to wait a little longer--but not too long. For if our national story has taught us anything, it is that extremism in defense of violence will not long stand. This bill will one day soon be the law of the land. So, too, will those passed last week in the House of Representatives and still others yet to come. The arc of American history may be long, but the American people have a way of bending it toward life, and after decades of violence and lies and corruption, help is on the way. Maybe it is a good day for the Senate after all. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, last week I began a thorough examination of the facts in the case of Planned Parenthood and the scandal that is now engulfing our Nation's largest provider of abortions. Today I wish to review briefly the evidence against Planned Parenthood--evidence brought to light thanks to whistleblowers and the conscientious journalists working with an organization called the Center for Medical Progress. After hearing that Planned Parenthood, in addition to performing almost 1,000 abortions every single day, was also selling the organs and body parts of its victims, CMP began investigating. CMP's investigation, which it calls the Human Capital Project, lasted for more than 2 years. Its findings have finally been published over the last few months in the form of a series of video documentaries posted on the Internet consisting mostly of interviews and undercover reporting of Planned Parenthood officials and facilities. The videos have sparked debate and controversy and have thrown the abortion industry and its political clients back on their heels. But thanks to an indefensible coverage blackout in the pro-abortion mainstream media, most Americans have never even heard of, much less seen, these videos. Based on the vote the Senate took last month, and in particular based on the lack of substance coming from the other side of the aisle during that debate, it is a good bet that most of our colleagues defending Planned Parenthood haven't seen those videos, either. So I thought it might do some good to at least get the facts into the Congressional Record before we move forward. To date, 10 of the expected 12 videos have been posted on the home page for the Center for Medical Progress. The first video was posted on July 14 and showed a luncheon meeting between CMP investigators posing as corporate buyers of fetal organs and Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services. In the course of this business lunch, we learn from the senior Planned Parenthood official's own words that Planned Parenthood clinics traffic in the body parts of aborted children as a matter of routine; that Planned Parenthood keeps these transactions at the local franchise level for legal reasons that appear to be designed to sidestep corporate liability; that Planned Parenthood's abortionists may alter their surgical procedures-- allegedly after consent forms have been signed--so as to maximize the organ harvest from unborn children. This was the infamous moment when we learned that Planned Parenthood doctors can ``crush below'' and ``crush above'' a baby's most lucrative parts. Finally, we learned that such alterations may involve performing dangerous and illegal partial- birth abortions. These revelations by themselves--in and of themselves, all by themselves--shock the conscience, but they were only the beginning. In the Center for Medical Progress's second video released on July 21, we witness another undercover business lunch with investigators again posing as corporate organ buyers, this time with the president of Planned Parenthood's Medical Director's Council. What we see in this video, contrary to Planned Parenthood's protestations, is without question a financial negotiation about the price of baby organs. They are not talking about compensating Planned Parenthood for procurement and delivery costs; no, they are haggling. As the official herself, a medical doctor, jokes at one point, ``I want a Lamborghini.'' In another video released August 4, the vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is seen not only discussing exactly this kind of market pricing but the need to conceal such transactions through message discipline. Here we learn that Planned Parenthood physicians do indeed alter their surgical procedures ``in a way that they get the best specimens''--that is, not to serve their patients but to maximize their sales numbers--because, as this vice president boasts, ``My department contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization.'' Subsequent videos have only corroborated these allegations. From the CEO of StemExpress, a major corporate buyer of fetal body parts, we learned that, yes, the price of fetal tissue is driven by supply and demand, not just cost reimbursements. And sometimes this market goes beyond organs and tissue and actually traffics in whole unborn children. From a fetal tissue producer, we learned that sometimes babies are born alive and are killed outside the womb because, she says, it just fell out. Just this week, a new video showed a Planned Parenthood official admitting that some abortion clinics ``generate a fair amount of income selling baby organs.'' And these are just the undercover videos. Other videos feature the heart-wrenching testimony of a former StemExpress employee who tells the harrowing stories of her work inside Planned Parenthood clinics. She tells not only of the screaming and crying of the patients but also witnessing unethical behavior by the medical staff. And, yes, the videos also contain horrifying, behind- the-scenes images at Planned Parenthood centers where the exploitation, butchering, and violence are worse than anything one can imagine. The images and stories will pierce the heart of anyone who has a child or has ever been one. But that is exactly why we must watch these videos. For those who don't already know what abortion clinics are like and what they do, these videos must be seen to be believed. For anyone who has ever wondered why so many Members of Congress, so many citizens want to transfer taxpayer funding of abortion clinics to safe community health centers that actually practice life-preserving medicine as proposed in the bill recently introduced by Senator Ernst, watch these videos and you will know. Watch these videos and you will understand. Every new video brings further corroboration not simply of particular instances of blood-chilling behavior but of what appears to be a pattern and practice of endangering vulnerable women by manipulating surgical procedures after consent forms have already been signed to perform abortions in a ``less crunchy'' way, for purposes not of women's health but greed; to harvest organs from aborted children and sell them to corporate purchasers; and to conduct this grisly business in secret to avoid public detection and outrage and, quite possibly, criminal indictment--yes, indictment. That--the potential crimes of the abortion industry evidenced in these videos--will be the topic of my next speech on this scandal, for the behavior documented by the Center for Medical Progress is not just stomach-turning--it is that, to be sure, but it may well also be illegal, violating not only the moral laws of nature and of nature's God, which we already knew, but also the criminal laws of the United States of America. I would encourage my colleagues and all Americans to view these videos for themselves so that they, too, can judge for themselves. We should all be warned: The videos are as difficult to watch as they are easy to find, but the price of self-government is self-awareness. The American people need to know the truth about what actually goes on in America's abortion clinics, what lies are being told, and what crimes are being committed in their name and with their own money. The truth about human life and dignity has the power to set us all free, but first, we have to tell it. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to thank the majority leader for scheduling this debate about the agreement struck by the Obama administration and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is important to highlight right up front what this deal is. It is nothing more than a political agreement between President Obama and the current leaders of Iran. This deal does not have the support of the American people, nor will it have the consent of their elected representatives here in Congress. At no point in the course of negotiating this deal did the Obama administration seek the advice and consent of the Senate or display any respect for the constitutional limits of the Executive in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, I am glad the Senate has been debating this agreement because this is how the Senate is supposed to function, on the basis of open and robust deliberation. I hope it is how the Senate will function well into the future on matters of national security and domestic policy. But if the debate we are trying to have today could be congressional deliberation at its best, the Obama administration's deal with Iran is the product of diplomacy at its worst. As the negotiations neared completion earlier this year, President Obama began building his case for the deal on the specious claim that the only alternative to the deal was war. This black-or-white setup--the notion that the art of statesmanship is little more than navigating a series of binary either-or propositions--is plainly absurd. It misses the mark. We learned this from the fiasco following the New START treaty in 2010. At that time, President Obama and Secretary Clinton warned that it was the only way to reset the relationship with Russia. But now, 5 years later, we know it was, in fact, the starting point for the worst era of U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War. But the Obama administration has repeated this ``my way or war'' maxim with such faithful devotion and emotional conviction that it appears at some point along the way they began to believe it themselves. They actually started to believe it, even thought it was wrong. Just look at the facts regarding this deal. Fact No. 1: The centerpiece of the agreement is the lifting of significant portions of the multilateral financial, energy, and transportation sanctions currently imposed against Iran. Lifting these sanctions--lifting them prior to any meaningful action by Iran in exchange--will immediately give the world's largest supporter of terrorism access to tens of billions of dollars in currently frozen assets. That is just on day one. Welcoming Iran with open arms to the global marketplace will provide untold future riches to Tehran's revolutionary government. The current sanctions are not perfect, but they are in place for a very good reason: to restrict Iran's access to resources we know its radical leaders will use to acquire nuclear weapons and continue exporting terrorism not only throughout the region but throughout the world. This is not a matter of speculation. It is not a matter of hyperbole. It is exactly what Iran's own leaders have told us in no uncertain terms. Those sanctions were originally put in place in response to Iran's repeated violations of previous nuclear agreements. It is complete fantasy to believe they can be revived in the future when--not if but when--they cheat on this deal. Fact No. 2: Nothing in the agreement will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. It won't. Under the terms of this deal, the Iranian Government will be allowed to conduct research on more advanced nuclear centrifuges after only 8 years. After 15 years, there will be no limits whatsoever on their nuclear fuel production--no limits whatsoever. To believe that this deal will stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program requires an act of blind faith. In fact, it requires us to disregard the facts altogether. Fact No. 3: This agreement will increase Iran's access to conventional weapons and ballistic missiles. It will do this by providing for the removal of the U.N. conventional arms and ballistic missile technology embargo. If this seems out of place in an agreement that was supposed to be about Iran's nuclear weapons program, well, that is because it is. It is entirely out of place for this type of an agreement. It was never supposed to be part of the deal. But you see, in the eleventh-hour negotiations, the Ayatollah demanded it, sensing-- rightly--that the Obama administration was unlikely to object. This deal is not the work of savvy negotiation. No, this deal is the product of desperate capitulation. For years, this administration has been dead set on reaching a deal, any deal with the mullahs in Iran. That is why they got the deal they did, an agreement that fulfills a wish list for the Iranians and the sprawling network of terrorist groups that depend on their largesse, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and Bashar al-Assad's tyrannical regime in Syria. And what does the United States get in exchange? Well, we get a promise from the Ayatollah to abandon Iran's 35-year quest for deliverable nuclear weapons--weapons they crave for the explicit purpose, as they put it, of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth and fulfilling the aspiration of their infamous motto ``Death to America.'' Evidently, this is good enough for the Obama administration and for the supporters of this deal, but it is not good enough for the American people--not even close. In fact, the public opposes the proposed deal by a 2-to-1 margin, but not because they are clamoring for war with Iran. The truth is that most Americans would prefer a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by Iran's apocalyptic, nuclear, ambitious theocracy. But this is not a diplomatic solution. This diplomacy won't solve anything. I would note that the public's overwhelming opposition to the Iran deal did not catch the Obama administration by surprise. In fact, public opposition to the deal was one of the primary reasons why the administration decided not to submit the agreement to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. When Secretary Kerry testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee just a few weeks ago, I asked him to explain why the agreement with Iran was not submitted to the Senate as a treaty for ratification--ratification requiring two-thirds of the Members of this body who support it. His answer was, in effect, to say that the deal does not amount to a treaty because it is a multilateral agreement, one that involves more countries than just Iran and the United States. But the inclusion of multiple parties to an international agreement has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether it can be considered a treaty. There is no shortage of examples of this, of examples of multilateral agreements that have been ratified by the Senate, including the Chemical Weapons Convention, including the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. In fact, as I pointed out to Secretary Kerry at the time, the State Department's own Web site provides a definition of the word ``treaty'' that includes multilateral agreements, which is why I think the more honest and troubling answer was the one that he provided just 1 day earlier when Congressman Reid Ribble of Wisconsin asked Secretary Kerry the exact same question: Why does the Obama administration not consider the Iran deal to be a treaty? This was Secretary Kerry's response to that question asked just 1 day earlier in the other body. Secretary of State John Kerry said as follows: Well, Congressman, I spent quite a few years trying to get a lot of treaties through the United States Senate, and frankly, it's become physically impossible. That's why. Because you can't pass a treaty anymore. This is indefensible. Secretary Kerry's appeal to expedience shows an ignorance of--or disdain for--both principle and precedent. The Senate has not lost the ability to ratify a treaty. No, the Senate is perfectly capable of ratifying treaties, as it did 160 times during the George W. Bush administration. It is just reluctant to ratify unpopular treaties and treaties that undermine U.S. interests. There is a distinction between these two types of treaties. From the Obama administration's perspective, this is a problem with the Senate. But from the perspective of the Constitution, this is the purpose of the Senate, and it is exactly why the framers included the Senate in the treaty-making process. Article II, section 2 of the Constitution states that the President ``shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the senators present concur.'' The sharing of the treaty-making power between the Executive and the Senate is not a quirk, nor is it optional. It is a constitutional command. Both branches are essential. They are essential to this process. Without both branches, you cannot make a treaty and have it take effect. The Executive is best suited to manage negotiations with foreign nations, but only legislative consent can grant the kind of broad political consensus necessary to ensure that the United States lives up to the terms of an agreement in the long run. In ``The Federalist,'' Alexander Hamilton defended the sharing of treaty-making power between the Executive and the Senate. He wrote: ``The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of [the] President of the United States.'' Of course, not all international agreements are treaties, and those that aren't do not need legislative consent in order to go into effect. But, historically, agreements that make long-term commitments or include significant changes to the United States' relationship to another country have been considered treaties and have, therefore, been submitted to the Senate for approval. As I see it, the Iran deal fits both of these categories quite comfortably. The terms of the deal purport to extend well beyond President Obama's remaining time in office. According to the administration's own reckoning, this agreement will fundamentally alter the relationship between the United States and Iran. People of good faith can disagree about whether the Iran deal should be considered a treaty or merely an executive agreement, though not on the farcical grounds provided by Secretary Kerry. But this debate is worth having. This is the debate that we should be having. It is worth it for the sake of our national security and for the health of our political institutions, and it is a debate that must include the Senate, just as the Constitution itself requires. The past few months have been a case study of the dysfunction and the danger that result when the Executive chooses to ignore, instead of engage with, the Senate in order to determine whether an international agreement should be considered a treaty. The President's go-it-alone approach has become all too familiar in the realm of domestic policy. President Obama has spent much of the last 6\1/2\ years justifying his will-to-power Presidency on the basis of expediency. Constitutional restraints and historical precedent have only slowed--never stopped-- the President's routine abuse of power to unilaterally impose his domestic policy preferences on the country. Now, with this Iran deal failing to receive the support of even half of the Senate, the President appears willing to extend his imperial Presidency, even to the area of foreign policy. We must do everything in our power to stop this Iran agreement from receiving congressional sanction. The facts are clear. This is a bad deal for global security, it is a bad deal for our allies--including, especially, Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East--and it is a bad deal for the American people. But we must also learn from this experience. Later this year, the Obama administration will negotiate a major climate change agreement, what will be known as the Paris Protocol. Already the administration has indicated it does not intend to submit the protocol to the Senate for ratification, even though the agreement would call for a significant expansion of the already broad powers of our Federal regulatory regime. It would empower unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to seize even more control over the American energy sector and insert themselves ever further into the everyday lives of the American people. On account of its expected size, scope, cause, and effect on the American economy, failure to submit the Paris Protocol to the Senate as a treaty would be an unprecedented and dangerous abuse of Executive power. Now is the time to make clear to ourselves, to the White House, and to the American people that the Senate understands and plans to defend the centrality of the treaty-making process to the negotiation of international trade agreements and the full and rightful role of the Senate in that important process. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, last month, before the August recess, the Senate took up legislation introduced by my friend Senator Joni Ernst that would have ended Federal funding for Planned Parenthood, transferring subsidies to other women's community health clinics. Unfortunately, the bill failed on its first vote, but the questions raised by the Planned Parenthood scandal and the challenges it presents to Congress and to the American people have only grown since then. At issue are undercover videos released over the last few months that provide an unprecedented behind-the-scenes glimpse inside America's leading abortion provider. These undercover videos were captured by a pro-life organization called the Center for Medical Progress. They contain images and conversations unlike anything ever before submitted for public scrutiny. So far, CMP has released 16 hours of footage depicting what appears to be the routine mutilation of American children, born and unborn; the harvesting and sale of those children's body parts for profit; the means by which Planned Parenthood avoids public detection of and perhaps criminal prosecution for their actions; and, finally, in many ways the most terrifying of all, the nonchalant, blood-chilling amusement Planned Parenthood personnel seem to derive from all of the above. To date, no one has rebutted the evidence contained in these videos. Planned Parenthood's friends and political clients gamely try to change the subject. They take umbrage and they shoot the messenger. They deflect and distract as best they can--the political equivalent of a checkmated lawyer banging his shoe angrily on the table. Even the guilty deserve a defense, after all. But they are guilty. We all know it. You only have to watch the videos for 5 minutes and you know it is true. The subjects of these videos are sincere and candid--casually sharing the secrets of their grisly business with people they think are their co-conspirators. The evidence points to only one conclusion: Planned Parenthood really does these horrifying things. Planned Parenthood makes money at it and laughs about it over lunch. But aside from the primary evidence, do you know how else we know it is true? Because if it were false, we would know for sure that it was false. The mainstream media--Big Abortion's loudest shoe banger of them all--would be thundering Planned Parenthood's vindication from every headline, every homepage, every network satellite. If these videos were false--if a pro-life group somehow fabricated this narrative of Planned Parenthood's greed, barbarism, and cruelty--it would be a story. Who are we kidding? It would be the story, a career-making scoop, with fame, Pulitzer Prizes, lucrative book deals, and speaking tours awaiting the journalist who broke the story. Yet if you open a newspaper, click on the legacy media sites, and turn on the news-- nothing. You see nothing. The major networks have gone dark on the videos over the last month, and major newspapers have scrubbed the scandal from their front pages. Why the silence? Simple. They know it is true too. The media looked for the facts, they found them, and then they turned away. In the case of the Planned Parenthood undercover videos in the court of public opinion, as they taught me in law school: Qui tacit consentire videtur--the media's silence indicates the media's consent. Everyone who has watched these individual videos knows they have the power to change minds and in only one direction. So the pro-abortion news media is doing everything they can to suppress the videos' exposure. So tightly have the wagons been circled that the media can't even attack the Center for Medical Progress as much as they would surely like to because doing so would require context. That context would be exceedingly painful here. Even describing these videos--even mentioning them to a wider audience--can only lead to curious Google searches, then tweets, then Facebook shares, YouTube views, and inevitably to public horror at what people would see and the organization responsible for that horror. This, Planned Parenthood's friends in the media cannot allow, and so they ignore the undercover videos, just like they tried to ignore the harrowing case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in 2013, the perennial scandal of dangerous clinic conditions and the horror of partial-birth abortion in years past. Every pro-choice activist, including those with press credentials, knows that the greatest threat to abortion-on-demand is the truth about what it entails. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in his Nobel lecture: ``[Violence] is necessarily interwoven with falsehood.'' The media hides the truth about Planned Parenthood and about Big Abortion--even at the expense of their own credibility, even to the endangerment of vulnerable women and the enrichment of monsters. Like Tolkien's Gollum, they must protect the ``precious.'' I am not a reporter, nor am I an editor or a producer. I am certainly not a network news anchor, a job for which I lack the skills, the experience and, alas, the hairline necessary for that position. I am a lawyer by training and now a Senator. Therefore, I cannot make leading newspapers, news sites, and television networks tell this story, but it occurs to me I can try to tell it myself on the Senate floor. More than just tell that story, I can make the case to our colleagues and to our fellow Americans. For the next several weeks, for as long as it takes, I will come to the floor of the Senate--the American people's great deliberative Chamber--and make that case. The public deserves to know the truth about Planned Parenthood, the inhumanity it practices, the laws it may be breaking, and the lies it tells. Taxpayers deserve to know what their money--more than a half billion dollars last year alone--is paying for and how their taxes might be more conscionably spent. Americans deserve to know what evil is abroad in their land and what good can be done to overcome it. In the struggle between Planned Parenthood and its victims, President Obama and his party have sided a rich and violent special interest group over the innocent women they exploit, the tiny children they mutilate, and the vulnerable communities they poison. I harbor no illusions about softening such weaponized extremism with a few floor speeches, nor do I believe that the 45 Senators who voted in August to reaffirm Planned Parenthood's eligibility for hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal funding will change their minds--at least not yet. The history of our Nation is the story of a good and loving people who stubbornly, if sometimes slowly, overcome narrow, prejudicial legacies. When presented with the truth, Americans have always come to see and defend the innate dignity of our once overlooked brothers and sisters and welcome them out of the shadows and into our hearts and our society. Indeed, the gradual embrace of our youngest Americans is well underway. In fact, it is gaining momentum all the time. With every Instagrammed ultrasound image, every overjoyed Facebook post, and every advance in embryology and obstetrics, Americans move closer and closer to the truth about the unborn. At the same time, every new undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress is bringing us all a little closer to the truth about Planned Parenthood. In coming weeks, I hope these speeches might help my colleagues and anyone who might be listening to come a little closer to the truth about both. As I make the case against using taxpayer funds to facilitate, protect, and promote Planned Parenthood's deceptions and violence, I hope my colleagues on the other side of these questions will join me from time to time. A good debate is always more fruitful than a monologue. But as long as Planned Parenthood's friends remain mute, I will endeavor to improve upon the silence and, hopefully in time, improve upon our inadequate legal protections for the dignity of human life. As I said, even the guilty deserve a defense, but so do the innocent. However vulnerable they may be--both children in the womb and mothers in the waiting room--however forsaken, however afraid, the innocent are never defenseless. Their defense is the truth, and I am going to do what I can to tell it. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to one of the country's exemplary organizations, Intermountain Healthcare, which this year celebrates 40 years of service to people in Utah and the surrounding area. Based in Salt Lake City, Intermountain Healthcare has been a longtime provider of top-of-the-line care, as well as a leading example among the country's integrated health systems. Prior to the organization's inception in 1975, the 15 hospitals that would become Intermountain Healthcare were administered and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After deciding it would divest its hospitals, the church yielded its responsibilities to a new, secular, not-for-profit organization known as Intermountain Healthcare. Since that time, Intermountain Healthcare has grown to include 21 hospitals across the State of Utah, as well as one in Idaho. In addition to its hospitals, Intermountain also includes more than 185 clinics and 1,400 multi-specialty doctors and advanced-practice clinicians. Its not-for-profit health plan, SelectHealth, serves more than 750,000 members. Its integrated structure allows Intermountain to work with people at all stages of their lives, before and after they may require medical care, to optimize health. Intermountain Healthcare has been completely dedicated to its mission of ``helping people live the healthiest lives possible,'' and for the last 40 years it has successfully accomplished that mission. Intermountain strives to provide the highest quality care and services to all at an affordable cost, at times, even providing care for those unable to finance their own medical needs. In 2014, in more than 268,000 cases, Intermountain Healthcare donated more than $384 million in services to those who were unable to pay. In addition, Intermountain operates safety net community clinics for people who are uninsured or who have low incomes, and it provides financial support to 30 independent community clinics in the region. These clinics cared for people in more than 366,000 visits last year. Among its many other community benefits, Intermountain also provided $33 million to support medical training programs, residencies, and other health-related education. Intermountain Healthcare is a vital leader within the Utah community and truly embodies its values of integrity, trust, excellence, accountability, and mutual respect that are critical in the provision of health care. Led by a volunteer board of trustees who donate their time without pay themselves, Intermountain is making a huge impact in the world of health care, as well as in the lives of the individuals it serves. Intermountain Healthcare has for years been recognized as one of the leading organizations of its kind. This year Intermountain Healthcare had five hospitals included on the Truven Health Analytics annual 100 Top Hospitals study. There was only one other health system in the U.S. that had five hospitals on the list. In 2014, Intermountain was named to the InformationWeek Elite 100 rankings, which compiles a list of top business technology innovators in the U.S. These are just a few examples from the resume of accomplishments and recognition Intermountain Healthcare has rightfully earned. In addition to the administration of its health services and medical group, Intermountain Healthcare provides key emergency transport services in its region. In 1978, Intermountain Life Flight made its first helicopter patient transport, making it only the seventh air medical helicopter service in the United States. Life Flight now owns and operates 7 helicopters and 3 fixed-wing aircraft. This operation has been crucial to locating, rescuing, and saving patients who are in time-sensitive, critical condition. The growth, quality, and innovation of Intermountain Healthcare is impressive, but what stands out even more is this organization's character. It has always sought to follow the highest ethical standard, even in cases when legal standards were lower or when transparency may have led to embarrassment. One example was its decision to proactively notify certain patients of possible exposure to a rare disease, even though the risk was very low and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that notification was not required. Another example was its decision to voluntarily self-disclose potential compliance issues with a Federal law to the U.S. attorney, even though it exposed itself to significant penalties. Intermountain is an organization that always takes the high road, seeks to do the right thing, and raises the bar for ethical behavior. When I look at Intermountain Healthcare, I see an example to the country of what it means to serve. I see health care providers who make people a priority rather than profit. I see an organization that values honesty and ethical conduct with its patients, its peers, and the government. We in Utah are blessed by such a high standard of conduct. May we all follow this example as we fulfill our duty to honorably serve our fellow citizens and contribute to our community. Please join me in commending Intermountain Healthcare on the leadership it has demonstrated and the positive influence it has had on American health care in its first 40 years of service.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 6:15 p.m.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 1881, which would transfer Federal funds now granted to Planned Parenthood to other women's health care and counseling centers. It is a modest, commonsense response to the blood-chilling scandal besetting America's leading abortion provider. To date, only 4 of the promised 12 undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officers and facilities have been released. To be sure, in coming months there will be more revelations about Planned Parenthood's profiteering, violence, and fraud. There will be congressional investigations to cut through the obstructions and obfuscations of Planned Parenthood's army of lawyers, spokespeople, and friends in the media. There will be criminal investigations into whether physicians altered procedures in violation of the law and in violation of medical ethics to maximize the prices they could charge for the remains of their victims. There will be inquiries into Planned Parenthood's army of clerks, lawyers, and bookkeepers who turned barbarism into commerce. There might well be civil litigation brought against Planned Parenthood by former patients who did not realize their harrowing personal ordeals were being exploited for profit by people they thought they could trust. It may be some time before all the facts come out about the full scope of Planned Parenthood's moral and economic corruption, but the revelations exposed in just the first four videos all by themselves are more than enough to disqualify Planned Parenthood from continued taxpayer support. After all, nobody is entitled to taxpayer money. Nobody is entitled to it. Nobody can just assume that it is theirs. Recipients have to continually demonstrate their worthiness for public support. I think we can all agree it is not too much to ask that our women's health care grants not finance a criminal conspiracy against American women and children. So, of course, we should pass Senator Ernst's bill. Now, it does not cut any funding. We have to remember that. It does not cut anything; it just transfers Planned Parenthood's grants to other women's and community health centers. This is a no-brainer. This is something every Member of this body should be able to vote for and do so enthusiastically. Yet this bill did not pass today. It did not get past the cloture vote. Planned Parenthood's defenders don't even want to debate it. They are not willing even to bring it to the floor to allow it to be debated, discussed, and voted on on the merits at the end of the day. Now, in a sense, I cannot say I blame them, but the fear of open dialogue on the other side of the aisle is itself part and parcel of the unfolding scandal. Now, let's be honest. Let's be honest about the fact that the multibillion-dollar abortion industry includes grisly revenue streams, legal corner-cutting, and the bullying dehumanization of the human family's most vulnerable members. This should not surprise anyone who gives the matter 5 minutes of concentrated thought. For all of the political spin, at the end of the day, Planned Parenthood makes its money doing things any child could tell you are simply indefensible. That is why those things are almost never actually defended, including on this floor today. Defenders of Planned Parenthood offer, instead, gauzy rhetoric about ``care'' and ``access'' and ``choice,'' which are totally irrelevant to Senator Ernst's thoughtful, focused compromise proposal. On the other hand are the shocking words at the heart of this scandal. Shocking words like ``abortion,'' ``organ,'' ``price,'' ``crunch'' are carefully, almost religiously avoided. That is what you do when you are forced to defend the indefensible. You distract, you confuse, you talk about anything else besides the facts at hand. In this debate, Planned Parenthood's defenders' true adversary is not the Center for Medical Progress or the pro-life movement or the millions of even pro-choice Americans outraged by the scandal. Like all defenders of institutional violence, their real adversary is the truth. The pro-life movement today may love different sinners and hate different sins than previous social reform movements, but they fight for the same truth: that not only are all men created equal but that all human beings are, in fact, human beings. Abortion on demand survives today as other peculiar institutions once did, violating a universal moral principle by disguising a biological fact. Such is the nature of violence. As the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in his Nobel lecture in 1974: [L]et us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of national bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood. Complicity in falsehood, Mr. President, that some of us created in the image and likeness of a loving God are not; that some of us endowed with inalienable human rights weren't; that because of the color of our skin, the arrangement of our genes, the content of our prayers or the tiny size of a little girl's hand, some of us become them--all to absolve ourselves from doing to them, to the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless, terrible, unspeakable things that we know are terrible. That is what violence demands. Because the inhumane but all too common logic goes: If we all do it, and we all agree only to speak of it in comforting words, then, maybe, just maybe, we can tell ourselves it isn't wrong. ``Clump of cells,'' ``tissue specimens,'' ``products of conception''--but even as we grope through this fog of lies, we all know the truth. We know that one day, that truth is going to burn through the euphemisms like the sun through the clouds. When that day comes, we are going to have to choose whether to stay complicit in the falsehood, to crouch down a while longer in our comforting fog or stand up and face the searing truth of what is being done to these little hands and hearts, our fellow passengers to the grave, still so fresh from God. The day will come when, in an act not of reckoning but of love, America finally sets these things right in full. That day is not yet here. For now, even though Planned Parenthood apparently breaks some laws, its lucrative business remains protected by others. So even when we do pass the Ernst bill, and we will one day soon, Planned Parenthood will nonetheless continue at least for a while in its grisly work, but not in our name, and not with our money. Planned Parenthood has betrayed our trust and the trust of the women who came to them for help. Within the community of women's health and services, even among those who support its mission, Planned Parenthood now stands apart. Planned Parenthood has chosen a path we cannot follow, crossed a line we cannot ignore, and profited from an unspeakable business we cannot support. We can, and under the Ernst bill we will, support health care, especially for vulnerable women and children who are always targets for exploitation. That is why we must pass the Ernst bill, and why I urge my colleagues to support it, to protect America's women and children from Planned Parenthood's ongoing abuse and to protect American taxpayers from financing it. We no longer have to be complicit in the lie of Planned Parenthood or the violence that it protects. The Ernst legislation, S. 1881, finally accepts the facts, embraces the truth, and would help move our Nation a small step forward toward the culture of life America's every mother and child deserve. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk, amendment No. 2282, withdrawing Federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. LEE

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