Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, Gwain Brown was 16 years old. He was a sophomore in high school in Chicago, IL, and he was all hyped up to throw himself the biggest 16th birthday party that his friends had ever seen. At the end of April, he was going to throw down. Yet, on April 1, he was standing in front of a gas station when a gunman opened fire and hit Gwain in the leg and the chest. One of his basketball teammates thought the initial news of Gwain's death was an April Fools' joke as it happened on April 1. So, when he heard about it, he just went back to sleep. His friends said Gwain was the life of the party and was so energetic. ``I was . . . with him . . . a week ago, and for that to happen in this time period, I'm just in shock.'' At a vigil, his elementary school principal read an excerpt of something he had written well in school. Gwain wrote: ``I want to be a good son, always be there for my mom and always be there to take care of her.''

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, Ryan Keith Cox was 50 years old when he was shot and killed on May 31. He was known for his soft-spoken nature and his powerful singing voice in his church choir, and he was constantly affecting those around him with small but meaningful gestures of kindness. The day that he was killed in Virginia Beach, a close coworker of Ryan's, Christi Dewar, was with him when the shooting started. Ryan told Christi and other colleagues to barricade themselves in the break room. Christi implored Keith to join them in the break room, but he said to her ``I have to go check on the other ones.'' Keith left and was soon shot by the gunman as he was assisting other coworkers in reaching safety. Christi said: Every time I was upset, [Ryan] would give me a [big] hug. When I was upset about something, he knew exactly what to say to make you smile. He's the type of person who you know would lay down his life for someone, just like he did. Bishop Williams of Faith World Ministries in Norfolk said that he had known Keith and his family for years. They were close, a very loving family, and had just been ``leaders in the church world,'' Bishop Williams said. Ryan Keith Cox was 50 years old when he was shot in Virginia Beach.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, Joshua Hardy was 2 years older. He was 52 years old. He had been working for 4\1/2\ years as an engineer and technician for the city of Virginia Beach. He was raised in Hampton Roads. He came from a really big family, and he was described by his friends and his family as being incredibly caring, especially about kids. He didn't have any children of his own, but he often watched over his nieces and nephews. One of his nieces, Tasha, remembered that he was around a lot. ``He cared about me and all of my cousins,'' she said. ``He was like a father figure to me because my dad wasn't around.'' In 2011, Joshua actually published a book, called the ``ABC Book on Protecting Yourself from Strangers.'' The people he worked with remember being so impressed that Joshua had gone above and beyond the call. One of his colleagues in the engineering department, Larry Knight, gave a copy of the book to his daughter and his grandson. He remembers Joshua as just always having a smile on the job: Joshua was one of the nicest men you would ever care to meet. He was funny and kindhearted. [He] would do anything for you.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, last week, a man submitted his 2-weeks' notice to his place of employment in Virginia Beach before going there and shooting 12 people and injuring 4 others. He unloaded dozens of rounds indiscriminately. In addition to having two handguns, he had extended ammunition magazines and a suppressor to muffle the sound of gunfire. This was the 100th mass shooting in America, coming on the 100th day of the year. This has become a regular part of life in the United States of America--individuals walking into churches and shopping malls and schools and places of employment and shooting indiscriminately such that dozens of innocent lives are lost. In most cases, the same kinds of weapons are used--semiautomatic rifles, extended magazines--weapons or components of weapons that are banned in other countries and that were banned in this country for a period of time because they were believed to have been so dangerous such that they should have been in the exclusive province of the military and law enforcement.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, a couple weeks ago, Jaylin Ellzey was a freshman at Fenger Academy High School in Chicago. According to his uncle, Jacob, he was an outgoing, kindhearted kid. He lived with his mother. He had two sisters and three brothers. Jaylin is not around anymore because he was one of those victims of gun violence in the city of Chicago. His uncle said: Summer in the city, it's just something different. Other kids look forward to going to summer camp. He was just trying to make sure he lived another day. His uncle, Jacob, began tearing up as he recalled his favorite memory of Jaylin as a small child. Whenever Jaylin and his brother would come stay with their uncle, they would take a bath, and then they would nestle amongst the pillows and the blankets, waiting for their uncle to blast them with hot air from a blow dryer. ``He was just a lovable kid surviving his environment,'' said his uncle. ``And he knew about family. Family was always instilled in him.'' Since my life was changed in December of 2012, when 20 first graders were killed in Sandy Hook, I have tried to come down to the floor every couple weeks and tell the stories of victims of gun violence in this country to try to put some personality behind the 10,000 lives that have been lost in the last 100 days, and I told you about 5 of the victims this morning. Our inaction is complicity. There are tough things, and then there are easy things. I get it that there are some anti-gun violence measures that I would support that are just too hot for some Republican Members, but I don't care what State you are from, 97 percent of your constituents, 80 percent of your constituents--the vast majority of your constituents--support expanding background checks to make sure that if you buy a gun online or you buy a gun at a gun show, you have to go through a 5-minute background check. All of our constituents, no matter whether we represent a blue State or a red State, support extreme risk protection orders--the idea that you should be able to go to court when somebody is on the verge of lashing out against someone else or going to hurt themselves and take away their guns, at least temporarily. These are things that are not controversial anywhere, except for here, that we could pass. Since the House passed the background check bill--by the way, with bipartisan support--10,000 people have died, but there have been 109 mass shootings. Thirty-one States have had a mass shooting; 166 kids have been killed or injured; 175 teenagers have been killed or injured. I am on the floor today to send my heartfelt condolences to the families in Virginia Beach who continue to mourn yet another mass shooting. I express, as I always do, my condolences to the families of gun violence throughout this country. Eighty to ninety people lose their life every day from a gunshot wound. I am also here today to ask my colleagues to think about why we continue to refuse to have a debate on a piece of legislation that the House passed 100 days ago in a bipartisan fashion. Even if you don't love the version of the background checks bill that the House passed, bring your own version to the floor--bring a different bill that will address the epidemic of gun violence in this country. All I ask is that you don't do nothing; that you stop your absolute silence in the face of this epidemic of slaughter. Let the Senate be the Senate. I heard there was a time some years ago when the U.S. Senate actually debated legislation. I have read in the history books that this is supposedly the greatest deliberative body in the world. We are doing no deliberation here. Bill after bill passes the House of Representatives. None of them come before the Senate for a vote--no healthcare bills, no immigration bills, no anti- gun violence bills. I get it that the bills that pass the House probably can't pass a Republican-led Senate, but why are we not even trying? Who is in charge here? The special interests who want nothing to happen, the gun lobby, the health insurance companies or are we in charge? We are the ones who were elected. We are the Members of the U.S. Senate. We could choose to have these debates, hash out our differences, and see if there is a proposal that 60 of us could agree on that would do something about this unacceptable level of gun violence that plagues this Nation on a daily basis. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, LaQuita Brown was 39 years old. She was a public servant from Chesapeake, VA. She had worked in the public works department for more than 4 years. She was a right-of-way agent. Her friends called her ``Ms. Worldwide'' because she loved to travel. She had been all around the world, and her social media was plastered with pictures of her travels. Her father, as any father would be, is absolutely heartbroken by her death. He said: She was just everything. She was everything to me. I know nobody's perfect--but from the time she was born, she had no faults. For the Brown family, the grief surrounding LaQuita's death comes on the heels of LaQuita's brother dying from a hit-and-run driver 3 years ago. Her father said that LaQuita helped him through the grief. ``She saved me,'' he said. ``I wouldn't have made it through that [without her].'' In 100 days into the year, we have had 100 mass shootings. It doesn't happen anywhere else in the world except in the United States of America. We can't claim to be helpless, and we can't claim to have no solutions because, if it only happens here and nowhere else, then there must be something different happening here. We can learn. We can adapt. It has now been 100 days since the House of Representatives passed a universal background checks bill, a universal background checks bill that is supported by 90 percent of Americans and would have a significant downward effect on the number of people who are shot in this country. We tend to pay attention as a nation and as a body only when something like Virginia Beach happens, when there is a mass shooting of an epic scale--when 5 or 10 or 20 people lose their lives at one time. Yet, since the House passed the universal background checks bill, 10,000 people have been shot and killed in America. That is a stunning number. There have been 10,000 people shot and killed in America in just the 100 days since the House passed the universal background checks bill, but the vast majority of these individuals were not killed in mass shootings. Most of these were suicides. Most of these were individuals who had taken their own lives with weapons. Others were accidental shootings. Many of them were homicides. The grief and the pain that comes with all of those is no different than the grief that LaQuita Brown's family is feeling right now. We should care about every single one of these deaths. The reason I pegged this to the passage of the background checks bill is that we know that background checks save lives in States that have universal background checks, meaning, if you are getting a gun in a commercial sale, you need to prove that you are not a criminal or that you are not seriously mentally ill. In the States that have universal background checks, you have fewer suicides, and you have fewer homicides. Connecticut is a perfect example. The research shows that once we passed our universal background checks requirement--and we did it quite a number of years ago--we saw a 40-percent reduction in gun homicides in our State. Similarly, when Missouri went from having a universal background checks requirement to its not having one, the State saw a 40-percent increase in gun homicides. Not every single one of these 10,000 deaths was preventable, but many of them could have been. It is not that we don't know what to do, and it is not that we don't know what makes this country different; it is just that we are unwilling to take those steps. Just this past weekend, 52 people were shot in communities across this country. There were 10 deaths from gunshot wounds in Chicago alone. These victims are just as worthy of remembering as the victims in Virginia Beach or in Sandy Hook or in Parkland.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted for the remainder of the day to my fellow, Dr. Kali Cyrus, and that they be granted for the rest of the year to the interns in my office, named Jyot Singh, Darcy Farwell, Alexandra Hartman, Jordan Sicklick, Holly McGrath, Jordan Adjepong, and Cady Stanton.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, the House recently passed a piece of legislation called the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act. The substance of this legislation would prevent a Trump administration rule from going into effect that would allow for States to license the kind of insurance plans that Senator Baldwin was referring to. These are plans that do not cover preexisting conditions or the essential healthcare benefits. I am going to offer right now a unanimous consent request to proceed to immediate consideration of this bill. I suspect it will be objected to. After an opportunity for Republicans to object, I will speak to the merits of this legislation. So let me start with a request to bring this legislation that will protect people with preexisting conditions and the essential healthcare benefits to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. President. Again, I share in Senator Baldwin's disappointment that we can't move immediately to this legislation. This isn't a political game. These are individuals all across the country who are relying on us to make sure that they are not subject to the abuses of the market. They are relying on us to make sure we don't return to the days in which insurance companies could prevent you from getting healthcare simply because you were sick or return to the days when you bought an insurance product and then it didn't turn out to ultimately be insurance. Let's be clear. The waiver that the President has allowed States to take advantage of would absolutely--it would by definition of the rule--allow for States to waive the preexisting condition requirement. The rule itself says that the innovation that happens at the State level does not have to comply with the essential healthcare benefits requirement. It says in the rule that you do not have to comply with preexisting conditions requirements. That is the reason that they are so cheap. So I am at a loss as to why we have Republicans on the floor saying that preexisting conditions will be protected under this rule. That is not true. The rule says that States do not have to comply with the preexisting requirement. It says that States do not have to cover essential healthcare benefits. That is why these junk plans are attractive, because they aren't actually insurance, and they are only insurance for people who are at the time very healthy. We have to get on the same page here. We have to be reading from the same script. The fact of the matter is, the definition of the rule allows for protections for people with preexisting conditions to be discriminated against. I am sorry that we weren't able to bring up this piece of legislation because healthcare insurance should be healthcare insurance. And what we worry about are two things. First is that by allowing for the marketing of these junk plans, you are going to have all sorts of people who today aren't sick jumping into those plans, coming off of the plans that protect people with preexisting conditions. The people who are going to be left behind on those regulated plans are people who are sick, people who have preexisting conditions. So you are, all of a sudden, bifurcating the insurance market. You are going to have a market for people who are currently healthy, and then you are going to have a market for people who are sick or have ever had a preexisting condition. You do not have to be an actuary and you don't have to have taken classes in healthcare insurance economics to know that when that happens, rates skyrocket for people who have a preexisting condition-- for the millions of people around this country who have had a serious diagnosis at some point during their life. So as you sell these junk plans, there is no way but for costs to go up. That is on top of the increases we saw last year. Last year, insurance companies priced in the costs of Trump administration sabotage. They priced into their premiums the attacks on our healthcare system from the Republican Congress. In many States, we saw insurance plans pushing 60 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, 80 percent increases in premiums. Now on top of that, for sick people, for people with preexisting conditions, the rates are going to be even bigger because of the flight of those without preexisting conditions into marketplaces set up specifically for them. The second thing we worry about is that these junk plans market themselves as insurance, but they aren't. Here is a list of things that I would generally consider to be covered under my insurance plan. If I bought an insurance plan, if I handed over a check to the insurance company, I kind of think that if I go to the emergency room, I am not going to have to pay for it out of my pocket. I am thinking to myself: Well, you know what, if I need prescription drugs, they are going to cover some of that. Well, if I have a mental health diagnosis, doesn't insurance cover my head as well as the rest of my body? These are the things that I would assume that insurance covers, but these junk plans don't cover these things. Junk plans do not cover trips to the emergency room. Junk plans often don't cover hospitalizations. They don't cover prescription drugs. Almost none of them cover maternity care. Your checkups might not be covered under a junk plan. Preexisting conditions will cost you more. Contraception isn't going to be in lots of these plans. They are not required to cover lab services or pediatrics. Mental health isn't going to be in many of these junk plans. As for rehab services, if you get injured, you are not going to find those in some of these plans. And if you have a chronic disease, there is nothing in the law that requires treatment for those to be covered. So all of a sudden, as for the things you thought insurance covered, they don't cover it, and you have been paying a premium for years. Then, when you finally need access to the system, it is not there. That is what these plans can do. That is what the law and the Trump administration rule allows States to license as insurance. And that is why we are on the floor today, to ask--to plead--to our colleagues to bring legislation before this body, either Senator Baldwin's legislation or Representative Kuster's legislation that has already passed the House, that would stop these junk insurance plans from being sold all around this country, which will trick many Americans into believing they have insurance when they don't and will dramatically raise the cost of care potentially in many States for people who have serious preexisting conditions. I am not surprised at the objection to both of our unanimous consent requests. Nevertheless, I am disappointed in it. We will continue to be down here on the floor for as much time as it takes to try to rally the whole of this body to protect people with preexisting conditions, to fight back against the sabotage of the Affordable Care Act and the healthcare system by this President. Hopefully, one day we will be successful. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, across America, there are 130 million individuals who have a preexisting condition. This means individuals have a diagnosis, an illness, a medical condition that without the Affordable Care Act would likely mean they were priced out of insurance because the costs associated with their illness are so high that no insurer would provide them coverage or the cost of insurance is much higher than those who don't have that illness or that condition. These preexisting conditions don't discriminate. They affect Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, people who watch FOX News, people who watch MSNBC. This isn't a partisan issue; preexisting conditions affect everybody. In my State, give or take, 522,000 people have preexisting conditions, and I talk to them every time I go back to Connecticut. I remember 2 years ago when I was walking across the State--something I do every year. I take about a week in the summer, and I walk from one end of the State to the other end--there were families who would find out on social media where I was going to be walking that day and pre- position themselves hours ahead of time by the side of the road so they could tell me about their diagnosis. One young woman was sobbing on the side of the road in Meriden, CT, as she explained to me her lupus diagnosis and how, without the Affordable Care Act and the protections it provides her, she would not have insurance; she would not be able to afford the medications that keep her well and alive; and her life would be ruined. Those individuals are freaking out today because they have watched this President--and frankly this Republican Congress--use every power at their disposal, every tool in their toolkit to try to take away these protections for people who are sick, for people who, through no fault of their own, just have higher medical bills than the rest of us. They don't feel like they should be discriminated against or forsaken by the health insurance marketplace because of their unfortunate diagnosis. The latest assault on people with preexisting conditions comes through an effort by the administration to allow States to sell insurance plans that don't cover basic medical needs, plans that would allow for a skimpy set of benefits to be sold out on the insurance marketplaces. Now, admittedly, that might be good news for pretty healthy people who don't want to pay for a full insurance product because they think they don't need it. The first problem with that is you are only healthy until you are not healthy. The second bigger problem is, when all the healthy people go to these skimpy plans--sometimes called junk plans--and all the people with preexisting conditions get left behind on the regulated plans, where insurance is real, where it covers everything you need, costs go down for the healthy people, and they go through the roof for the sick people, which is the entire problem we were trying to solve in 2009 and 2010. It is, in fact, the problem the Republicans say repeatedly out on the campaign trail and back in their districts and States that they want to solve too. I don't know that I have met a Republican Senator who doesn't say that they don't think people with preexisting conditions should be discriminated against. Yet this rule the administration is proposing is going to allow States to do just that. It will allow for a ``have and have not'' insurance system, in which people with preexisting conditions are charged more and people without preexisting conditions are charged less. My intention was to come down to the floor today and offer a unanimous consent request to get us on the road to solving this latest assault on people with preexisting conditions. Let me explain to you what my request was going to be. I understand there are Republican objections, and there is not the ability to object today when I make this request, so I will reserve the right to make that request until early next week. Here is the substance of the request I was planning to make today. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a piece of legislation called the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act, and what this legislation would have done--and will do, if passed and signed by the President--is prevent HHS from taking any action to implement the administration's waivers for States to set up these junk plans, these skimpy plans. It is in keeping with the intent of the Affordable Care Act, which is to allow flexibility for States--there is an ability under the Affordable Care Act for States to innovate and to be flexible, but the Affordable Care Act says you can't do that in a way that hurts consumers. You can't do that in a way that provides less coverage to consumers. The rule the Trump administration is proposing, in many of our minds, is a violation of the Affordable Care Act in and of itself, which is still the law of the land, but this piece of legislation would clarify that you cannot allow for the development and widespread sale of these junk insurance plans without dramatically harming the healthcare of the 130 million Americans who have preexisting conditions. So my intent was to ask for a unanimous consent request to bring this bill for a vote in the Senate. I will do that next week. At some point, we have to act like we actually are the U.S. Senate. It is not enough to just say over and over again that you support people with preexisting conditions and then do nothing as the administration launches a daily, nonstop, unending, unceasing, relentless effort to destroy healthcare for people with preexisting conditions. This is the latest assault on people with preexisting conditions, but it stands in a very long, ongoing line of actions by this administration, backed up by Republicans in the Congress, to try to reduce coverage and increase costs for people with preexisting conditions. It started, of course, with the whole repeal effort, which would not have replaced the Affordable Care Act with anything meaningful. The bill that passed the House of Representatives would have stripped healthcare away from 30 million Americans. The tax bill that included a portion of healthcare repeal that was passed and signed by the President eliminates healthcare for 13 million Americans, and many of those have preexisting conditions. As we speak today, the administration is readying to go to court with a whole bunch of Republican attorneys general to ask the Federal judicial system to overturn protections for people with preexisting conditions. So having failed to get the entirety of the bill repealed through the Congress, the administration now is going to court to try to get the protections for people with preexisting conditions repealed. Once again, this Congress, this Senate is silent on that case. We have offered another piece of legislation to stop that lawsuit from going forward. We don't have any takers on the Republican side. This assault is real. I didn't make it up. It is not imagined. If this court case that the Trump administration is pushing succeeds, overnight the entirety of the Affordable Care Act will be invalidated, and there is no plan to replace it. If these junk plans go into effect--listen, maybe I will be wrong. I hope I am wrong. Maybe there will not be a flight of people to these skimpy plans, but much of the analyses I have seen suggests that will happen. If it does, there is just no way, other than for the cost to go up for everybody who is left behind on the regulated plans. I don't know about you, but when I talk to my folks living paycheck to paycheck in Connecticut, they don't have a lot of room in their budget for increased premiums for healthcare. They are maxed out as it is. So I will stand down for now, but I will be back early next week to offer this unanimous consent request. I hope, if my colleagues turn it down, if they don't want to bring up a piece of legislation that would stop this latest regulatory assault on the Affordable Care Act, that they will come to the table with other ideas as to how to protect people with preexisting conditions from this campaign of sabotage by the administration; that they will finally recognize that this assault on the Affordable Care Act in the court system is a really awful precedent to set. It is going to come back and bite all of us as legislators if it is successful. Without any real hope of a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, it leads to a humanitarian disaster in which 20 million to 30 million people lose insurance because of it. This is as important as it gets. There is very little that matters to people more than their health and their healthcare, and I hope that possibly next week we can come together as a body and finally do something about the administration's attempt to take away these protections for sick people and people with complicated diagnoses all across the country. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to celebrate the 54th anniversary of Head Start and the 25th birthday of Early Head Start. Head Start and Early Head Start provide essential early childhood education services to almost 6,000 low-income children and families in Connecticut. In addition, across the 38 Connecticut centers, over 7,000 children have been able to access healthcare services, 2,000 families have gotten help through crisis intervention programs, and over 800 parents advanced their own education. For these families and thousands of others across the country, Head Start is a lifeline for struggling families and a stepping stone out of poverty. Fifty-four years since its founding, the work of Head Start and Early Head Start remains paramount. Children in poverty are more than twice as likely to suffer traumatic childhood experiences such as abuse, neglect, homelessness, and parental substance abuse. Exposure to these kinds of trauma results in greater likelihood of chronic disease, mental illness, and substance use disorders, as well as decreased likelihood of high school graduation and increased likelihood of involvement with the juvenile justice system. We know that children having access to safe and stable environments mitigates these effects and that Head Start is on the frontline of providing children with nurturing relationships. This Saturday, not only do we celebrate the Head Start program reaching another milestone, but we celebrate the hundreds of thousands of dedicated Head Start staff and educators who work hard every day to support and teach the next generation.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, over the Easter recess, Senator Romney and I had the privilege to visit our troops and our diplomats in Iraq. They are serving us well, and they are putting their lives on the line as we partner with the Iraqis to make sure that ISIS does not reconstitute itself in Iraq or in Syria. We have taken their territory away from them, but there are still over 20,000 or so ISIS fighters and loyalists in and around the region. Once again, our trip proved to both of us that our soldiers and our diplomats are the best in the world. We are so lucky to have them be so willing to stand on guard for us all over the world. It may be the most important assignment today in Iraq as we continue to battle the scattered remnants of ISIS. I don't want a President who takes the unquestioning advice of his military leaders. I want a President who is willing to push back. But nobody knows how to defeat ISIS better than the U.S. military. They effectively have done it twice. They beat al-Qaida in Iraq, and then they came back again with many partners to take territory away from ISIS. Nobody takes more seriously the threat of ISIS's reemergence or the threat of an expansionist Iran than the U.S. military. But I am here today to talk about our President's refusal, over and over again, to listen to the advice that he is being given by his generals and by his advisers at the Department of Defense. Instead, he is listening to the Iraq hawks inside the White House who think about this problem through the air-conditioned safety of their West Wing offices with little regard to how things actually work in the real world on the ground of the Middle East. I want to talk about our two main objectives today in Iraq and in Iran, and I want to frame this in the context of today's disastrous news that the Iranians are restarting elements of their nuclear weapons program. First, let's talk about a bipartisan commitment that we share, and that is the commitment to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In and of itself, it would be a world disaster. It would present an immediate existential threat to our partners in Israel, and it would result in an arms race throughout the region that would be exacerbated by the fact that in the last 2 years, the Trump administration has made the decision to engage in a new nuclear partnership with the Saudis, which puts the Saudis on a quicker path to obtaining a nuclear weapon in case that arms race sets off. What the Trump administration has done is to goad Iran into restarting their nuclear weapons program. They announced last night that they are pulling out of their side of the Iran nuclear agreement and that they are going to start to, once again, take steps that could lead them to a quick breakout to a nuclear weapon. Those who opposed the agreement that President Obama signed did so, in part, because they said that it could allow Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program in 10 to 13 years and that 10 to 13 years wasn't enough security to sign on to that agreement. Well, President Trump has now managed to press the Iranians into restarting their nuclear weapons program in 4 years. We didn't get 10 years; we didn't get 13 years; we got 4 years, and Iran is back on a potential path to a nuclear weapon. The President will say that he is imposing crippling new sanctions on Iran, such that they will come back to the negotiating table. But let's be honest. There is not a plausible path for that to happen in the next year and a half of the President's term. It took President Obama two terms to engage in multilateral sanctions to get the Iranians to the negotiating table. There are no credible analysts of Iranian behavior or of politics in the Middle East that will tell you that the Iranians are going to come back to the negotiating table in the next 12 months, in part, because the balance of powers has totally flipped. Under the Obama administration, it was the United States, Europe, China, and Russia on one side and the Iranians on the other side. President Trump has managed to flip that alignment, such that it is now the Iranians, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians on one side and the United States isolated on the other. If you don't believe me, just take a look at the statements that many of those parties sent out in response to Iran's decision last night, effectively aligning themselves with the Iranians' decision to restart their nuclear program instead of aligning themselves, as they had for years, with the U.S. position of strict nonproliferation. It is a disaster for the United States that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program. It is a massive failure of President Trump's strategy, but it is only one element of a meandering Iranian strategy that is accruing to the national security detriment of the United States. Let's talk about our second primary objective in this region. I referenced it at the outset. It is to prevent the reemergence and reconstitution of ISIS inside Iraq and Syria. We have bad news to report there as well. The Trump administration took another step that had been counseled against by his generals and by his military leaders, and that is the designation of the IRGC--an element of the Iranian military--as a terrorist group. Now, nobody could come to this floor and defend the actions of Iran or the IRGC. They have absolutely supported terrorism in the region for years. They supported Shia militias inside Iraq that were shooting at and killing American troops. Yet, notwithstanding that activity, our military leaders and our diplomats inside Iraq cautioned the administration against making this designation because weighing the costs of it against the benefits to our military leaders was a clear case. The costs are this: By telling these militias inside Iran that they have to make a choice today between the United States and this newly designated terrorist group, the Iranian militias make the choice easily. They align themselves with Iran, their neighbor, not the United States. The effect of our decision is to push more of these militia groups closer to the Iranians. Second, we no longer can talk diplomatically to the groups that have associations with the IRGC, and that is a lot of these militia groups. That means that the United States effectively takes itself out of the game diplomatically. We no longer have the ability to engage in political reconciliation in the country like we used to. All of this presses the case of ISIS, as they are able to make the case that Baghdad is more and more leaning toward Shia interests and Iranian interests. As the United States isn't there in order to press the reconciliation case, ISIS has an opportunity to reemerge. All of this also accrues to the benefit of those interested in Iraq who want the U.S. military out. Just months ago there was an effort to push a bill through Parliament to expel the United States and our continued hard line on Iran. As much as it may make sense to the air-conditioned offices of the White House to allow those interests in Iraq to, potentially, successfully litigate the case to push the U.S. military out of that country, it would, once again, open the gates to ISIS. As far as I can tell, the administration's policy is to set in motion a series of escalatory actions with respect to Iran that has no end game with no logical conclusion. There isn't a diplomatic process at the end of this rainbow. The President has a year and a half left in his term. There isn't enough time, and there is no willingness in Iran and no partners on our side, as I have mentioned. So what is the other alternative--military action? An invasion of Iran would be an unmitigated national security disaster. It would make the mistake of invading Iraq look positively benign, in retrospect. There is no appetite in America for such an endeavor, and there is no way the votes exist in Congress to authorize such an action. The risk, of course, is that we fall into war by accident or through a series of events that appear as an accident. When you commit yourself to such an unplanned and unscripted series of military and diplomatic escalations, as the Trump administration has, and you have no working channel of communication to settle misunderstandings, then accidents can easily happen. Shots can be fired; lives can be lost, and then our options suddenly narrow. That is the real risk of the path we are on today. What scares the heck out of me is that it is a path that is seemingly being made up day by day, and it is a path that is opposed by our military and that is laid out without any meaningful input from our diplomats who are on the ground in the region. That is a potential recipe for disaster. It shouldn't matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative because messing around in the Middle East, in countries like Iran and Iraq, with no strategy and no clear set of goals should send chills down every Senator's spine. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, let me thank my colleague from Maryland for outlining one of the cases for why the override of the President's veto is so important. There is no question that Saudi Arabia has in no way moderated their human rights behavior since the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi. In fact, as Senator Van Hollen has rightly pointed out, the stick in America's eye from Riyadh has just gotten sharper. The number of executions has increased. More American citizens are being detained. I didn't catch it as to whether Senator Van Hollen specifically referenced the case of Dr. Fitaihi, a Harvard-trained physician who has allegedly been tortured, including stripped to his underwear and shocked with electricity. He has been in detention without charges or a trial for 1\1/2\ years after his arrest. The Saudis' behavior has gotten more outrageous, has crossed more human rights lines, has compromised the safety of more American citizens, and yet no response from the U.S. Congress and not a single piece of legislation moving through the U.S. Senate that would hold the Saudis accountable for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and now the detention of multiple U.S. residents. We almost shut down our relationship with Turkey over the detainment of an American pastor, but there is no similar response from this body when it comes to the continued detention of Americans in Saudi Arabia, with no trial, with no charges, and with evidence of torture. How is that? How is that? Today we specifically litigate the case of the disastrous war that continues to rage inside Yemen today. I want to read a very short excerpt written by a hardened U.S. diplomat. Jeffrey Feltman is not a Democrat or Republican. He was a career Foreign Service officer. He did some of the toughest duty in the Middle East, including a stint as our Ambassador to Lebanon. Many people know him, and I know he commands just as much respect from Republicans as he does from Democrats. Here is what he wrote. He said: The war in Yemen has been a disaster for U.S. interests, for Saudi interests, and above all for the Yemeni people. It has sparked the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe: tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, and 14 million are at risk of starvation. It has been a strategic blunder as well, producing the exact results the Saudi-led military campaign was designed to prevent. The Houthis are more militarily sophisticated and better able to strike beyond Yemen's borders than they were at the start of the war; Iranian influence has expanded; and the relationship between the Houthis and Lebanon's Hezbollah has only deepened. Although the United Arab Emirates has waged an effective battle against al Qaeda in Yemen, terrorism remains a grave threat. Now, I could read you similar pronouncements from all sorts of other Middle Eastern experts. There is a hegemony of opinion that this war has been a disaster not just from a humanitarian standpoint. I had to select a picture that, frankly, wouldn't induce sickness from my colleagues. I chose a picture in which this young, starving boy's back is turned to the camera, but there are plenty others in which you would have a hard time holding down your lunch. It is not just the humanitarian nightmare; it is the strategic nightmare that is Yemen. Every single day that we stay involved in this war, the battle lines do not change, and yet Iran and Hezbollah get more and more involved inside the military fight. There is a political deal to be had here. If the United States chose to lead diplomatically instead of follow militarily, there is a political deal that can be had, but for reasons I do not understand, the United States does not lead the diplomatic negotiations. We outsource that to the U.N. I am a big fan of the U.N., but there is not going to be a peace settlement in Yemen without the United States as the lead. Instead, we simply choose to follow the military campaign of the Saudis by helping them engage in a bombing campaign that has murdered thousands of civilians, either on purpose or by accident. It has destroyed the civilian infrastructure of the country, and it does not relent. Every single time you meet with somebody from the administration, they tell you: Well, it is getting better. It is getting better. There is really no evidence of that. On March 26, airstrikes reportedly hit a hospital supported by Save the Children in northwest Yemen, killing at least seven, including four children. There is no excuse for that because every single hospital is on the list of targets that the Saudis can't hit, and yet they continue to do so. Senator Romney and I just came back from the region, and here is what we heard. All of the relief agencies that do the big heavy lifting in Yemen flew into Amman, Jordan, to talk to our delegation. I thought it was exceptional that they were making this trip, but then when they delivered the news that they had, I understood why they were making the trip into Jordan to meet with us. The report they gave us was absolutely bone-chilling. I want you to listen to this. Today, in Yemen, there are 250,000 Yemenis who are so malnourished and so sick that they are beyond saving. They will die. One-quarter million Yemenis are so sick, are so malnourished that they cannot be saved, and another 10 million are on the cusp of entering that category. The only way to stop this humanitarian disaster, of a scope and scale that we see nowhere else in the world, is to end this civil war. So long as the United States participates in the military campaign with the Saudis, while not offering any meaningful pressure to get to a political settlement, we are complicit in those deaths. One-quarter million people are going to die in the next several months inside Yemen from starvation and disease and malnutrition due to a military campaign that we are a part of. Don't get me wrong. The Houthis bear a great degree of responsibility for those who are starving inside territories they control. There is still 15 to 20 percent of the relief supplies that the Houthis steal and take for themselves, but hundreds of thousands of those who are dying or who are subject to disease and famine are in the parts of the country that are controlled by our coalition. This isn't just a matter of the Houthis refusing to let supplies get to people who need them. There are people dying in parts of the country that the coalition, of which the United States is a part of, controls, and we are standing by, largely idly, as this devastation continues. I hope my colleagues will consider voting to overturn the President's veto. I hope you will do it because it is the only means by which we force a political settlement. I hope you will do it because even if you don't think that a political settlement is coming, the United States should never willingly be a part of a bombing campaign that results in this kind of starvation. I hope you will also do it because even if you believe Iran is the No. 1 objective of U.S. interest in the region or even if you believe that al-Qaida and ISIS are the No. 1 target of U.S. interest in the region, they are getting stronger every single day that the status quo continues. The military campaign has been a massive failure. The battle lines don't move, and al-Qaida and ISIS remain uniquely strong inside that country because of the chaos, and Iran, every single day, becomes more and more influential. Get out of the military campaign, take the lead on the diplomatic effort rather than simply follow others, and we will end that misery. It is within our power to send that message. I agree with Senator Van Hollen. This is also about sending a message to Saudi Arabia about the continued murder and detainment of American citizens and residents. This is about standing up for human rights in the face of 37 people convicted and beheaded inside Saudi Arabia, several of them minors. But this is also about squaring U.S. policy with national security interests and getting the blood off our hands as 250,000 Yemenis face certain death if we don't do something different very soon. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to Gary Yohe, a Connecticut resident and preeminent national expert on climate change, who is retiring from Wesleyan University. Professor Yohe has had an impressive and distinguished career. After receiving his PhD in economics from Yale University, he devoted his career to climate impact and mitigation research. He worked as a senior member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, receiving a share of the 2007 Nobel Prize, served as vice chair of the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee under President Obama, and has testified before the Senate on multiple occasions to explain the risks and impacts of climate change. Professor Yohe continues to serve as a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change and has been a member of the faculty at Wesleyan University for more than 40 years. On a more personal note, he has been a great resource to my office, and I hope he will continue to contribute to public policy after his official retirement. I would like to congratulate Professor Yohe on his retirement from Wesleyan University and take this moment to thank him for his contributions to the scientific community.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Once again, I am very pleased to join my friend the Senator from Vermont on the floor to press this body to take seriously its constitutional responsibility and its responsibility to ensure that the United States doesn't enter into hostilities abroad other than in those situations that are vitally necessary to protect our national security interests. I am so proud to have worked with Senator Sanders, Senator Lee, and many others here to build a truly bipartisan coalition that is going to do something that, as Senator Sanders said, is historic. I have been coming down to the Senate floor for 4 years now raising concerns about U.S. participation in this civil war. When the United States first entered into an agreement with the Saudis to help them in their bombing campaign, very few people could probably locate Yemen on the map. Today, it is the subject of national conversation. With passage in the Senate and the House, regardless of what the President chooses to do, the world now knows that the United States is paying attention to the world's worst humanitarian disaster--a nightmare inside Yemen that is taking the lives of tens of thousands of people. Sometimes humanitarian disasters and famines are caused by natural events, those that we cannot control--droughts, for instance. This is a manmade humanitarian catastrophe that the United States has something to say about, and we are going to say something about it in a matter of hours. Let me just say a few things about what will happen if we pass this resolution and it becomes law and what will not happen if we pass this resolution and it becomes law. I think Senator Sanders covered this, and we have covered this enough. The first thing that happens is that we uphold the Constitution. I get it. Declaring war is a lot tougher today than it was 40 years ago or 100 years ago. It is not as if there are big armies that march against each other across open fields. Very rarely is there a nice peace treaty signed to wrap up hostilities. Now we have shadowy and more diffuse enemies who are harder to define. We have wars that seem to never end. But that doesn't obviate Congress's responsibility to set parameters around war. Just because it is harder to declare war today doesn't mean that we still don't have the responsibility to do it. Over and over again, we have outsourced the decision on hostilities to the President, whether it be President Obama or President Trump. In large part, it is because we just don't want to be in this business any longer. There is no doubt that when we are helping Saudi Arabia drop bombs on churches, on weddings, on cholera treatment facilities, and on some legitimate military targets, we are engaged in a war, and we should declare it here. That is the first thing that happens. The second thing that happens if we pass this resolution and it becomes law is that we wash our hands of the blood associated with being a participant in the creation of one the world's worst humanitarian catastrophes. Never has the world seen a cholera epidemic as big as this one, at least in recorded history. There is no secret as to why there is a cholera epidemic; it is because the Saudis bombed the water treatment facilities, so the water isn't clean any longer. Whether or not the United States knew about this or signed off on it, we don't know, but the fact is, we should not be associated with a bombing campaign that the U.N. tells us is likely a gross violation of human rights. Third, if we pass this resolution and it becomes law, peace becomes more likely. We have evidence of why that is because when we passed this resolution in the Senate at the end of last year, not coincidentally, within days, a partial ceasefire was announced in Hodeidah. Why is that? The reason is twofold. One, when the Saudis realize they don't have a blank check from the United States any longer, they get more serious about peace. Two, the Houthis, who are the other party to this conflict and who don't believe that the United States is an honest broker or that anyone will actually be serious about enforcing concessions they give, come to the table because they see that the United States and others that we support as part of the negotiations will actually be honest brokers and that we are only willing to go so far with our Saudi partners. The fourth thing that happens, as Senator Sanders has mentioned, is that we are able to send a message to Saudi Arabia and specifically to the Crown Prince that they need to change their behavior if they want to maintain this relationship. Some people are going to vote against this because they say it has nothing to do with Jamal Khashoggi. It does. Jamal Khashoggi's name isn't in here. The names of the other American residents who are currently being detained by Saudi Arabia aren't in here. But make no mistake--Muhammad bin Salman, who ordered this campaign of political repression--his No. 1 foreign policy priority is the perpetuation of the war inside Yemen. Given the violation of trust that has occurred with the United States over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the coverup of it, it stands to reason that we would rethink our association with other priorities of the Crown Prince's if he blatantly lied to us about his participation in the human rights violation that has become the obsession of this country and the world. The two are connected. This will be seen as a message to the Saudis that they need to clean up their act. What will not happen? Casualties will not get worse. The Trump administration says: Well, if we are not part of the coalition, it just means we can't stop civilians from being killed. Well, forgive me, but it doesn't seem like we have been doing too good of a job thus far if 85,000 children under the age of 5 have died of starvation and disease and tens of thousands of civilians have been caught in the crossfire. We can't get into classified information here, but let's just say there is a limit to what the United States can do as part of this coalition. There is no evidence to suggest that casualties will get worse. In fact, the cover being lifted of U.S. endorsements of this bombing campaign will make it harder for the Saudis to take chances because they know they don't have the United States to fall back on. Second, the Saudis will not go somewhere else. This idea that if we just say we are not going to participate in this one single war with you, that the Saudis will all of a sudden break relationships with the United States and go buy their military equipment from Russia, is belied by how this alliance has worked for years. The complication of the Saudis turning around and choosing to go to another partner, if that is how this works, that the nature of our relationship is one in which the United States can never ever refuse a request from the Saudis to participate in one of their military endeavors overseas, then that is not an alliance. An alliance allows you to tell your partner when you think they are wrong and choose, unless you have a treaty obligation of some sort, whether you engage with them. Lastly, as I mentioned, some people say we will lose our political leverage; that we will make it harder for negotiations to happen. It is exactly the opposite, as evidenced by the fact that when we were debating this resolution last time, as people were telling us that if we passed it we wouldn't have as much leverage in the negotiations, successful negotiations were being concluded in Stockholm. This is a historic moment for the Congress to step up and say that enough is enough. We are made weaker in the eyes of the world when we willingly participate in war crimes and when we allow for our partner to engage in activity that leads to the slaughter of innocents. Never mind the conduct of a war in which our true enemies, al-Qaida and ISIS, are getting stronger and stronger by the day. I hope we have the same bipartisan stamp of approval on this resolution today as we did last year, and I hope it stands as a new day for the Senate when we are more willing, on a bipartisan basis, to do our concurrent responsibility, along with the executive branch, to set the foreign policy of this Nation. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of my good friend, the Senator from Oklahoma. I look forward to working with him on ways that we can try to come together and solve some of these big problems. In a minute, I am going to talk about the Affordable Care Act, which is probably the signature accomplishment of a Democratic Senate and Congress. It is notable that the Affordable Care Act, for all of its controversy, reduced the deficit. It did not increase the deficit. It is also notable that the signature accomplishment of the Republican Congress and the Republican Senate was a tax reduction bill that has dramatically spiraled the deficit out of control. There is $2 trillion of additional deficits in that provision. I share the concerns about the deficit, and I find it curious that this Congress, under Republican control, has chosen to dramatically increase deficits, making us on pace for having the biggest deficits in our legislative history--with enormous additional new elements of debt as well.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, later today, the House of Representatives will pass a proposal that will be supported by 95, 97 percent of Americans. This is a proposal to make sure anybody in this country who wants to buy a gun in a legitimate transaction has to go through a background check--a background check that in 90 percent of the cases takes less than 5 minutes of time. That background check will assure that only people who should be buying guns and owning guns will be buying and owning guns--people who don't have violent criminal histories and people who don't have histories of serious mental illness. It is a popular proposal. It is an impactful proposal. It will save thousands of lives all across this country. I have come down to the floor to just remind my colleagues as to why this is so important, and I want to tell a quick story to try to put a little meat on the bone when it comes to this conversation we are having about the importance of making sure people go through background checks before they buy weapons. Mr. President, 2008 to 2012 was a period of time in this country's history where violence was declining. Homicides were declining. Gun murders were declining. They were declining across the country. Specifically during that period of time, they were declining in the Midwest. Yet there was one State that stood out as a curious outlier during that period of time, and that was the State of Missouri. In the State of Missouri, there was a dramatic jump during this period of time in gun homicides. In fact, it happened right away after 2007. In 2008 and 2009, about 50 to 60 to 70 additional people every year were being murdered with guns inside Missouri. A researcher from Johns Hopkins went to try to figure out why this was, and I think it is important to tell that story on the floor today. Let me give a little historical context first. During the Civil War, Missouri was one of the most violent, most dangerous places in the country because there were these outlaws, these renegades of Confederates who were out in the bush--they call them the bushwhackers--who were doing regular battle with Union troops. It was one of the first instances of true, sustained guerilla warfare in this Nation. When the Civil War was over, they didn't go home. They had been brutally put down by the Union, but they stuck, and they formed their own smaller criminal enterprises. We know about this because Jesse James and his brother Frank were amongst those who made their name as bushwhackers fighting the Union and then turned into criminals who robbed stage coaches and banks and trains. To combat this post-Civil War continuation of violence, Missouri decided to change its firearms laws, and it started with a crackdown on the ability of individuals to conceal weapons. It extended to a change in the Constitution to make it perfectly clear that Missouri politicians had the ability to limit who could own guns and who couldn't. Eventually, a provision got passed that said that in order to own a handgun, you had to get a permit from your local authority. As time went on, that permit came to include a background check, so that if you wanted to own a gun in Missouri, you had to go and get a background check. You had to prove you did not have a serious criminal history or a serious history of mental illness. What happened in 2007 was that, very quietly, that provision got repealed. It was part of a much louder effort to repeal a whole host of gun laws in Missouri. Missouri kind of became the epicenter of the NRA's focus in the 2000s. It was this Southern--semi-Southern State that still had pretty tough gun laws, and the NRA went all in and had their annual convention in St. Louis and spent millions of dollars trying to elect folks who would sign laws they were pushing through the legislature. In 2007, they finally got their way. They got all these laws that had been passed since the Civil War repealed. One of them was the law that required you to get a background check before you could buy a gun. The researcher from Johns Hopkins sort of looked at all these laws, controlled for all sorts of other factors, and came to the conclusion-- you should read the paper; it is very well done--that it was this provision which removed the background check that led to this dramatic spike in violence. He has all sorts of interesting data to show why that is. All the other violent crime in Missouri stayed flat from 2008 to 2012, but gun crimes spiked. All of a sudden, guns bought in Missouri were being used in crimes all over the region. Other States started to report an increase--a curious, sudden increase--in crime guns that were bought in Missouri. Well, guess why. It was because all of a sudden, you didn't have to get a background check if you wanted to buy a gun in Missouri. All of a sudden, criminals and people with serious mental illnesses could get guns through gun shows and internet sales--transactions on the private market--without that background check. I tell this story because I hear opponents of this bill in the House saying: This isn't meaningful. It won't work. These mass shootings weren't perpetuated with weapons that were bought without background checks. Well, that is true. This one public policy intervention won't stop every single bad thing that happens in this country. But the data is the data, and it shows us that States that have background checks have dramatically lower rates of gun crime than States that don't have them. A little bit earlier than the changes made in Missouri, my State of Connecticut made the opposite change. My State of Connecticut made a change to go from being a non-background check State to a background check State. We put in a local permit that came with a background check requirement. So even if you bought your gun outside of a bricks-and- mortar gun store, you had to get a permit, and that permit required you to get a background check. Well, that same researcher went to Connecticut, ran all the numbers, and found out that in Connecticut, after that change was made, gun murders dropped by 40 percent. They increased in Missouri by about 25 percent and decreased in Connecticut by about 40 percent--and again controlling for all sorts of other factors that could explain those changes. So on both sides of the ledger, there is what I would tell you is incontrovertible evidence that a State that has background checks is going to end up having many fewer gun crimes than a State that doesn't have them. The problem is, as we saw in and around Missouri, guns don't respect borders, so when Missouri dropped its gun background check requirement, those guns started moving into other States. That is what happened in my State. The guns that are used to commit crimes in our cities--the guns that are trafficked out of the back of vans--aren't bought from Connecticut gun stores; they are bought by criminals in other States because they know they can go to gun shows and they can turn to internet sales in those other States and buy those weapons. The same thing happens as weapons move across our border. I have heard an awful lot from this President about how dangerous Mexico and Central America are. Well, there is some truth to that, but the guns that are being used in those crimes are trafficked from the United States of America, and the way they get to the southern border is through States that don't have background check requirements. Just go online and check out what people say who have been arrested for gun trafficking. They tell you exactly how they did it. They go to gun shows in Texas. They buy guns at unregulated gun shows in Texas, and they take them back across the border and sell them in Central America. So we have all the evidence we need--empirical evidence, anecdotal evidence--to pass this piece of legislation, but maybe the most important reason that we should pass it, that we should take it up here in the Senate when it passes the House later today, is that it is just so darn popular. There really isn't anything else in America today that is as popular as universal background checks. The minimum score is about 90 percent. There is plenty of really good polling that says that 97 percent of Americans support universal background checks. Grandma isn't that popular. Apple pie isn't that popular. There is nothing we debate here that gets 97 percent on agreement other than the issue of background checks. So I am here on the floor today to try to fill in some of the details on why this is so important and to implore my colleagues, once it passes the House of Representatives, to bring it here. Obviously, I would love to have a vote on the House bill, but I understand how this place works. We are going to send a letter to Chairman Graham asking him to at the very least convene a hearing on background checks in the Judiciary Committee. We came to a conclusion here in the Senate as to a bipartisan background checks proposal that could get 50 votes--in 2013--and I would love to start that process again. But there is no reason not to do it because all the evidence tells us that when we make sure that only the right people buy guns, a lot less people die from gun crimes. This is not controversial anywhere except for Washington, DC. Everybody out there in the American public wants us to pass universal background checks. Maybe some other interventions in this space are a little bit more controversial, split folks a little bit more, but not background checks. This thing is decided outside of the Senate Chamber and the House Chamber. Popular in the public, deeply impactful, will save thousands of lives--that is a triple we don't get very often here, and we should take advantage of the opportunity. Let me leave you with this: I convened a panel a couple of nights ago to talk about the importance of background checks, and there were a number of parents of those who were lost to gun violence. One of the parents was from Sandy Hook. Another was a parent of a child who was killed in Chicago, and she really wanted to make sure we knew what the real impact of gun violence in America was. She wanted to make sure we knew that the victims aren't just those who show up on the police blotter; the victims are the parents and the brothers and the sisters and the friends and the coworkers. The average number of people who experience some diagnosable trauma when somebody in their life is shot and killed is 20. So when you hear the number that 100 people in the United States die every day from guns--which is a number 10 to 20 times higher than in any other high- income nation on a per capita basis--you have to understand that number isn't really 100; that number is 20 times higher than that because the people who have to live with that loss have to ask these questions: Why did they shoot themselves? What do I do about that individual who shot my son? How do I get over that combination of pain and anger? That is hard to understand unless you have spent time with the mothers and the fathers who will be dealing with this catastrophic, life-changing trauma for the rest of the time they are on this Earth. So that is why this is so serious to me. It is because we have an answer for their pain--not an answer that will stop every gun crime in this country but an answer that will result in thousands fewer people dying. We know that because the evidence tells us that. And I can't explain to these families--to that mother in Chicago--why something that has been proven to work and is supported by 90 percent of Americans can't get a vote or a debate in the Senate. I will leave it at that for today. I hope that when this passes in the House with a big bipartisan majority, we will take advantage of the opportunity to get a big bipartisan majority here in the Senate. If the Republican majority commits to starting that process, I guarantee that will be the result. I want to thank all of the people who made this possible in the House today. For the record, I have introduced a version of H.R. 8 here in the U.S. Senate. To Chairman Nadler, Mike Thompson, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and to their Republican cosponsors who helped bring it to the floor--I thank them on behalf of all of the folks they will never know, those lives they will save by their action today if we do the right thing and take it up here in the Senate. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, there have been some days recently when I kind of wonder why we even show up to the Senate any longer. This job is not what it used to be. When I get the chance to read about the history of the Senate, I read about these things called debates that we used to have on the floor of the Senate. I read about something called an amendment, which apparently is a way that an individual Senator calls up a proposal or an initiative and puts it on the floor for an up-or-down vote. Those things don't really happen anymore in the U.S. Senate. We don't have open-ended debates on the big policies of the day. I get it. When Republicans control the Senate, they control the agenda. When Democrats control the Senate, they control the agenda. At the very least, I would have hoped that the Senate majority, now in Republican hands, would put their policy initiatives before the Senate so we could have an open debate. That doesn't happen any longer. All we seem to be doing these days is voting on judges. Now, that is a really important function of the U.S. Senate, and I am glad we are doing it, but today we are going to do something truly exceptional, which causes me, once again, to wonder what my job here is and to feel a little bit of sadness as to how it has changed and how much less substantive the input of each individual Senator is in the direction of this country. Today, for the first time in the history of blue slips, we are going to vote and, I assume, confirm a judge who didn't get one blue slip from either of the home State Senators from which that judge comes from and is going to serve. This has never happened before. Yet today we will vote on Eric Miller's nomination to be a judge on the Ninth Circuit from Washington. He is 43 years old, so he is going to be there for an awfully long time. Eric Miller did not get a blue slip from either of Washington's Senators. Let me say that again. That has never happened before in the Senate. In fact, the last time a judge was confirmed without both blue slips was in 1989. That was the last time before this Congress that any judge was confirmed without both blue slips. In that instance, it was a Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee who was confirming a judge over the objection of another Democrat. This is very different. These are two Democratic Senators from Washington, neither of them returning a blue slip on Eric Miller. Yet the majority has decided to go ahead and proceed with this confirmation. This is a serious break with precedent. The last time Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate, Chairman Leahy was the head of the Judiciary Committee, and he did not hold a single hearing on an Obama nominee who did not have two blue slips--didn't hold a single hearing even when there were exceptional circumstances. There was one time when Senators initially returned the blue slips but later rescinded them. Those are two Republican Senators who submitted them, rescinded them-- did not go forward with the nominee. There was another circumstance in which Senators had recommended a nominee for the district court but then refused to submit blue slips when that judge was elevated to the appellate court. Once again, Senator Leahy honored that precedent. Now Republicans have already taken advantage of Senator Leahy's decision to uphold precedent. I will just give you a couple of examples. In the Seventh Circuit, Michael Brennan was confirmed for a seat that had been held open by Republicans since 2010. So, had Chairman Leahy decided to move forward without blue slips, that Seventh Circuit seat could have been filled, but because he upheld tradition, it was left open, filled by Republicans. Similarly, for a district seat in South Carolina, Marvin Quattlebaum was confirmed to a seat that had been held open by Republicans, again, since 2013. So Republicans have already taken advantage of the fact that Democrats upheld the blue-slip precedent, but now they are taking it a step further. In the past, when Republicans have changed the rules here, as they did on the number of votes required to elevate a judge to the Supreme Court, they claimed it was because Democrats started it. I don't agree with that rationale. If you found the change for district court nominee so objectionable, I am not sure why you would decide to go further, but there is no excuse of that kind here. This is just a brash power grab because there is no claim that Democrats, when they were in the majority, violated the blue-slip principle. This is a fresh violation of tradition here in the Senate. There is a reason we give deference to home State Senators. In these States and in these districts, there are particular issues that are important to their constituents that may be unique to their area in which they have more knowledge than the rest of us do. Some of the reasons Senators Murray and Cantwell are so concerned about this nominee are his extremist views on the issue of Tribal sovereignty, which is a very big deal in the State of Washington, and the idea that they are going to have somebody sitting in the Ninth Circuit who has these extreme views on limiting the rights of Tribes is of great concern to their constituents. That is why, traditionally, we have allowed for individual Senators to have that kind of voice and that kind of say. No longer. I would just hope that my Republican friends understand how this works. Once the rule is gone, once the tradition is gone--listen, I am a relatively junior Senator here, so I don't want to speak for those who are going to be the chairman and ranking members of committees in the future, but I would imagine it is not coming back. I would imagine--once we get through today and Republicans have decided that individual Senators, unless they happen to be a member of the majority party, no longer have any say in who is appointed to their circuit courts-- that horse has fully run out of the barn and across the field. I don't know if that is a good thing for this body because it is just another hit. It is just another assault on the traditions of this place in which we used to try to work things out together, in which we used to honor the role that individual Senators have some say over what happens in their own States and their own regions. I do sometimes wonder why we all keep on showing up here if we don't really debate legislation as we used to, if we don't get to offer amendments anymore, and if we don't have any say any longer in the judges who are appointed in our States and our districts, and this is just another day that makes me question that as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, from time to time, I come to the floor of the Senate to share with my colleagues stories of the victims of gun violence. I had hoped the statistics that consistently show this country has a gun violence rate that is 10 to 20 times higher than those of other similar high-income nations--data that shows this continuing epidemic of mass slaughter during which we average a mass shooting almost every day-- would have compelled my colleagues to action. It hasn't. So I have tried to come down to the floor as often as I can to explain who these people are and to explain the genius that has been lost from this world when lives are cut so short by gun violence--gun violence that is largely preventable in this country. I come to the floor with an unusually heavy heart because I want to talk about some of the lives that were lost a year ago today at the shooting in Parkland, FL, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was a year ago that I was actually walking to the floor to give a speech on immigration when I learned of another mass shooting. It hits hard for those of us who represent Connecticut because we are still working through the ripples of grief that never ever disappear in a community that has been shattered by an episode of catastrophic gun violence--in our case, in Sandy Hook, CT. In February of last year, 17 students and teachers were gunned down in their classrooms at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. One of them was Peter Wang. Peter was 15 years old. He was a U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps cadet. He was getting ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his family. His two younger siblings and many other friends called him a natural leader. When the shooter entered the high school, Peter had a choice to make: He could run and protect himself or he could try to help his fellow students in need. He chose the latter. He chose to hold a door open to help his classmates escape. He saved other people's lives while he lost his own. Classmate Jared Burns said: ``For as long as we remember him, he is a hero.'' ``He yanked open a door that allowed dozens of classmates, teachers and staffers to escape,'' officials said. His middle school basketball coach said that he was just a ``joyful person.'' His sacrifice, according to his coach, ``just made perfect sense'' because he was that selfless. Peter was posthumously accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for his heroic actions on that day. Alex Schachter was a freshman who played the trombone and baritone in the marching band, and he loved to play basketball. He loved music so much that in middle school, he took two band classes so that he could get ready to join the marching band in high school, which was his dream. His Eagle Regiment Marching Band actually won the State championship in Tampa. His dad said that he was just a sweetheart of a kid. He said that he just wanted to do well to make his parents' happy. His dream was to attend the University of Connecticut. He told everybody. He was only a freshman, but he knew where he was going to college. He wanted to go to my State, to Connecticut. He wore a UConn sweatshirt almost every single day to school. His favorite song was an old one by Chicago, ``25 or 6 to 4,'' which is kind of an odd choice for a 14-year-old. Yet UConn's band actually chose to play that song at halftime at one of UConn's football games, and UConn admitted Alex posthumously because his dream was to be a UConn Husky. Helena Ramsay was full of laughter and had this infectious smile. She was 17 when she was shot that day. She loved all kinds of music, although she was mostly into K-pop. She had all sorts of other interests too. She was interested in human rights and the environment. She joined the school's United Nations Club and the Christian faith- based First Priority Group. She was always looking out for her friends. One of her friends said: ``When I was stressed out from my chemistry lab that I thought I was going to fail, she calmed me down and told me that it was going to be OK.'' One of her best friends said that she was ``one of the kindest people I've ever met.'' When the gunman walked into her classroom, she turned to her friend to make sure that her friend was safe and told her to shield herself with books. People described it as a ``moment of bravery in the face of horror.'' Another hero that day was Aaron Feis. He was an assistant football coach, and he was a security guard. He threw himself in front of his kids. That is how he died that day. The football program's spokesperson said: [Aaron] died the same way he lived--he put himself second. . . . He was a very kind soul, a very nice man. He died a hero. One of his football players who had been going through leukemia treatments remembered that Aaron had guided him through those treatments. He would send me prayers. He would send me Bible scripts and just stuff to cheer up my day. Aaron died while protecting the kids at that school. These 4 stories are amongst those of the 17 people who died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Yet 93 people die every day from gun violence. Most of those are suicides. A bunch of them are homicides. Others are accidental shootings, but they are all preventable. As we remember today the mass shooting at Parkland, it is important that even on those days on which nobody puts up on cable news a mass shooting, there are still somewhere around 90 people who die every day, and I will tell you about one of them. Corey Dodd was 25 years old when he died last month in Baltimore, MD. That morning, he told Marissa, his wife, to stay home and rest with their 3-year-old and their 3-week-old while he took the 5-year-old twins to school. After he dropped the twins off at school and pulled up outside their home, he was shot to death. The 3-year-old was inside. Marissa had to tell her kids that Daddy wasn't coming home. She said: I've told the kids that Daddy is done. He's not coming back. Their family was planning to move because Corey was looking for work, and they were going to move to wherever he found work. He had recently finished a program to earn his commercial driver's license. Things were looking up for Corey and Marissa and their four kids. I didn't know Corey, but I know something about his death because I happened to be in Baltimore on that day. I happened to be at Corey's kids' school at the moment he was shot. I was inside that school when an announcement came over the loud speaker that there was a code green. I didn't know what a code green meant. A few minutes later, I found out that it is what happens inside schools in Baltimore when there is a shooting in the neighborhood. They locked down the school and our classroom and pulled down the shades, and we turned off the lights. A few minutes later, the police notified us that the scene was clear, that the school was safe, and that the day could go on. Yet, unbeknownst to me, just down the hall from me inside that school were two twins whose father had been shot blocks away from that school. Their lives will never be the same. Part of the reason we care so much about this epidemic is that it is not just the victims; it is also about the people who are left behind. Imagine going to an elementary school in which you fear for your life when you walk to and from school and where parents of your friends are shot at 10:30 in the morning. It changes their brains, the trauma these kids go through in a school like that. It makes their little, tiny, developing brains unable to learn. There is a biological process that actually happens to these kids. That trauma is what Parkland has been going through for the last year, and that trauma is what kids in Baltimore, New Haven, Hartford, Chicago, and New Orleans go through every single day. We are ruining millions of children all across this country because of an epidemic that we could choose to solve, that we could choose to do something about. This week, the House of Representatives had a hearing and a meeting to move forward with a universal background checks bill that is supported by 97 percent of Americans. It will pass the House of Representatives, with Republican and Democratic support, with flying colors. Do you know what that tells us? It tells us that the most important thing we could do to save lives, to cut down on the 93 people who are killed every day, is to pass that universal background checks bill. In States that have universal background checks, there is about 30 percent less gun crime and fewer gun homicides than in States that don't have those universal background checks. As we remember 1 year since the massacre at Parkland and as we strive to understand that this is an epidemic that takes 90 people every day, know that it is within our power to do something about it. We can't eliminate every single gun death. We can't stop every suicide or every homicide, but with commonsense legislation that is supported by 97 percent of Americans, we can make a big difference, and we can send a signal to would-be shooters who are contemplating violence that they should not interpret our silence as a quiet endorsement. It is up to us. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you. It is also my understanding that S. 47 makes uniform the process by which Federal lands may be closed to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting Moreover, it is my understanding that S. 47 does nothing to change the standards that the Federal Government uses to determine whether to close Federal lands to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting or to otherwise limit those activities. Is that a correct reading of the bill?

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I wish to engage in a colloquy with the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Murkowski, regarding S. 47, the Natural Resources Management Act, often referred to as the lands package, of which Chairman Murkowski is the sponsor and which is currently under consideration by the full Senate. In particular, I am interested in clarifying the intent of title IV, regarding ``Sportsmen's Access and Related Matters.'' This title of the legislation deals with--among other issues--the amount of Federal lands open to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting. If I understand the bill correctly, nothing in S. 47 opens existing Federal lands to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting that are not currently open to those activities. Moreover, under this bill, those lands may be closed for reasons, including public safety and environmental protection, among other reasons. Is that a correct reading of the bill?

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you.