Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to consideration of S. Res. 396.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. 41 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 95, S. Res. 126.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. In order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceedings.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I understand there are two bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading en bloc.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, the great American labor organizer Delores Huerta said: Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person [is a] potential activist, [and] every minute [is] a chance to change the world. In that spirit, I rise to bid farewell to a member of my team, Dan Mahr. Dan sees every constituent as an opportunity to connect and every townhall meeting as a chance to change someone's world. I host a lot of townhall meetings in Oregon--one in every one of our 36 counties every year. One time, Dan and I were hosting a townhall meeting in rural eastern Oregon, where an older, conservative rancher was waiting in line to talk to me and had that look on his face where he just knew he was pretty unhappy and wanted to let me know why. Well, Dan noticed him too. He started chatting with him, and pretty soon, that stony expression began to crack, and the conversation began to warm up. By the time that stern rancher had made it to me, he was chuckling and patting Dan on the back. As we left that meeting, everyone, including our church ladies and our ranchers and our farmers--everyone--to our rural hippies, was giving Dan extra handshakes on the way out the door. That is how it was in townhalls where Dan was staffing. He joined my team in 2016, 7 years ago, after a decade of fighting for unions and working families across America. As my senior labor adviser, he has stood up to the powerful on behalf of the working people all across our State. He has been one of my field representatives, serving folks in North Central Oregon, in Clackamas County and Wasco and Hood River and Sherman and Gilliam Counties. But he didn't just get the job done in those counties; he was always the first person to volunteer to staff a townhall meeting for his teammates no matter how far away it is across the State. He just loves being out on the road in Oregon. He has driven thousands of miles, set up thousands of chairs, met thousands of Oregonians. Whenever a new field representative joined our team, he was the first to welcome that individual to Team Merkley, to go with him or her to their first townhall, to lend a helping hand at the events. Our work is important to him because if folks are taking their time out of busy lives to come to a townhall meeting, he wants to give them the respect that goes with feeling welcome and feeling heard. And, of course, that is exactly the attitude I take to those meetings. Well, Dan's dedication to constituents' services is renowned on the team, not just for his personal touch but also for his personal tenacity. There is a saying--a saying I like a lot--that tenacity is a superpower. I experienced that a few times in my life. I certainly believe it is true. Ever since I was first elected to the Senate in 2008, I have been hearing about funding for economic development in the Columbia River Gorge. That funding had been authorized when the Columbia River National Scenic Area was established in 1986. In that scenic area, every community had restrictions on what additional buildings they could create, so they felt for sure the Federal Government would hold up its side of the deal and deliver that money for economic development in compensation. They did get some of that money in the 1990s but not the full amount. They were millions of dollars short. It came up at meeting after meeting after meeting: Where is that money the Federal Government promised us? It was an issue folks were not going to let go of. Of course, I wanted to deliver that funding, but I had to have a key staff member work on it, and that key staff member was Dan--working on it for 5 years, finding strategies in which we could get additional pieces of funding delivered until every single dollar had made it through tricky local politics, bistate politics, to help the stakeholders who live throughout the Columbia Gorge. There was no silver-bullet moment; it was just year after year of planning and pushing and seizing key opportunities to fulfill promises to ordinary Oregonians. In the end, fulfill they did. Dan secured those millions of dollars in economic development for the Columbia Gorge. He was just as tenacious about protecting local services, too, like when he kept open the West Linn Post Office. After 2 years of searching for a permanent site, one day in August, we heard that the U.S. Postal Service had decided to just close the doors on the post office in September, right before the November election. Just 6 weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, in a State where we vote by mail, in the midst of COVID, right before the holidays, the post office is going to close the doors on that post office. They had just given up on finding a new location. That post office serves a city of 26,000 people. Dan went immediately to work, organizing our delegation, our local officials, working with the Postal Service to find a better solution, insisting that no way those doors could be closed, making sure that everyone felt the urgency, and ultimately secured the extension of that post office and kept it open. At the election, people could cast their ballots. People could receive their medications, and they could mail their gifts to their loved ones during the holidays. But there is more to the story because the post office continued to insist on closing. Well, again, Dan helped organize. He helped carry the message that that was unacceptable, and eventually the U.S. Postal Service got the message, found a suitable location, and the people of West Linn, OR, were overjoyed. But it took tenacity, and that is what Dan brought to the ballot. He is also tenacious, by the way, when he is trying to win a game of table tennis. I can neither confirm nor deny that he ripped a pair of suit pants in a table tennis match with an unnamed U.S. Senator. He has been tenacious as my labor adviser. Whether working with bakers, the building trades, nurses, teachers, timber workers, public employees, everyone knows that Dan is a partner they can trust. He has navigated countless labor issues to ensure the working families of Oregon get the pay and benefits they earned. A few years ago, there was a difficult discussion about a major project in Oregon. It would have created a lot of construction jobs, but it also would have done a lot of damage to the climate. In that situation, with this benefit and this problem, Dan was a supreme professional, the supreme diplomat, ensuring that full and accurate information was brought to bear and that everyone's perspectives was carefully considered and weighed. In the end, of course, not everyone agreed with the ultimate outcome, but so many were impressed by the thorough and transparent process that Dan facilitated. Dan is the kind of guy who brings a positive angle to every situation. One time, my team members, after driving 8 hours across Oregon--big State; I know that is hard to envision here on the east coast--they were driving 8 hours to host an event and discovered the local motel rooms were out of commission, so they would have to drive after the event an additional 3 hours to find accommodation. The team really was exhausted and just wanted to climb in bed and go to sleep, but they couldn't. But Dan said: Hey, let's use this as an opportunity to see Oregon's only geyser. The water table had come up, and the geyser was back in action. So they went in search of the geyser before hitting the road, and they found it, and they were thrilled to see it because few in Oregon ever have. It was an effective pivot for an exhausted and quite cranky crew. As one of them said afterward: It was very, very cool. I'm so grateful that Dan made us slow down a bit. He always encourages us to enjoy the trip, enjoy the sights, and enjoy each other's company. I know he has done that for me. I remember a day after many miles and many events when we had a little bit of time before our next stop. We went by his house in Hood River, sat on his porch--sat on his rocking chairs on his porch--hung out, laughed, relaxed, and played with his dog. It was just what we all needed, and Dan knew it. I began these remarks quoting Dolores Huerta, who said that ``every minute is a chance to change the world.'' She also said: I think the importance of doing activist work is to engage people and give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow. Hope that change is possible, and that they can be part of that transformation. Dan has engaged and given hope to so many ordinary people--hope for a better Oregon, hope for a better community, hope for a better tomorrow. Most importantly, he has shown folks that, working together, change is possible and that they can be part of that transformation. So many people I met have a great story about Dan and some way he has helped them or helped their town or just that they have enjoyed knowing him. He embodies the best spirit of Team Merkley. So it is with deep gratitude that Team Merkley and I thank Dan Mahr for his service to the people of Oregon, and we wish him all the best in his next chapter.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: The purpose of life is . . . to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you lived and lived well. It is not the length of life, but the depth of life that matters. In that spirit, I rise today to bid farewell to a member of my team, Matt Squeri, who is one of the most useful, honorable, compassionate people I have ever worked with, and his public service has made a difference in the lives of so many, including the lives some of the most vulnerable people around the world. Not only do I want to thank him for the length of his service in the Senate, I want to thank him for the depth of his service. Matt joined my team in 2019 after several years working for our former colleague Senator Heidi Heitkamp and, before that, the Department of Defense and the Center For Strategic and International Studies. His legislative skill and his policy expertise were immediately evident. What took a little longer to emerge was his encyclopedic knowledge of college football--especially for our shared alma mater, Stanford--not to mention his love for watching boxing. For those of you who know Matt, that might sound surprising. But if you have worked with him, it makes perfect sense because, if the cause is worthwhile, if it is for democracy, if it is for justice, if it is for human rights, then Matt loves a good fight. He doesn't crash in, like a brawler. He works methodically, like a boxer. A great example of that was early on, when negotiations on a bill had been stuck in a stalemate with the House for months and months. We had gone round and round with the House, and then Matt went to work. He floated over conflicts, he parried the problems, and, within 2 months, he knocked it out and passed it into law. He has taken on much bigger fights since then. After joining my team he set out to cultivate working relationships with the staff of Members on both sides of the aisle of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. His goal was simple: to turn the CECC's--Congressional-Executive Commission on China--research, advocacy, and awareness-raising into bipartisan legislation and new laws that would make a real difference for real people. In 2019, as the Chinese Government began its brutal crackdown on Hong Kong, Matt led our successful efforts to protect Hong Kong's people by banning the export of crowd control equipment to the Hong Kong police. Soon, he took on an even more ambitious project: tackling the problem of the genocide of the Uighur people and their forced labor in Xinjiang Province. He helped coordinate with the CECC the release of a landmark report in March 2020. That report became the launching point for passing some of the most ambitious human rights legislation the United States has ever considered, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The premise of the bill was quite simple: The American consumers have the right to know if their products are made with forced labor in China, and they have the right to choose not to do business with those companies. Matt officially joined the CECC staff in 2021, and he was central to the negotiations that began in committee in January and continued all the way to final passage in December. And he didn't stop there. He pushed the Olympics and the NBA to stop using uniforms made by--or made from materials made by--forced labor in China. China, multinational corporations, the Olympics, the NBA--you see what I mean about him not shying away from a fight. And, since then, he has helped us hold hearings, introduce legislation, and improve policies to protect the people of Hong Kong, the people of Tibet, the Uighur people, and to stand up to the Chinese Government's transnational repression. There is a lot more I could say about Matt's work on legislation. What stands out to me though and to everyone who knows Matt is just how wonderful he is to work with. As one of my senior staff said about starting in our office, ``Matt was the person I looked up to, the person I wanted to emulate.'' He is fun, he is unflappable, he is morally clear, and he is legislatively masterful. And he is generous with his time, whether he is helpful to those new to our team in learning their way around or helping them understand complex human rights issues in far corners of the world. We will miss having him as part of our team. I quoted Emerson at the start of these remarks. Later, in the same piece, Emerson wrote: [T]o leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded. Countless people around the world who have never met Matt Squeri have breathed easier because of his work. So it is with gratitude that Team Merkley, the Congressional- Executive Commission on China, and I thank Matt Squeri for his service to this institution, his service to this Nation, and his service to human rights around the world. We wish him all the best as he moves on to his next assignment.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 5 p.m.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be extended to Matt Squeri, member of my team, for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions submitted earlier today: S. Res. 414, S. Res. 415, and S. Res. 416.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I have eight requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, October 19; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for later in the day, and that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, the bill that we will be voting on shortly reflects intense bipartisan collaboration here in the Senate, the type of collaboration that we need to see a lot more of in this institution. I share a lot of credit--let me put it differently. I thank the coleads, Senator Murray and Senator Collins, for working so hard to get all the appropriation bills out of committee and finding a path forward for us to make sure that, with the CR, we can keep the government open. It doesn't have things in it that I would like--a lot more disaster aid for folks around the country, a lot more support for Ukraine. But I think it represents exactly the type of modest package that is appropriate at this moment, while, as the chair of Appropriations pointed out, we will continue to work together in the month to come to pass the actual appropriation bills. The issue that I am very concerned about on the House side right now is that they are taking and putting together a package that has no support for Ukraine and that bans the administration from moving funds throughout the Defense Department and the State Department to be able to support Ukraine. If you want China and Russia being No. 1 and No. 2 in the world, then that would be the path to go. If you want to have dictatorships, authoritarian governments crush democracy, then that would be the way to go. But I want our vision of a republic, our vision of a democracy, our vision of a state that has freedom of speech and freedom of assembly to be able to be the model that expands freedom in this world. Let's support this package before us, and let's support a package that has both disaster aid and aid for Ukraine. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am standing here at the desk next to the desk of our fallen colleague, Senator Dianne Feinstein. It seems enormously strange that instead of being able to sit here and have her next to me, her desk is covered with a black cloth and a crystal bowl of white roses. We come from the west coast where our States sit side by side, so perhaps it was fitting that we sat side by side here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. One thing, in particular, that Senator Feinstein liked to do was share with me pictures of her dog Kirby, whom she absolutely loved. And she had a lot of pictures on her phone to show Kirby in different moments of delight. And I must say, for me, this was kind of a powerful, personal connection because I enjoyed showing her pictures of my dogs, Roxy and Lila, whom I love dearly. So even as we work on the great issues of international affairs or the big challenges of America, sometimes it is just the personal connections, simple connections in life that can bond people to each other. Very few people's lives are as full of as much history and consequence as Senator Dianne Feinstein's: the first woman to serve as mayor of San Francisco; the first woman to serve as a Senator from California; the longest serving Senator not only from California, the longest serving woman in the Senate ever at just over 30 years. In 2009, during my first year in the Senate, she made a point to invite me as a freshman Senator to meet her friend the Dalai Lama. I had a chance to previously meet the Dalai Lama when I was head of the World Affairs Council in Oregon, and I had invited him to speak to the people of Oregon. But this was in a different context of the connection, the foreign relations, in which we were striving to elevate concerns about the treatment of the Tibetan people. She was a passionate supporter of Tibetan people. She had met him 30 years before in India. She had welcomed him on his first visit to the United States, as the mayor of San Francisco. She never let up on the importance of that challenge and her concerns about the mistreatment of the Tibetan people. In fact, I also had the opportunity to work with her on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which strived to shine a light on many human rights issues, but one of which, certainly, was defending the Tibetan people's human rights and culture from the repression of the Chinese Government. She was also a powerful partner as we worked together to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act here on the Senate floor, which we did in 2013, and then to strive to elevate the Equality Act, the gold standard for ending discrimination against our LGBTQ community--an act that we have not yet passed on this Senate floor but absolutely should. I hope someday we will have the votes to do that. She just believed that nobody should face discrimination, everybody should have an equal opportunity to thrive here in the United States of America. We also served together for many years on the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee. She was a persistent voice in this last couple of years, time and time again, calling for better pay for our Federal wildland firefighters. Now, that particular issue is so essential because of the fires we are facing in the West, and no one raised it as often or as passionately as she did. As a result, we won that pay raise. I know that she would be insisting, if she was here today, to make sure that pay raise is sustained in any continuing resolution that we might pass in the next couple of days. She knew how essential that was out West, that we have wildland firefighters who can work year-round and be paid decently so we are actually there on the job. I was proud to cosponsor her legislation this year, the West Coast Ocean Protection Act, to prohibit the exploration, development, and production of oil off the west coast, a mutual concern of those of the west coast that our coast and our multiple fisheries--our crabbing, our whiting, our shrimp, our salmon, our groundfish--are not damaged by oil, that our shoreline is not damaged by oil. It was essential, she felt, that we preserve the health of our oceans against the potential damage of drilling off the coast. In fact, she was a strong voice in this modern conversation about climate change. She understood climate chaos and how the changing temperatures are affecting us in so many different ways. At one point when we were serving on the Appropriations Committee together, I had a simple amendment that supported our international obligation to help fund an intergovernmental panel on climate change, and we had a deal between legislators on both sides of the aisle that we would simply hold a voice vote because legislators across the aisle felt it should be passed. But they knew anything that related to climate was so controversial, and they didn't want to bring that controversy into the discussion about honoring a treaty obligation. So the agreement was to pass it by voice vote. When I proposed the amendment, Senator Dianne Feinstein spoke up--I hadn't filled her in on the background--and she said: This issue is about climate. It is so important we should hold a recorded vote. I probably went a little bit pale because I wasn't sure that, as a recorded vote, we could vote to honor our international agreement. But, fortunately, and just by a single vote, we did. It worked out. But it just shows her commitment to having a public discussion, public votes, public accountability to take on this incredibly significant challenge that we have faced with the changing climate. Senator Feinstein helped open the doors of the Senate to so many other women legislators. She took weapons off the street. She believed torture was un-American and unacceptable, and those who are responsible must be held accountable. She raised vehicle emissions standards and protected so many of California's and America's beautiful outdoor spaces for future generations, including the interest she had in protecting Lake Tahoe. Yesterday, Senator Feinstein, who did so much to open this government to so many, cast her final vote in the U.S. Senate. It was a vote to keep this government open, keep the American Government serving the American people. She lived an exceptional life--a life dedicated to public service. She has left behind an enormous public legacy--a legacy of tenacity, a legacy of and willingness to build bridges across the aisle to solve problems. I hope that many of us can just hope to do as well. My thoughts are with her daughter Katherine and her granddaughter Eileen. It was an honor and privilege to serve with Senator Dianne Feinstein here in the U.S. Senate. Thank you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the privileges of the floor be extended to Mike Zwolinski, a member of my team, for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to Allison Arbuthnot for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Marcus Mildenberger, be given privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.