Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I am pretty sure, down the hall in the House of Representatives, nobody is missing a meal; yet so many people in each of our States are missing meals. In my State of Oregon, hunger has doubled since March. I imagine hunger has increased in your home State of Michigan.

Mr. MERKLEY. No one in this Chamber is missing a meal.

Mr. MERKLEY. Senator Stabenow, it is a pleasure to be here with you in this fight for something as fundamental as hunger. As I was listening to the conversation, your words and our colleague's from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who was speaking, and our colleague from Minnesota and partner from Oregon, I thought: How many Senators have experienced hunger this last week, the inability to have a meal? What is your sense of that?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in colloquy with my colleague from Michigan.

Mr. MERKLEY. We are talking about millions of American children who are suffering not just discomfort but damage to their minds because they don't have enough to eat. The majority leader is sending us on vacation rather than addressing it. Thank you to my colleague for coming to the floor, organizing, carrying this forward, the work you do, and authorizing the work the Appropriations Committee does and the funding. We have got to address this. We have to recognize how bad the situation is, how bad things are nationally. More than 40 million people have lost their jobs; 120,000 people have died. The rate of infections are exploding across the country--and how bad things are in my home State--243,000 people are out of work. We have an unemployment rate of over 14 percent, higher than it was any point in the great recession. Food insecurity and hunger have doubled since March. Food is at the top of the hierarchy of needs for human life. All we have done is come to the floor and say: Let's help in a pretty modest way with a 15-percent increase--the $4 and change that the Senator talked about--60 cents? We probably should be doubling it. But that 15-percent increase in the maximum benefits does make a difference. It makes a difference. Hunger doesn't take a vacation and neither should we. As Senator Stabenow proposed, we should debate a bill now--pass now a bill. We should effect these changes at this moment and not leave this Chamber until we have gotten the work of the American people done for the most important need any human being has, and that is basic nutrition. When Martin Luther King was accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, he said that he had ``the audacity to believe that people everywhere could have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.'' Let this Chamber have the audacity not just to believe that people can have three meals a day but to make it happen. I am fully in support of your efforts, a full partner on behalf of all those who suffer hunger in the United States, on behalf of every child who wants a basic foundation to thrive here in the United States of America. We are failing in our job. Hunger doesn't take a vacation and neither should the Senate. Let's get the act passed now.

Mr. MERKLEY. It is being driven by massive unemployment. The estimate in April was for families who earn less than $40,000 a year, 40 percent had lost their job. I think that was April. Now, maybe it is well over 50 percent. Half of working America of modest incomes lost their jobs, and it wasn't that easy to sign up for unemployment benefits. We still have a couple hundred thousand people in Oregon who are waiting for unemployment benefits. I can guarantee you they are very hungry. I know there are those in Michigan as well. The majority leader has decided to send the Senate on vacation for 2 weeks. I guess my question to you is: Does hunger take a vacation? Do those who are hungry in Oregon and hungry in Pennsylvania, is it going to take a vacation for 2 weeks?

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the powerful words, the passionate delivery of stories on the defense of freedom, the defense of equality, the advance of justice, and the presentations of my colleagues from Wisconsin and Michigan, my partner from Oregon, my friend from Colorado, the Senator from Minnesota, and Senator Booker from New Jersey. Their words speak to the heart of what our Nation is about--equality, opportunity, justice, and freedom. I will, therefore, ask that we bring this bill about equality to the floor, that we go forward in the great tradition of this Chamber and this Senate to debate issues that involve the opportunity for every individual to thrive in our Nation. Time and again, we have held those debates before. We held them in 2013 on the Employment Non- Discrimination Act. Now, I understand some colleagues have come to the floor to object to this Senate's entertaining such an important debate. They have come to the floor to obstruct the opportunity of this Chamber to engage in a dialogue on this important issue--so violent to the life of millions of Americans. I ask them to reconsider. Have the courage to debate this issue on the floor--to bring, in the great tradition of this country, an issue violent to freedom to be considered here. One colleague responded to the Supreme Court's decision on employment nondiscrimination earlier this week by saying: This judicial rewriting of our law short-circuited the legislative process and the authority of the electorate. Well, let no Member of the Senate today short circuit the legislative process by objecting to this important debate on the floor of the Senate. On behalf of equality and opportunity and freedom, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. Further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am disappointed that my colleagues have come to the floor to stand in the way of a debate, in this esteemed Chamber, over issues of freedom, issues of opportunity, and issues of equality that affect millions of LGBTQ Americans. What did we hear in their conversation? My colleague from Utah says there is no chance for debate. Has my colleague forgotten that bringing a bill to the floor brings it to debate? Is that such a lost art in the Senate that my colleague thinks debating a bill on the floor somehow squelches debate? It is a mystery to me how one can make the argument that bringing a bill to the floor kills debate. My colleague from Oklahoma laments there is no committee action. Well, my colleague might be reminded that for 400 days this party has controlled whether or not there is committee action on this bill; that it is the majority that decides whether a committee addresses the issues before it. Is not 400 days of inaction in committee an argument to have the conversation here as a committee of the whole? Isn't that what we are asking for--a committee of the whole to debate these key issues? My colleagues have also referred to how somehow this bill affects religious rights, and I am taken back through the history of the conversation and dialogue about equality and opportunity in America, how every time we seek to end discrimination, someone says: But wait-- religious rights. Remember that this was the argument against Black and Brown Americans having equality here in the United States of America because their religion said they are not equal and they shouldn't be let in the door and I should have the right to not let them in the door. I should have the right to discriminate. Isn't that the conversation we heard around the opportunity for women in America to play a full role in our society, that people had a religious foundation for discriminating between men and women? Well, I tell you that this Nation, although imperfect, was founded on a vision that everyone is created equal and has a full chance to participate. We have worked over hundreds of years to get toward the goal that every child can thrive in America, no matter their gender, no matter the color of their skin, no matter if they are identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, no matter if they are transgender. That is the conversation we should be having here. I feel the injury of a Senate that is no longer a Senate, where people tremble in their seats over the idea of having a debate. What has happened to this esteemed body that that should be the case? So let us not rest. For those colleagues across the aisle who have said that the Supreme Court shouldn't have acted this week, that it should be the legislature that acts, and yet come to the floor and don't argue--fail to argue--that we should, in fact, act, isn't that obstruction of the legislative process? I would encourage my colleagues who say that there are important issues to be considered to go to their leadership and say ``Let's get the committee that has this bill, the Equality Act, to start doing its job: Hold the hearings; hold the conversation'' because to fail to argue that it should be done in committee while you lament on the floor that the committee hasn't acted is certainly an argument with no integrity. I yield the floor.

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, this morning we received news that the Supreme Court has ruled in regard to our Dreamers, our Deferred Action Childhood Arrival children, who came to America knowing no other country, and now the Court has said that President Obama did have the authority to establish the DACA Program and that President Trump does not have a basis in law for ending it. Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers now have full legal authority to continue their lives in America--the country they know and love--and pursue their dreams, and we must celebrate that today.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am honored today to join Senator Booker, Senator Harris, and so many of my colleagues to work to take this moment of national outcry and turn it into an opportunity, a moment of national action. For weeks now, in protests across our land, millions of fellow Americans have been rising up and speaking out to demand justice, accountability, opportunity, and, above all, the equality promised by our Founders 244 years ago. This latest movement may have been sparked by the senseless killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of public safety officers. One officer, sworn to protect and defend him, knelt on his neck for 9 minutes, extinguishing his life. But this movement is about so much more. The pain and anger and the anguish that have burst forth from the hearts of Black Americans everywhere run far deeper than a single tragedy. It is a pain born of an endless string of tragedies, the senseless killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and more--so many more Black men and women who should be alive today--of Rayshard Brooks, shot in the back by a police officer, who died this past Friday night. It is a pain borne even before we were yet a country, when more than 400 years ago, traders kidnapped Africans from their own lands, brought them here to these shores--American shores-- sold them, locked them into generations of brutal slavery, treated not as people but as property, chained, sold, whipped, raped, treated as something less than human. Our Nation has never come to terms with this legacy. There is no memorial on the National Mall. There is no Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So, still today, America's gaping wound of racism bleeds pain and injustice, and inequality continues to plague every system in our country. Too many Black men and women have lost their livelihoods, their lives, and their dignity to a justice system rigged against them: racial profiling, mandatory minimums, stop and frisk, acts of racial profiling, and racially driven predatory actions. We entrust to our public safety officers vast power to serve their communities, but have we ensured that their vast power is exercised equally on behalf of all citizens? We have not. Too often, forces--public safety forces, police forces--treat White citizens as clients and Black citizens as a threat. That is systemic racism, and it must change. It is why I am so proud to stand here in support of Senator Booker's and Senator Harris's sweeping Justice in Policing Act reform bill. We need to hold officers accountable for their actions. We need to change the culture of policing in America, and this legislation is the right law at the right moment to begin to do that. No one should ever be profiled based on the color of their skin. Choke holds, like the one that killed Eric Garner, must be a thing of the past. No-knock warrants, like the one that ended with Breonna Taylor being shot to death in her bed, should no longer exist. Under the Justice in Policing Act, these will be gone. When a public safety officer misuses the immense power of his or her badge, that misuse must be investigated, must be documented, must be penalized, and the record of that abuse must be public. That is the essence of accountability that goes hand in hand with the responsibility and the power that goes with wearing the badge. Never again should an officer who has been fired for abusing their power be able to go down the road and be hired by another department and be able to continue abusive practices in a new setting. That is why I have advocated for a national database of police misconduct, to achieve this outcome. And it is why I am so pleased that Senator Booker has included such a database in the Justice in Policing Act. In 1968, the Kerner Commission, which was examining the source of the demonstrations the year before concluded: ``Bad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression, and other culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination all converged to propel violent upheaval on the streets of African-American neighborhoods in Americans cities, north and south, east and west.'' Doesn't that sound familiar--all too familiar--here, 52 years later, half a century later? One person testifying at the Commission said: I read the report of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the investigative report on the Harlem riot of 1935, the reporting of the investigating committee of the riot of 1943, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot. I must say in candor to members of this Commission, it is a kind of ``Alice in Wonderland,'' with the same moving picture shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction. That is why I am standing on the floor in support of this act, because inaction is not acceptable. Let the same not be said about this moment years from now. Today is a moment for a day of action, for greater investments in affordable housing and decent communities and in schools and teachers in minority communities, for greater investments in Black business owners and early education programs like Head Start. It is a time to ensure that every American truly has a right to vote and is free from voter suppression and voter intimidation. This Friday, our Nation will, once again, recognize and celebrate Juneteenth, the day when slavery officially ended in this country 155 years ago. Let this Juneteenth stand as a day for all of us to reflect on the calls for justice crying out across our land. Now is a time to be agents of change--yes, to listen to the voices of the people, to join with those who have taken to the streets, enduring rubber bullets and the batons and the tear gas, to stand up for what is right. Now is a moment to stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans who have had enough of the suffering of inequality and of injustice, so together we can help our Nation live up to the ideal of a land where everyone, no matter the color of their skin, is treated with the dignity and the respect and the opportunity and the equality equal to all others.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this week our majority leader is asking the Senate to vote on the nomination of Michael Pack to serve as Chief Executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Mr. Pack's nomination should trouble all of us in this Chamber. It raises the question of whether the U.S. Senate is committed to being the check and balance on the qualifications of those potentially vested with substantial responsibility into positions in our executive branch. His nomination draws into question the challenge we have, the responsibility we have to ensure that only individuals of talent, experience, and of integrity serve America in the executive branch. Hamilton commented on this in the Federalist Papers. He said: To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of [the Senate's] concurrence would have a powerful though, in general, silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon the spirit of favoritism in the President, and tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters. Those words should resonate in this Chamber now. The individual who will come before us, Michael Pack, set up a nonprofit called Public Media Lab, or PML, apparently for the sole purpose to channel contracts to his for-profit operation known as Manifold Productions. Over a period exceeding a decade, he channeled $4 million from the nonprofit to the for-profit. Not a single contract went anywhere else--no other contracts. Utilizing a nonprofit to launder for-profit contracts, in the process of which providing tax subsidies to your customers and advantage over your competitors, raises both ethical and legal issues. The legal issues, including potential criminal conduct, have not been resolved. Mr. Pack is, at this moment, under investigation by the attorney general of the District of Columbia. Mr. Pack, in tax filings to the IRS in 2011 through 2018, did not accurately disclose a relationship between his nonprofit and his for- profit. When he was asked if, in fact, there were common officers between the two, he answered no when the answer was clearly yes. He did not disclose that his for-profit benefited from the setup of the nonprofit. Mr. Pack did admit to the Committee on Foreign Relations that he made oversights; that is the term he used--``oversights.'' But he has refused to correct his tax filings. Mr. Pack, when he was renominated in 2020, inaccurately stated in the records to the committee that his tax returns were complete and accurate. He has refused to provide critical documents to the committee and, in that sense, to the Senate to examine these significant issues. He has refused to provide the agreements between PML and Manifold, his nonprofit and his for-profit, to examine the propriety of the relationship. He has said simply that those documents are confidential and proprietary. But we should realize that serving in the executive branch is a privilege. We asked for information so that we can exercise our constitutional responsibility. When an individual confronted with substantial ethical and legal issues simply says ``I will not provide them'' and if the Senate committee says ``That is OK,'' then we are failing in our constitutional responsibility to examine the qualifications of the individual. This is no light responsibility we bear in this Chamber. This is a very significant check and balance of the U.S. Constitution, which each and every one of us swore to uphold when we took our oath of office. Mr. Pack, when he was president of the Claremont Institute, directed significant funds to his for-profit company for fundraising. His company is not a fundraising company; his company is a film company. So we have asked him to provide the details and documents related to that work to see if there was an inappropriate transfer of funds from a position of responsibility to the personal profit of Michael Pack. But Mr. Pack has refused to provide details. He has refused to provide documents related to that work. In addition, he prematurely resigned from his role at the Claremont Institute, and it is shrouded in mystery. We do not know if the board found ethical issues. We do not know if they found criminal conduct because he has not responded to our request for documents related to his premature resignation. Given the gravity of these issues, it makes sense, when he was renominated, that he would reappear before the committee to help clear up these concerns and these issues. Well, we have not had such a hearing. To summarize, when an individual makes false statements to the IRS and refuses to correct them, when they make false statements to the committee, not in the first time before the committee but the second time before the committee, when they refuse to provide relevant documents to provide significant issues of ethical conduct or potential criminal conduct, when there is an active investigation into that potentially criminal conduct, then we should simply say to the President: Send us a different name. This man may be well qualified, but he does not wish to provide the information necessary for the Senate to do its responsibility as a check and balance on potentially unfit individuals. To exercise advice and consent in accordance with responsibilities charged to us, we must insist on upholding the standards for records and documents and truthfulness to the committee. We must insist that outstanding investigations be completed when they involve potentially criminal conduct. We must insist that verifiably false statements be corrected. These are not high or exceptional standards; these are fundamental, basic, elementary responsibilities that we carry. That is why I have written a resolution declaring that the Senate should not vote on a nominee who has made verifiably false statements to Congress or the executive branch and who refuses to correct those statements. Until those statements to both the Foreign Relations Committee and to the IRS are corrected, Michael Pack's nomination should be set aside. We should simply tell the President and exercise our responsibility, for which we have taken an oath of office, to send us someone else. This individual is not prepared to provide the information necessary for the Senate to proceed with his nomination. That is what we should be saying, and we should still be saying it at this late date. I urge my colleagues to do the right thing by supporting this resolution

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, at this moment, Americans everywhere are confronting unprecedented challenges and uncertainties as we continue to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic implosion. That is not all that is going on across the country. Although some of the challenges we face are quite severe, they are just getting drowned out by the daily news about the pandemic. But imagine being a family farmer in the midst of this crisis. You have already faced any number of challenges in recent years--low commodity prices, tariff wars--only to face the greatest health and economic disaster any of us have experienced in our lifetime. Then, when you thought nothing else could go wrong, something else does go wrong. You have to face a severe drought. Twelve hundred farms in the Klamath Basin in Oregon and California don't have to imagine this situation because they are living through it as we speak. The Klamath Basin is sometimes referred to as the ``Western Everglades,'' an area rich with agricultural resources and exceptional populations of wildlife. This basin attracts 80 percent of the Pacific Flyway's waterfowl and supports the largest overwintering population of bald eagles anywhere in the lower 48 States and is home to some of the country's most productive salmon river systems in the country. It is also home to 1,200 family-owned farms of different sizes, encompassing some 200,000 acres of farmland. That farmland is irrigated with water from both the tributaries of the Klamath River and Klamath Lake. Those who are familiar with the basin will know that the water is essential to the health of the river, the health of the lake, the wildlife in the refuge, and the economic success of the ranchers and farmers. In many years, there is enough water to address all of these needs, but in other years, such as this year, 2020, there isn't enough water to go around. So when there is a dry year with less water in the lake and river, it is bad for everyone--bad for the refuge, the river, the lake, and it is a horrific challenge for our ranchers and for our farmers. This year, 2020, isn't just a dry year; it is ``as difficult a year as anyone could have imagined,'' according to Jeff Nettleton, Area Manager of the Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Basin area office. As Governor Kate Brown put it back in March, ``Drought conditions arrived early and have persisted, including reduced snowpack, precipitation, and minimal streamflow.'' In other words, this is a perfect storm of challenges. The Governor went on to say that ``the long-term forecast for the region continues for warmer than normal temperatures and lower than normal precipitation.'' There has been nothing in the 2 months since she said that which has reversed that course. As of last Friday, the snowpack in the Klamath region, the natural reservoir that replenishes the lakes and streams providing water for the irrigation system for the summer, was just 28 percent of normal. You can get some sense of how bad the drought is this year by looking at the historic numbers on this chart. This is one way of presenting it. We can see deliveries that are coming to the Upper Klamath Lake project, and the blue lines are the more normal years. Then we have the worst ever drought of 2001. Then we have the terrible drought of 2010, and here we are with this year's drought deliveries forecast to be essentially the same as 2001. In 2001 there was a water war in Oregon. Some of you may remember that there was a bucket brigade to take water out of a canal ditch or to put water into the canal ditch. There were protests. There was great anger and frustration. Since then, in 2010, though, we had worked out partnerships between the competing constituencies. They worked together to try to develop a plan for the region so that when crisis hit, they could be in partnership rather than in conflict. So 2010 didn't end up to be national news like 2001. Well, I am here tonight to say that part of that partnership was working with the Federal Government intensely to provide assistance, to provide assistance in funding that would help retire or disconnect the use of water rights for a given year and to pump water out of the ground--use groundwater--which is very expensive. The Klamath Water Users Association says that, typically, 350,000 acre-feet of water is needed to fully irrigate the basin. Now, at the beginning of this season, farmers were told they would get a fraction of that, maybe 140,000 acre-feet of water. So they went to work with that in mind. They have to charge the canals, get initial water into the canals to prepare for planting, prepare for the water that would come with summer. And they used about 25,000 of that 140,000 acre-feet. But there was less water even than anticipated, unexpectedly low inflows from the snow pack--not enough snow, and it melted too fast. So, now, it is not 140,000 acre-feet; it is 80,000, again, putting it on par with 2001 that generated so much tension and conflict and anxiety. That means that just 55,000 acre-feet remain. Compare that to the typical 350,000 needed to fully irrigate the basin. So farmers are going to be cut off. Ranchers are going to be cut off. We need, here in Congress, to come to their aid. The basin and its 1,200 farmers are in deep trouble. The impacts don't just stop with them. It will be felt up and down the economy. With no crops to harvest, our food chain takes a big hit. The workers who usually harvest these crops aren't going to have jobs to go to. Local businesses that supply things like seed and fertilizer and farm equipment, well, they are hit hard too. So the farmers and the community--the economic community--need our help, and they need it now. The worst thing we can do is stand by and say that, in these times of trouble, we aren't here to help. That is why, tomorrow, I will be introducing a bill that will give the Bureau of Reclamation flexibility and authority to utilize the $10 million a year that has been previously authorized and appropriated to work with the farmers and the basin's ranching community. Now, this money, as I mentioned, has already been authorized. It has already been appropriated. So why should I need to introduce a bill? Well, the answer is, a lot of bureaucratic redtape. In 2018, Senator Wyden and I worked here and Greg Walden worked on the House side--the congressman who represents this district--and we got a concept into the Water Resources Development Act, the WRDA bill, and it passed. That bill passed. It went to the Oval Office. It had President Trump's support. But, after the bill was enacted, the lawyers at the Bureau of Reclamation said: We are sorry. The language we gave you isn't quite right, on further examination, and we can't release these funds. So, last year, Senator Wyden and I were able to work again in partnership with Congressman Walden, and in July 2019 we passed language here in the Senate to fix this. Well, OK. That is great, except that bill didn't make it through the House. That technical corrections bill never made it to the Oval Office. So there is $10 million out there--authorized, previously appropriated--that needs a technical fix to be able to help out our farmers and ranchers right now. Now, I am not saying to all of you that this will be enough help in this incredibly horrific drought year. We may well need significantly more, but at least this first step should be taken right away. That is the bill I will be introducing tomorrow with the full support, again, of my partners in this effort: Congressman Walden and Senator Wyden. Farmers and ranchers need help, and they need it now. This is not a silver bullet, but it is something easily within our reach. Let's do these simple things that are within our reach: Money that has been authorized, money that has been appropriated, money that hit a technical glitch at the Bureau of Reclamation--let's fix it and get help right now to idle land and to pump water to provide assistance. I thank all my colleagues who helped so much in 2010 when I came to this floor under similar circumstances and we gave unanimous consent for this bill. Congressman Walden came down the hallway to vouch for the issues we were facing, so we were hearing bipartisan representation of the challenges and addressing the challenges that our ranchers and farmers in Klamath Basin faced. That is all we are doing again. I ask for each and every Member's support that we get this done and we get it done quickly. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I wish to state for the record that, though the difficulties of traveling across the country in the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic made it impossible for me to present in the Capitol to vote on the nomination Brian D. Montgomery, of Texas, to be Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, I would have voted `nay' had I been present. Few things create a stronger foundation for a thriving, successful families than affordable housing. Study after study has shown that children who grow up in a stable home do better in school and are more successful over the course of their lives. Stable affordable housing builds strong neighborhoods and communities because the members of that community are invested in its success. For generations of Americans, homeownership has been a driving force behind the building of a strong middle class, helping families build wealth through the equity generated through homeownership. As the son of a union mechanic, I experienced this throughout my own life. My father's wages were enough to afford a modest ranch home in a blue collar Oregon community. And because of that house and that community, I was given all kinds of opportunities. I was allowed to explore my interests, whether it was taking machines apart and putting them back together again in my dad's garage or exploring the great outdoors as a Boy Scout. I was able to receive a good public education and go on to be the first in my family to graduate from college. But far too many Americans don't have those same opportunities today. That is because the goal of affordable housing, whether buying a house or renting a decent apartment, is out of reach for too many working and middle-class families and falling further out of reach with every day that passes. Prior to this pandemic, we saw rents and home prices rising twice as fast as worker's incomes. Today, the cost of a typical single-family home is four times greater than the median household income. We need a Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who will make it a priority to reverse the trajectory that we have been on and to actually make housing more affordable in America. This position is responsible for management of all day-to-day operations within HUD, including roughly 7,700 employees. They oversee a budget of approximately $50 billion that funds a number of programs meant to provide quality, affordable housing for lower income Americans, provides rental assistance for low-income families, and distributes grants to states and communities for various housing-related purposes and also enforces the Fair Housing Act. Brian Montgomery is not the person for the job. In his current role as the FHA Commissioner, Mr. Montgomery has supported policies from the Trump administration that would increase the cost of FHA loans and include risk-based pricing, continuing to make homeownership even less affordable for those who can least afford it. He was also part of the senior leadership team that published a rule that would help undermine enforcement of the Fair Housing Act through the Disparate Impact Study. The disparate impact standard is a longstanding tool used to root out policies and practices that may not be openly discriminatory on their face, but disproportionally harm a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. The proposed rule that Mr. Montgomery helped create--and which is vigorously opposed by a coalition of fair housing, civil rights, and consumer groups--rigs the system to make it nearly impossible for a victim of discrimination to win a disparate impact claim. A person who has used his current position to make it harder for low- and middle-income Americans to afford to buy a home should not serve in a top-tier position as the equivalent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's chief financial officer. We need individuals in these positions fighting to get families into homes, not pushing that dream further and further out of reach. Therefore, I oppose Mr. Montgomery's nomination to serve as the Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and would have voted nay, had I been able to be present.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to address the debate we are having today over whether to override the President's veto of the Kaine resolution that reminds the President of the United States about the fundamentals of the Constitution, about article I, section 8 of the Constitution, which gives the enumerated powers of Congress and says that Congress, and Congress alone, has the power to declare war. No decision is tougher or more important than the decision to go to war. That is why the Founding Fathers never intended for a single person to be able to make that decision. They explicitly, after intense debate and consideration, gave that power solely to Congress, the people's branch of our government. They didn't want anyone--any one individual, even the President of the United States--to be able to drag our Nation to war for personal or political reasons or for misjudgments, inadequately vetted with the wisdom of the leaders of the country. Since President Trump came into office, we have come within a hair's breadth of war with Iran on more than one occasion because of his words and his actions. It is why back in February and March, the Senate and the House debated this resolution, reinstructing the President on the fundamentals of the Constitution, reminding him that he does not have the power to take us to war in Iran. It instructed him that any hostilities with Iran need to come in accordance with the Constitution. But the President of the United States has responded to our clear declaration of the essence of the Constitution by tossing it aside, by vetoing that resolution. And so here we are debating whether to override that veto. The Founding Fathers were adamant about not having anything resembling a King in the new country they were building. The President was given the power to lead the Nation's Armed Forces as Commander in Chief, but article I, section 8 of the Constitution stated: ``The Congress shall have Power. . . . To declare war.'' If there is any real doubt about the Founders' intent, well, let's return to the comments that they made at the time. James Madison, father of the Constitution, said this: The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the legislature. He continued: ``The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature . . . the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or not cause for declaring war.'' How about George Washington, commander of our forces in the Revolution, first President of the United States, father of our Nation? He said this: ``The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure,'' referring to Congress. How about George Mason of Virginia? George Mason remarked that he was ``against giving the power of war to the executive'' because the President ``is not safely to be trusted with it.'' There is more. How about Thomas Jefferson, one of the most brilliant minds our country has ever produced? He said this: ``We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him''--the dog of war--``loose from the Executive to the Legislative body.'' And Jefferson didn't just believe that these were important words in the Constitution. When he was President and when he was being pressured over a dispute with Spain over the boundaries of Louisiana and Florida, he wrote to Congress stating: ``Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force in any degree.'' How about Alexander Hamilton, whom many Americans have been hearing so much about with the play ``Hamilton'' having been such a hit over the last few years? What did Hamilton say about this? He said: ``The Congress shall have the power to declare war''; the plain meaning of which is, that it is the peculiar and exclusive duty of Congress . . . to change that state into a state of war.'' Abraham Lincoln was not a Founding Father, but he understood absolutely what the Founders were talking about, and he said this: The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated . . . by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions, and they resolved to frame the Constitution [so] that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But we are in a day and age where we have the President who does not respect the words of the Constitution, does not respect the vision of our Founders, does not understand the wisdom that the issue of war and the associated huge toll in blood and huge toll in treasure is absolutely too important a decision to be vested in a single person, that it must be a product--a decision to go to war must be the product--of a considered debate of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. That is why we proceeded to pass the resolution here in February and in March down the hall, because the President has been beating the drums of war since he came to office. He started up by tearing up the Iran nuclear agreement, after the United States had led the world in creating an effective strategy to end the nuclear programs of Iran. He followed it with an economic war against Iran that has inflicted great suffering on the people of that Nation, and, then, so many other escalatory provocations and responses, that without the considered response of Congress to remind him that he does not have the power to go to war, could take us into another Middle East war. We here in the Senate must not allow that to happen. We saw the consequences of the last Middle East war and the toll of the blood of our sons and daughters and of our national treasure. We saw that toll, and we must not allow a war to occur because of a President who disregards the Constitution of the United States. The resolution that the Senate and House passed, the Kaine resolution, says: Congress hereby directs the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for the use of military force against Iran. That, by the way, is exactly consistent with the War Powers Resolution, which is the law of the United States of America that notes that the power of the President as Commander in Chief to involve the United States ``in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to a (1) declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its Armed Forces.'' That is the law of the United States of America backing up the Constitution of the United States of America, founded on the wisdom of the Founders, as you heard one after another, all conveying that same message. But what was the President's response? The President's response in his veto message said that the resolution is insulting. Is it insulting to fight for our Constitution to be followed No, Mr. President, it is the responsibility of every Member here to fight for the Constitution to be followed, and the most important issue we ever consider on the floor of the Senate is the issue of whether or not we are going to war. It is not insulting. It is essential--essential--to remind this President that the wisdom of the Constitution stands today as it has for more than 200 years. The President also cited authorities he has under the 2002 authorization for the use of military force. Well, let's see what that authorization actually said. It said this: The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to-- (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. Now, I know people get confused about Iraq and Iran, but, Mr. President--and I am speaking to the President of the United States-- please, get out a map and understand that Iraq is not Iran, that this does not give you authority to go to war against Iran. The President also cites article II of the Constitution, and he goes on at some length in his veto message saying what limited powers this gives him. Well, Mr. President--and, again, I am speaking to the President of the United States--that is not what is written in the Constitution. That is not what is embodied in the War Powers Resolution. That is not what our law and international law provide as a basis for going to war--that the President has sole power--and it is absolutely contrary to the complete history and founding of the United States of America, giving the power of war to this body and the House that is down the hall. In fact, international law and U.S. law refer to issues like force being used as necessary and proportionate, and for the President to be able to act when there is an imminent threat. And the President takes a shot at this in his Trump veto message, referring to the fact that he has powers that go far beyond to respond to an imminent attack, under article II of the Constitution. In other words, the President of the United States is saying that his powers are unlimited, as he asserted in so many other arenas--that his powers are unlimited to go to war. No, Mr. President, they are not, and a bipartisan majority of this Senate has said that. A bipartisan majority of the House has said that. And even if your veto stands and we cannot override it today, it is the Constitution of the United States that says that. And that should be the final point that today, when we vote, let's vote with the Constitution of the United States. Let's vote with the Founders, who so explicitly gave that power to this Chamber and the Chamber down the hall. Let's vote to say that the wisdom that has stood for more than 200 years should be the wisdom that prevails today when we vote to override the veto of the President of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I walked outside across the Capitol grounds, and it is such a beautiful day. The cherry blossom trees are blooming. There were mothers with young children, 3- and 4-year-old children, playing on the grass, and it seemed like just so idyllic, so perfect. It seemed like nothing could be wrong in America. But, in fact, so much is wrong in America. Our everyday rhythm of life has been shattered. We are facing a medical pandemic and an economic collapse: K-12 schools, closed; universities, shut down; grocery stores, empty; restaurants, locked; gyms, movie theaters, music venues, closed for business. The reverberations of so many core businesses and core retail being shut are affecting virtually every family and every small business across this country. So many forms of commerce are grinding to a halt. The economy is imploding, and it is touching the workers and it is touching those small businesses. Workers are experiencing the reality of reduced hours, lost shifts, layoffs; and they don't know when they are going to be able to pick up that work again. Then, they are not sure how they are going to pay their utilities. How are they going to pay their rent? How are they going to pay their mortgage? And when will America and the economy start to heal, and when will they be able to go back to work? So the American people are anxious and worried, rightly, about the threat of the disease and worried, rightly, about the collapse of the economy. Coronavirus is marching on America. As of yesterday--or, actually, as of this morning--we have almost 6,000 cases here in our United States of America--5,881 cases as of this moment. Compare that to a week ago. We are talking about 1,200 cases a week ago. That is a five-fold increase in a week. We now have more than 50 States affected--all the States, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Then, we can ponder the fact that the number of deaths has gone up--51 deaths compared to in the thirties a week ago. So the coronavirus is marching on America and marching on the economy. It is a double hammer affecting families and small business, and it is particularly appropriate at this moment to share with all of you the stories of small businesses in my home State that are being impacted. More than 40 businesses sent in their stories, and I am going to share 6 or 7 of those stories. But as we think about how we proceed, we need to recognize that this recovery needs to be one where we invest in the foundation of our economy, we invest in the families, we invest with sick leave, we invest with unemployment insurance, we invest by covering the health costs of getting tests and the cost of getting treatment, and we invest in our small businesses. Not so long ago we had a bailout that favored big business, and big business went on to make billions of dollars and then get a massive tax break in 2017. Right now, the airlines are asking for a $50 billion bailout, but they have spent almost $50 billion in stock buyouts over the last few years because they were so profitable. And why did they do stock buyouts? Because it increased the value of the stock options of the corporate executives in that industry. This is a version of private gain and public pain. When a business says, ``During the good times I will keep all that money; thank you very much for not charging me any taxes to maintain our infrastructure or our military or our medical care system, and then, when we hit a hard time, we will ask to be bailed out''--so we will have conversations about that strategy for big business. How about, instead, we focus on the families and the pain they are feeling, and focus on the small businesses and the challenges they are facing? We need a Main Street recovery, not a Wall Street bailout. We need an economy rebuilt from the bottom up, not from Wall Street down--small businesses, like Bargaritas, a small Mexican restaurant in Ontario, OR. It is a great place for people to gather for a meal, and unlike nearby fast food restaurants, they aren't known for their takeout. But to combat the virus, the State of Oregon has shut down sit-down restaurants and asked them to go to takeout only. Well, that is taking a toll on Bargaritas. When a couple came recently in the door and sat down for a meal, the restaurant staff had to explain that they could make their meal for them, but they would have to make it to go. The couple got up, and they didn't order to go. They walked out the door. The owner of Bargaritas notes that they are just struggling to keep their restaurant open, that business is not coming in enough to pay the workers. So if things don't pick up quickly, he is going to have to close and ask his employees to file for unemployment. Or how about the Paddington family of stores in Ashland, OR, in business since 1973? In recent years they have endured all kinds of challenges, including a couple of summers in which wildfire smoke created major challenges for the businesses in Ashland, OR. But things were looking pretty good this year. Business was going OK. Now, however, the owner says they ``felt [their] world crumble in March with the threat of the coronavirus changing our world.'' They have laid off eight staff members just this week. That is 30 percent of their staff. In a single day, their sales dropped 50 percent. As things are going now, they will need to lay off more staff within the next few weeks if the business climate does not change. And the story is much the same for the retailers throughout the town of Ashland, OR. The story is similar in Portland, where Betsy and Iya, a company that has designed and manufactured jewelry for the past 12 years and regularly employs about 17 workers, had to downsize. They had to ask three of their workers to be let go This is a business that has gone out of its way to promote other local businesses, but sales have dropped off very quickly. I would presume that in this sense of crisis, families are buying essentials, and that means those in the jewelry industry are seeing their sales drop. The sales have dropped very quickly, and they are seeing the virus's huge economic impacts, and they are expecting to have to lay off more people soon, and they are looking for help. Ultrazone Laser Tag--now, you might think that, with folks being out of work, they might go to a place to get some exercise and have some recreation, and a sense of separation might be OK. Maybe laser tag would see an upsurge in sales--not the case. Lee Sturman, of Ultrazone Laser Tag, in Milwaukie says: My name is Lee Sturman, and I am the owner of Ultrazone Laser Tag, a family entertainment center Located in Milwaukie, Oregon. As the founder, I have successfully operated for 26 years. During this time, like all small business owners, I have battled competitors and overcome other challenging obstacles. On a level playing field, I have managed to survive and thrive. But, unfortunately, my business has been upended by an invasion of tiny microbes. COVID-19 has struck fast and struck hard. In a matter of two weeks, Ultrazone has gone from busy crowds to near emptiness. Steve and Kristi Ball operate Basin Indoor Gardening in Klamath Falls, OR. In response to the Klamath County Chamber of Commerce collecting stories of the financial impact that COVID-19 is having on local businesses, they submitted the following and appreciate the opportunity to share, and I appreciate the fact that they responded and are sharing. Steve and Kristi note: [They have] owned a small retail business in downtown Klamath Falls for nearly 11 years so have experience with seasonal fluctuations and customer trends that affect the cash flow and overall revenues of my store. Things have been shockingly slow since the beginning of March but especially this last week where customer traffic has almost halted. Based on last years total for March and daily sales compared to this years same time frame my store gross sales are down to about 36% of normal, indicating 64% loss in revenues. I hope this is a short lived situation and business can go back to what is normal, more than a month like this will force some difficult decisions for the future of my store. April Severson of Portland writes: I've owned my event production company for 20-years. My business has always had it's ups and downs but this is the first time I've had all of my contracts cancelled. I am the sole employee of my company however, my cancelled contracts have also cancelled the work for my associates and vendors in audio-visual, entertainment, decor, furniture rentals, floral and catering. Since most of my vendors are small and emerging businesses as well this has had a spiraling effect on our ability to pay for bills, insurance, mortgages and to take care of our families. Amy Baker is the owner of Thread Bare Press in Eugene, and she notes: My screen printing business relies primarily on schools, restaurants and events to keep our T-shirt presses running. On Friday March 13th as the stock market tanked and major cultural centers shut down across the country, I saw a third of our monthly revenue vanish in one day. In the five days since, my email inbox has remained empty as our client base struggles to shore up their expenses. I have laid off half of my six staff this week and have let the rest know that next week they will temporarily not have a job. It's hard to feel like so many people depend on me for their paychecks, let alone my own children that depend on me for our own livelihood. I have helped my staff apply for unemployment, but there is no unemployment for business owners. We are a small business that essentially lives week to week based on our clients. In a perfect world there would be money to pay my staff paid leave or savings to sustain myself while we close our doors for what I estimate to be a month. However, we are not in that position. What I'm hoping for is to ride out this storm with forgiveness on my own bills and expenses that will not get paid next month. I'll need emergency, low interest capital to get back to work and bring my staff back on. Then we have all of our State's music venues, like Mississippi Studios and the historic Liberty Theater in Astoria and the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. All of them are in danger of going out of business. With social distancing and prohibitions on large gatherings and a sudden cancellation of musical acts, the venues are experiencing a sudden and total loss of income. Those stories are representative of things happening all over my State and I know in every State of the United States of America. The economy is imploding, and with each and every small business that can't pay its bills, it affects other small businesses and other larger businesses. It affects those who have rental housing and those who have mortgages. All of us are going to be touched. That is why it is going to be so important that we turn to this third stage of response by the U.S. Senate. The first stage was to shore up the healthcare industry. The second stage was some immediate help with sick leave and unemployment insurance and food assistance and free testing for the coronavirus. That bill inexplicably has been sitting untended in this Chamber. Why aren't all 100 of us here debating it before the American people and voting on it? I am told now that maybe, possibly, the bill may come to the floor this afternoon; that some deal will be worked out. Wouldn't it be better that we actually be on the floor talking about it, discussing it, and voting on amendments, if necessary? In a perfect world, I would like to pass it just the way the House sent it to us and get it into law immediately. The President has signed on, the House has signed on. You have Republican leadership and Democratic leadership. Why is this Chamber not acting? Then we must immediately go to this broader strategy--the stimulus to support our economy through this collapse to try to keep the collapse from being as severe and shortening the period before it can be restored. That period is going to depend a lot on how successful we are at interrupting the course of this disease. That is why this is so important--social distancing is so important. We have to stop the disease from moving from one person to another. The disease is on the march against America, and we have to interrupt it. We have to bring it to a standstill. Meanwhile, we have to help those families and businesses being so profoundly affected across America. Let's rebuild this economy from the bottom up, paying attention to the impact on families and the impact on our small businesses. As John F. Kennedy once put it, ``In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.'' That is what we did after 9/11. That is exactly what must happen today. Let us not be moved by the powerful and the wealthy to give yet more wealth and power to them. Let us be moved by the fact that we are all Americans in this together. Let us tend to the fundamental needs of healthcare and housing and education and, most importantly, good jobs as those jobs disappear across America. Let's pay attention and work together to shore up small businesses with low-interest loans and with grants to see them and their employees through this difficult time.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, my colleague has just demonstrated why this bill should be on the floor. He has given extensive conversation on a series of points that should be deliberated upon. I say to my colleague from Missouri, isn't this what we should be doing as a body, putting issues on the floor of the Senate and debating them for the future of this country so that we can get, if you will, right to the facts rather than to have things obscured by the fact that the issue is not on the floor. So I would encourage my colleague from Missouri to go back to his caucus and say: You know, I just gave a vigorous opposition to this bill, but I believe in the role of the Senate in deliberating the issues. So I think this bill should be put on the floor, and I think it should be open to amendments. I can hear from what my colleague has stated that he probably thinks the bill should be shrunk and probably thinks it could also be expanded. Good. That is the point of having debate and amendments on the floor of the Senate. So I would hope, in the spirit of your comments, you would be willing to actually stand up and debate this bill and advocate for your colleagues to debate this bill on the floor of the Senate, because once upon a time, this floor would have been full of Members arguing over key issues, enlightening each other, pointing out the flaws in their thinking, but now substantive policy bills don't arrive here on the floor because of an unconstitutional position--one that is not delineated in the Constitution--the majority leader has decided that nothing should be debated on this floor that he alone doesn't want considered. Let's think about some of the points that were just raised. One point was that the Federal Government should have no role in elections; it should all be left to local officials. Didn't we have that debate in 1965 in the Voting Rights Act? Why did the Federal Government say that we should, in fact, have laws for the integrity of our elections? It was because there were all kinds of forms of voter intimidation and voter suppression, keeping the people of the United States, the citizens of the United States, from fully participating in their democratic Republic. It is the Constitution that laid out this role for the Federal Government, saying Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations regarding elections. So it is the Constitution that envisioned that if States failed to protect the integrity of our elections, then we should act right here, right now. My colleague said he didn't like the idea that the bill says what type of paper to use. Well, that's certainly something that can be worked out. But shouldn't we have paper ballots everywhere? My colleague said local officials are doing a great job. Then why were people in minority districts waiting 7 hours to vote, when people in many other districts--more affluent districts--were waiting 7 minutes to vote? That is discrimination, straight and simple. Shouldn't we debate eliminating that discrimination here on the floor of the Senate? This is about the integrity of our elections. This is about the vision of our Constitution. This is about not letting the wealthy and powerful control what happens in our United States of America. If we do not address this corruption of this Senate and of the voting institutions, then we, in fact, will fail to fulfill our responsibility under the Constitution of the people, by the people, and for the people. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am pleased to be here with my colleagues to fight to restore the American Constitution. I am pleased to be here with Senator Tom Udall, who has led the For the People Act, and my colleagues Mazie Hirono, Michael Bennet, Amy Klobuchar, and Dick Durbin--all speaking up to say that we must defend the American Constitution. At the root of that is our system of electing those who represent us, and that election system, America, is now deeply corrupted by gerrymandering, by extensive, persistent voter suppression, and by dark money. It affects everything that we should achieve for the people of the United States. If we believe we need to end the price gouging of Americans on pharmaceutical drugs, we need to end this corruption and pass the For the People Act. If we believe that every child deserves a quality K-12 education and that our children should be able to go to college without a mountain of debt, we need to end this corruption and pass the For the People Act. If we believe that Americans should be living in homes and apartments, not sleeping on the streets, we need to end this corruption and pass the For the People Act. If we believe that we have a responsibility to pass on a habitable and livable planet, free of pollution, to our children and grandchildren, we need to end this corruption and pass the For the People Act. This corruption--gerrymandering, voter suppression, dark money--is all about eviscerating the very soul of our Constitution--the ``we the people'' vision of our Constitution, that we would not be like European nations that had government by and for the powerful, but that here in America representatives of the people would be able to have government by and for the people. It is Jefferson who said: The real test of whether we succeed is whether the laws reflect the will of the people. But instead, we see the laws in this Chamber being constructed solely, uniquely, and, unfortunately for the most powerful and wealthy among us rather than the people. Gerrymandering, where voters should choose their politicians but, instead, politicians choose their voters--that is a deep and powerful corruption that has extensive impact on the Chamber that is just down the hall. We have seen what happened in North Carolina, where 47 percent of the State's popular vote in House races won 23 percent of the seats and, similarly, in Pennsylvania, in the election before last, and the Supreme Court threw up its hands and said: We can't do anything about this, even though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court understood it is so important to fairness and equal representation and took it on and solved it. This bill sets up independent commissions across the country so that the districts for representation are drawn fairly. Then there is voter suppression and intimidation. If you believe in our Constitution and if you honor it, you believe in voter empowerment, not voter suppression. We have seen a flood of suppression and intimidation since the Supreme Court took a hatchet to the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case--voter ID laws, purges of voter rolls, moving polling locations, cutting back on the hours, cutting back on the staffing. We have seen it in North Dakota. We have seen it in Georgia. We have seen it in Ohio, and we have seen it in North Carolina. We have seen it in Iowa. We have seen it in New Hampshire, and we saw it in Texas last week. There are strategies to keep the poor from voting, strategies to keep those Americans of minority communities from voting, strategies to keep American Native Indians from voting, and strategies to keep college students from voting. Talk about the intense and deliberate corruption of America. Voter suppression and intimidation is it. But this bill lays it out--automatic voter registration, national vote-by-mail, prohibiting the purging of voting rolls, online registration to enable people to have a smooth, solid road to be able to participate, rather than roadblocks and land mines to prevent them from participating. Then we have the dark money. These are the most powerful and richest Americans trying to drown out the voices of millions of Americans through unlimited dark and dirty money in our campaigns. Americans know the system is now rigged. They know it is now corrupted by this money. We have seen an explosion of this money since 2010 when the Citizens United decision came down, a 5-to-4 decision from the Supreme Court. It bloated to more than $4.4 billion. This bill takes that on. It shines a light on all the money so we know where it is coming from and where it is going, so it can't be hidden in a shell game from one level, to the next, to the next. It requires honest ads. It allows small-donor matching grants. This bill, for the people, says no to corruption and yes to the ``we the people'' Constitution of the United States of America. If we want to act on the fundamentals for families on healthcare, on housing, on education, on infrastructure, and on living-wage jobs; if we want to take on the Equality Act so doors are no longer slammed for the LGBTQ community; if we are going to take on the carbon pollution that is destroying so much in American agriculture and our forests and our fishing, doing so much damage with fiercer storms; if we are going to take this on, we must pass the For the People Act. This act has passed the House down the hall. It has come down here, and it has been buried by the Republican leadership in this Chamber in, I must say, one of the most deliberate acts of sabotage of the Constitution we have ever seen on the floor of this Senate, and that sabotage must end. Therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 39, H.R. 1; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am proud to rise in support of S.J. Res. 68, the Kaine-Lee resolution to ``remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military.'' This resolution is crucial at a momentous moment in our Nation's history. As U.S. Senators, we are no strangers to tough decisions. When this institution is functioning properly, we make such decisions all the time. There are tough questions, and we make tough decisions on which programs to fund or on who sits in judgment over their fellow citizens on the Federal bench or on issues of civil rights or equality or fairness. Yet, without doubt, the most difficult decision any Senator will ever face is whether to authorize war--whether to, through such authorization, open the gates to send the men and women of our Armed Forces into harm's way. It is a solemn responsibility that all of us here take very seriously, and it is a responsibility that the Founding Fathers intended to rest solely here in the Congress of the United States of America, not down Pennsylvania Avenue, in the White House, not in the hands of any one person sitting in the Oval Office. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, George Mason, a delegate from Virginia, said he was ``against giving the power of war to the executive'' because the President ``is not safely to be trusted with it.'' In speaking to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention that same year, James Wilson stated: This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men [such as just the Senate or just the House], to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large. James Madison, the ``Father of the Constitution,'' wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1798: The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature. All of these comments and so many more are about the gravity of deciding to go to war--deciding on whether hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands will walk into the face of danger, suffer injuries, suffer death. Questions about war are questions of great human calamity that cannot be taken lightly. They cannot be taken at the spur of the moment. They cannot be taken with the judgment of a single individual. Our Founders noted that the decision should not be by any single President, not by a particular individual. This is not about the individual in the Oval Office at this moment; it is about the Founders' vision that it should be the collective decision of Congress, representing the people of the United States, to weigh this question of national defense--whether or not we should send our sons and now our daughters into harm's way in a military fashion, where many will be injured and many will die. It is an issue of the National Treasury as well because the cost of war is a huge cost in blood and a huge cost in injuries and a huge cost to the Treasury. That is why this responsibility was placed with us and with the House of Representatives. In this Constitution--and all Senators here probably have one in their desks--one just simply has to look in article I, section 8, which is where that specific responsibility is given to us, not to the President, not to the executive. Upon coming into this body, we did swear an oath to this Constitution, not to some vision of our personal desire that maybe a President would be better at making this decision and not to any scholars' opinion but to this document, which vests its power in this body, not in the President of the United States. For too long, Congress has allowed a steady expansion of the exercise of military power without authorization--without a declaration of war from Congress. So this is one of those rare moments in which we are standing up to say: No. Any decision to conduct war against Iran needs to come in accordance with the Constitution, in accordance with the War Powers Act, in accordance with the decision and debate that would occur here. S.J. Res. 68 lays out what the War Powers Act reads, which is, ``At any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs.'' This is a debate over whether the Congress should so direct. Indeed, it also lays out in this document the vision of our Constitution and reads that the question of whether U.S. forces should be engaged in hostilities against Iran should be answered following a full briefing to Congress and the American public of the issues at stake--a public debate in Congress and a congressional vote as contemplated by the Constitution. This resolution does not read that Congress will not debate the issue; it reads that Congress should debate the issue if the President so requests and come to a decision as to whether to open the gates of our Nation to war. It then proceeds to do exactly what the War Powers Act provides for, which is to ``[direct] the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of the government or military unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific Authorization for Use of Military Force.'' This is all about the vision of our Constitution. Are we going to support it? Are we going to say no to this warfare unless it is authorized as envisioned by the Constitution or are we going to say, ``No. We don't want the burden of that responsibility. It is a tough decision to make. We are not sure we will get it right, so we will just let the executive do what he wants even though the Constitution says no''? Let us honor the vision of the Constitution. Let us support this that is before us. Let us ponder how easy it is for there to be a cycle of provocation, an escalation. We have seen that in Iran. Iran is not a friendly power to the United States of America. Iran has been involved in activities that we greatly oppose in its supporting forces in Syria, in Lebanon, and Yemen; in its developing ballistic missiles; in its creating concerns inside of its neighbor Iraq with its Iranian militias. The United States has been involved in this cycle of provocation and escalation. We made a deal with Iran of economic assistance to Iran if they abandoned their nuclear program. They abandoned the nuclear program, and the inspectors certified they had abandoned it. Then, we have broken the deal, and we have tightened the sanctions, making life very difficult for the people of Iran. Iran launched rockets at our forces inside of Iraq, and the United States responded and attacked militias sponsored by Iran, killing a good score of Iranians in the process and assassinating an Iranian general. Iran responded with ballistic missiles attacks at the U.S. forces in Iraq, injuring, at this moment, an estimated 100 U.S. forces--a cycle of provocation and escalation. We are on the edge of war. We are involved in hostilities that have not been authorized, and the Constitution essentially says, in this situation, it is Congress's responsibility to debate and wrestle with whether to unleash our forces against Iran. So let's carry that responsibility, and as we do so, let's think how close we were to a third major war in the Middle East. We had a war and are still at war in Afghanistan. Now, the authorization for the use of military force in regard to Afghanistan was very narrowly tailored. That authorization said that our forces are authorized to attack those who attacked us on 9/11 and those who harbor those forces. It is now as if that AUMF had language added to it, language which essentially said and: any other group we disagree with in the world. The words that are often quoted as being part of that AUMF are ``and related forces.'' But do you know what? That language isn't in that AUMF. This Congress gave a very, very narrow assignment for the authorization of force, and it has been expanded massively. We could debate whether or not that authorization has been stretched to the breaking point. I think it has. I think it has been abused. It has been misused, and it dishonors the fact that Congress was so specific with that authorization. The result is that here we are, 19 years later. We didn't pursue a simple mission of taking out the training camps. We pursued a mission that has cost this Nation $1 trillion and thousands of our sons and daughters and tens of thousands with lifetime injuries. So we have that war. We know what kind of damage and costs there can be to an ill-considered strategy. Then, we have the war we had against Iraq and authorized by a 2002 authorization for use of military force, or AUMF, and this was also very narrowly crafted. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq--not posed by anyone else, just by Iraq--and to enforce the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq--very, very specific. Now, the administration is arguing that this AUMF from 2002, about Iraq, provides authority to go to war against Iran. It is just like the stretching of the 2001 AUMF that said go after those who harbored the 9/11 terrorists but has been stretched to go after other groups all over the world. But in both these cases, it was an authorization. Congress did debate. Yes, they have been abused after they were passed, but what there wasn't was an open door without Congress involved. So we must do our job here and realize the gravity of these conflicts and get the full, extensive information and make sure there is no fake news in that information. On the Iraq AUMF, this body operated on the solemn guarantee that there were weapons of mass destruction being developed by Iraq. It proved out to be false. So when we do hold the debate over Iran, let's make sure we get the absolutely honest intelligence, not the spin, not the cherry-picked intelligence, not partial, not selected to drive a conclusion--the honest, fully honest, situation of our activities and their activities and the threats that they pose. That is the responsibility we have--to make sure that the information we wrestle with is absolutely accurate and then to weigh the heavy cost of different strategies that may or may not involve force before we vote for force. It is a big responsibility, and I have heard Members of this Chamber say: You know what; it is such a tough decision. What if I get it wrong? Let's just let the Executive make that decision. If I misjudge it and don't vote to go to war and, for example, maybe there were those weapons of mass destruction equivalent to Iraq, I don't want to make that mistake, and people back home will not like it if I make that mistake. If I vote to go to war and the information is wrong and the strategy is wrong, well, then, people back home won't like that either. So let's just ignore the Constitution. Let's just ignore our oath to the Constitution. Let's just let the person down Pennsylvania Avenue do what he wants because we don't like the burden imposed on us by this document that says that issue has to be debated here. The decision to use force has to be debated and decided here, not there, because it is too big a question to leave to a single individual. Our Constitution starts out with these words: ``We the people.'' They did not want to create a King. They did not want to create an imperial Presidency that acted like a King. They wanted a nation run of, by, and for the people. The question of war is our responsibility. We must make the decision here, and that is why I urge my colleagues to take and say yes, we will vote for this S.J. Res. 68 because it says we are demanding the administration do what the Constitution demands, which is to place the question of going to war with Iran with this body.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, as Senators, our decisions build the foundation for future generations. I want those generations to know that I stood here on the floor of this Chamber fighting for equal justice under law. I stood here to defend our Senate's responsibility to provide a fair trial with witnesses and documents. I stood here to say that when our President invites and pressures a foreign government to smear a political opponent and corrupt the integrity of our 2020 Presidential election, he must be removed from office. As a number of my Republican colleagues have confessed, the House managers have proven their case. President Trump did sanction a corrupt conspiracy to smear a political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. President Trump assigned Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, to accomplish that goal by arranging sham investigations by the Government of Ukraine. President Trump advanced his corrupt scheme by instructing the three amigos--Ambassador Volker, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland--to work with Rudy for this goal. President Trump did use the resources of America, including an Oval Office meeting and security assistance to pressure Ukraine, which was at war with Russia, to participate in this corrupt conspiracy. The facts are clear. But do President Trump's acts rise to the level the Framers envisioned for removal of a President, or are they, as some colleagues in this Chamber have said, simply ``inappropriate,'' but not ``impeachable''? With respect to those colleagues, ``inappropriate'' is lying to the public; ``inappropriate'' is shunning our allies or failing to put your personal assets into a blind trust or encouraging foreign governments to patronize your properties. That is something you might call ``inappropriate,'' but that word does not begin to encompass President Trump's actions in this case--a corrupt conspiracy comprising a fundamental assault on our Constitution. This conspiracy is far worse than Watergate. Watergate was about a break-in to spy on the Democratic National Committee--bad, yes; wrong, definitely. But Watergate didn't involve soliciting foreign interference to destroy the integrity of an election. It didn't involve an effort to smear a political opponent. Watergate did not involve an across-the-board blockade of access by Congress to witnesses and documents. If you believe that Congress was right to conclude that President Nixon's abuse of power merited expulsion from office, you have no choice but to conclude that President Trump's corrupt conspiracy merits his expulsion from office. President Trump should be removed from office this very day by action in this very Chamber, but he will not be removed because this Senate has failed to conduct a full and fair trial to reveal the extensive dimensions of his conspiracy and because the siren call to party loyalty over country has infected this Chamber. Every American understands what constitutes a full and fair trial. A full and fair trial has witnesses. A full and fair trial has documents. A full and fair trial does not begin with the jury foreman declaring that he is working hand-in-glove with the defendant. When discussing why the Senate tries impeachments, Alexander Hamilton stated: ``Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent'' for that daunting responsibility? Every American should feel the sadness, the darkness, the tragedy of this moment in which this Senate is neither sufficiently dignified nor sufficiently independent for that responsibility. The Senate trial became a coverup when the majority voted on January 22 and again on January 31 to block all access to witnesses and documents. If this coverup goes forward, it will be the latest in a set of corrupt firsts this Senate has achieved under Republican leadership. It has been the first Senate to ignore our constitutional responsibilities to debate and vote on a Supreme Court nominee in 2016. It became the first Senate to complete the theft of a Supreme Court seat from one administration giving it to another in 2017. And now, it becomes the first Senate in American history to replace an impeachment trial with a coverup. President Trump might want to consider this: With a coverup in lieu of a trial, there is no ``exoneration,'' no matter how badly President Trump might want it. No matter how boldly he might claim it, there is no ``exoneration'' from a coverup. If this Senate fails to convict President Trump when we vote later today, we destroy our constitutional responsibility to serve as a check against the abuses of a runaway President. It is a devastating blow to the checks and balances which have stood at the heart of our Constitution. Our tripartite system is like a three-legged stool, where each leg works in balance with the others. If one leg is cracked or weakened, well, that stool topples over. If the Senate's responsibility is gutted and the limits on Presidential power are undermined, then, there is lasting damage to the checks and balances our Founders so carefully crafted. Let's also be clear. The situation that we find ourselves in today didn't spring out of nowhere. With respect to the Chief Justice, the road to this moment has been paved by decisions made in the Supreme Court undermining the ``We the People'' Republic, while Justice Roberts has led the Court--decisions like Citizens United in 2010, which corrupted our political campaigns with a flood of dark money, the equivalent of a stadium sound system drowning out the voice of the people; decisions like Shelby County in 2013, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to voter suppression and voter intimidation--if you believe in our Republic, you believe in voter empowerment, not voter supression--decisions like Rucho V. Common Cause in 2019, giving the green light to extreme partisan gerrymandering, in which politicians choose their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians. It is one blow after another giving more power to the powerful and undermining the vision of government of, by, and for the people--blow after blow making officials more responsive to the rich and wealthy donors than the people they are elected to represent. These Supreme Court decisions have elevated government by and for the powerful, and trampled government by and for the people, paving the path for this dark moment in which the U.S. Senate chooses to defend a corrupt President by converting a trial into a coverup. A trial without access to witnesses and documents is what one expects of a corrupted court in Russia or China, not the United States of America. We know what democracy looks like, and it is not just about having the Constitution or holding elections. Our democracy is not set in stone. It is not guaranteed by anything other than the good will and good faith of the people of this country. Keeping a democracy takes courage and commitment. As the saying goes, ``freedom isn't free.'' It is an inheritance bequeathed to us by those who have fought and bled and died to ensure that government ``of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.'' Fighting for that inheritance doesn't only happen on the battlefield. It happens when Americans everywhere go to the polls to cast a ballot. It happens when ordinary citizens, distraught at what they are seeing, speak up, join a march, or run for office to make a difference. And it happens here in this Chamber--in this Senate Chamber--when Senators put addressing the challenges of our country over the pressures from their party. Before casting their votes today, I urge each and every one of my colleagues to ask themselves: Will you defend the integrity of our elections? Will you deliver impartial justice? Will you protect the separation of powers--the heart of our Constitution? Will you uphold the rule of law and the inspiring words carved above the doors of our Supreme Court, ``Equal Justice Under Law''? I stand here today in support of our Constitution, which has made our Nation that shining city on a hill. I stand here today for equal justice under law. I stand here today for a full and fair trial as our Constitution demands. I stand here today to say that a President who has abused this office by soliciting a foreign country to intervene in the election of 2020 and bias the outcome--betraying the trust of the American people and undermining the strength of our Constitution--must be removed from office. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk for Senator Schatz, for Senator Carper, and for myself.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice. On behalf of the Senator from New Mexico, Martin Heinrich, and myself, I have a question to send to the desk.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, a lot is happening right now across our country and in Washington, DC, and in the House and the Senate--and across the globe, for that matter. There are a lot of issues. There is one that has not received the attention it should, which is about a group of Americans who have suffered enormous calamity in the last few days who deserve our attention and our focus. I am speaking, of course, about the devastation in Puerto Rico. Seismologists report that over 1,200 tremors, earthquakes, and aftershocks have struck the island since January 1. More than 70 of these were of a magnitude 3.5 or greater. Residents on the island have felt at least 100 of these earthquakes. The largest of the quakes, a magnitude 6.4, struck last Tuesday, taking one life and injuring many others. More than 2 weeks after the Earth started shaking, these quakes and aftershocks are still going on. In fact, this last weekend, the island was struck by an earthquake with a 5.9 magnitude. Yesterday morning, a 4.6-magnitude tremor could be felt. This morning, there was a 5.1- magnitude quake. The damage from these quakes is so severe, it can be seen from space. According to NASA, the satellite shows the land in parts of Southern Puerto Rico, near the epicenter of the quake, has moved 5\1/2\ inches. That is a very dramatic change in the landscape. You don't have to be in space; you don't have to have those images or be orbiting the planet and looking down to see the damage because the damage is everywhere. There is $110 million in damages estimated by the Governor's office. Other estimates from the Geological Survey now have the damage approaching $1 billion. Power has been restored to most of the island, but periodic outages are still happening in different parts of the island, and severe energy conservation is in place. The Costa Sur plant in the town of Guayanilla was so severely damaged, they are telling us that it will take over a year to get it up and running. That island needs 500 megawatts of emergency generation until that plant is fixed. As of last Thursday, hundreds of thousands were without water. The world-renowned chef Jose Andres' relief organization World Central Kitchen has served tens of thousands of meals in just the last few days. Buildings and homes have collapsed and been destroyed. Thousands are living outside of their homes, both with the damage done and the damage feared. It is reported that a total of 559 structures are affected. Look at this picture. Look at this pile of rubble lined up and crossing the street of collapsed buildings, hundreds of piles like that where building, or parts of buildings, once stood. There are 4,000 to 6,000 residents in shelters, thousands sleeping in hammocks or inflatable mattresses and in tents because they are afraid to sleep in their homes. My heart goes out to the people of Puerto Rico who are enduring yet another natural disaster, while they still have been fighting to rebuild their homes and their lives after the destruction of Hurricane Maria 3 years ago. The truth is, we haven't done nearly enough to help them. Not nearly enough from the last disaster has made it to the island to help them repair all of that damage done. The aid that has come has not come quickly enough. Indeed, just today, we are hearing that the aid that was supposed to be released no later than last September--$8 billion related to Hurricane Maria--is being released, or at least put in the Federal Register so it can be prepared to be released years after the disaster, when that aid was needed immediately after the disaster to rebuild. The citizens of Puerto Rico are American citizens. They don't have a vote in this Chamber, and that is a problem we should remedy. What we see is, when citizens don't have a Senator who represents them, there is no one to stand up and advocate with the same ferocity and determination and passion as somebody who is elected by those individuals, so the rest of us need to stand in--Democrats and Republicans, Senators from the South and the North and the East and West--we need to stand in together on behalf of our fellow Americans in this devastated landscape of Puerto Rico. This neglect of the citizens of Puerto Rico, of this island that is part of America, is staggering. That is why I have joined with Senator Schumer and 31 of my Democratic colleagues in a letter to President Trump supporting the Governor of Puerto Rico's request for a major disaster declaration, but this shouldn't be a partisan letter. Let's all join together--Democrats and Republicans together--to fight for the aid that is needed by our fellow citizens. President Trump signed a declaration that provides only $5 million for immediate emergency services. Five million dollars isn't close to addressing what the Geological Survey says is close to $1 billion in damage. That $5 million is useful, but far more is going to be needed-- far more--for removing debris, building temporary shelters, providing electric generators, distributing food and water, providing immediate emergency lifesaving medical care. They are going to need a lot of help, in addition, for long-term rebuilding. A major disaster declaration can help in that. That has not happened. It has been sitting on the desk in the Oval Office since last Saturday. Let's join together--Democrats and Republicans together--and say: Mr. President, sign that declaration that brings along with it crisis counseling, help rebuilding homes, help repairing roads, help restoring bridges, water control, water supply. Clean water supply is so important to health. Water treatment, which is so important in preventing cholera, job training, aid for businesses--that is the type of thorough, significant assistance the people of Puerto Rico need, and they need it right now, not tomorrow and not a month from now, not years from now. They need it now. I say, let's join together and call on President Trump to sign that major disaster declaration that unleashes this help. There is a lot going on in the world, a lot here in Washington. We prepare for one of the rare moments in American history where we will be conducting a trial related to Articles of Impeachment. Just a week ago Tuesday, 8 days ago, I was sitting in front of a television very worried about escalation to major war with Iran. There are big issues going on, absolutely, but don't let these big issues prevent us from addressing the plight of our fellow Americans. Let's pay attention. Let's make sure the people of Puerto Rico are neither ignored nor neglected. Swift action is needed. Let's join together and make it happen.