Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, here we are on another evening, debating another Cabinet nominee, addressing the question that Hamilton put before us, which is whether an individual is of fit character to serve in a particular post. This effort, this advice and consent responsibility held by the Senate, is one that was anticipated by our Founders to be used rarely because the very existence of this power, they felt, would ensure that a President would nominate people who are appropriately suited to the post they would hold. So I do find it troubling the number of times I have come to the floor in these last few weeks to speak about a nominee and consider whether they are fit and to find that perhaps the individual is lacking. Tonight we are considering the nomination of Congressman Mick Mulvaney to head the Office of Management and Budget. This is a powerful organization, and it is a very important position. It plays a critical role in the oversight and management of our Federal budget. It plays a critical role in determining what gets funded and what doesn't get funded. So with that in mind, it is important that we have a robust debate about this position and about this nominee. To break that down a little bit, the Office of Management and Budget puts together the budget for the President. In doing so, they take the vision our President has articulated, and they build it into a roadmap to accomplish that vision because where you spend money affects what actually happens as we pursue programs here in the United States of America. It is the Director of the OMB who works to make sure the various pieces of the Federal Government are working together like gears that mesh cleanly together and do not conflict. It is the Director of the OMB who helps to determine the cost of proposed legislation, which can advance or doom any particular proposal. It is the position of the OMB Director to review the impact of proposed regulations, and that can also have a significant impact. I come to this conversation with a number of concerns, and the first is the position of the nominee on Social Security. For 82 years, Social Security has provided for the American people, and it has helped our Nation prosper. On the third anniversary of the Social Security Act, in 1938, Franklin Roosevelt pointed out: ``Men and women too old and infirm to work either depended on those who had but little to share, or spent their remaining years within the walls of a poorhouse.'' That is not the vision we have today. Thanks to Social Security, our seniors have a basic income to see them through their golden years. They can live out their lives in relative comfort and security, rather than, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, ``within the walls of a poorhouse.'' In 2016, roughly 61 million Americans received over $900 billion in Social Security benefits. That is a huge injection into our economy, and it is spent almost immediately on fundamental goods. Nearly 9 out of 10 Americans older than 65 receive Social Security benefits, and for one-quarter of our Social Security beneficiaries, including both those who are single and those who are married, Social Security accounts for virtually their entire income. That would be many millions--more than 15 million Americans who would definitely be struggling in the most difficult fashion financially if Social Security didn't exist. Retired workers and their dependents account for about 71 percent of the benefits paid. Funds also go to disabled workers. Disabled workers and their dependents account for about 16 percent of the benefits. Survivors of deceased workers account for another 13 percent or roughly one-eighth of the benefits paid. Simply put, Social Security assists our retired workers, our disabled workers, and the survivors of our deceased workers. It is one of the best ideas America has ever put forward, but Congressman Mulvaney doesn't agree. He sees Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. Let me explain what a Ponzi scheme is. A Ponzi scheme is something where the incoming amount raised immediately pays for the benefits of somebody who paid in money previously. We actually have a Social Security trust fund, which is the difference between Mick Mulvaney's description of Social Security and what we actually have. If we made no changes, no changes at all to increase the lifetime of the trust fund, it would continue to be able to pay 100 percent of the benefits through 2034 and roughly three- quarters of all benefits currently promised ever after. That is if we make no changes. If we make small changes, our Social Security trust fund is solvent for decades and decades into the future. Certainly, I think we should aspire to that vision of a trust fund that has a 75-year horizon, a full solvency. The issue that Congressman Mulvaney raises, the idea he raises for changing how we adjust Social Security, however, isn't one of increasing the amount of wages that are subject to Social Security tax; it is not one of putting premiums on the income earned through nonwages, which is primarily income raised by wealthier Americans. Instead, it is to say to folks: Just retire later. When you are a white-collar worker and you work in an office that is nicely air-conditioned and you have had full healthcare benefits throughout your entire life, maybe when you get into your sixties, you say, ``Well, maybe I could keep working a little longer,'' but the reality for a huge percentage of Americans who work difficult jobs, who work jobs where their bodies wear out, they don't have the choice of simply saying: I will retire in another 5 years, because they literally have developed so many issues and challenges that it is impossible to do the same kind of work they did in their twenties and their thirties in their sixties. So that strategy of moving the goalpost on American workers, many of whom are decades already into the work they are doing, doesn't fulfill the promise and the vision of the Social Security Program. While Social Security is a great idea, moving the retirement age to age 70--which Mick Mulvaney advocates for, from his view as someone who comes from a job that perhaps isn't as arduous as many jobs in America--is a bad idea. This vision continues on into Medicare. Like Social Security, Medicare is also a generational promise, a lifeline for countless Americans since President Johnson signed it into law now more than five decades ago. Over 55 million Americans rely on Medicare for their health and their financial security. Roughly, 46 million are older Americans, 9 million are younger Americans with disabilities or certain illnesses. While this program has worked incredibly well, our nominee wants to ``end Medicare as we know it.'' Those are ominous words for the 55 million Americans relying on Medicare. He also believes we have to raise the retirement age. He told Bloomberg News in 2011: ``You have to raise the retirement age, lower a payout, change the reimbursement system.'' The problem with raising the retirement age is the same problem we have with Social Security. For American workers working hard in many types of jobs, their bodies are worn out. I used to have folks come to my townhalls and say: Senator, I am just trying to stay alive until I get to age 65, and they would tell me how they had multiple diseases and they were choosing between which disease to treat or how they had a single significant problem, but they were deciding to skip their pills every other day or cut their pills in half or perhaps go a week without their pills at all or how they were choosing not to go to the doctor when they developed a difficulty because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to afford the payment. That is not a healthcare system, but Mick Mulvaney wants to say to those folks: Oh, you reached age 65, too bad. I am providing this healthcare program another 5 years into the future. That is simply wrong, but more than wrong, it is also in direct contradiction to the promises made by President Trump during his campaign. The contrast is incredibly stark between the President's promise to Americans that unlike so many of the folks in his party, he would not be the one to promote tearing down Medicare and Social Security. He would not be the one to promote advancing the retirement age so people who are struggling have to struggle for another 5 years. So it is a poor fit between this individual and the office and the promises made to the American people. Another concern I have is in regard to Congressman Mulvaney's advocacy for shutting down the economy. He seems very comfortable playing Russian roulette with our economy. He and a group of other House Members brought our government to a screeching halt in 2013 because they wanted to defund the Affordable Care Act. What is the Affordable Care Act? The Affordable Care Act has enabled 20 million Americans to gain access to healthcare that they didn't have previously. In my home State of Oregon, the Affordable Care Act has enabled about one-half million people to gain access to healthcare, both through expansion of Medicaid, known as the Oregon Health Plan, and also through the healthcare exchange and marketplace where you can compare one policy to another, shop for the policy that best fits your family, and those of modest means get credit to help pay for those policies so they can actually afford them. It is an affordable care plan that provides for a healthcare set of benefits--benefits such as the ability to keep your children on your policy through age 26, benefits such as not having an annual limit or a lifetime limit on your policy so that when you do get seriously ill, you don't run out of healthcare partway into treating your disease. It is the Affordable Care Act that ends gender discrimination in the insurance marketplaces. It is the Affordable Care Act that says if you have a preexisting condition, you can still get insurance. I was at a fundraising walk for a woman who had a family member with multiple sclerosis. It was a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis. She said: Senator, this year is so different from last year. That was the year before the Affordable Care Act was implemented. I asked: How so? She said: A year ago, if your loved one was diagnosed with MS and they had insurance, you knew there was a good chance that your insurance was going to run out at the end of the year or they would hit a lifetime limit, and they wouldn't be able to pay for the care they needed. She said: If you didn't have insurance, you now have a preexisting condition that would prevent you from ever getting insurance. She went on to say that the difference between last year and this year, because of the Affordable Care Act, is that now members in the MS community--those who had the disease and their family members who were supporting them all out at this fundraising walk--now knew their loved one would have the peace of mind that they would get the care they needed. This is what a healthcare system is all about, peace of mind, but Mick Mulvaney wanted to tear away that peace of mind. He proceeded to support a 16-day government shutdown that cost our country $24 billion--and to what purpose? To rip peace of mind away from 20 million Americans. Back in 2015, he threatened to do it all again. The damage he had done--the $24 billion he had stolen from the American Treasury in the context of damaging the government with that shutdown--he was ready to do it all again in order to make sure Planned Parenthood never gets a dime from the government. To be clear, not a single dime from the government goes to Planned Parenthood for abortions. In fact, the organization that has done more to decrease abortions than any other in our country is Planned Parenthood. The government funds go for different purposes. They go to Planned Parenthood to do cancer screenings, breast cancer screenings, prostate cancer screenings, and a whole host of fundamental basic healthcare. They are the healthcare provider for 2.5 million American women. Just as he was ready to recklessly shut down the government to rip healthcare away from 20 million Americans in 2013, he was ready to defund these essential healthcare clinics serving 2.5 million Americans in 2015. That is a sign of someone who has lost their policy foundations and is acting in an irresponsible and unacceptable manner. Let's talk a little bit about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB was in response to a big problem in America, which was that we had no one looking out to shut down predatory financial practices. It was the responsibility of the Federal Reserve, but the Federal Reserve had their conversation on monetary policy up in the penthouse--the top level, if you will. That is what the Chairman of the Federal Reserve paid attention to. They took the responsibility for consumer protection and put them down in the basement, and they locked the door and threw away the key. Folks kept coming to the Federal Reserve saying: Hey, there is a major concern here. We have these predatory mortgages that have these teaser rates, and they are going to destroy the families who get those mortgages. They are going to destroy their dream of homeownership and turn it into a nightmare. People went to the Federal Reserve and said: By the way, we now have these wire loans, where there is no documentation of income and people are being sold these loans that they have no hope of repaying. In addition, we have another predatory practice called steering payments, which are kickbacks to originators. So they are getting kickbacks to steer people into subprime loans with high interest rates rather than prime loans that they qualify for. What happened? The Federal Reserve ignored all of that. That is the foundation for the collapse of our economy in 2008. So along comes Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren, as an advocate, not yet a Senator, comes to this body and said: We need an agency whose mission is to look out and stop predatory financial practices, a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and we got it done. What does Mick Mulvaney say about this effort to stop predatory financial practices? He says it is a ``sick, sad joke.'' So I asked him about this in committee. I said: Really? This is an agency that finally is watching out for working families so they are not prey to predatory, fraudulent practices. And he said: Yes, ``a sick, sad joke.'' I said: You know, they have returned funds to 27 million Americans. What other agency has fought for Americans in that fashion--returned funds to them from folks who were operating in a predatory fashion, to 27 million Americans. I didn't change his view by raising that. I said: You know, this agency, to those 27 million people, has returned $12 billion. There was $12 billion returned to people who were cheated; isn't that a good thing? But I didn't persuade him. He said: You know, I don't like the way this agency is set up. I want it to be a commission rather than an individual who heads it, and I want the funds to be appropriated annually by Congress. I can tell you exactly why he wants those provisions, because that is the way Congress, at the behest of Wall Street, can step on the airhose that supplies the oxygen to CFPB. They can stop the CFPB from functioning as a guardian, as a watchdog for consumers in America by simply defunding it. We have a President who ran on the principle of taking on Wall Street, but Mick Mulvaney doesn't want to take on Wall Street. He wants to do their bidding, to be able to shut down this agency that is finally fighting for financial fairness for working families. Wait. We have a President who said he is going to fight for working families. Mick Mulvaney should be backing the CFPB. He should be expanding the CFPB. He should be championing the CFPB, but, no, he wants to tear it down. That is deeply disturbing. I see my colleague, the Senator from Hawaii, who is prepared to make remarks. I am going to wrap up my remarks. There are more concerns that I have about the policy perspectives and how out of sync this nominee is with the promises the President made to fight for working Americans, the promises he made to take on Wall Street, the promises he made to protect Social Security, the promises he made to strengthen Medicare, not to tear it down. So for all these reasons, I find Mick Mulvaney is not the right person to fill this post, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against confirming him in this capacity.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Josh Lind, be granted privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, even now, more than 2 months after then President-Elect Trump nominated Steven Mnuchin to be Treasury Secretary, I still find it hard to believe. Month after month out on the campaign trail, President Trump attacked Wall Street. He said, time after time, that he was going to take on Wall Street. He attacked his opponents in the primaries and in the general election by saying that they were too close to Wall Street and, specifically, too close to Goldman Sachs. He said, regarding Secretary Clinton: She will never reform Wall Street. I know the guys at Goldman Sachs; they have total control. But he countered this by saying that he would do it differently. He promised to take on Wall Street. He promised to fight for middle-class Americans. He promised to drain the swamp and reduce and eliminate the powerful entrenched special interests here in Washington, DC. But what a change can happen within a few weeks. Less than a month after winning the Presidency--I should point out, winning the electoral college but losing by a massive margin the popular vote, the citizen vote--who does Mr. Trump pick to be Treasury Secretary? A 17-year Goldman Sachs veteran, a foreclosure king--Steve Mnuchin. So here tonight, not even a decade after the second worst financial crisis in U.S. history, we will be holding a vote on whether Steve Mnuchin is a fit character to be Secretary of the Treasury. What is particularly puzzling is not only the Goldman Sachs background, in contrast with the President's campaign promises, but also that this individual was a contributor to many of the predatory practices that nearly destroyed our economy in 2008, and he is someone who made a fortune throwing struggling American families out of their homes and onto the streets. I am somewhat shocked we are here tonight and that some of my colleagues are considering voting to put a man in charge of our Nation's financial system who played such a role in bringing it to its knees just a couple of years ago. Let's remember the massive impact on American families. They lost jobs by the millions. The unemployment rate soared. They lost their retirement savings and often they lost their homes--not just because they lost their jobs and couldn't pay their mortgage but because of the predatory design of the mortgages. So I am shocked that I am here tonight and we are holding this vote and that we are particularly considering an individual who worked to tear down the protections and throw American families to the Wall Street wolves. Maybe we should have a Treasury Secretary who succeeded in the past to build up the economy, not one who participated in tearing it down. Maybe we should have a Treasury Secretary who worked hard to put tens of thousands of people into homes, rather than someone who personally profited by throwing tens of thousands of American families out of their homes. I would be feeling much better about the vote we are holding tonight if that was the case because the American people have endured too much pain and suffering at the machinations of Wall Street. I thought we had perhaps learned our lesson. We worked hard to pass the Dodd-Frank reforms that would end those predatory mortgages, that would end those liar loans, that would end those teaser rate-exploding interest rate loans that brought families to their knees, that would end the securities designed in such a fashion that you couldn't evaluate whether they were AAA or AA, that would end this process and this formulation that turned the dream of American homeownership into the nightmare of American homeownership--this nightmare in which, instead of building wealth for American families, homeownership became a predatory instrument for draining wealth from American families. What was Steve Mnuchin doing when the Banking Committee was working to save the economy he had helped to tear down? Well, he was foreclosing on more than 36,000 struggling homeowners, conducting more than one-third of all the reverse mortgage foreclosures, running a bank with a record of discriminating against minority home buyers, running a bank with a record of discriminating against minority neighborhoods. So for all these reasons, this is the wrong man; the wrong man because he does not fit the promise the President made to take on Wall Street; the wrong man because he participated in destroying our economy, which harmed millions of American families; and the wrong man because he wants to dismantle Dodd-Frank, which had been put together specifically to end the predatory practices, including the illegal robo-signing he participated in. This individual has no business overseeing the financial future of the American people so I will be voting no on his confirmation, and I passionately urge my colleagues to do the same. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, the answer is that it does have a date, and that is Thursday, March 13, 1986.

Mr. MERKLEY. That occasion was a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the potential appointment of the individual to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I will be speaking later tonight, perhaps about 2 o'clock, possibly on through 4 o'clock, but I wanted to take a few moments now and share some of the letter that was discussed earlier and share it in a fashion that is appropriate under our rules. I would like to thank very much my colleague from New Jersey for yielding a few minutes in order to do so. I think it is important for us to understand the context of what this letter was all about. This letter was a statement of Coretta Scott King, and it was dated Thursday, March 13, 1986. She noted: ``My longstanding commitment which I shared with my husband Martin''--of course that is Martin Luther King--``to protect and enhance the rights of black Americans, rights which include equal access to the Democratic process, tells me to testify today.'' Then in her letter she goes on to essentially present an essay about the essential role of voting rights in our country, and so I will continue to read in that regard. She says: The Voting Rights Act was and still is vitally important to the future of democracy in the United States. I was privileged to join Martin and many others during the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965. Martin was particularly impressed by the determination to get the franchise of blacks in Selma and neighboring Perry County. As he wrote-- Now she is quoting Martin Luther King-- ``Certainly no community in the history of the negro struggle has responded with the enthusiasm of Selma and her neighboring town of Marion. Where Birmingham depended largely upon students and unemployed adults to participate in nonviolent protests of the denial of the franchise, Selma has involved fully 10 percent of the negro population in active demonstrations and at least half the negro population of Marion was arrested on 1 day.'' That was the end of the quote from her husband. She continued writing: Martin was referring, of course, to a group that included the defendants recently prosecuted for assisting elderly and illiterate blacks to exercise that franchise. Each time she refers to franchise, she is referring to this fundamental right to vote under our Constitution. And she continued: In fact, Martin anticipated from the depth of their commitment 20 years ago, that a united political organization would remain in Perry County long after the other marchers had left. This organization, the Perry County Civic League, started by Mr. Turner, Mr. Hogue, and others, as Martin predicted, continued ``to direct the drive for votes and other rights.'' That is a quote from her husband. And then she continued. In this letter, she says: In the years since the Voting Rights Act was passed, Black Americans in Marion, Selma, and elsewhere have made important strides in their struggle to participate actively in the electoral process. The number of Blacks registered to vote in key Southern states has doubled [she said] since 1965. This would not have been possible without the Voting Rights Act. She continues in her essay. She says: However, Blacks still fall far short of having equal participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the South, efforts continue to be made to deny Blacks access to the polls, even where Blacks constitute the majority of the voters. It has been a long up-hill struggle to keep alive the vital legislation that protects the most fundamental right to vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws, and thus, to the exercise of those rights by Black people should not be elevated to the federal bench. She continues in her letter to note: Twenty years ago, when we marched from Selma to Montgomery, the fear of voting was real, as the broken bones and bloody heads in Selma and Marion bore witness. As my husband wrote at the time, ``it was not just a sick imagination that conjured up the vision of a public official sworn to uphold the law, who forced an inhuman march upon hundreds of Negro children; who ordered the Rev. James Bevel to be chained to his sickbed; who clubbed a Negro woman registrant, and who callously inflicted repeated brutalities and indignities upon nonviolent Negroes peacefully petitioning for their constitutional right to vote. This is what Martin Luther King is referring to was the specific actions of sheriffs in the South who were representing the law. And then Coretta Scott King continued: Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to American democracy that we cannot tolerate any form of infringement of those rights. Of all the groups who have been disenfranchised in our nation's history, none has struggled longer or suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than Black citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box denied so persistently and intently. Over the past century, a broad array of schemes have been used in attempts to block the Black vote. The range of techniques developed with the purpose of repressing black voting rights run the gamut from the straightforward application of brutality against black citizens who tried to vote, to such legalized frauds as ``grandfather clause'' exclusions and rigged literacy tests. Now she proceeds to note that other techniques were used to intimidate Black voters and that included investigations into the absentee voting process, and this concerned her a great deal. And she notes that Whites have been using the absentee process to their advantage for years without incident. Then, when Blacks, realizing its strength, began to use it with success, criminal investigations were begun. Then she proceeds to address that there were occasions where individuals with legal authority chose to initiate cases specifically against African Americans while ignoring allegations of similar behavior by Whites, ``choosing instead to chill the exercise of the franchise by Blacks by his misguided investigation.'' Let me continue later in the letter. She addresses her concern over the prosecution illegally withholding from the defense critical statements made by witnesses and that witnesses who did testify were pressured and intimidated into submitting the ``correct'' testimony. That is incorrect testimony. Many elderly Blacks were visited multiple times by the FBI who then hauled them over 180 miles by bus to a grand jury in Mobile when they could have more easily testified at a grand jury twenty miles away in Selma. These voters, and others, have announced they are now never going to vote again. She obviously is addressing issue after issue that affected the Black franchise, the franchise of African Americans, the ability to vote, and then she returns to her essay about how important this is. The exercise of the franchise is an essential means by which our citizens ensure that those who are governing will be responsible. My husband called it the number one civil right. The denial of access to the ballot box ultimately results in the denial of other fundamental rights. For, it is only when the poor and disadvantaged are empowered that they are able to participate actively in the solutions to their own problems. Coretta Scott King continues: We still have a long way to go before we can say that minorities no longer need to be concerned about discrimination at the polls. Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans are grossly underrepresented at every level of government in America. If we are going to make our timeless dream of justice through democracy a reality, we must take every possible step to ensure that the spirit and intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution is honored. The federal courts hold a unique position in our constitutional system, ensuring that minorities and other citizens without political power have a forum in which to vindicate their rights. Because of this unique role, it is essential that the people selected to be federal judges respect the basic tenets of our legal system: respect for individual rights and a commitment to equal justice for all. The integrity of the Courts, and thus the rights they protect, can only be maintained if citizens feel confident that those selected as federal judges will be able to judge with fairness others holding differing views. And she concludes her letter having examined a number of incidents in the historical record with this conclusion: I do not believe Jefferson Sessions possesses the requisite judgment, competence, and sensitivity to the rights guaranteed by the federal civil rights laws to qualify for appointment to the federal district court. And that is the context of her letter; that voting rights matter a tremendous amount. I applaud the efforts of my colleague from Massachusetts to make this point and share this essay with the body of the Senate earlier this evening.

Mr. MERKLEY. I yield.

Mr. MERKLEY. I believe that is probably correct.

Mr. MERKLEY. A parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, just to make sure I understand that clearly, if we are considering a nominee who happens to be a Senator and we state factual elements of their background, for example, the conviction of a crime that is inappropriate conduct in the past, stating the factual record about an individual would be considered in violation of rule XIX?

Mr. MERKLEY. If a Member of the Senate is being considered for nomination, and we are exercising our advice and consent power, and if there is factual conduct in that individual's background that is presented on the floor that is uncomplimentary, would presenting the facts of that conduct in the process of debating an individual be considered in violation of rule XIX?

Mr. MERKLEY. Just to clarify, if I could, therefore, the point is that something could be absolutely true, as, perhaps, a point that was made earlier--a statement can be true in a letter that is presented-- but even if it is true and accurate for a person under consideration for a nomination, it would still be in violation. In other words, the fact that an individual is found in violation of rule XIX doesn't mean that the statement had to be false. It could have been a true statement?

Mr. MERKLEY. I do not know if it was made a matter of record. My impression initially was that she had read this letter at the hearing, but I am not sure if it was presented in person or as a document submitted to the committee.

Mr. MERKLEY. I am.

Mr. MERKLEY. Parliamentary inquiry. Mr. SCHUMER addressed the Chair.

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 rising to speak this morning about the nomination of our colleague, Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama, to become the 84th Attorney General of the United States. As the highest law enforcement officer in the land, it is the responsibility of the Attorney General to ensure that all Americans receive the equal justice under the law they are entitled to as American citizens. A commitment to that equal justice has rarely been more necessary than it is today. We need an Attorney General wholly committed to serving the people of the Nation, and we need an Attorney General who fights to expand American's civil rights, not to restrict them, hobble them, or eliminate them, or to eliminate the Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights. We need an Attorney General who will stand up to the President when he tries to put an illegal and unconstitutional policy in place. So it has been part of our journey, the story of America, that we have strived to form a more perfect union. We have worked over time--like Martin Luther King said, the long arc of history bends toward justice. But we have worked to bend toward justice. Our vision of opportunity was incomplete at the founding of our Nation. It was not extended to all genders and all ethnicities and all races. We have worked hard to change that, but here we are at this point in time, still not at the end of that journey. Part of the question is, How does any given individual fit into the position of Attorney General in that fight for that more perfect vision of our Nation? So I thought I would share a little bit about that. Hillary Shelton, the Director of NAACP's Washington office, told the New Republic that Senator Sessions has ``consistently opposed the bread and butter civil rights agenda.'' When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 2013 with Shelby v. Holder, Senator Sessions celebrated the decision saying: If you go to Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, people are not denied a vote because of the color of their skin. Well, indeed, part of this--the point is, when the Voting Rights Act was in place, it prevented many activities that would have otherwise denied the vote. We have seen the resurgence of all kinds of measures since the Voting Rights Act was modified by the Supreme Court, which it eliminated key provisions. We have seen the ``almost surgical precision'' of North Carolina's voter ID law that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down because they were created specifically to reduce the vote of African Americans. We are living in times that it just feels like our Nation is a bit under siege. During the campaign of last year, we had so many divisive attacks as part of the Presidential primaries. Even during the general election, very divisive rhetoric passed from the man who would then become our President, President Trump--attacks on women, attacks on minorities, attacks on African Americans, attacks on Hispanics, attacks on people with disabilities. Yet, against that, we have a vision of a system of law that treats everyone equally, impartially. We learned when we were children that Lady Liberty wears a blindfold with the scales of justice in her hand. We need an Attorney General who has at their core that vision of impartial justice, justice for every American, justice regardless of skin color, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of geography. That is essential, and we need it now particularly in a powerful way to help address the divisive rhetoric of the last year, which has left many people doubting that their government is willing to fight for them, that they will receive this form of impartial justice. We have seen what has happened with the strong work of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under President Obama. For more than half a century, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division fought for and enforced laws that uphold the basic rights of all Americans, steadily expanding opportunities. The work of that division was stifled, restricted in many ways during George W. Bush's administration. But under President Obama, the Civil Rights Division has worked hard to apply, in a powerful way, civil rights for all Americans. In just the last few weeks of the Obama administration, they won the first hate crime case involving a transgender victim, they sued two cities that were blocking mosques from opening, they settled lending discrimination charges with two banks and sued a third, they filed legal briefs on behalf of New York teenagers held in solitary confinement, and they accused a business in Louisiana of moving mental patients into nursing homes. They were actively, aggressively fighting for the rights of all Americans. Many wonder now, under the new administration, whether we will have a powerful Civil Rights Division fighting for those whom others would choose to exploit. Senator Sessions has downplayed the need for the Justice Department to prosecute crimes against women and members of the LGBTQ community, saying: I am not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face discrimination. I just don't see it, he said. Well, if you talk to LGBTQ Americans, they will tell you their stories of harassment and discrimination. So it is very hard not to be aware of the extraordinary amount of discrimination they experience, unless you are determined not to see it. To those who say we don't see discrimination, if you ask, you will hear the stories of discrimination. You will hear the stories of profiling, individual young African-American men picked out time and time again to be stopped and questioned at a rate that someone of a different skin color would not experience, but you do not see it unless you open your eyes to see it. At his confirmation hearing, Senator Sessions said: These lawsuits undermine respect for police officers. He was referring to the investigation of two dozen police agencies, knowing that the Civil Rights Division reached consent decrees with 14 of them. He said: These lawsuits undermine the respect of police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness. Well, let me explain that the reason the departments were investigated is because there were a lot of reports that in fact they were not doing their work consistent with fidelity to the law. It was not an impression; it was a report about failure to do that. Don't we want an Attorney General who rather than relegating the complaint to, well, don't pursue them because it creates an impression they are not doing work, instead says: These are complaints we must investigate and remedy that situation. That is the responsibility of the Civil Rights Division, to investigate and to remedy, and that is what this division did under President Obama. They didn't turn a blind eye. They didn't say that would be embarrassing to the Department, but my colleague had a different take, saying: We need to be careful before we do that because it might create an impression that they are not doing their work well. Just think if we take that attitude. We anticipate to have hearings for a labor commissioner. The nominee for Labor runs a company that has a tremendous number of Hardee's and Carl's Jr. outlets, and those outlets have a horrendous record of labor rights abuses, but we wouldn't know about those abuses if the investigator said: We won't investigate because it might create an impression that they are doing something wrong. So I am very concerned about the attitude that you don't investigate because you might embarrass someone. When there are reports of injustice, that is the point, that it gets investigated. And it not only gets investigated in order that the problems will get remedied but also so it will send a message to others to operate within the bounds of the law. Our next Attorney General needs to make civil rights a priority, fighting for them, ensuring them, securing them as the North Star of the Justice Department--not something that can simply be left to the States, not something that can be ignored, not something that will be allowed to slip backward. Communities of color aren't the only ones watching Senator Sessions' confirmation process with some anxiety. Over the last 8 years, the rights of the LGBTQ community have leapt forward in incredible ways, from the greater acceptance of gay and lesbian Americans and transgender Americans. And certainly we cannot forget the historic milestone of the legalization of same-sex marriage a year and a half ago. But so many of these long-fought-for and hard-won rights are so new that the community is terrified that President Trump's administration will work to restrict those rights or roll those rights back. But it is the duty of the Attorney General to protect those rights, to fight for those rights. So it is of some concern--for me, it is a substantial concern--that the nominee voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This act was passed on October 22, 2009, and signed by President Obama 6 days later. It was part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010, and it expands the 1969 U.S. Federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The bill removes the prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity, like voting or going to schools. It is much, much broader. It gives Federal authorities a greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue. It provided funding for fiscal years 2010 to 2012 to help State and local agencies pay for investigations and prosecuting hate crimes. It requires the FBI--the Federal Bureau of Investigation--to track statistics of hate crimes based on gender and gender identity. Hate crimes for other groups were already being tracked. It was named after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a student, was tied to a fence, tortured, and left to die in Laramie, WY, because of his sexuality. In that same year, James Byrd, an African-American man, was tied to a truck by two White supremacists. He was dragged behind it and was decapitated in Jasper, TX. At the time, Wyoming hate crime laws did not recognize homosexuals as a subset class, and Texas had no hate crimes laws at all. Supporters of an expansion in hate crimes laws argue that hate crimes are worse than regular crimes without a prejudice motivation from a psychological perspective. The time it takes to mentally recover from a hate crime is almost twice as long as it is for a regular crime. And LGBTQ people feel as if they are being punished for their sexuality, which leads to a higher incidence of depression, anxiety, and post- traumatic stress disorder. In short, in multiple ways, in ways I have enumerated, this law more aggressively pursued justice. I was pleased to be here as a first-year Senator to be able to support that law. Hate crimes tear at our collective spirit. They are based on divisions in our society, divisions that some choose to amplify and inflame, divisions that victimize people for being who they are as individuals. I was proud of this Chamber, of this Senate, that we passed a bill that would give State and local law enforcement the necessary tools to prevent and prosecute these types of crimes and move our Nation down a path toward equality--equality under the law and freedom from persecution. But my colleague, the nominee, voted against this pursuit of greater justice for a persecuted group within our society, and that certainly bothers me substantially. It is my understanding that he didn't feel that people actually faced discrimination, but the fact is, they do. LGBTQ individuals, especially transgender women of color, are more likely than any other group to be targets of discrimination and hate crimes. Across the category, and more so in some, look at the 49 people killed, the 53 more injured at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last summer. The attacker purposely targeted a gay nightclub for his attack. LGBTQ people are twice as likely as African Americans to be targets of hate crimes. Nearly one-fifth of the 5,462 so-called single-bias hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2014 were because of the person's sexuality or perceived orientation. Another issue was raised in 2010 when the proposal was put forward to repeal a discriminatory law in the military, the don't ask, don't tell law, which barred openly gay and lesbian individuals from serving in our armed services. My colleague, our nominee, said that gay servicemembers would have a corrosive effect on morale, essentially saying discrimination is justified because of the prejudices of others who serve. But it is not justified, and the prejudices have taken a bit of movement along that journey toward justice. More than 14,500 people were discharged from the military during the 18 years of don't ask, don't tell. An estimated 66,000 lesbian, gay, and bisexual servicemembers were in the military at the time the ban was lifted. But here is what happened after that 2010 change--a change that our nominee opposed. The military family embraced the LGBTQ community, and instead of having a corrosive effect, repealing don't ask, don't tell has strengthened the military family. In fact, in 2016, just last year, the first openly gay Army Secretary was confirmed, Eric Fanning. Last year, the Navy named a ship after Harvey Milk, the gay politician and former member of the Navy who was assassinated in 1978. So a robust pursuit of equality would have been to voice principled opposition to this discrimination in armed services that was actually robbing our armed services of a tremendous amount of talent and experience and was damaging the lives of those who were expelled from the military. That would have been a principled pursuit of justice, but that is not the path my colleague, our nominee, chose to travel. Instead, it was a path of justifying discrimination, justifying injustice. During the confirmation hearing, my colleague, our nominee, softened his stance on LGBTQ issues, and he said he would uphold the statute protecting LGBT people's safety and ensure that the community's civil rights are enforced. Well, I wish we had more statutes that protected LGBT people's safety. Promising to uphold them when they largely don't exist is somewhat of an empty promise. It sounds good, but it lacks punch. We had a debate in this Chamber about the Employment Non- Discrimination Act. This act was specifically about anti-discrimination in the process of job hiring in America, and I was deeply involved in this effort. Back in Oregon, when I became speaker, I worked to end discrimination for our LGBT community--discrimination in hiring, discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination on a whole spectrum of aspects of our society. And we passed a very strong law in the State of Oregon to end that discrimination, and a piece of it--a big piece of it--was to end employment discrimination. How can we claim, as a nation, that we are the land of opportunity if we slam shut the door to opportunity on a large number of our fellow Americans by allowing discrimination in employment? Well, because of that work I did in Oregon--when I came here to the Senate, Senator Kennedy was ill. Senator Kennedy would champion this legislation. Senator Kennedy, who had been here--he had been on the floor, I believe it was 1998 or 1996. And that bill had only failed by one vote back before the turn of the century. It was a 50-to-49 vote. The individual who was not here probably have voted for it. The Vice President breaking a tie probably would have passed it. It would have been adopted. It would have been signed. Fast-forward to 2013, and here we were on the floor debating this issue, and I was very pleased to see it on the floor because Senator Kennedy and his team had asked me to carry the torch on the bill and work to see it passed. I had worked for us to hold hearings, and I had advocated with our leadership that it was time to put this issue on the floor, that we couldn't allow this discrimination to continue without at least working to address it. We might fail on the floor to pass this bill, but we should at least put it before the body, make the case, have the argument, fight to end this discrimination. Here on the floor, we no longer have to get 50 votes and the President because the habits of the Senate changed, and now it is almost always required to get a supermajority to close debate. So we had to get 60 votes, not 51, but we did get 60 votes. We did close debate and go to a final vote. But one of the individuals who placed himself directly in the path to obstruct success on the bill, to obstruct the end of discrimination--job discrimination for LGBTQ communities--was our colleague and our nominee for Attorney General. I would hope to have a voice in the office that was seasoned through tough battles and stood up in difficult times to fight any discrimination, not to perpetuate discrimination. So that concerns me-- substantially concerns me. In 2013, the Senate voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, often referred to as VAWA, after Congress passed it. That was an important effort because a woman should never be a victim of violence in her own home. Nobody should be a victim of violence, but particularly to address the challenges that we see. And the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control notes that women in the United States experience roughly 4.8 million assaults and rapes per year from their intimate partner, and they are afraid to seek medical treatment. Less than 20 percent of battered women sought medical treatment. The National Crime Victimization Survey--the statistics that I have here from 2006, so quite a while ago--says that over the course of the year, 33,000 women were sexually assaulted, more than 600 women every day. Women ages 20 to 24 are at greatest risk of nonfatal domestic violence, and women age 20 and higher suffer from the highest rates of rape. The Justice Department estimates that one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape during her college years--just during those college years--and that less than 5 percent of these rapes will be reported. Income is a factor. The poorer the household, the higher the rate of domestic violence. Women in the lowest income category experience more than six times the rate of intimate partner violence as compared to women in the highest income category. African-American women face the highest rates of violence. American-Indian women are victimized at a rate double that of women of other races. The impact of these kinds of violence is huge and long-lasting. According to the Family and Violence Prevention Fund, growing up in a violent home may be terrifying, a traumatic experience that can effect every aspect of a child's life, growth, and development. Children who have been exposed to family violence suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as bed-wetting and nightmares, and were at greater risk than their peers of having allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches, and flu. In addition, women who experience physical abuse as children are at greater risk of victimization as adults. Well, I go through all these statistics to note what a substantial issue this is in terms of crime and violence and the impact both on the victims and on the children in homes--an impact that damages children's ability to pursue a full, healthy path toward thriving as an adult, an impact that creates a cycle of violence. In 2011, during one 24-hour period, 1,600 Oregon victims were served by domestic violence services. What are those services? Emergency shelter, children's support, transitional housing, support for teen victims of dating violence, therapy or counseling for children, advocacy related to cyber stalking. Additionally, during the same 24- hour period, Oregon domestic violence programs answered more than 27 hotline calls every hour. VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act, has been a powerful tool in fighting these kinds of abuse, these kinds of violence in our community, and it has proven to dramatically reduce domestic violence. Among other things, in 2013 the VAWA reauthorization included measures to ensure that LGBTQ men and women cannot be turned away from domestic violence shelters. It addressed threats of violence against women in transgender communities, who face rates of domestic violence and sexual assault at much higher rates, as I noted before, than those faced by the general population. It provides tools and encourages best practices, which have proven to be effective to prevent domestic violence homicides by training law enforcement, victims service providers, and court personnel to identify and connect high-risk victims with crisis intervention services--all of this in the interest of preventing violence against women, and when such violence occurs, to get the treatment to be as robust and available as possible to assist those women. I would hope to have the champion in this fight to decrease violence against women in the position of Attorney General of the United States of America, but my colleague, our nominee for Attorney General, voted against these practices for decreasing violence, voted against these efforts to provide greater support when the violence did occur, and that, for me, is a very substantial concern. This turned many women's advocacy groups into a position of opposing this confirmation. And another factor came into play. In October of this last year when our nominee for Attorney General was asked his opinion about a 2005 audio recording which then-Candidate Trump was--well, he wasn't yet a candidate at the time of the audio recording--but he was heard bragging about inappropriately groping women. The nominee said he didn't think the behavior that was described was sexual assault. Senator Sessions said: ``I don't characterize that as sexual assault. I think that is a stretch,'' he said. I couldn't more profoundly disagree. When someone grabs the intimate parts of an individual, that is an assault. How can one reach any other conclusion? Envision that your loved one is the one who is groped--your wife, your sister, your mother, or your daughter. You don't believe that is a sexual assault? I would like to have as our Attorney General an individual who would understand in the core of his or her being that this is an assault and wrong. The law makes it an assault. Morality makes it an assault. So that bothers me a great deal. I do want to note that in a confirmation hearing, my colleague Senator Sessions changed his opinion on this and he noted what we would expect one to note. He said that yes, activity such as was noted on the recording of our now President, when asked whether it was an assault, he said clearly it would be. I appreciate that evolution, but the initial reaction before the confirmation hearing still disturbs me. Earlier this month, the National Task Force to End Sexual Violence issued an open letter opposing his confirmation based on the record. In the letter, they stated, when referring to the nominee, that ``his history leads us to question whether he will vigorously seek to ensure all victims and survivors of gender-based violence, particularly vulnerable populations and those at the margins of society, have access to vitally needed services and legal protections.'' This goal to champion justice for all--perhaps it is easy to champion justice for the groups one most closely identifies with, but the role is to fight for justice for everyone throughout our society, and that is why this is of substantial concern. The letter went on to say: ``Selective application of the law and outward hostility towards victims of sexual and domestic violence in historically marginalized populations has a chilling effect on their willingness and ability to seek services and protection. It then noted that the Attorney General of the United States must be an individual committed to protecting the inalienable rights of equal protection under the law to all--to all within the jurisdiction of the United States. Let me say it again. We need an Attorney General who fights for equal justice for all. Another issue we face--set of issues, really--is related to immigration. As we know, President Trump recently signed an Executive order barring travel by those from seven Muslim countries and also barring refugees into our country and having a longer ban on refugees specifically from Syria. And the first ban, the Muslim ban, came out as Rudy Giuliani told us of instructions to create a Muslim ban that would be changed enough to make it legal under the law. There are many reasons to be concerned about this ban based on religion. We have a tradition of freedom of religion in our country. It is a freedom enshrined in our Constitution. We have a tradition of religious tolerance. If we are a nation with religious freedom, religious tolerance goes hand in hand with that, but we have heard over the course of President Trump's campaign statement after statement that essentially presented a war on Islam, the Nation is at war with Islam-- the opposite of religious freedom, the opposite of religious tolerance. The worst aspect of this--and there are many bad aspects to it--is that it endangers our national security because of the recruiting strategy of ISIS. Our President says he wants to diminish and extinguish. Their recruiting strategy is to claim that the United States is conducting a war on Islam, so this ban and this campaign feed right into that recruiting strategy. It has been pointed out by security expert after security expert after security expert that this makes us less safe. Sally Yates, the Acting Attorney General, refused to defend this order in court because she believed it was illegal and unconstitutional. That is a principled stance, that despite that the head of the executive branch put something forward, the Attorney General said: No, that is wrong. That is not constitutional. Well, she was fired shortly thereafter, for taking that stand, by President Trump. But then, two attorneys general from Washington State and Minnesota took the case to court, pointing out that they had substantial harm in their States as a result of this, giving them standing to challenge it--harmed because of professors trapped overseas, harmed from students trapped overseas, harmed from citizens in the States of Washington and Minnesota whose family members were trapped overseas. They put it to a district court judge, James Robart, a judge who was appointed by George W. Bush. The judge put a restraining order on the Executive order. To do that, one has to reach the standard that the case has merit and is likely to prevail. So a judge, given this issue, the design of this issue, and the facts surrounding these orders, struck them down. And then it went to the Ninth Circuit Court, and the Ninth Circuit didn't find that there was enough information to change the decision of the district judge, but they asked for additional briefs, and they are expected to rule later this week. We will find out of course then how they weigh the issues. Part of what is being taken into account are the facts on the ground, including was this designed around national security, and part of that debate recognizes that individuals from those seven countries have not come to America and killed Americans. Now, individuals from other countries have come to America and killed Americans, but not from those seven countries. Then there is the question of whether it was based on religion, and they will be taking into account and looking at the fact that Rudy Giuliani said he was instructed to develop a Muslim ban but to make it look legal. So, clearly, there is evidence that the real intent of this wasn't national security but was religious discrimination. Then there is the fact that the Executive order itself has a clause that says we will discriminate based on religion, letting in Christians while closing out Muslims. They will consider all of that. We will see what they say. There is considerable power in the executive branch and the Presidency for making rules related to immigration. There is considerable power to take actions related to national security, but the design of this suggests serious constitutional problems, and two very capable lawyers--one, the acting AG for the United States of America and, second, a district court judge--have found it fails the test. I would like for us to have a nominee for Attorney General who would have the courage and convictions to stand up to a President when the President goes off track in violating the Constitution, and I am concerned that our nominee wouldn't reach the same courageous point of view that Sally Yates found or James Robart found. Even while noting that the courts are yet to ultimately decide, there are certainly heavy concerns that should be weighed intensely in this consideration, and I am not sure that would happen. In 2015, Senator Sessions, my colleague, our nominee, authored a bill that would automatically cut off Federal funding to sanctuary cities that refused to have their police officers act as agents of our immigration force, as ICE agents. Just today, I had the sheriff of Multnomah County in Oregon come and speak to me. He was formerly the police chief of our largest city--the city of Portland. What he conveyed was that if you have police officers pursue each person they interact with on the basis of immigration, pretty soon people in the community will not work with you to solve crimes, and you actually create enormous public safety risks for the citizens in Multnomah County. Numerous mayors have pointed this out; that if you see your police force as one that is continuously trying to be an immigration agent rather than a police officer and you are pursuing folks with profiling--stopping everyone in the Hispanic community--that pretty soon the Hispanic community folks don't want to talk to you. They will not help you solve the crimes that occur. The community becomes less safe. So this assault on public safety is a profound concern across this country. I am disturbed that our nominee authored a bill to penalize cities and States that are seeking to reduce public violence and enhance public safety. That seems the opposite of what an Attorney General should do. During his nomination hearing, Senator Sessions advocated for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA. This is a program on which one needs to understand it by meeting individuals who are childhood arrivals. There are folks who have crossed the border into our country who have brought with them a baby in their arms, or a toddler, or a 4-year-old. Those individuals--those children, those babies--grow up in America. They speak English. They only know America. Most of the time--I will not say most of the time, but in many cases they don't know they were even born outside the country. So these children were put into a position of saying: If you disclose your status and fill out all this paperwork, we will not send you back to a country you don't even know, that speaks a language you don't even know because you have grown up in America and you are going to contribute to America, if we embrace you. And you will just be a lost citizen--a citizen without a country--if you are sent out of the country to somewhere that would be totally unfamiliar to you. In this position that our nominee took, that he thinks we should end this program, it means that those children would now be eligible for deportation. There is a substantial concern here because they were promised that their information would not be used, would not be turned over for their deportation when they signed up. They trusted that when the United States of America made this promise to them, that promise would be kept, but it appears we have a nominee who wants to end that program and, therefore, place all of these children at risk of deportation. The nominee had no answer for what to do with the 800,000 children who have come out of the shadows because of that program. In December 2015, Senator Sessions voted against Senator Leahy's sense-of-the-Senate resolution that affirmed that the United States must not bar people from another country because of their religion. Our nominee spoke for 30 minutes against the resolution. This takes me back to the echoes of this issue of the Muslim ban and discrimination based on religion that is so alien to the United States of America. This resolution that affirmed that the United States would not bar people from our Nation because of their religion had the support of 96 Senators. Four Senators voted against the resolution, essentially saying it is OK to discriminate based on religion. Our nominee was one of those four Senators who conveyed through their vote that it would be OK to use a religious test for those entering the United States. According to Bloomberg News, our nominee was one of the few lawmakers to defend President Trump's effort to propose a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, in this report of November 18, 2016. He told CNN's Dana Bash last June: Well, all I can tell you is, the public data we have had indicated that there are quite a number of countries that have sent a large number of people here who have become terrorists. During his nomination hearing, our nominee tried to walk back his support for the Muslim ban. He said he would not back a complete and total shutdown of all Muslims entering the United States. So he evolved from a position he took in December of 2015 and was more moderate during the nomination hearing. But still I am concerned about the position he put forward at that debate in December of 2015, when he spoke for 30 minutes and was one of four Senators to refuse to support a resolution saying that the United States should not discriminate based on religion. This Muslim ban and the vote on the December 2015 resolution leaves Muslim Americans wondering if our nominee would fully defend and advocate for them; whether our nominee, the President's nominee for Attorney General, would fight for equal justice for Muslims after supporting the position that it is OK to discriminate against Muslims entering our country. That concerns me because that is not the position I would like to see represented in the President's nominee for this office. My office has been receiving an enormous number of phone calls, emails, and letters about a whole host of nominees, and I think it is appropriate to share some of those as well as to note that a group of 1,424 law school professors nationwide sent a letter to Congress urging us to vote no on this nomination, representing 180 law schools in 49 States. I am not going to share all of the letter because I want to stay within the bounds of the debate. So I will just note this: They lay out a whole number of concerns about positions taken in the past. I will summarize it with a final paragraph: As law faculty who work every day to better the understanding of the law and to teach it to our students, we are convinced that the President's nominee will not fairly enforce our Nation's laws and promote justice and equality in the United States. That is 1,424 law school professors from 180 law schools looking at the record of the President's nominee. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights gives our nominee a zero-percent score. The Human Rights Campaign, which fights for justice for the LGBT community, gives the President's nominee a zero-percent score. The NAACP has repeatedly given grades of F to the nominee. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the ACLU have voiced vigorous opposition. I will share some of the letter from back home. Cobin from Portland, an assistant professor, writes: I am writing today to state my strong dissent for the nominee to be U.S. Attorney General. While this should be self-evident given his record, in light of this past week's events, it is all the more critical we have an Attorney General willing to fight for our Constitution. Protecting our fundamental values as Americans is priceless. From Southern Oregon, Karen of Jackson County writes: I am strongly opposed to the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. His support of President Trump's views regarding immigration and voting rights are unacceptable and make him unacceptable to be the Nation's chief law enforcer. Letter after letter expresses concerns about the record. Earlier tonight, my colleague from Massachusetts was sharing testimony Coretta Scott King presented on March 13, 1986, to the Senate Judiciary Committee when my colleague was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. The Senate at that point in time rejected the nomination. They did so after examining a whole series of events which had transpired under his leadership. I can't read those events under the rules of the Senate because they would constitute a critique of a fellow Senator. So I am just summarizing that her letter laid them out, and the Senate Judiciary Committee fully explored the issues presented by Coretta Scott King, and by many others, and decided there wasn't the judicial vision appropriate for someone to serve as a judge in the United States of America. If that series of events led to the unusual outcome of the Senate deciding that an individual's background--a background related to efforts to prevent African Americans from voting, weighed it incorrectly, not right that an individual be serving as a judge, that same background should be weighed by all of us here this morning, in this debate, over whether a nominee has the judicial heart of Lady Liberty to judge everyone without discrimination, to fight equally for everyone without discrimination. The answer years ago by this Chamber was no. After I have weighed the many positions presented tonight which are deeply troubling, and the history that led this Chamber to make the decision it did back in 1986, I will have to join those who say and vote no on this nomination.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate your point and the belief that the son or daughter of a millwright, a mill worker as I was, should have the same opportunity as the son or daughter of a CEO in a big company. That is embedded in the notion of quality public schools. What I was really struck by was that DeVos wants to divert all these public funds from our schools to for-profit schools, and if it is for- profit, you squeeze down the services in the school to maximize the profit, and that is just exactly the type of attack on our children that we can't tolerate, but I was also struck about how she imposes the accountability for these alternative schools. The columnist Stephen Henderson of the Detroit Free Press said: Largely as a result of DeVos's lobby, Michigan tolerates more low-performing charter schools than just about any other State. It lacks any effective mechanism for shutting down or even improving failing charters. He goes on to say: We are a laughingstock in national education circles and a pariah among reputable charter school operators who have not opened schools in Detroit because of the wild west nature of the educational landscape here. Do you share the concern about the complete lack of accountability of these for-profit schools that are pulling the funds out of our public schools in Michigan?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, will the Senator from Washington yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Senator from Washington for her answer. So often I have heard speeches about accountability from across the aisle. This is a case where accountability matters a tremendous amount because it determines whether our children have a fair shot at driving America. So I thank the Senator from Washington for elucidating us in regard to that issue.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this morning and throughout the night, the Senate has been considering the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the next Secretary of Education. My colleagues have come down here to the floor, and I appreciate my colleague, who just completed his comments, for his knowledge and his insights on public education and his passion for a system of education that provides opportunity to every child in America. We are down here speaking through the night to raise the issue of why the nominee for Secretary of Education is so completely inappropriate. We see the passion that has arisen across America, ordinary citizens calling us up on the phone, inundating our phones, thousands of phone calls--I had more phone calls in a single day than I normally get in a couple of weeks--inundating us with thousands of emails and letters. Why is there so much public passion about this nomination? The short answer is that public education is a cherished institution in the United States of America. Public schools are a vital pathway through which our children have the opportunity to gain the knowledge that allows them to thrive in our society. We don't want to see that system of public education, that gateway for a successful life, destroyed by Betsy DeVos. That is why the American people are sending us so many letters and emails and making so many phone calls--because Betsy DeVos has no education experience, no public school experience. Our students, teachers, communities, and our Nation deserve leadership that does have public education experience, someone who does have a passion for the success of every child, not someone who is simply dedicated to trying to tear down public schools so she can run private profit institutions and put money in the bank. What do we really care about in the United States of America? Do we care about the education of our children or about an entrepreneur hijacking the public education system for personal profit? That is why the citizens of this country are so outraged by this nomination and outraged that Senators on this floor are planning to vote for her later today. I had the chance to go to school starting in first grade down in Roseburg, OR. Roseburg is a timber town. My mother showed me the path that was somewhere between a quarter of a mile and half a mile long. I walked that path over to the first grade school. It had classrooms that did not have hallways; they opened to the outside. The school ground was a magical place for me to go in the first grade. I still remember vividly Mrs. Matthews. Mrs. Matthews was a very stern public school teacher. She had probably about 20 people in her classroom, 20 little kids. She was determined that by the end of the first grade, we would all read at the third grade level. That was her mission in life. And we would do math at the third grade level. Thus, every moment in that classroom we were working. She was a senior teacher. I thought of her as quite old at the time. I don't know if she was in her fifties or sixties. Suddenly that age doesn't seem so old to me now. She was very experienced, and she had her system of working with little kids. She would divide us into groups of about four to five kids, and we would work in different clusters around the schoolroom. She would travel from one cluster to another keeping us on track, making sure we were progressing as we were reading to each other, as we were doing our math problems. By the end of the school year, everybody read at the third-grade level. We were afraid of Mrs. Matthews because she was a very stern teacher, but we all thrived in that classroom because we had a person dedicated to the success of children. One of the things that helped Mrs. Matthews was that there were 20 students in her classroom. When I went to my son's first grade classroom, there were 34 kids in that classroom. I don't know that Mrs. Matthews' strategy could have worked with 34 children. I don't know if she could have taken 34 kids and gotten them to the third grade level at the end of first grade. It is unfortunate that we are not providing for our children the same quality of education that our parents provided for us. Yet we are living in a knowledge economy world where public education is much more important today for success than it was a generation ago. So it is more important, but we are funding it less. Certainly we have growing national wealth. Why aren't we making the investment in our public schools? Along comes Betsy DeVos, who says: Here is an economic opportunity for me to make even more money and convert these public schools to private schools, private for-profit schools. That bothers me an enormous amount because I want to see the resources not go into the bank accounts of wealthy, ambitious entrepreneurs; I want to see those resources go into our public classrooms, which, quite frankly, don't have enough resources as it is. For first grade, I went up to Portland. My family moved with the timber economy. The mill shut down outside of Roseburg, OR. We had been in Roseburg through first grade. By second grade, my father had taken a job as a mechanic up in Portland. We moved to the public schools of Portland and the following year bought a house outside of Portland and moved to the David Douglas High School system, where I was from third grade through graduation. That grade school and high school system provided the foundation on which I could pursue virtually any path I put my mind to. Isn't that the goal in America, that every child should have the opportunity to pursue their dreams, not to have that opportunity cut short by somebody who wants to drain the resources out of our public education system? When I was in grade school, my father said to me: Son, if you go through the doors of that school and you work hard, you can do just about anything here in America. I thought that was pretty cool because I lived in a blue-collar community. I knew there were fabulously more affluent communities in different parts of Portland, and our community was not one of them. We were a working-class community. The idea that if I went through those doors and worked hard, I could pursue just about anything was a really cool notion. It gave me a lot of pride in the United States of America, and it gave me a lot of pride in my parents' generation that they were providing public schools to enable every child to have this opportunity to thrive. That is what we want to have--not a system for the elite, not a system in which the rich get their education over here and they are therefore destined to seize the best jobs in society and generationally build wealth upon wealth upon wealth while the rest of our Nation is left out in the cold--no, a system where every child has the opportunity to thrive. That is the great foundation for a nation that says we are going to dedicate our resources so that all families are lifted up. But that is not the vision of Betsy DeVos. That is why I am on the floor today at 5 a.m. speaking about my concerns about her nomination and what it represents for public schools. We need, plain and simple, an Education Secretary who actually has experience with public education. Betsy DeVos has none. She did not attend public school. She did not send her children to a public school. She did not volunteer in a public school. She did not get a degree and teach in a public school. I don't know if she has ever set foot in a public school. The process--the journey of becoming a teacher--is one that requires substantial education so you are prepared to convey and to find the pathway with which children can learn, absorb knowledge, move forward, and be inspired. But Betsy DeVos likes the idea of schools in which there is no accountability for the preparation of the teachers. Why undermine the success of our children for personal profit? For a moment, think about the type of backgrounds previous Secretaries of Education have had. They have been prepared to understand our school systems and issues before, here in America. John King was our 10th U.S. Secretary of Education from March of 2016 through January of 2017, just recently. He had a J.D. and a Doctor of Education from Columbia University. He taught in the Massachusetts school system. He had been Commissioner of Education in the State of New York from June 2011 until January 2015. He had been the Deputy Secretary of Education for a little more than a year. He had a lifetime of study about our public education system, a lifetime of dedication to that system, a lifetime of experience in that system brought to bear to make that system work for our children. How about Arne Duncan, who preceded him? He was the ninth U.S. Secretary of Education, serving from the time President Obama came into the office through December 2015. Arne Duncan graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in sociology. He was deputy chief of staff to the Chicago superintendent from 1999 through 2001. He was superintendent of Chicago Public Schools for 8 years--or almost 8 years--from June 2001 to January 2009. He also brought to bear substantial, extensive experience and an understanding of the issues and how to address them in America. Let's go back to a Republican administration and Margaret Spellings, our eighth U.S. Secretary of Education, serving for 4 years, from January 2005 through January 2009. She worked on the Education Reform Commission under Texas Governor William Clements. She was executive director for the Texas Association of School Boards. We can keep going back and see the type of experience that has been brought to bear on this important position. Rod Paige was a son of public school educators. Rod Paige was our seventh U.S. Secretary of Education. Rod Paige taught at Texas Southern University. He was Dean of the College of Education of Texas Southern University. He was a trustee of the board of education of the Houston Independent School District. He was a superintendent of the Houston Independent School District. In other words, as we work backward through his career, he was involved in education in one role after another. Betsy DeVos has none of that background. She has a background, and she certainly has things she knows well and is very good at, but education--public education--is not one of them. She was chairwoman of the Windquest Group, a private technology and manufacturing investment firm. She was a Republican National Committee member for Michigan from 1992 through 1997. She worked at that point to divert children from our public education system and to divert resources from that system. Michigan's charter school system, which she has backed, has most of them run by private for-profit companies--80 percent, the largest percentage of the country--companies driven by making a buck and squeezing every dollar out of the system they can rather than squeezing every ability into our children. Public education being converted into a private profit company is the experience that she brings. She likes the idea of those schools having no accountability because if you have no accountability, you don't have to spend as much money on the kids, and you make more money for yourself. That sort of self-serving, for-profit depletion of our public schools should not be represented or advocated for by the Secretary of Education. She has other experience. That experience has to do with being very involved in one party of the United States--the Republican Party-- serving as the Michigan Republican Party chairwoman from 1996 through 2000 and 2003 through 2005. Serving as a party chair is different than gaining experience in public education. She wanted to further press the case to convert public schools over to for-profit, a strategy that she was benefiting from so much. She worked on a 2000 ballot measure, and the people of Michigan rejected it. She also put a lot of money into a PAC but, again, putting money into an advocacy group--an advocacy group dedicated to depleting our public schools--is not a foundation for running public schools. It is a foundation for not running public schools. During her confirmation hearing, it became so incredibly evident that she knows nothing about public schools. It makes sense that she has no background because she didn't attend public schools. It makes sense that she didn't learn anything about public schools by teaching; she didn't teach. Or volunteering in ones--she didn't volunteer. It makes sense that she didn't learn about public schools from her children going to public schools because they didn't go to public schools. You might have thought for all her dedication to converting our public schools over to for-profit schools, she might have learned something along the way, but we found out during her confirmation hearing that she knows literally nothing about public schools. If she knew she was going to have a confirmation hearing, you would think she would have prepared for this experience. One of the major questions that we wrestled with in public schools is how to use assessment tools and whether they should be used in the context of measuring students' growth or students' proficiency and how that reflects on the teacher. When asked by Senator Franken about her views in this dialogue on proficiency versus growth as a tool of measurement, Betsy DeVos said: I think if I am understanding your question correctly about proficiency, I would also correlate it to competency and mastery so that each student is measured according to the advancement they are making in each subject area. Franken said: That is growth. That is not proficiency. I am talking about the debate between proficiency and growth, and what are your thoughts on that? She was unable to respond to that question because she was unfamiliar with the issue. That is a fundamental debate that is going on as we try to make sure that we have accountability in our public schools. Perhaps she was not familiar with the issue because she opposes accountability in her for-profit operations, because the less you spend on a student, the more you can put in the bank. That is a very sad point of view--to put profit over people, and those people are children. Another major issue in our school system is how to address the education of students with disabilities. We have an act called IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. She was asked by Senator Kaine about IDEA and said that is a matter best left to the States. Her response worries educators and those with disabled family members because before IDEA passed in 1975--so it has been with us for 42 years now--only one in five students with disabilities received a public education. I will put it differently. Four out of five or 80 percent of students with disabilities were left out in the cold. They didn't get the benefit of a public education. Our goal from 1975 forward as a nation has been to make sure students with disabilities also receive the best education that their circumstances enable them to have. Before 1975, many States had laws on the books that specifically excluded disabled students. That began to change with a series of court cases and the eventual passage of IDEA, a vision in which we said: Let's embrace our students with disabilities and give them a pathway to the maximum opportunity they might be able to have in life. IDEA gives such students the right to a free and appropriate public education. That is the wording of the law--free and public education, and the right that this education should take place in ``the least restrictive environment'' possible. A right to free and appropriate public education and that it should take place in the least restrictive environment has meant so much to millions of our students who have some disability in life because we haven't said to them we are setting you aside. We have said: We are going to empower you to seize all the opportunities you can possibly seize by making sure you have an education, an appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. When Betsy DeVos responded to the issue about IDEA and said it is a matter best left to the States, people across the Nation envisioned how States used to operate, which they basically said: Disabled child, there is no pathway to a successful life. That is not the way we should treat our children with disabilities. To facilitate these rights, each student under IDEA receives an individualized education program, referred to as an IEP, a legal document that lays out how public education will be tailored to their needs. Once a year, the family, the student, the school officials, and experts gather around a table to update the IEP, the individualized education program, for that particular student, based on that student's abilities and disabilities. The IEP lays out the accommodations the student may get in the classroom and any related services the school will pay for, such as occupational therapy or speech pathology and services. IEP can even be used to pay for certain kinds of private school education in the event a family requests it and the IEP determines that it is in the best interests of the child. Betsy DeVos would throw all this out the window and say: Let's not as a nation guarantee an opportunity for these children. Let's not require accountability for our States to provide an education to these children. Let's not provide a pathway. Let's leave it to a State. Maybe they will get an opportunity, maybe not, and that is OK with her. It is not OK with me. It is not OK to the parents of the thousands of children who wrestle with a disability in my home State of Oregon. It is not OK to the parents across this Nation that their children be tossed aside in the vision of Betsy DeVos. Betsy DeVos had little constructive or helpful things to say on how she would protect students in our schools and on college campuses if she became Secretary of Education. Sexual assault on campuses is a very significant issue. It is estimated that roughly one-fifth of women on campuses are victimized by sexual assault, and many of them know the offender; that of every 1,000 women attending a college or university, there are 35 incidents of rape each academic year. Only a small portion of those are reported to law enforcement. So Senator Casey asked her if she will commit to maintaining President Obama's attempts to curtail sexual assaults, and the answer didn't leave confidence with the Senator or the committee that she would be dedicated to that issue or understood that issue. Senator Murphy asked Betsy DeVos whether guns have a place in and around our schools, and again she seemed unfamiliar with the national debate. She said: ``I think that is best left for locales and States to decide.'' And referring to a school in Wyoming, she said: ``I think probably there, I imagine you need a gun in school to protect against grizzlies.'' Senator Murphy asked whether she would support President Trump's proposal to ban gun-free school zones, and she responded that she would. There are many challenges in the details of this debate, but Betsy DeVos didn't seem prepared to understand and be able to articulate those issues. It remains very clear for many of us all that has occurred in America since 2013. There have been 210 school shootings. There were 64 school shootings in 2015. In Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT--the Senator from Connecticut was speaking during the previous hour--there was an assault that killed 20 first grade children and killed 6 adults. And this question of how to create a secure environment is one that any nominee for public education should have a deep understanding of. Betsy DeVos has a questionable history in terms of her interest and concern about LGBTQ rights for students, so that is a concern as well. She does have this history of this war against public schools in Michigan, and if we had a department for a war against public schools, maybe she would be the right person to lead it. It would be a mission I would disagree with because I am here to tell you that this vision of public schools--every child has the opportunity to thrive is a vision we have embraced in America and should continue to embrace. If we believe in the American dream, if we believe in opportunity for all, then we should not have millionaire Senators voting to confirm a billionaire Secretary who knows nothing about public education and the struggle for education among working Americans and Americans with modest means. That is the concern--Senators living in a bubble confirming a Secretary who lives in an ultra-rich bubble and knows nothing about our public schools. We can take a look at some of the schools that Betsy DeVos has promoted with her vision of no accountability. Seventy-nine percent of Michigan charter schools are located in Detroit. Very few perform in the top tier of schools. There is a school in Brightmoor, a charter boasting more than a decade of abysmal test scores--not good test scores, not outstanding test scores, but terrible test scores. That school is not alone. Another charter school, Hope Academy-- serving the community around Ground River for 20 years--test scores have been among the lowest in the State throughout those two decades. In 2013, the school ranked in the first percentile. That means out of 100 schools, it was the worst. But its charter was renewed under this vision of no accountability. How about Woodward Academy? It is a charter that has bumped along at the bottom of school achievement since 1998, while its operator, despite running an abysmal school, a terrible school, was allowed to expand and run other schools. How about the idea of outstanding schools, not terrible schools? How about the idea of resources invested in the success of the school, not an entrepreneurial for-profit strategy designed to squeeze as much money out of that school as you possibly can at the expense of our children? Stephen Henderson, an editor at the Detroit Free Press, summed up the carnage in Michigan--Betsy DeVos's destructive results in Michigan--as the following: ``Largely as a result of the DeVos lobbying, Michigan tolerates more low-performing charter schools than just about any other State, and it lacks any effective mechanism for shutting down or even improving failing charters.'' That is a powerful statement, that DeVos's assault on public schools--converting them to charters with no mechanism for shutting down poorly run charter schools, no mechanism for improving failing charter schools--Betsy DeVos's vision of zero accountability--producing failing schools--is an assault on the opportunity for the success of our children. And it should not be entertained, and she should not be within a thousand miles of the Department of Education. A columnist, an editor with the Detroit Free Press, went on to summarize that ``as a result of DeVos's interference and destruction of the schools in Michigan, we are a laughingstock in national educational circles, and a pariah among reputable charter school operators, who have not opened schools in Detroit because of the wild West nature of the educational landscape here.'' Often what we see with this strategy from the very rich who want to masquerade as helping our children and challenging communities is what they really want: They want the government to pay for their elite education in private schools. Take the money out of the public system and help the wealthy in America be even wealthier by subsidizing or paying for their children to go to elite schools. The strategies that Betsy DeVos implements results in this failing system in Michigan that has become ``a laughingstock in national educational circles, with no accountability for improving the schools, and no accountability for shutting them down.'' If anyone was running a private business with no accountability, that business would fail. But when it comes to squeezing money out of the public system, there are opportunists who say: Here is something. Don't care much about public education, but I sure see an opportunity. I smell an opportunity for profit right here. I can squeeze that school, and I can make a lot of money. That person belongs nowhere near our public education system. There are other things that concern folks. In 1983, Betsy DeVos's family funded the creation of the Family Research Council. FRC is known for its incendiary anti-LGBT agenda. It is known for its promotion of junk science, claiming a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. The FRC thanks on its Web site the DeVos and Prince families of Michigan for establishing its DC base. And FRC advocates for conversion or reparative therapy. Well, in all those ways, it sends a message that as the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos is not going to watch out for LGBTQ students, who have plenty of difficulty figuring out life and a pathway to life in a world in which they don't necessarily find support in many places. And their concern is amplified by her opposition to nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community. In fact she has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat marriage equality--an opportunity for opportunity in our Nation. Funding these anti-LGBTQ causes is plenty of concern for students and their parents across America. Well, why is she nominated to be Secretary of Education? I think an objective observer would say that she has been a massive donor to the party of the President, and that objective observer would be right. Some $200 million was donated to the President's party. When discussing her contributions in 1997, DeVos said the following: ``I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now, I simply concede the point.'' She continued: ``They are right. We do expect something in return.'' She concluded: ``We expect a return on our investment.'' Well, she is seeking a return on her investment by seeking the nomination and receiving the nomination to Secretary of Education, but pay-to-play politics has no place in our public schools. Let me repeat that once more. Pay-to-play politics has no place in our public schools. Our children's education is not for sale. That is why we are here tonight on the floor of the Senate conveying our passionate dissent against this nomination. The Secretaries in the Cabinet--their position--should not be sold to the highest political bidder, and certainly one should have a small modicum of experience to bring to the post, particularly when it comes to the education of our children. Throw on top of that this pay-to-play politics. Throw on top of that a determination to destroy our public schools and to turn them into for-profit operations for the benefit of the rich, to squeeze profits out of these schools that are investing in our children, and this person is uniquely unqualified, the most unqualified individual to be considered for a post of this nature probably in the history of the United States of America. I was home in Oregon last week. I attended a rally of folks who wanted to share their thoughts about Betsy DeVos's confirmation. CREDO helped organize the rally, an organization that fights for progressive change, for opportunity for every child, opportunity for every family to thrive. In a short period of time, 1.4 million Americans had signed the CREDO petition for her nomination to be blocked. Just yesterday, I was at a rally outside the Russell Senate Office Building, just a few yards from here, where hundreds of activists came out to rally against her confirmation. The phones in my office have been ringing off the hook for weeks, with folks calling in opposed to this nomination. We have received 19,667 letters and emails from constituents--that is the last count-- who are writing in opposition to her nomination--opposition to potential confirmation by the Senate. These letters, these phone calls, they are coming from teachers and administrators, they are coming from parents, they are coming from concerned citizens who know what powerful role public education has played in the opportunity for our children. Now, this vote today has been laid out as something that virtually equally divides the Senate; that there may be 50 votes for her nomination, maybe 50 votes against. Half of the Senate saying no is a rather spectacular rejection of this individual, but we need another Senator. We need a 51st Senator who values our children over for-profit destruction of our public schools. Is there not one more Senator who will stand up and fight for our children here in the Senate? We need a Secretary of Education who knows about education policy, a Secretary who has experience as a teacher, who has experience as an administrator, and who wants to fight for our schools to thrive, not for our schools to be exploited, but we don't have that nominee today. So that is when this body needs to stand up and say no to the President; say, no, Mr. President. We know you were pushed to do this because this individual donated massive amounts of money to your party, but that is not a qualification for serving as Secretary of Education. We need for the Senate to reject this and the principle it represents, the principle that experience matters, that the heart for our children matters, not how much money you pump into the President's party. I think it might be helpful to look at some of the writings that have been put forward. Let me read an op-ed from an Oregon paper, the Register-Guard, our Eugene paper. This article is by Belicia Castellano. She writes the following: After having donated $9.5 million to Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, President-Elect Trump selected Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education. This decision has been widely viewed as controversial. With Trump's decision, it is apparent that education policy will focus on the privatization of public education. DeVos is not a suitable candidate for this position and much more consideration should be taken into who has offered such a significant role in our government and society. DeVos would not be actively supporting our public schools, and would not commit to advocating for only public schools. We need a Secretary of Education advocate of all teachers, principals, staff, students, and families within different types of schools. DeVos never worked in a public school and will struggle to empathize with public school students and teachers. In order to hold the position of Secretary of Education, an individual should have a teaching license or have some experience working within the field of education. I guess that is kind of the point here, is someone should have some experience working within the field of education. This Register-Guard editorial said: The morning after Election Day, a Register-Guard editor asked University of Oregon President Michael Schill what he knew about President-elect Donald Trump's views on higher education. Schill's answer: hardly anything. It goes on to say: DeVos is a long-time advocate of charter schools and school vouchers, but the Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications have turned up few grains of information after sifting through her positions on issues affecting colleges and universities. DeVos's home State of Michigan has more charter schools run by private companies than any other State, she is expected to be friendly to for profit colleges. Maybe, maybe not--who knows. So the point is that the Secretary of Education should also have experience related to higher education. Let me speak a little bit to that. Our public K-12 system, which has now become sometimes a preschool through community college system, or a K-20 system, has expanded vision. We have started to understand that just as we said at some point that the equivalent of a high school education is essential for a pathway for opportunity in our country, so now is the ability for many visions of what you will do with your life, to attend school after high school; that is, higher education. Now there are many pathways to success through apprenticeship programs and other routes that we should publicize and honor, many trades that need more people in them, very successful pathways to stable family finances, a foundation for raising your children. But much of our economy does require the experience of gaining a higher education through our community and 4-year universities. The cost of this pathway has exploded. There was a chart a couple of years ago in the New York Times that showed the cost of different products over a 10-year period. Over that period, the product that had increased the most in price was the cost of a university. University education tuition, that was the very top curve. The bottom curve--the things that had decreased the most in price--was large flat-screen TVs. Now, you don't need a large flat-screen TV to thrive in life, but for many opportunities in our economy, you do need a 4-year education at a university. So the thing we need, our students need, for many pathways had increased the most in price. That cost effectively creates a massive barrier. If you are a millionaire or you live in a bubble community, a gated community, you don't really see this because parents just write a check. But in my community, in a blue-collar community, people worry about this all the time. Parents worry about whether they can save a little money to help their child go to college. Then they look at that savings in the context of the cost of college and realize it is not enough and that their children will have to take on a lot of debt to be able to attend even a public 4-year school. So back a couple of years ago, I held a whole series of meetings with students on different campuses in Oregon. The students brought balloons that said on the balloon what their debt was or their anticipated debt would be at the time of their graduation from college. Some of them said, $22,000, some said $14,000, but a lot of those balloons said $55,000 or $85,000. Some students had gone from undergraduate to graduate school, and their numbers started to get to three figures: $112,000. It is in light of that debt in the higher education system that parents start to wonder whether college makes sense because with that kind of debt, that is half the price of a home in my community. You can buy a two- or three-bedroom house for $250,000 in my community, although the price has been going up. So you are saddling a child with a debt the size of a home mortgage or at least a good portion of a home mortgage. The fear is, what happens if you graduate with that debt and you actually can't get a job to pay off that debt. That concern has many folks saying to their children in middle school and in high school that they are not sure their child should follow that pathway. When a child hears from their parents that they are not sure that pathway makes sense, that affects and reverberates back to the way they treat junior high and the way they treat high school because they see it as a pathway that has been paved for them by society so they can thrive. And if they will be able to afford public education on through college, that is more inspiring and more powerful and can persuade a person to work hard in junior high and high school than the message that, no, it is so expensive we don't think that you are going to be successful going that route and it is going to be a trap. That message hurts our public schools. But Betsy DeVos has none of this understanding, how the high cost of college then reverberates back into junior high and high school. How about the issue of STEM education--science, technology, education, mathematics--and the role that plays in our schools. You know, I feel particularly lucky in life. I am the first in my family to have gone to college. My mother and father came from very, very modest backgrounds. Yet thanks to the economy after World War II, they were able to buy a home on my father's blue-collar income. They were able to provide a foundation for the family to thrive. My father told my sister and me: We didn't go to college, but we hope you will. We are saving some money to help that be possible. Even though I had no understanding of what college was all about, the message from my parents, that they were encouraging my sister and me to aspire to that pathway and that they were going to help us, just sent a message: It is a feasible pathway. So I always assumed, not knowing the details of what college cost or what scholarships might be available, I just always assumed it would be possible to go. We need a system of higher education in which people can afford to go to college without massive debt. What is important to understand is this affects not only the opportunity after high school, it affects how children feel about schools when they are in school. We see this, for example, in the DREAMS Program, where children are sponsored from grade school, and they are told: Listen, you have been the beneficiary of an individual who is going to pay your college expenses and for a program for you to get extra mentoring during your K-12 years of school. Those children thrive at a whole different level in public schools than the children in an adjacent classroom who don't have that sponsor and don't have that vision laid out for them that there is an affordable college awaiting them. So that is an issue we need to have an advocate for, as Secretary of Education, as well as an advocate for our K-12 system, and we don't have that in Betsy DeVos. She doesn't bring her personal experience in life to bear with that. I am going to wrap up my part of this conversation by noting that this is a potential turning point in our history. If we hand over the reins of our education system to a person who wants to see it as one more corporation, one more opportunity for profit, we will destroy a system that is the foundation of the American dream, the foundation of the vision for every child to thrive. We are a society to make sure that the pathway of opportunity is there for each and every child, including children who are English language learners, including children who have disabilities, including children who come from blue collar communities, as I do. Every child. That is the vision we are fighting for that is about to be deeply damaged. Should the reins of public education be handed over to an individual who wants to destroy it? That is why I am encouraging our colleagues to search their hearts, step aside from party politics and pay-to-play politics, and fight for the children of the United States of America. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my team member, Patrick Drupp, be granted privileges of the floor.