Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I will close by saying that we can't let these people dangle there anymore. We have to come to the aid of our fellow American citizens. Let's remember that when it comes to time of war, Puerto Rico provides some of the bravest military people we have. Let's remember they serve this Nation honorably. Now let's try to help them. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, this week the Senate is going to consider legislation dealing with the crisis in Puerto Rico. The legislation before us, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, has already passed the House by a vote of 297 to 127. We are taking it up this week because Puerto Rico needs help. They have needed help for quite a while, but now we are running out of time to help that island territory of the United States, with 3.5 million American citizens living there. Last week, I spoke to the Governor of Puerto Rico, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla. He explained just how dire the situation is in Puerto Rico. On July 1, a $2 billion debt payment is due. That is just a few days from now. There is no way Puerto Rico can make that payment; they don't have the cash. When they don't make that payment, there will be a race to the courthouse to see which hedge fund will sue Puerto Rico first and squeeze out whatever money is left on the island, even if it comes at the expense of the 3.5 million American citizens living there today. Hedge funds have already filed for injunctive relief in the Southern District of New York. In their court documents, they state that they should be paid first in times of scarcity, even ahead of what the government needs for essential services--essential services such as schools, hospitals, law enforcement. In our conversation, the Governor told me that if the hedge funds are granted injunctive relief, then he is not going to be able to pay the salaries of law enforcement and other first responders. This isn't abstract; this is real. Hospitals have already closed. The Secretary of the Treasury, Jacob Lew, earlier cited in a letter that hospitals can only order dialysis treatments for premature newborns in intensive care. How? Only if they pay cash on demand daily. Let me repeat that. They are so strapped that hospitals can only order the dialysis that is essential for life for premature newborns who are in intensive care--they can only order it if they are paid in cash for that dialysis on a daily basis. This legislation the House has crafted is certainly not the bill I would have crafted, but it is the only bill we have before us that could get by the tea party element in the House of Representatives. It is not ideal, particularly with regard to the labor provisions in the bill and the way the oversight board is organized. We will hear bipartisan attacks against the bill in the Senate, well meaning and well felt, but this legislation is needed to get Puerto Rico out of this immediate crisis. Several of us would like to see more in the bill to address the health care disparities in Puerto Rico and the lack of economic growth on the island, but, as Governor Padilla has said, if someone is holding you up at gunpoint and says ``Your wallet or your life,'' you are going to hand him your wallet because the alternative is worse. That is where we are. We have to compromise. That is the nature of Congress. That is how the Framers set it up. That is how we get things done. We don't get the perfect, the ideal; we have too many other opinions to consider when we put legislation together. If we pass this legislation, once we get out of this immediate crisis, then all of us must work as hard as we can to push for solutions for some of the other long-term problems Puerto Rico has. This isn't the end; it is just the beginning. At the same time, we should not look past the achievements in this bill. At the end of the day, this is why this Senator comes down on the side of supporting this legislation. It provides for an orderly process for Puerto Rico to adjust all of its debts, including its general obligation bonds. Those are the bonds held by the hedge funds that are asking for injunctive relief, that they be the ones to get the money first, looking to squeeze the life out of the territory. They are the ones that ran all those ads saying this bill was a bailout. Have you seen those ads? Isn't it interesting that they are the only ones who have the money to run ads saying it is a bailout. Who is paying for the ads? The hedge funds that hold the bonds because they want their money first, to the exclusion of essential services on the island. Well, this is not a bailout. It doesn't spend any taxpayer money. But it has the hedge funds on Wall Street running scared because they know that if this passes, they won't be able to get special treatment and they won't be able to starve Puerto Rico of its vital resources. Just consider the suffering going on in Puerto Rico. Nearly 200 schools have closed. Public transportation services have been cut. Payments to gasoline suppliers have been delayed, causing vendors to stop supplying gasoline to emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks. Schools have had to cut services to special needs kids. Eighty percent of the businesses in San Juan's main business district have closed. This isn't something we can continue to debate ad infinitum. Real people are suffering now. Every day we go without providing some sort of relief, more harm is done to the people of Puerto Rico. We are out of time. We need to act. And this bill is the only bill moving. I ask my colleagues to support the bill and send it to the President as soon as possible because, as the Governor said, the alternative is worse. Might I also add that since this Senator comes from a part of the country--Florida, Central Florida, the Orlando area--where there is such a concentration of citizens who have moved from the island--there is one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the United States right in the Orlando area. What is happening is that as the island deteriorates as far as all of its essential services--doctors can't get paid, the people do not have the essential services for life, the health, welfare, and happiness of people--what is happening is that the professional people are picking up roots and moving to the mainland United States. A good number of them are coming to my State. We are glad to have them, but look what is happening: The very people who will help Puerto Rico come out of this financial and health care crisis--by the way, with Zika piled on top of it, with huge percentages of the population already infected with the Zika virus, that is all the more compounding the problems of the people of the island. This is why we have to act. I have a letter from the Department of the Treasury to our majority leader--from the Secretary of the Treasury--that outlines some of the island's medical woes, talking about the island's doctors in the neonatal intensive care unit. In order to get the drugs for dialysis, they have to get cash every day in order to deliver those services. I also have Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla's letter to me, stating why he supports the legislation. I might also say that another Member of the Government--the delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, whom we call Congressman Pedro Pierluisi and is of a different party than the Governor--likewise strongly supports this legislation. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record those two letters.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, yes, this Senator is from Florida. This Senator is from Orlando. This is an AR-15. It is the civilian semi-automatic version of the military version M-16. This is what the killer used in Orlando a week ago. It is the same .223 caliber. It is collapsible stock. It is the SIG SAUER MCX. Do we think that a person who is on the no-fly list ought to be able to buy one of these lethal killing machines? I have been a hunter all my life. I grew up on a ranch. I own numbers of guns, but my guns are for hunting. These guns are for killing, and that is exactly what that weapon did to 49 people just a little over a week ago. If we have a list, and it is approximately 1,000 American citizens or American people who are here legally, both--not Americans--that category is called American persons. There are roughly a thousand on the no-fly list. If they cannot get on a plane to fly, should they be able to go out and buy one of these? There are another 1,700 folks that are on a selectee list, and those are the ones for which there is close to credible evidence that they are a terrorist--1,700. There is close to credible evidence that they are a terrorist, and do we want them to go and buy this kind of a weapon? Then there is another category, and that is those on what we call the terrorist watch list. In this country that is about 5,000 people-- American persons--for which there is declaratory evidence that they are a terrorist. Do we want them to be able to purchase these weapons? The Feinstein bill--that group of 5,000; that is it in America, there are 5,000. There are many more who are internationals, but there are 5,000 American persons on that list. I don't think we want them to be able to buy this gun. Even if that had been the law, it would not have caught Mateen. Thus, Senator Feinstein included the bill that I had filed which would catch Mateen because it says if you have been on the terrorist watch list--as he was back in 2013 and 2014, and they didn't have any prosecutable evidence, so they closed that case--when you purchase a gun, the FBI would be notified so that the FBI could make an up-to-date decision that they want to go back and interview that person. If they had seen Omar Mateen purchasing these, knowing that he had been on their watch list, they would have gone and talked to him. That is what is in front of us. It seems to me it is common sense. We hear words out here: Oh, this is the NRA locking down its votes, putting the fear of God in our Republican friends and colleagues about the next Republican primary they are going to be in. I am so proud of the Senator from Connecticut and what he did for 15 hours to bring this thing to a head.

Mr. NELSON. Thank you for listening to my plea. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for three rollcall votes for S. 524, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016, on June 16, 2016. Had I been present, I would have voted in favor of the motions to instruct led by Senator Shaheen and Senator Whitehouse, rollcall vote No. 101 and rollcall vote No. 102, respectively. I would have also voted in favor of rollcall vote No. 100, cloture on the motion to disagree to the House amendments to the Senate bill, agree to the request for conference, and the Presiding Officer appoint the following conferees: Senators Grassley, Alexander, Hatch, Sessions, Leahy, Murray, and Wyden.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I commend the chairman and ranking member for many, many things. I want to say to the ranking member, Senator Mikulski, that we are going to miss her upon her retirement. As one who is near and dear to our Nation's space program, both civilian and military, their leadership has been extraordinary. Mass Shooting in Orlando I want to talk about Orlando. Since I didn't have time to blow this up, I want people to see this small print, where my finger is on an AR- 15. A similar weapon is what the shooter Mateen used called a Sig Sauer, and it has some designation of letters. It has a collapsible stock. That is probably why he was able to conceal it as he went into the nightclub late in the evening while some people were leaving. It was last call. There was probably some reduction of heightened awareness because the evening was over. The AR-15 is an extremely lethal military weapon which, like the military M-16, can shoot a bullet called a .223, or it can shoot a bullet that is a little larger and more powerful called a .300 AAC Blackout, all the more that will do damage tearing into flesh. This tragedy in my State, in the town in which I live, could have been prevented, since he had been on the terrorist watch list for over 2 calendar years. While he was questioned three times--in 2013 and 2014--upon that questioning, the FBI saw no prosecutable evidence to continue and closed the case. As the Director of the FBI said, ``Once an investigation is closed there is then no notification of any sort that is triggered by that person then attempting to purchase a firearm,'' when the case or cases were closed as inconclusive. That was FBI Director Comey. Therefore, I have introduced legislation that would--if you have been questioned about a possible terrorist act--much more so if you have been put on the terrorist watch list but have been taken off because, as the Director said, that case was closed as inconclusive, his words-- when you go to purchase a gun, you can purchase that gun legally. Why shouldn't the FBI be notified that the person who has just purchased the weapon had been on the terrorist watch list? It is common sense. I don't think that even the NRA can object to this--and they are accustomed to getting their way around here--because this does not in any way inhibit the purchase of that firearm. This is after the fact of the purchase that a notification is given to the NCIS system--the National Instant Criminal Background Check System--that this person was once under investigation by the FBI and/or put on the terrorism watch list. It seems to me this is common sense. Had that law been in place, 50 people--49 innocent victims--would not be dead, and there would not be another 50, some of whom are fighting for their lives. I will also say we have already hotlined a resolution that my colleague Senator Rubio and I have introduced expressing the condolence to Orlando, condemning the terrorist attack, giving our support for the families and friends of those affected, and applauding the dedication of the law enforcement who responded and the interagency officials. I will also say what I repeated in my remarks Monday afternoon, as I had just returned from South Orange Avenue, the street in Orlando not far from the nightclub and not far from ORMC, the hospital where so many of those victims are still in critical condition: We are healing. It is going to take a long time, but one of the things in the healing process that we need is the expression of unity instead of division. It was a marvelous sight in the temporary command center, set up in the middle of Orange Avenue, to see the State, local, and Federal level all working together seamlessly, with the FBI taking the lead. That is how government is supposed to respond. How is a society supposed to respond? Was it on Sunday when we opened our Orlando office to try to help with the incoming calls, all of which were support; was it like the ceremony two nights ago at the First Baptist Church of Orlando, where it was one of unity and the members of the Muslim community were prayed for by the other faith communities in that church setting; or was it in the 400 calls we had in our Orlando office on Monday, the day after--95 percent of which were expressing hate, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti any gun control, anti whatever it was, expressing not a message of unity but a message of division? This Senator had just been elected in 2000. In the first year of my tenure in the Senate, 9/11 happened. What I saw was remarkable. This Senate came together to crowd around the Senators from New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, offering them the unity of the Nation. At the time that we were still under the terror watch on that very evening of September 11, 2001, the Members of Congress in this Senate and the House said: We don't care. We are going to the center steps on the east front of the U.S. Capitol Building, and we broke out in unison singing ``God Bless America.'' We were showing our unity. Where is that unity now? It is being expressed in pockets around this country, and it is being expressed to those grieving in Orlando. We must do more. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, since the Senator would like to know what Doctor Joshua Corsa, the medical doctor who owns these shoes, said, he wrote in one of the Orlando publications: These are my work shoes from Saturday night. They are brand new, not even a week old. I came to work this morning and saw these in the corner of the call room, next to the pile of dirty scrubs. I had forgotten about them until now. On these shoes, soaked between its fibers, is the blood of 54 innocent human beings. I don't know which were straight, which were gay, which were black, or which were Hispanic. What I do know is that they came to us in wave upon wave of suffering, screaming, and death. And somehow, in that chaos, doctors, nurses, technicians, police, paramedics, and others, performed super human feats of compassion and care. This blood, which poured out of those patients and soaked through my scrubs and shoes, will stain me forever. In these Rorschach patterns of red I will forever see their faces and the faces of those that gave everything they had in those dark hours. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done. Some of the work will never end. And while I work I will continue to wear these shoes. And when the last patient leaves our hospital, I will take them off, and I will keep them in my office. I want to see them in front of me every time I go to work. For on June 12, after the worst of humanity reared its evil head, I saw the best of humanity come fighting right back. I never want to forget that night. Dr. Joshua Corsa, Orlando Regional Medical Center. I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. NELSON. For the military, that is expected.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I wish to ask the Senator about the weapon that was used in Orlando. My home is in Orlando. I was there right after the shooting. Of course, I speculated at the time that this was going to be a combination of ISIS-inspired, a hate crime, anti-gay, and very likely anti-Hispanic because 44 of the 49 had Hispanic surnames. I want to ask the Senator if he is aware of the difference between the lethal killing machine that was used and the AR-15, which is a military weapon used by the military called the M-16, and the SIG SAUER MCX. They can use the same bullets, but this one, in fact, can use an even larger, more lethal bullet, traveling at 2,000 miles per hour. I wanted the Senator to see this. Is he aware that down in Orlando, this killer used this rifle?

Mr. NELSON. And the Senator no doubt but unfortunately agrees, along with the rest of us about what happened in Orlando, that these are not weapons for hunting; these are weapons for killing. And this particular weapon has a collapsible stock. Would the Senator be surprised? This is how he got it in. You take out the magazine. You collapse the stock. He probably had a blousy outer garment. It is near the 2 o'clock closing time. People are leaving, security is lessening, and he walks in with this. How did he get it in? He didn't have to have a long rifle; he had a collapsible stock. What would the Senator think about that?

Mr. NELSON. Yes. Mr. President, if I may, if the Senator will yield for a question. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue.) The Senator from Connecticut has yielded to the Senator from Florida for a question.

Mr. NELSON. Those who are listening to this, if they are concerned about this stilted parliamentary language we are using, it is the Senate's rules that I am requesting through the Presiding Officer permission to ask a question, so I will ask this in the form of a question. Would the Senator believe that these are the shoes of one of the trauma surgeons? It just so happened that two blocks from the nightclub is the trauma center in Orlando, the Regional Medical Center, the No. 1 trauma center with trained trauma surgeons. They called them all in in the middle of the night. Would the Senator like me to read what the doctor who owns these shoes said?

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I call up amendment No. 4670.

Mr. NELSON. If the Senator will yield, I just wish to thank him for his comments. Indeed, some folks wish that I were still in orbit, and I understand that. I want the Senator to know that I have great affection and great respect for the chairman of our committee and for him and for the Senator from Alabama to be reasonable in finding an accommodation about this so that this country would have assured access to space. Certainly, the Senator from Illinois, as the ranking member of that Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, likewise, has also been in the mix. I am very grateful that this issue is behind us and we can move on. I might note that there is one technical change we will have to make in the conference committee. It is technical in nature, but it is necessary to get the language right. I thank the chairman of our committee.

Mr. NELSON. The Senator from Arizona has the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I want to thank the leaders of our Armed Services Committee for working out what had been a difficult situation going forward with regard to assured access to space over a 6-year period starting in fiscal year 2017 and going through fiscal year 2022. We have been able to work this out, and that is the subject of the amendment I have just called up.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I have just returned from the command center of the emergency operations center, a temporary one that has been set up in the middle of South Orange Avenue, very close to the Pulse nightclub, not far from the hospital where so many of the victims have been taken, where 9 of the victims died in the care of the doctors, and where there are up to 50 people, some of whom are still fighting for their lives. Needless to say, Orlando is shocked. We didn't know a place that sometimes is called the happiest place on Earth could be one of the saddest places on Earth. Indeed, the morning's Orlando Sentinel, the entire front page is dedicated to a statement by the paper entitled ``Our Community Will Heal.'' Will our community heal? Well, certainly, in what we see with the long lines snaking around the block at the blood donation center, where it is literally going around what would be the length of 2 blocks, and where there are people standing in the hot Sun with umbrellas to donate blood, that says something about how the community will heal. Indeed, when we had our office in Orlando opened on Sunday, the kinds of calls expressing grief and shock and just disbelief, along with the messages of comfort, has been quite a contrast to the 95 percent of the hundreds and hundreds of calls the Orlando office has received today. Ninety-five percent of those calls have been hateful. What does that say about us as a nation? Will we, in fact, heal? What does it say about us as a nation deep inside? Have we lost the teachings in almost all the major religions--clearly in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament and clearly in the New Testament, as well as in the Koran. You will recognize these words if I say it in the old English: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Putting it in modern English, it means to treat others as you would want to be treated. Yet what we find is that in our society today there are folks who want to divide instead of unify, and this killer is a good example. I have spent two days with the FBI. I have been on the phone. I have talked to the Secretary of Homeland Security. I have talked to our intelligence community. It is this Senator's opinion that once the dots are completely connected--and they are being rapidly connected. The FBI is doing a great job. They are the lead in Orlando. By the way, talking about something good, what about the cooperation and coordination, which has been almost seamless, among local, State, and Federal Government officials, all represented down there in the command center, all being represented as a number of us went in front of the assembled cameras? It seems that is a good thing. That is unity. That is how we do things in America. Yet, as the dots are being connected, we will find out that, yes, this shooter was ISIS-inspired--and that is a whole set of issues--and how are we going to protect ourselves in the future? But we are also going to find that this shooter was inspired by hatred, and we are going to find that this hatred was directed, as his father already said in interviews, toward the gay community. So here again, we have another terrible tragedy. I have had a number of calls from my fellow Senators. One of those calls came from Richard Blumenthal. He is from Connecticut. He has reason to be sensitive about this because of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 20 children and some 6 adults were gunned down needlessly. Maybe that was a mental case. Maybe part of this one in Orlando is a mental case. But it is driven by hatred, maybe through ISIS, a hatred of America and of a free society being willing to be able to speak what you want without fear of persecution, or maybe it is a hatred about a group of people. It is exactly the opposite of what is taught in all of the Scriptures. So as we heal in Orlando, it will take a while. You can imagine those families of the ones who have been lost. You can imagine the families down in the Orlando Health hospital right now, grieving, hoping, and praying that those victims fighting for their lives are going to make it. So America, we are going to have to dig down deep and find out who we really are. You know, I really know who we are. We are a people with a character that is compassionate, generous, kind, and respectful. We as Americans are ladies and gentlemen. We can express ourselves as has been the tradition on the floor of this Senate in the heat of political debate. We can sharply differ, but we can be respectful of the other fellow's point of view. That is America, and until we finally come to the conclusion and insist that this aberrant behavior be stopped--until that happens--we will still be grieving. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am going to try to make sense out of some of the discussion that has been going on, which has been quite detailed and very esoteric, with regard to the Russian rocket engine which is the main engine in the tail of the Atlas V rocket--the first stage of the Atlas V. Why is there a Russian engine? In the early 1990s, at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States went in to try to help secure the nuclear material and nuclear weapons. It was clearly in the interests of the United States and her allies that loose nukes not get into the hands of rogue nations or rogue groups. At the same time, it was clearly in the interests of the United States that we try to prevent all of the experts, the Russian scientists and engineers that had been involved in the Russian or the Soviet Union's rocket program--and it was an exceptional program--from going to rogue nations or to rogue groups. Read: Iran. Thus it became apparent, when U.S. scientists, engineers, and space pioneers visited the Russian engine plant, that it was this extraordinary engine that had this high compression with liquid oxygen as a fuel and also kerosene. As a result, it was clearly in the interests of the United States not only to prevent loose nukes and scientists leaving but to keep them interested and employed. Remember, this was in a Soviet Union that was disintegrating at the moment. Therefore, it was in the interest of keeping that Russian rocket engine manufacturing facility employing those engineers and scientists. In one instance, that facility has been called Energomash, and in another instance, it has been made reference to as Roscosmos. Therefore, private companies in the United States arranged to buy the Russian engines and keep them employed and, at the same time, to obtain the plans with the idea that down the road the United States would manufacture the same Russian engine, but its manufacture would be done in the United States. That intention was never carried out. As a result, that leads us to where we are today. Today, we still buy the Russian engines. On average, that is costing us $88 million a year. How much is that of the total expenditures that we buy from Russia in other goods? It is less than a percent. In fact, that $88 million a year, on average, is one-third of 1 percent that is purchasing this excellent engine. That excellent engine happens to be the workhorse engine of the Atlas V, which is our most reliable rocket for military launches, as well as future NASA launches, as well as commercial launches of communications satellites in orbit. The whole fracas that has been engulfing this Defense bill here is because now that same Russian Federation, where it was so important for us to keep employing its scientists and engineers 25 years ago,--today is being led by a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin. He is doing things that we don't like. He runs over Ukraine and he takes a part called Crimea. He is pushing into eastern Ukraine and he is doing all kinds of bad things there that is threatening the freedom of the people of Ukraine. As articulated by Senator McCain, naturally we would not want to continue to buy those Russian engines, which is basically helping Vladimir Putin, even though it is minuscule--less than one-third of 1 percent of the total goods that we buy from Russia. So that brings us to this point: How do we get out of the mess? How we get out of the mess is that we build our own engine. We should have done that years ago. But now we can actually build a better engine and not plug into the same rocket, because if it is a different engine you cannot plug into the same rocket in the Atlas V. You have to basically plug it into a different rocket. As we speak, there is now a competition going on to develop a replacement engine. In one case, it is called the BE-4. In another case it is called an Aerojet Rocketdyne engine. That competition is going to continue, but we can't do it overnight. So it is going to take some time. An optimistic estimate might say that the engine is ready in about 2019, and then you have to test-fire in the new rocket that you have developed. So a realistic time of when the new engine is available is at the end of the year 2022. So what do we do to make sure we have the rockets to have assured access to space between now and the end of 2022? That is what all this discussion is on the floor. On the one hand, there is a very successful company called SpaceX. They are now certified with a rocket called the Falcon 9, and that rocket has won some competitions and has put payloads in space, including one defense payload that I know of. There may be more, but I do know that they have been certified for the Department of Defense. Its competitor is the other company, United Launch Alliance, which is a combination of Boeing and Lockheed. They have been successfully launching the Atlas V without a miss for years and years. I think the successful number of rocket launches is something in excess of 50 or maybe 60. Thus, it is a proven workhorse. We never want to get to the position where we have just one rocket company, because if something happened, you want to have a backup because we have to get satellites into space to protect our national security, and we have to do it over this period of time from now until the end of 2022. Therefore, how do you keep them going alive if you eliminate the ability of being able to buy the Russian engine? That is what all of the very emotional and very well-meaning speeches on the floor have been about--in one case, United Launch Alliance, and in another case, SpaceX. For the good of the country, we have to have both until we can develop, test, and successfully fly the replacement engine for the Russian engine. As we speak, these discussions, by the way, that have been going on over the past several weeks, and with intensity over the past few days, continue. It is certainly my hope that we are going to get resolution and can get an agreement on this and a way to go forward so that we can get this issue behind us and move on with a defense bill that is so important to the future of this country. Mr. President, I wanted to lay out the predicate of what this is all about. When you start getting into the weeds about this number of launches and that number of launches, all of it boils down to what this Senator has just shared. So I hope we get resolution. And since I am basically an optimist, I think we will. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, my distinguished colleague from North Carolina, Mr. Tillis, is correct. Chairman Thune and I did agree to accept this amendment as part of a package of 26 amendments agreed to by all but one of our colleagues. While I am disappointed that these amendments could not clear the full Senate, including one that preserves certain State and local powers to deal with public safety concerns regarding drones, I will work with Chairman Thune to address this and other issues in the conference committee once the House has acted.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this is a motion to instruct the conferees that whatever is decided in the conference to fund the Zika crisis, the money would not be taken out of the Ebola fund and that the money that has been borrowed from the Ebola fund would be replenished. Remember that since the Ebola outbreak was contained 1 year ago, there have been seven more clusters of outbreaks since that time, and the CDC still employs 80 employees working on Ebola. With the last recent Ebola case in Guinea, the CDC has had to vaccinate 1,700 people and then go out and do the infection control over there in West Africa in 50 health centers and make 20,000 connections to try to ensure that it does not spread, which of course is the source of how Ebola gets to the United States. So this motion is simply to say: Let's not take the Zika crisis funds out of Ebola and replenish what has already been taken out. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, do I have any time left?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I have a motion to instruct conferees at the desk.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I would say to my friend from Missouri simply that the administration does not say that they don't need this. As a matter of fact, in their $1.9 billion request, they have asked for the replenishment of this, and the statements that I just made were made by Dr. Frieden and Dr. Fauci as early as this morning.