Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak about a topic that is bittersweet for me. I am here to share my gratitude for a person who I not only consider an adviser and an exemplary public servant, but a friend and confidant for over 40 years--our director of constituent services, Sherry Davich, who retired from the Senate. I met Sherry back when we were both admittedly younger, after she worked on Jimmy Carter's Presidential campaign and I was running for the Florida House of Representatives. Sherry was finishing her bachelor's degree at Florida State University and had an undeniable curiosity and a nose for politics. After Carter became President and I was in the Florida House, I convinced her to intern in our office, and the rest is history. Forty years--wow, that is real public service. Sherry has been unwavering in her service to the people of our country and of Florida as I have served in the House and Senate, as well as State treasurer and insurance commissioner. During her 15 years in the Senate, she has overseen over 350,000 constituent cases ranging from veterans not receiving their benefits, working with folks impacted by the BP oil spill, reuniting families as they navigate the immigration process, and of course, the lost passports and visa assistance. She has touched the lives of so many of our constituents as their chief advocate. She has also been a part of my family. Actually Sherry and her husband, David, started to see each other as a ``Nelson Congressional Couple,'' both working in the DC office years ago. Grace and I think of Sherry, David, and their son Will, who was an intern in our office, as family. We are so thankful for her commitment, her loyalty, and her friendship. Sherry has left a lasting mark on our family, our office family, and the folks she has served. She will be missed, and I am grateful to her beyond words.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I think the chairman, Senator Thune, has pointed out that what we have tried to exhibit is the way the Senate is supposed to work. We are supposed to work in a bipartisan way to forge consensus in order to be able to govern. The subject matter of the FAA reauthorization bill is one that we shouldn't dilly-dally around. Indeed, we take some of the very serious consequences we are facing with our national aviation system head-on. I also want the chairman to know how much I appreciate the spirit with which we have worked, not only on this issue but on the many issues we have discussed in the Commerce Committee. I think the proof is in the pudding, and I think we will see an amendment process that will run fairly smoothly as a result of the example and the spirit we have tried to set with regard to this legislation. This is a comprehensive bill. It has been months in the making, and in working together in the fashion that I indicated, the bill reflects our broad agreement on aviation. At the same time, we have refrained from the controversial proposals, such as the plan in the House bill that has come out of the House committee and has not gone to the floor. They had a plan to privatize air traffic control and that has stopped the House FAA bill dead in its tracks. We have a good bill in front of us here in the Senate, and in this robust process we will consider many amendments and improvements as we continue the legislative process. There is no basis for the chatter coming from some in the House that hearts and minds will change here in the Senate on air traffic control privatization. Air traffic control privatization is just not going to happen. I have made myself very clear on that issue. Such a privatization scheme would seriously impact the overall success of our aviation system. It would dismantle the longstanding partnership between the FAA and the Department of Defense and needlessly disrupt the progress the FAA is making in its modernization efforts. Let me underscore that. The Defense Department operates in about 20 percent of our airspace. They cannot afford to have a private company handling that airspace. Of course, this privatization could also lead to increased costs for the traveling public and users of the National Airspace System. We think the measured approach we are taking in this bill is the better path, and we are not alone in this view. This bipartisan bill enjoys the support of a huge number of organizations. Now, nothing is perfect, and so it was my hope that we could find a way to help our busiest airports by increasing the resources they need to improve and maintain vital facilities. We couldn't reach that agreement. That is one reason the term of this bill is somewhat limited through fiscal year 2017, so we have an additional opportunity to revisit this and other issues in the not-too-distant future. It is a consensus bill, and it contains, as the chairman has just mentioned, many new consumer protections for airline passengers, critical improvements in drone safety, and reforms that boost U.S. aircraft manufacturing and exports, and it will do all of this without disrupting the safest and most efficient air transportation system in the world. Let me highlight some of these consumer protections. How irritating is it to passengers that they don't know about this-and-that fee, this- and-that charge? At the end of the day, consumers feel nickeled and dimed. They deserve to know, and they need some relief. Well, this bill makes progress on that. Last summer, this Senator released a report that found that airlines failed to adequately disclose the extra fees and the add-on costs charged to the flying public. In many cases, passengers didn't know they could get a seat without having to request a special seat with a fee. In many cases, passengers didn't know about the fees they had to pay for airline baggage. That report had a number of comprehensive recommendations, and this legislation builds on that report to protect the flying public--many things in the bill. For example, it requires fee refunds for lost or delayed baggage. It requires new standardized disclosure of fees for consumers. It requires increased protections for disabled passengers. As the chairman mentioned, drone safety is a very important area of this bill. Remember Captain Sully Sullenberger, who became a national hero when, upon takeoff and ascending out of LaGuardia, he encountered a flock of seagulls which were sucked into his jet engines? Now, that is flesh and blood and feathers and webbed feet. You can imagine what would happen if a plane, on ascent or on descent of a passenger airline, sucks in the plastic and metal of a drone. There are lives at risk, and there might not be a Hudson River that Captain Sullenberger could belly it in, in the Hudson River, and save all the lives of his passengers. Last year alone, the FAA recorded over 1,000 drone sightings near airports and aircraft. That is unacceptable, and we must do everything we can to protect the flying public from these dangers posed by drones. So this bill creates a pilot program to test various technologies to keep drones away from airports, and it requires the FAA to work with NASA to test and develop a drone traffic management system. We have seen the technology already available that can suddenly capture a drone, if it goes into a prohibited area, and land that drone or take over that drone and take it someplace else. The identification of drones that go in and out of prohibited areas is also important. We are going to have to face this because, sooner or later, it will not be what happened at the Miami International Airport with a drone within hundreds of feet of an inbound American Airlines airliner into Miami International. So we want to avoid that catastrophic outcome. This legislation also provides reforms in the FAA certification process that will boost U.S. manufacturing and exports and most importantly create really good jobs for hard-working Americans. Those are just some of the key features in the bill when it comes to reauthorizing the FAA, and that is what brings us here today with the bill on the floor. We know we are in a new context of world terrorism, having just been reminded in Brussels. The dual attacks on a Brussels metro station and the airport are a grim reminder that both aviation and surface transportation networks remain attractive targets for terrorists. It is now almost 15 years after September 11. The terrorists are still out there seeking these vulnerabilities. In November of last year, we saw the ability to penetrate airport perimeter security in Egypt enabled an employee to get an explosive device on a Russian passenger jet, and that killed 224 civilians. So we have amendments to address these issues. We think these amendments are noncontroversial, we think they are bipartisan, and they certainly are timely. As our debate unfolds over the next few days, aviation security will be an important factor in the discussion. The chairman and I have talked at length, and we have some of the ideas that we are going to present for consideration on security. One such proposal, as the chairman has mentioned in his opening remarks, we already passed in the commerce committee. It is right there, the Airport Security Enhancement and Oversight Act. That bipartisan legislation, sponsored by a number of us on the committee, would improve background checks for airport workers and increase employee screenings--obviously, a reminder of the Russian jetliner--this is important--and a reminder of the gun-running scheme in the Atlanta airport: over 100 guns over a 3-month period put on airliners, transporting them from the Atlanta Airport to New York. It is an area that requires attention. So I look forward to collaborating with our colleagues as we move these important issues. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I would just add to Senator Leahy's comments that a year ago, unfortunately, Honduras was known as the murder capital of the world, with the highest number of per capita murders per 100,000 people. That has improved somewhat. But that little, poor nation, under its new President, is struggling to overcome the drug lords, the crime bosses who prey on a country that is ravaged by poverty. It is such a tempting thing when all kinds of dollars are put in front of their noses in order to tempt them to get involved in these crime syndicates that have a distribution network of whatever it is--drugs, trafficking, human trafficking, other criminal elements--a distribution that goes from south to north on up into the United States. So I join Senator Leahy in his expression of grief and condolences for the lady who was murdered. Drilling Off the Atlantic Seaboard Madam President, this Senator has conferred with the administration on its proposal for the drilling off the Atlantic seaboard. At least the administration listened to this Senator and kept the Atlantic area off of my State of Florida from proposed drilling leases for this next 5-year lease period. They did that last year. We are grateful they did that for the reasons for which we have fought for years to keep drilling off of the coast of Florida, not only because of what we immediately anticipate--tourism, the environment--but also our military training and testing areas. So this Senator made the argument to the Obama administration that if you are coming out there with leases off the Atlantic seaboard, don't put it off of Florida. We have military and intelligence rockets coming out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We have the rockets coming out of the Kennedy Space Center for NASA. Obviously, we can't have oil rigs out there when we are dropping the first stages of these rockets. And the administration complied. But the administration then went on to offer for lease tracks of the Atlantic Ocean from the Georgia line all the way through the Carolinas, including up to the northern end of Virginia--very interesting. Just this morning the administration has walked back the offering of those leases off the eastern seaboard of the United States. Now, it is certainly good news not only for the fact that they never did it in the first place off of Florida, but it is good news for the Atlantic coast residents who then fought so hard to keep the drilling off their coast. They first released this draft plan in January of 2015, a year ago, and the Department of the Interior had suggested opening up these new areas of the Mid-Atlantic. As we would expect, communities up and down the Atlantic seaboard voiced their objection, and they did it in a bipartisan way. From Atlantic City to Myrtle Beach, cities and towns along the coast passed resolutions to make clear their opposition to the drilling off their shores. Obviously, they weren't the only ones because--surprise, surprise--just this week the Pentagon weighed in and voiced its concerns, having been just corroborated in the Senate Armed Services Committee when I asked the question of the Secretary of the Navy about the concerns that drilling in the Mid-Atlantic region would impact the military's ability to maintain offshore readiness because of the testing and training areas. The Pentagon had voiced this concern two administrations ago with regard to drilling in the gulf off of Florida, which is the largest testing and training area for our U.S. military in the world. So today, there is the Interior Department's decision to remove the Atlantic from the 5-year plan. Well, what about the next 5-year plan? And what about the rigs already operating in other areas off of our coast, such as off of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas in the gulf. We have carried on this fight now for four decades, and today we still have a renewed push to allow drilling off of these sensitive areas for the reasons I have mentioned. Some of our own colleagues are offering an amendment to a little energy bill that is about energy efficiency. It is a nongermane amendment. But what they want to do is to sweeten the pot with all of the revenues for offshore drilling that would normally go to the Federal Government instead to go to the States--another incentive to do that drilling by the oil industry. But what we saw was that the coastal communities--in this case the Mid- Atlantic seaboard--rise up and voice objections, regardless of their partisan affiliation. We have seen again today that the Pentagon raised its objection, and, unfortunately, we have found a Federal safety regulator asleep at the switch. It has been nearly 6 years since we faced one of the greatest natural disasters that our country has ever seen, and that was the gulf oilspill. Yet, according to the GAO report released just last week, we are no better off now than we were before that tragic accident. As a reaction to that accident, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that, I remind my colleagues, killed 11 men and sent up to almost 5 million barrels--not gallons, barrels--of oil gushing into the gulf, there were a number of questions that were asked: How could this happen? Where were the safety inspectors? Well, it soon became clear that the agency in charge--a subdivision of the Department of the Interior, the Minerals Management Service--was so cozy with the oil and gas industry that the Interior Department's own inspector general considered it a conflict of interest. And in response to the IG's findings, the Interior Department decided to reorganize, and it split that agency--the Minerals Management Service-- into two, one in charge of leasing and the other in charge of safety. Last Friday, the GAO--what is the GAO? It is the General Accounting Office. It is the independent, nonpartisan research arm of Congress. The GAO released a report that found that the ongoing restructuring-- that splitting into--actually ``reverses actions taken to address the post-Deepwater Horizon concerns, weakening its oversight.'' The report goes on to say that the Interior Department's newly created agency in charge of safety--one of the two that were split--the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, suffers--this is the report's words--``a lack of coherent leadership'' and ``inconsistent guidance.'' So here we are 6 years after the gulf oilspill, and we are weakening oversight--the very words of the report--6 years later. Obviously, this is inexcusable. That is why a number of us have asked the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to hold a hearing on this troubling report to get to the bottom of it. Now, at some point, the objections of the vast majority of people who live along the coast and the economies that depend on those environments and those white sandy beaches and crystal blue water and the military bases that are utilizing the testing and training areas over those waters have to be heard. Their concerns have to be addressed. We can't continue to keep having a fight every time this comes up every 5 years. There is too much at stake. Yet the fight goes on. Now there is the new evidence mounted just last Friday and--lo and behold--the results of that new evidence this morning--pulling the plug on the leasing off the eastern coast of the United States. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I wish to speak about Bob Levinson, a retired FBI agent who 9 years ago today disappeared in Iran. He was on the tourist island of Kish. It is a little island off the coast of Iran, and it is Iranian territory. It is in the Persian Gulf. It is just a few minutes' flight from Dubai. Bob Levinson was there. There is conflicting information, but in the process of checking out from his hotel and getting into a cab and going to the airport to return--I think to Dubai--he disappeared 9 years ago today. There is a lot of mystery surrounding the disappearance, and there is a lot of mystery surrounding what has happened ever since. There is a mystery as to why the FBI, shortly after his disappearance, was somewhat lackadaisical about pursuing it. It is a mystery as to why the CIA was not coordinating with the FBI in pursuing vigorously the disappearance of Bob. There is no mystery surrounding the fact that, finally, the two agencies got their act together and started to vigorously pursue the disappearance of Bob Levinson. I wish to give great credit to the agency, since they tried to get to the bottom of it, but that has led us nowhere, and here we are 9 years later. It is particularly troubling to all of us, including all of our negotiating team for the Iranian nuclear agreement, because at every meeting, both high level and low level, at the direction of our Secretary of State, first Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry, over and over it was brought up to the Iranian Government. It is frustrating for this Senator, being the Senator from Florida where a wife and seven children are left behind, and for Christine Levinson, whom I have met with many times, as well as her sons and daughters and most recently both Christine and her son, as they plead for help, for just any information. About 5 years ago there was proof of life, and it was a video, and Bob was looking very gaunt. He had been gone several years at this point. He was pleading: Don't forget him. Sometime after that, but within a year, the last proof of life was a photograph showing an even more emaciated Bob with a huge beard and unkempt hair. Again, the picture says all we need to know. Why is he being left behind? Here, 9 years later, supposedly we don't know anything. This Senator, on behalf of Christine and her family, went years ago to the Iranian mission at the United Nations--the only place that Iran had an ambassador here in the United States, since we do not have diplomatic relations--and made the case on humanitarian grounds. That case has been made over and over and over again, including directly with Foreign Minister Zarif and the new Iranian Ambassador last September, in a meeting of a handful of Senators on behalf of all of those who have been kept by Iran. Subsequently, some have been released, including the fellow from Michigan, the former marine, and so forth, whom we know about--but nothing about Bob Levinson. Of course, the Government of Iran always says: We don't know anything about it. Oh, we thought he was in Pakistan. Those are always the answers. But he disappeared in Iran, and with the very strict state-controlled Iranian security apparatus, obviously, they know what happened. Certainly, 9 years later, they should know what happened or at least have the capacity to be able to find out what happened to Bob Levinson. The rest of us keep searching in every possible way. A couple of years ago it became apparent to this Senator that the Associated Press was about to publish a story talking about Bob Levinson's clandestine activities. This Senator called the executive editor and pled that they not publish the story, that they do what the responsible New York Times had done. New York Times investigative reporter Barry Meier sat on the story for over 3 years, knowing that if the story about clandestine activities were published, it could jeopardize Bob's life. To no avail, the Associated Press executive editor said to this Senator: Well, they already know this. Despite my pleading to them, the answer was no, and they went ahead and published the article. I vigorously disagreed with the Associated Press's conclusions, and I think that jeopardized Bob's wherewithal as well as his safety. Here we are, several years later, 9 years after the apparent disappearance, and still there is nothing about Bob Levinson. So it is the conclusion of this Senator that if the Government of Iran--namely, President Ruhani, as told to us by his Foreign Minister Zarif--knows nothing about it, well, somebody in Iran does. Maybe that tells us something about Iranian society and the Iranian Government--that there are these different power centers, one being the Revolutionary Guard and another the exclusive Quds Force. But there is one person that is over all of this in Iran, and that is the Supreme Leader, and he should know. All the pleas that have been made on the basis of a humanitarian plea for a family--a wife and seven children--thus far have been ignored. This brings us to the next point. According to New York Times investigative reporter Barry Meier, a meeting took place in 2011 in Paris in the Iranian Embassy with the Iranian Ambassador by a group of private American citizens who were doing what they could to facilitate the location of Bob or any information about Bob, and the Iranian Ambassador told them that, yes, Iran had Bob Levinson. This is according to a story published in the New York Times by Barry Meier a few months ago. This Senator called Barry Meier and asked: ``Are you sure of your facts?'' And he said yes. This Senator then called one of the people that was associated with this audience of private citizens, and that person, when I met with him, confirmed that what the New York Times had published was accurate and true, and that, in fact, the FBI had been called and the FBI had met with representatives of the Iranian Embassy in Paris right across the street from the Embassy in a cafe in Paris. This Senator called the former Deputy Director of the FBI--a man of impeccable reputation--Sean Joyce, who before he was Deputy Director had spearheaded the efforts on trying to find Bob Levinson and continued that in his new role as the No. 2 in the FBI. Just last week this Senator talked to Sean Joyce, and he said that he didn't know anything about this. Well, if an investigative reporter has found out this information and it has been confirmed by people who were there or knew of that meeting and, at the time in 2011, the top guy in the FBI who is spearheading the efforts to try to get Bob Levinson, a former FBI agent, doesn't know about it, what does this suggest? It suggests that there is a huge disconnect in the FBI, which leads this Senator, who has been on this case for 9 years on behalf of a grieving wife and seven children, to wonder what in the world is going on. Until this turmoil is sorted out, the bottom line is that we want Bob Levinson home with his family for humanitarian reasons. I know John Kerry is doing all he can, but we have to find another way to get to the Supreme Leader. Maybe it is through some of these private contacts. Why has that not been coordinated? I know the White House is involved in this, but do they know about that 2011 meeting? If FBI agents were there on the case, why was the White House not informed along with the leadership of the FBI? Something is terribly amiss, and we need to get to the bottom of it. Sadly, on this ninth year of Bob Levinson's disappearance, a patriotic American who--poof--on the way to the airport disappeared from Kish Island, Iran--sadly, 9 years later, there is no information about bringing Bob Levinson home. To the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the head of the FBI, the head of all of our alphabet agencies: It is time to get the information about Bob and bring him home. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I was necessarily absent for yesterday's vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Grassley-Leahy amendment No. 3378 to S. 524, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Bill. I would have voted yea. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for today's vote on the Manchin amendment No. 3420 to S. 524, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Bill. I would have voted yea. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I wish to associate my remarks with the Senator from Minnesota and just say that what the Constitution says is so clear. It says that the President shall--not may--it says shall nominate and then the Senate will advise and consent. That is clear. The President is going to nominate. So are we going to wait around for a whole year without giving our advice and/or consent? In other words, just do your job. So I thank the Senator for her comments. Takata Airbags Mr. President, I have a very touchy subject to talk about again--the ongoing Takata airbag fiasco. It is now a recall fiasco. To this point, some 26 million of these airbags that are in the center of the steering column that we drive around with right in front of us or in front of the passenger's seat or on the sides, side airbags--some 26 million of them have already been recalled. A little over a week ago, I spoke about this continuing customer confusion over this recall fiasco. For the sake of the safety of our American consumers who happen to be drivers in these vehicles with these Takata airbags, we need to end this confusion. I think the process has to begin with having the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, take a hard look at whether they need to start the process of recalling all Takata airbags with ammonium nitrate-based inflaters. Ammonium nitrate seems to be the problem. It is a chemical compound that is ignited when you have a collision. Within less than a second, it inflates with gases. This is the airbag that is supposed to save our lives. But what is supposed to save lives has been killing lives because the explosive force is so great that it starts to shred the metal housing. That is sending pieces of shrapnel right into the driver or into the passenger. Last week, I showed the Senate one of these airbags, and then I showed them a piece of metal that became, in effect, shrapnel, like a grenade, only this piece was that big and it had killed a lady in Orlando, FL. As a matter of fact, when the police got to the intersection where she had a collision and the airbag deployed and they got there and found her in the car, they thought it was a murder because her neck had been slashed. But, in fact, it was this airbag, exploding with such force that it shredded the metal. In this case, it was a piece that big. On February 10, I sent a letter to the NHTSA Administrator, Mark Rosekind, asking him to do two things. First, I asked him to use his authority to phase out the production of the new Takata ammonium nitrate-based airbag inflaters as soon as possible. With all that we know about these things, this ammonium nitrate should not be used as replacement for the old Takata inflaters, and it certainly shouldn't be used in the new cars that are produced and sold to consumers. Second, in this letter, I asked him to seriously consider a total recall of all Takata ammonium nitrate-based inflaters that are currently in vehicles. My goodness, that is a big number. That is potentially another 90 million units in this country alone. That could be as much as 260 million worldwide. But with all the manipulation of data and the serious safety lapses that our staff on the Senate Commerce Committee has detailed in two separate reports, I think it is something that we should seriously look at. Potentially, it is a big number of recalls of this ammonium nitrate-based inflater that is currently in vehicles. I want to say that I supported Administrator Rosekind's nomination, and I think he has done a number of things to try to improve NHTSA. But I was not too pleased with his written response to my letter that I received from him on February 26, just a few days ago. In my letter, I asked him to provide me with the total number of inflaters that Takata could supply under existing contracts with automakers. He didn't supply that. Will Takata continue to produce millions of these things? We don't know. We don't know the answer. Are consumers today basically getting a newer version of the old version that has been so defective? No answer to that either. In other words, are we going to replace an old live grenade with a new live grenade? In the letter, I also asked the Administrator to consider an accelerated phaseout of the production of new Takata ammonium nitrate- based inflaters. In his letter, he declined. As to the request for NHTSA to look at a larger recall of Takata ammonium nitrate-based airbags, Administrator Rosekind declined to call for a larger recall. He based that statement on the fact that most of the Takata airbags that have not been recalled contain something called desiccant, which removes the moisture and is supposed to stabilize the ammonium nitrate in the inflaters. That desiccant is there because moisture is considered to be the culprit that causes the ammonium nitrate to be defective in its explosion. So desiccant is supposed to remove that moisture, and it is supposed to stabilize the ammonium nitrate. The exact quote in his letter is this: ``In fact, to date, NHTSA is unaware of any inflator rupture, in testing or in the field, of a Takata inflator using chemical desiccant to counteract the effects of moisture.'' He says that NHTSA is unaware of any inflater rupture using the chemical desiccant. That statement is not true. On October 15 of last year, General Motors recalled about 400 vehicles for Takata side airbags with the chemical desiccant. Fortunately, in that testing, nobody was injured. But that wasn't correct information given to the Commerce Committee, and NHTSA finally admitted their error to our staff on Monday of this week. Why didn't NHTSA seem to know about it beforehand? This really raises serious questions when a regulator doesn't even seem to know about its own data. NHTSA had that data. As a result, it continues to raise questions about who is really in control of this recall. Is it who ought to be, NHTSA, or is it the manufacturer of the defective airbag, Takata? Deaths and serious injuries have occurred as a result of these defective airbags. They have been in Florida, but they have been in many other places. The last one was in the Carolinas in December, and a Ford driver is dead as a result of it. I can tell you that this Senator and many of the members of the Senate Commerce Committee are not going to sit quietly and wait for this to get sorted out in good time. Lives are at stake. We are going to keep pushing until all consumers who have vehicles with Takata airbags get answers and get help. I wish I didn't have to bring this to the Senate floor, but in the safety and sake of consumers we have to. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I rise to welcome a national hero back to planet Earth--CDR Scott Kelley. After spending 340 days in space on his most recent visit to the International Space Station, Commander Kelley has smashed the previous U.S. record in space flight and for most of the total time spent in space as well. But Commander Kelley's accomplishment, while notable in its own right, is serving a greater purpose. NASA is preparing to undertake one of the greatest technological challenges in human history--a voyage to the planet Mars. Depending on the alignment of the planets, Mars is anywhere from 35 million miles to an astounding 250 million miles from Earth. It is all according to the alignment of the planets. If you want to put that into perspective, Mr. President, the distance from you and me reflecting the 238,000 miles from Earth to the Moon, which is as far as we have gone and is a long way--that is the farthest we have ever been--if that distance from the Earth to the Moon were represented by the distance from you to me, then the distance to Mars from right where this Senator is standing would be way out to the edge of the District of Columbia and Maryland. Commander Kelley's mission is a milestone on this journey to Mars. The International Space Station--our football-sized laboratory orbiting in space, as large as a football field from one goalpost to the other-- is our test bed for exploration. Indeed, Commander Kelley spent those 340 days at the International Space Station. Now, as we venture out, traveling those vast distances between Earth and Mars, it is going to mean that humans are going to spend more time in space than ever before, so Commander Kelley's yearlong stay aboard the station is an important validation of our ability to live and work in space for the long periods of time someone would be in zero-g. But there is another very interesting aspect to his mission. Scott Kelley has an identical twin, his brother Mark. Retired Navy CAPT Mark Kelley, also an astronaut, remained on Earth while his brother was in space, and now he is a baseline to compare the changes in the body and the psychological effects to his brother Scott. This comparison is going to provide important insights into the effects of space flight on the human body and perhaps even effects on the Human Genome itself. The more we learn about how the human body changes in space, the better off we are because we can prepare for the longer and longer voyages in space. But we also gain insights into the fundamental working of the human body that we may never have learned confined to Earth's gravity. And who knows where these discoveries are going to lead--perhaps to new cures and therapies for afflictions folks suffer here on the face of the Earth. The space station where Commander Kelley stayed for almost a year is a powerful tool for science and for discovery and for exploration. That is why at the end of last year we extended the authorization of the space station all the way until at least through the year 2024. It is also why I am so excited about the crewed flights from U.S. soil to the space station resuming next year. Next year, Americans on American rockets will go to and from low-Earth orbit. Once we have the Dragon on the SpaceX or the Starliner on the Atlas V, those crewed capsules are going to make regular trips to and from the space station. But we should also then be able to expand the space station crew, because of that regular visitation, from six to seven doing their research projects on board the station. That means a lot more discoveries. Some people may not appreciate how difficult it is to spend a year in space, but I can tell you it is not only an amazing experience, but it is tough on your body. The body experiences muscle atrophy in zero-g and also bone loss. This is why astronauts have to be in peak physical condition and also try to continue that as they are out in space for long durations. And spending a year away from loved ones, of course, is no easy task. This demonstrates the strength and the courage Scott Kelley has shown. So I want the Senate to recognize CDR Scott Kelley for this accomplishment. It is going to take him some days to readapt to the Earth's gravitational pull. I commend him for the contributions to space exploration and thank him for the sacrifices he has made and the sacrifices his family has made over the last year. Welcome home, Commander, and thank you for offering to be a part of this great adventure we call space exploration. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I, too, would like to extend my condolences to the family in Colorado and to the Senators from Colorado for their loss. Return from Space of Commander Scott Kelly Madam President, I wish to call to the attention of the Senate that tonight, around midnight, we are expecting the return from space of Commander Scott Kelly, who has been in space for almost a year. He has been on the International Space Station for 340 days. It is an experiment regarding not only all of the things he has done in doing experiments--all kinds of physical things--but we are specifically doing a test to compare the effects of zero gravity on the human body for an extended period of time and, of all things, comparing him to his twin brother, an astronaut commander who was in command of the next-to- the-last space shuttle mission in 2011. In that case, it was Commander, now Navy, Retired, Captain Mark Kelly. So we will have an identical twin so NASA can then see the effects of the physical, emotional, and psychological effects, because as we prepare to go all the way to Mars in the decade of the 2030s, there is going to be a lot we are going to have to learn in long-duration space flight, and long duration in zero gravity is going to be one of the things we have to be able to adapt to. This Senator was only in space for 6 days. The human body readapts when you get back to Earth fairly quickly. For the long duration, and in this case a year, there is going to be a significant readaptation, as we have seen by some of our Americans who have been up for months and months but nobody as long as a year. In the old Soviet program, they put up cosmonauts for a year, and there are changes that occur, but in those intervening years we have become so much more aggressive in how we keep in a physical exercise activity on board the space station, which is what it would be on a Mars mission as well, trying to replicate through stress machines the fact that we don't have gravity, but replicating that, and trying to keep up the bone density and the muscle tone. We have to work at it, and the astronauts on board the space station do that. Scott Kelly has been up there for a year, and we will compare that with his identical twin brother Mark Kelly, who has flown several times in the space shuttle. I will report to the Senate tomorrow, since he is supposed to return in early morning to Kazakhstan. That is somewhere just before midnight here on eastern time, and I wanted to alert the Senate to this because we are right on the cusp of doing a whole number of things as we prepare to go to Mars. This is certainly one of the significant events, and we will see how Scott Kelly is doing. In the meantime, we say Godspeed on his fiery reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Our hopes and our prayers go with him as he and his crewmates return. I will be able to report to the Senate tomorrow. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, on December 2, 2015, 14 innocent souls in San Bernardino were gunned down in a violent act of terrorism, and it involved one of these, an iPhone. This item has become ubiquitous, and a lot of us carry them around in our pocket. Yet almost 3 months later, law enforcement has not been able to fully access the iPhone--the one used by the terrorists in gunning down these 14 people. The information on this particular iPhone could shed some light on how he planned the attack with his wife and would obviously give authorities an opportunity to see if others were involved in the attack. The contacts in that iPhone could indicate whether there were other terrorists in the United States or abroad who helped them in that attack. Yet 3 months after these murders, the FBI cannot access the contents of the iPhone because a security feature on the iPhone potentially erases its contents after 10 incorrect passwords are entered. The maker of the iPhone, Apple, says it would need to develop new software--software that it claims does not exist today--in order to disable that feature. If this security feature were to be disabled by Apple, the FBI could use what it calls ``brute force attack,'' which is the ability to run different combinations of numbers through the iPhone in milliseconds, to try to assess the different password combinations in order to gain access to the iPhone, but they still don't have access even though the court is involved. Last week a Federal magistrate judge ordered Apple to provide reasonable technical assistance to the FBI in order to provide access to the perpetrator's iPhone. Apple opposes this order, given the concerns that technology developed to intentionally weaken its security features could be abused if it is in the wrong hands. In other words, there would not be the privacy concern. They claim it would put smartphone users' data and privacy at risk. It is a legitimate argument. They also view the Federal magistrate judge's order as an example of government overreach. Well, in response the Department of Justice filed a motion in district court to compel Apple to comply with the magistrate judge's order, and because of the complicated nature of the issues of national security, individual privacy, which we value, and First Amendment questions involved, there will no doubt be prolonged litigation that may ultimately have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. I certainly understand the risk to Americans' privacy, as expressed by Apple and other technology companies, but I don't want to run the risk of letting the trail go so cold on this terrorist attack--and potentially other similar cases--that we lose this valuable information all because this is winding itself through months and years in the courts. In other words, we need to know what was behind this attack. Everybody recognizes that this was a terrorist attack. We need to obtain this information in order to get to the bottom of it and root out and see if there are other terrorists in the country planning to do the same thing so we can protect our people and our national security. There has to be a way that the FBI can get the information it needs from the terrorist's iPhone in a manner that continues to protect American smartphone users. Now, surely common sense can prevail here. This is why this Senator urges Apple and the FBI to work together in order to resolve the stalemate. Let me go back over this again. We have a dead terrorist. He and his wife killed 14 Americans. We have that dead terrorist's iPhone, and we have a Federal judge's order that says we have the right to get that information in order to protect the Nation and its people. It is just like if we had this terrorist, dead or alive, and we needed to get an order to invade that person's privacy to get into their home and get evidence to protect the Nation from other terrorist attacks. There would certainly be no objection to that. The judge's order would be the protector of that privacy. This is a similar situation, except the FBI has an iPhone and they still can't get the information in it. What if this terrorist were not an American citizen and this terrorist were illegally in the United States? Would the same standard apply? I think Apple would say yes. We can draw up the different scenarios, but the bottom line is we are going to have to protect our people. That is why this Senator urges Apple and the FBI to work together in order to resolve the stalemate. I understand that consideration must be given as far as the protection of privacy in people's iPhones. We have always found a way to balance our cherished right to privacy and our cherished right of securing ourselves and our national security, and that is what is needed in this case. The safety and security of our fellow Americans depend on it. Otherwise, when the next terrorist strikes--51 percent of Americans who have been surveyed today say they feel the government needs access to this information to protect against future attacks. If the next attack happens and information is on an iPhone, that 51 percent will soar and it will be very clear that the American people support the protection of our national security. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the achievements of Dr. Robert B. Hayling, a civil rights leader in Florida who passed away on December 20, 2015, at the age of 86. Dr. Hayling was born in Tallahassee and graduated from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical College. Upon graduation, Dr. Hayling served in the U.S. Air Force. Dr. Hayling went on to receive his degree in dentistry from Meharry Medical College and became the first African- American dentist in Florida to be elected to the local, regional, State, and national components of the American Dental Association. Throughout his years as a community leader and civil rights activist in St. Augustine, Dr. Hayling faced numerous threats, hate speech, and brutal violence at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Nevertheless, Dr. Hayling persevered in his resolve for racial equality and is widely recognized as a father of the St. Augustine civil rights movement. During a time of widespread racial divide, Dr. Hayling served as an adviser to the youth council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and as head of the St. Augustine chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the national organization of which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was president. Dr. Hayling is the recipient of various honors and awards, including the Order of La Florida and the de Aviles award which honors citizens that have dedicated themselves to the community of St. Augustine. Scott Street in St. Augustine has been renamed Dr. Robert B. Hayling Place in his honor. Dr. Hayling was inducted into the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame and received a certificate of recognition by St. Augustine's mayor. Even his old dental office became the first civil rights museum in Florida. Further, State Senator Tony Hill sponsored the Dr. Robert B. Hayling Award of Valor, which is presented to civil rights heroes, and a bronze plaque testifying to Dr. Hayling's contributions hangs in the lobby of the Florida State Capitol. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank Dr. Robert B. Hayling for his commitment, achievements, and dedication in advancing the cause of racial equality and civil rights on both a national and State level. I offer my heartfelt condolences to the family, friends, and loved ones of Dr. Robert B. Hayling.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. It looks kind of sinister, unfortunately, because it is. It is supposed to save lives, not kill. This is an airbag. It obviously has already been inflated. It goes right in the steering wheel, so when you get in an accident, this inflates and fills up with gas within a split second, and that protects your head and your torso from coming forward and being injured. What happens if this malfunctions, and what happens if the very manufacture of it causes it to malfunction under conditions? Let me show you what happens. I said these things look pretty sinister. Indeed, this is pretty sinister because this is a fragment that was in the metal casing in one of these airbags in Florida that, when it malfunctioned, caused the explosive force of the ammonium nitrate gas. It was so explosive that it ripped apart the metal casing, and this part that I am showing came flying into the face of the driver, severely injuring the driver. In this case it hit the forehead. I have told the Senate on many occasions that fragments of metal like this have come out just within the Orlando area of my State. They found a woman in the middle of an intersection where she had a collision, and when the police arrived, they found out that she was dead. She had bled to death. They looked at her neck and it was slashed. The police's immediate response was that this was a homicide. Upon reflection, she had a collision in the intersection that otherwise would have been a major fender bender, but because of a defective Takata airbag, it sent a piece of metal like this into her neck and cut her jugular vein. Near Orlando, a firefighter--a big, strapping, 6-foot-4 hunk of a man--doesn't have an eye anymore because a piece of metal fragment like this one from a Takata airbag came out when there was nothing more than a fender bender. When this bag exploded, it sent out a piece of metal. In his case, that firefighter doesn't have the sight in one eye because this piece of metal fragment hit him. Unfortunately, this has happened all over the country. Unfortunately, it has happened with a great deal of, shall we say, dragging of feet, coverup, and obfuscation. These airbags are supposed to save lives, but when they fail, they rupture violently and they send metal fragments right at the driver or the passenger. These Takata airbags have such an explosive force. What is behind it? Well, our staff on the Commerce Committee has just produced a report which this Senator is releasing today. It is an update on this report which found, through a review of recently obtained internal documents in the Takata Corporation, that Takata employees routinely manipulated safety testing data. That would be bad enough, but let's see the consequence of this drip, drip, drip approach to now a substantial number of recalls. There were a million vehicles recalled in 1 week, a million more the next, and there is no end in sight. A few days ago, there was a Reuters report that said that in addition to the already 20-plus million recalls of Takata airbags, an additional 70 to 90 million Takata airbags may have to be recalled right here in the United States. Can you imagine what that is going to do to all these poor auto dealers? I mean, don't even speak about the person who is in the greatest jeopardy, the one who is behind the wheel of a car with an explosive grenade right in front of their face, and the grenade may go off. But can you imagine the poor auto dealers, the Toyotas, the Hondas? Let me tell you about the last person killed. He was in a Ford F-150 pickup truck, and it was in South Carolina. By the time people got to the truck after the crash that would not have killed him, he was dead because of a fragment like this. I wish you could see this fragment. I wouldn't want that hitting me with an explosive force that inflates the airbag in less than 1 second. That is why the Commerce Committee has decided to jump all over this. We have been doing it for the last 2 years. We had a hearing on this 2 years ago. On the current recall, I said it was in excess of 20 million. It is actually 29 million with these defective inflators. That is because nine people are dead and dozens are injured. We find out now that in all, there may be 120 million airbags that eventually in the United Stated alone will have to be recalled. If you want a shocking figure, there may be in excess of 260 million airbags recalled worldwide. Knowing of all these problems, it is puzzling that the consent order that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration signed with Takata allows the continued production of ammonium nitrate-based inflators indefinitely. Then they said that certain ones had to be phased out by 2018. Why isn't the NHTSA taking a more aggressive approach? What is going on after all of these inflators, based on what we see with ammonium nitrate, have exploded? The essence of this and of the report we are releasing today as an addendum to the previous report is that the current recall may have to be redone. Why? Because auto manufacturers are installing new live grenades into people's cars as replacements for the old live grenades. According to Reuters and the New York Times, there are also internal documents that show Takata officials were aware of these consistent problems at its manufacturing plants. These reports claim that officials knew of manufacturing issues that could lead to moisture contamination, contaminating the ammonium nitrate wafer inside of the airbag inflator. This just adds all the more to the finding of evidence. Last June, the oversight and investigations staff of the Commerce Committee released a report on the Takata airbag fiasco showing that the company knew there were serious production and testing issues dating back more than one decade. That is why we wanted to release this report today. Through a thorough review of recently obtained internal documents at Takata, it was discovered that Takata employees continually manipulated the safety testing done. For example, in this report, in a 2005 memo to the Takata vice president, an engineer at Takata explained that ``the integrity of the validation reports . . . is in serious question.'' That engineer continued: ``These are not trivial changes in that the data clearly in violation of the customer specs is altered to meet the customer specs.'' The engineer called that ``a clear misrepresentation of the facts.'' That is what the Takata engineer said to one of the Takata vice presidents back in 2005. That was 11 years ago. In a 2006 email, a different engineering manager explained that testing reports were ``cherry picked'' and a Takata employee was ``schmoozed'' to accept deviations in the data. So was he schmoozed or intimidated? Whatever it was, it was altering what was the truth. The manager concluded--this is the Takata manager in 2006, which was 10 years ago--that ``the plant should have been screaming bloody murder long ago.'' Well, if I were a lawyer making a case to a jury, I would rest my case right now. The fact is, we are not lawyers arguing to a jury. As Senators, we are here to try to protect the American people. And this data manipulation has continued. Even after the recalls had been announced and the rupturing inflators had caused deaths and injuries, the data manipulation continued. I will give an example. A 2010 presentation explains that an experimental inflator was experiencing a significant safety and weld quality issue. According to that presentation, ``[Takata Japan] was informed of these results, but altered them and reported good results to Honda.'' Furthermore, even when these issues were raised to senior Takata employees, no action was taken. In a Takata director's notes from 2013, he explains that he shared his view that the range of a certain recall might be a ``violation of our moral obligation to protect the public.'' Let me repeat that. A ``violation of our moral obligation to protect the public''--that came from a Takata director. Wow. The engineer raised these concerns with Takata's senior vice president of quality assurance, but the vice president failed to take action to address it. These new documents that we note in this report from the committee speak for themselves. Takata failed to prioritize the safety of its products, and as a result, nine people are dead and dozens were injured. And even after exploding Takata airbags killed these innocent people, company employees continued to manipulate safety testing data. This is not only inexcusable, it is reprehensible. We have these thousands of automobile dealers around the country who have sold vehicles with the Takata airbags. They cannot sell a new vehicle if that vehicle is under recall because of a Takata airbag. Under law, they cannot sell that new vehicle. Also, rental car companies that have more than 15 cars cannot rent cars if they are under recall. But used car dealers can sell used cars that have a defective Takata airbags in them that is under recall--without fixing it. I really feel for our automobile dealers. I really feel for our automobile dealers also because what in the world are they going to do with the customers now screaming ``Replace this airbag'' when, in fact, there are not enough replacement airbags? In fact, because the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has allowed some of these replacements to go in with this ammonium nitrate, this is a horrendous situation. So I come to the floor today--this has been going on for over 2 years. We brought this out in a hearing in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. And today I urge Takata and NHTSA to do what should have been done long ago: Stop producing these ammonium nitrate airbags and get them out of people's vehicles. And by the way, give your automobile dealers some relief. And how about giving the American driving public, which is driving around with one of these things in their face, some consideration and put them first? Hopefully, we will see some more action on this. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am here to talk about Takata airbags, but I want to say to the Senator from Minnesota that she is so right on. The Constitution, article II, says that the President ``shall nominate'' and the Senate ``shall confirm.'' It doesn't say ``may'' or ``wish.'' It says ``shall.'' It is a constitutional responsibility of our duties. Just do your job, U.S. Senate. Just do the job, and we will see, once the President comes forward with a nominee. Let's see. Are we going to have committee hearings? Let's see if we are going to have open and bipartisan discussion on the merits of the nominee that is put forth. Let's see if the Constitution is trashed or whether the Constitution is upheld in the process put out to us in the third branch of government. I thank the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we all know how our senior citizens have been the victims of spoofing. Well, that is happening to a lot of our fellow citizens, no matter what the age is, because fraudulent and abusive phoning scams are plaguing thousands of Americans each year. These deceitful practices are causing very serious harm to victims by fake messages coming across often that cause the receiver to respond with some kind of financial transaction or the giving up of a credit card number. The Commerce Committee and the Aging Committee have explored the impact of these scams, and by one account consumers continue to lose millions of dollars each year to fraudulent phone scams, many of which originate in other countries. The impact of these scams are very real to the consumers who suffer. For example, one old poor soul took his life last year after spending thousands in a vain attempt to collect on his winnings in what he thought was a Jamaican lottery--winnings that were nonexistent because it was all a scam. A lot of us think we have trained ourselves to ignore phone calls and text messages from numbers that pop up that we don't recognize, but this is also where the sophisticated scammer enters because now scammers can impersonate government institutions' numbers. They promote fraudulent lottery schemes and they tailor their calls to individuals in order to coerce victims into paying large sums of money, just like the victim I mentioned earlier. Spoofing technology is used to manipulate the caller ID information and trick consumers into believing that the calls are local or are coming from trusted institutions. A few years ago, this Senator introduced the Truth in Caller ID Act to prohibit ID spoofing when it is used to defraud or harm consumers, and this law provided important tools for law enforcement to go after these criminals and crack down on the phone scams. That legislation was passed. It was signed into law. It was a huge win for consumers and the first step toward ending these abusive practices, but technology is passing us by. As the technologies evolve, the law directed the Federal Communications Commission to prepare a report to Congress outlining additional tools that are going to be needed for different kinds of spoofing practices because of new technologies. The FCC a few years ago provided its recommendations to Congress on how to update the law to keep pace with technology and the use of it by criminals. Senator Fischer and I have introduced a bill today that responds to the FCC's report, recommendations, and their requests, and it builds on the 2010 act on phone scams to keep up with the new kind of spoofing because they are now much more sophisticated. We need to make sure there are consumer protections and tools for law enforcement to keep up. That is why this legislation we introduced today is important. It is called the Spoofing Prevention Act of 2016. It would extend the current prohibition in law on caller ID spoofing to text messages and to calls coming from outside the United States, as well as from all forms of voice over Internet protocol services. For the first time, this bill would have access to information to go after these criminals in a centralized location on current technologies available to protect them against this sophisticated type of criminal. It does so by directing the FCC to publish and regularly update a report on existing tools. The act also directs the Government Accountability Office to conduct a report to assess government and private sector work being done to curb this spoofing, as well as what new measures, including technological solutions, can be taken to prevent this. I urge our colleagues to join Senator Fischer and me in supporting this act to try to give some protection in this age of digital technology, of rapidly advancing technology, to help protect those poor consumers who are getting fooled and in other words getting spoofed. I also thank Senator Klobuchar and Senator Donnelly for their work in combatting spoofing. We are going to continue to work on this, and this Senator is going to press the Federal Communications Commission to continue to use its full authority under the Truth in Caller ID Act to stop these scams, including a consideration of technical solutions like call authentication to protect consumers. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we all know how our senior citizens have been the victims of spoofing. Well, that is happening to a lot of our fellow citizens, no matter what the age is, because fraudulent and abusive phoning scams are plaguing thousands of Americans each year. These deceitful practices are causing very serious harm to victims by fake messages coming across often that cause the receiver to respond with some kind of financial transaction or the giving up of a credit card number. The Commerce Committee and the Aging Committee have explored the impact of these scams, and by one account consumers continue to lose millions of dollars each year to fraudulent phone scams, many of which originate in other countries. The impact of these scams are very real to the consumers who suffer. For example, one old poor soul took his life last year after spending thousands in a vain attempt to collect on his winnings in what he thought was a Jamaican lottery--winnings that were nonexistent because it was all a scam. A lot of us think we have trained ourselves to ignore phone calls and text messages from numbers that pop up that we don't recognize, but this is also where the sophisticated scammer enters because now scammers can impersonate government institutions' numbers. They promote fraudulent lottery schemes and they tailor their calls to individuals in order to coerce victims into paying large sums of money, just like the victim I mentioned earlier. Spoofing technology is used to manipulate the caller ID information and trick consumers into believing that the calls are local or are coming from trusted institutions. A few years ago, this Senator introduced the Truth in Caller ID Act to prohibit ID spoofing when it is used to defraud or harm consumers, and this law provided important tools for law enforcement to go after these criminals and crack down on the phone scams. That legislation was passed. It was signed into law. It was a huge win for consumers and the first step toward ending these abusive practices, but technology is passing us by. As the technologies evolve, the law directed the Federal Communications Commission to prepare a report to Congress outlining additional tools that are going to be needed for different kinds of spoofing practices because of new technologies. The FCC a few years ago provided its recommendations to Congress on how to update the law to keep pace with technology and the use of it by criminals. Senator Fischer and I have introduced a bill today that responds to the FCC's report, recommendations, and their requests, and it builds on the 2010 act on phone scams to keep up with the new kind of spoofing because they are now much more sophisticated. We need to make sure there are consumer protections and tools for law enforcement to keep up. That is why this legislation we introduced today is important. It is called the Spoofing Prevention Act of 2016. It would extend the current prohibition in law on caller ID spoofing to text messages and to calls coming from outside the United States, as well as from all forms of voice over Internet protocol services. For the first time, this bill would have access to information to go after these criminals in a centralized location on current technologies available to protect them against this sophisticated type of criminal. It does so by directing the FCC to publish and regularly update a report on existing tools. The act also directs the Government Accountability Office to conduct a report to assess government and private sector work being done to curb this spoofing, as well as what new measures, including technological solutions, can be taken to prevent this. I urge our colleagues to join Senator Fischer and me in supporting this act to try to give some protection in this age of digital technology, of rapidly advancing technology, to help protect those poor consumers who are getting fooled and in other words getting spoofed. I also thank Senator Klobuchar and Senator Donnelly for their work in combatting spoofing. We are going to continue to work on this, and this Senator is going to press the Federal Communications Commission to continue to use its full authority under the Truth in Caller ID Act to stop these scams, including a consideration of technical solutions like call authentication to protect consumers. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to remember and honor the life of Ed Mitchell. Ed was one of our Nation's great space pioneers and one of only a handful of Americans to walk on the moon. Ed once said of his Apollo 14 crew: ``We went to the moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.'' Ed and his fellow Apollo astronauts not only inspired a generation of astronauts and explorers, they blazed the trail we are all now following as we continue to journey outward to Mars and beyond. Thank you, Ed.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 7 minutes.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, late last year a cargo container ship carrying 33 men and women left Florida from the Port of Jacksonville en route to Puerto Rico. It typically sailed back and forth, carrying cargo to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico, but this time it sailed directly into the path of a hurricane. Two days later the crew sent what would be its final communication, reporting that the ship's engines were disabled and the vessel was left drifting and tilting, with no power, straight into the path of the storm. Subsequent to that, despite an exhaustive search and rescue attempt by the Coast Guard in the days that followed, the El Faro and her crew were never heard from again. Only in one case, in desperately trying to do a search and rescue mission, did they find one decomposed body in a bodysuit, but they could not find anybody else. Since then, the National Transportation Safety Board--the agency charged with investigating the incident--has been working tirelessly to understand what happened. Why would the ship leave port when they knew there was a storm brewing and it was going to cross the path of where the ship was supposed to go? Working with the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard, investigators eventually found the ship's wreckage scattered at the bottom of the ocean east of the Bahama Islands in waters 15,000 feet deep. But what they didn't find that day was the ship's voyage data recorder, or what we typically refer to as the ship's black box, not unlike the black box we look for in the case of an aircraft incident that records all of the data. Since we have no survivors, this data recorder is a key piece to getting the information to understand this puzzle of why that ship would sail right into the hurricane. It records and it stores all of the ship's communications. Finding it could shed light on what really happened onboard in those final hours. Despite the search team's exhaustive efforts to locate the data recorder amongst the scattered wreckage, they couldn't find it, and eventually they had to call off the search. Earlier this year, this Senator wrote to the Chairman of the NTSB and urged him to go back and search again because finding the ship's data recorder is important for us to understand how these 33 human beings who have families back at home were lost. I am here to report that at this very minute, the NTSB is announcing that they are going back to do the search again. At this moment, the NTSB is saying it will resume the search for the ship's black box. This time it will do it with the help of even more sophisticated equipment to help investigators pinpoint the approximate location of the recorder and hopefully, if it is not among the wreckage of the ship, point to its location and pick it up off the ocean floor. The NTSB's decision today--which I commend; and I thank the Chairman for continuing to keep after this--to search again for the data recorder is a critical step in our understanding of what went so tragically wrong that day. We owe it not only to the families of the lost mariners aboard the El Faro but to the future safety of all those who travel on the high seas. It is up to us to not only understand what happened but to do what we can to ensure that it doesn't happen in the future. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. We are doing this on the space station right now. We are putting together tools so that if we don't have a tool in space or if we were on the long journey to Mars and we did not have a tool that we needed to repair something, we could send the messages up to the spacecraft and 3-D print the tools that we need. So long-term space missions like the one to Mars are going to benefit from this onboard manufacturing capability. Spare parts--what happens if we get up there and we don't have enough? Well, we can print it. Engineers are even experimenting with creating a completely 3-D printed high-performance rocket engine. Can my colleagues believe that? So that would advance manufacturing technologies that could benefit a number of us right here on the face of the Earth. So the excitement of this--even though some would look at the President's request for NASA and see that it is $600 million over what he requested last year, but it is actually almost flat-line to what we actually appropriated. Don't be discouraged by that because in this sense the excitement is gathering as we are about to launch humans-- Americans on American rockets. That is going to occur next year, as we send crews to and from the International Space Station. As a result, we therefore do not have to rely on the proven Russian Soyuz that gets our crews to and from today. Now we will have the capability of not only transporting cargo to and from but our American astronauts. Even though the President's request falls short in some areas, I think the President's request has been overcome with what we have done here in the Congress, with a substantial increase in this current fiscal year over and above last year and with the excitement of human space flight again within our grasp on American rockets, as well as this excitement of defining, creating, and manufacturing new technologies for space flight that will benefit us here on the face of the Earth. If it sounds like I am a cheerleader, indeed I am a cheerleader. When I see the miracles of modern medicine, when I see the increased capabilities of exploring the heavens and now almost back to the original light emitted from the big bang, and when we start to uncover the new discoveries that expand our horizons, indeed, I am a cheerleader. For that, I am grateful. I commend the Senate to keep this space program going at a fast pace as we increasingly get back into the total business, both manned and unmanned, of space exploration. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about the President's proposal with regard to our space budget, the civilian space program, and NASA. Of course we have many other space programs, primarily national security, but now there is a commercial space program. We are seeing the burgeoning commercial space industry in the NASA budget. We are amazed by the rockets which can take the first stage--instead of throwing it away when it lands in the Atlantic Ocean after a launch from Cape Canaveral--under powered flight, even without parachutes, can come back and land on a specific spot, just as SpaceX did in its first stage in a launch about 2 months ago. We are seeing commercial space. The fact that these things we carry around in our pockets that we loosely refer to as phones that know exactly where we are at any time is as a result of a constellation of satellites up there called GPS that triangulate and calculate exactly where we are. It is absolutely amazing to me that my latest gadgetry acquisition--a Fitbit--can so sensitively understand what my heart rate is at any moment, can measure distance, and gives me all kinds of information about the functioning of the human body. Well, this didn't just accidentally appear. Where in the world did a lot of this come from? It came from the space program. I wish to talk about that, but first I want to underscore something. Other than its pioneering, for example, of increased investments in aeronautics, which is the first ``A'' in ``NASA''--the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--there are other parts of the President's proposal that have been left behind in the visionary appropriations bill we passed back in the middle of December which has sent us on a course that we are going to Mars. We are preparing to go to Mars, and that is a long way. In order to sustain human life and go all the way there--land, survive, reignite off the surface of Mars--and, by the way, I commend the Matt Damon movie ``The Martian.'' The author of the book which the movie came from actually consulted with a number of folks, including one of my crewmates, on the propulsion, how to get to Mars a lot quicker. That propulsion uses magnets and plasma as its fuel and thrust to get us to Mars, and instead of the conventional 8 to 10 months, we could get there in as little as 39 days. But those are to-be-developed technologies. Let me mention a couple of things we are developing. Folks often argue about the NASA budget, which back in the lunar days the Apollo Program was as much as 4 percent of the entire Federal budget. Now it is about one-half of 1 percent. In the process of divvying up the dollars out here, we pull and tug because people will ask: Why do we need to go to Mars? Why do we need to go to an asteroid in preparation to go to Mars? Why do we need a space program when we have so many needs here on Earth? That is a legitimate question. What is the legitimate answer? Do you appreciate the fact that we have MRIs and CT scans? MRIs--magnetic resonance imaging--and CT scans--computer-aided tomography--technologies that are used routinely today to help us so much in a diagnosis of what is wrong or what is right in our own human bodies and is part of this medical miracle that we know as modern medicine--they came straight out of the space program. In the 1960s, NASA had to find a safe landing spot for the Apollo lunar lander amid all of that Moon surface and all of that dust. So what happened was the engineers at JPL out in California developed a digital scanning process using high-frequency sound waves, magnets, and computers. In addition to making six successful Moon landings, this technology was tweaked, adapted, improved, and it led to CT scans and MRIs. How about robots in the use of modern medicine? How about robots in the use of the manufacturing process? Well, my colleagues will remember the one thing on the space shuttle that had the name of another country; it was the Canadarm. It was the robotic arm that was birthed in the cargo bay of the space shuttle. It was used to deploy, maneuver, and capture payloads. It has now been the forerunner of the neuroArm, a surgical device that has successfully performed dozens of tumor removals by robotic surgery. Now, any of the males around here over the age of 50 ought to be concerned about prostate cancer. They have a robot named DA Vinci that is built in California, even though it is named after Leonardo da Vinci, and this robotic device, with a small incision--six times--can go in and, with some of this precise photography that was developed for these cameras, robotically remove, in this case, the prostate cancer by removing the prostate without damaging the nerves and without cutting the human body open, which takes so much more time to heal, instead of just sticking six holes in. That came directly out of the space program. It is being used to develop an image-guided autonomous robot for use in the early detection of breast cancer. Let me give my colleagues another idea. When we get on a modern airliner today and we look out the window and we look at that swept- back wing, what do we see out there on the tip of the wing? The wing doesn't just stop as it normally does; it curves up. This is called a winglet. The winglets have these upturned features. They save billions of dollars in fuel costs. Now, with NASA technology at the Langley Research Center and now the tests conducted at the Dryden Flight Center--now named, after the first astronaut on the moon, the Armstrong Flight Center--this winglet technology was released to Boeing, and it has saved the airline industry more than 2 billion gallons of jet fuel, and it has saved more than $4 billion in jet fuel costs and a reduction of almost 21.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, just by the design of the wing. That technology came directly out of NASA. Here is another example. All of this is coming back to this: Why go to space? Well, we go to space because our nature is that we are explorers and adventurers. We go there because we haven't been there. We go there to explore. Our nature is one of pioneers. The frontier is now not westward, as it was in the beginning of this country, but upward. So that is certainly a reason to have the space program, but let me tell my colleagues more of how it applies to our daily lives. How about fortified baby formula? Early 1980s research on regenerative ecosystems led to a method of algae-based food supplements that provide the long-chain polysaturated fatty acids that support brain and eye development and function. So this led to a spinoff product called Formulaid, which was patented in 1996. It can now be found in over 90 percent of infant formula sold in the United States as well as those sold around the world. I will give another example: image sensors--image sensors to enhance cell phone cameras. In the 1990s, a NASA team had been improving digital image sensors in order to miniaturize cameras on spacecraft while maintaining the scientific image quality. So this was spun off into commerce, and the company that commercialized the technology has shipped over 1 billion sensors for use in applications such as--now, does this sound familiar--digital cameras, camera phones, web cameras, automotive cameras. They are even developing something where you will swallow a pill; only it is not a pill. It is an ingestible camera for imaging the patient's gastrointestinal tract. Let me tell my colleagues about another one. I had a visit from Tallahassee Community College today. They showed me what they could do with a 3-D printer. I ask unanimous consent to show this in front of the Senate.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.