Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, my colleague from Florida knows the personal affection I have for him, and I enjoy so much his friendship and working with him on issues regarding Florida. I think this is an example of how two Senators from the same State can come to different conclusions, apparently not about this legislation--advancing it, because this Senator will in fact vote to move this legislation forward--but on the ultimate judgment that we have to make. Senator Rubio has correctly stated, in my opinion, that Iran's is a regime that is bent on aggression, that they cannot be trusted, that Israel is threatened, and that we are basically the backstop protector of Israel. All of those things are very true. But the question is what is in the interest of the national security of the United States--which, in most cases, always folds into what is in the interest of the national security of Israel as well--and the Senator and I come to different conclusions. First of all, we don't know the final details. But we do know a framework that was put out, and if that framework is fleshed out, as is suggested, with the details by June 30, then the simple bottom line for this Senator is if it prevents Iran from building a nuclear weapon over at least a 10-year period, with the sufficient safeguards, intrusions, inspections--unannounced, as well--that prevent them from having a nuclear weapon without our getting, conservatively, a year's advanced notice and we know that is a guarantee for a 10-year period--if not 15 and 20 years--is that in the interest of the United States? And this Senator has concluded that yes, it is. I hope the agreement comes out as suggested by the framework. I will be looking forward to examining that. And, as a result of our passing this legislation today, we will have a guarantee that we will vote on parts with regard to the lifting of sanctions, and we will be able to weigh in on the specifics. It is interesting how two Senators from the same State can come out with such different conclusions having shared a lot of the similar information, as this Senator has served on the Intelligence Committee for 6 years and Senator Rubio is on the Intelligence Committee as well. It will be an interesting debate as we get into the details. 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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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. President, if the Senator from Iowa is intending to speak, this Senator will only use about 5 minutes.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I wish to embrace this package that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has brought forth to the floor. First, it is much needed bipartisanship which has been shown on the committee. That is a very good thing, given the fact that we have had so many contentious and divisive issues. But, secondly, what it does is set up a process by which the Congress would express its approval or disapproval with regard to a future agreement that may be made between Iran and the United States to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. First is the process by which we would express that vote, and then if the agreement is concluded by the end of June, the actual vote on whether sanctions under the agreement should be lifted. So it is a two- step process, and it is often confused. That is why it is important to keep this committee bill clean. As I have already expressed to the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on the floor of the Senate 2 or 3 days ago, it is this Senator's intention that all of the amendments, which generally have a deleterious effect and that are generally considered poison pill amendments--this Senator will oppose them. It is my understanding that leadership of the Foreign Relations Committee will likewise oppose those amendments. Then, I might say, assuming this legislation is passed and we have this process in place and the President has said he will sign it into law--if the framework, as announced a few weeks ago by the President, is fleshed out in the final details of the agreement, and those details, by the end of June, reflect the framework of the agreement that has been announced, it is this Senator's intention to support the agreement. I do that, very simply, on what is in the best interests of the United States. If, in fact, this agreement, once completed--if the framework is fleshed out--prevents Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for at least a 10-year period--and there are other 15-, 20-, and 25-year period benchmarks in the framework--but if they are prevented from developing a nuclear weapon within 10 years, and we know there is a regime in place in order to detect that so we have the verification, and that because of the verification we have at least a year's advance notice so that appropriate action could be taken--if all of that is included within the agreement, it is this Senator's intention that I will support the agreement. Why? Because if we keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon for 10 years at least, the world is going to be a very different place in 10 years. And what we will have done as a country is prevented Iran from going ahead and developing a nuclear weapon now, of which we would have to face those consequences with possible military action. I do not shy away from supporting military action if that is necessary to prevent a nuclear weapon from being developed. But if we have a path to achieving the same thing, doing it diplomatically and having the guarantee of at least 10 years--if not 15 and 20--then, to this Senator, that seems to be in the interests of the United States. I want to clearly state where this Senator is coming from. I happen to think that is in Israel's interests as well. The interests of the United States and Israel are inextricably entwined when it comes to the defense of that little democracy that is a beacon of democracy in that part of the world. I have some familiarity with the integration and the sharing of our military forces, as well as our intelligence apparatus. It is clearly in the interests of the United States that we see that Israel's security is protected. From what I see of the framework of this agreement, if fleshed out, then I think that is in the interests of our country. 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. President, while the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee is here, I want him to know of my admiration for him for trying to work together in a bipartisan way on an especially thorny issue, this Iranian nuclear negotiation. I read in today's paper that there are a lot of people who are trying to torpedo the chairman's good work by basically bringing up all kinds of poison pill amendments. If the chairman's conclusion is that he is going to stick with the unanimous product that came out of this committee, then I will be with him to keep that product clean so it can go forward in the bipartisan way in which the chairman brought it to the floor. Takata Airbags Mr. President, I am going to speak on a different subject today. It is not as pleasant as the remarks I addressed to the chairman, and it is on a completely different subject matter. It is about the defective airbags manufactured by the Takata Corporation which are exploding in people's faces and our collective effort to get them out of cars. Instead of saving a life, these airbags--when they explode--either maim or kill because of the defective construction. When the airbag explodes, metal is coming out of the airbag like shrapnel and hitting the occupant of the car--either the driver or the passenger. Last November, we had a hearing in the commerce committee about these rupturing airbags and the recalls. The number of vehicles recalled due to the defective Takata airbags is going to be in the record books as one of the largest in American history. At that hearing, we saw that instead of preventing these deaths and injuries, the opposite was happening. Interestingly, many of these incidents are happening in vehicles exposed to persistent high heat and humidity. This Senator is from Florida, so it is, sadly, no surprise that Florida has been the epicenter of these incidents. Earlier this year, I came to the floor and reported that Takata had received unconfirmed reports of 64 injuries and 5 deaths as a result of the exploding airbags. At the time, these numbers from Takata were far greater than what had been reported. Takata recently provided an update to the committee, and I have new numbers. According to the most recent data as of the end of January, Takata had identified 40 more alleged incidents of rupturing airbags, including 1 death. This brings the total number of alleged injuries from 64 to 105 and the total number of alleged deaths to 6. As one would expect, 17 of the 40 newly reported incidents provided by Takata to our committee occurred in Florida. That brings the total number of alleged incidents of exploding Takata airbags in Florida--just in Florida--to 35, including 1 that caused a death. Now, these injuries have been very serious. I am not talking about a minor little nick. These injuries include facial fractures, blindness, a broken sternum, and even quadriplegia. This Senator has visited with one of his constituents--a big, strapping, healthy firefighter who will no longer be a firefighter because he does not have sight in one of his eyes. But even the new numbers I just gave do not paint the full picture. In fact, Reuters recently reported that another Takata airbag in Florida ruptured just last month. The figures I reported earlier were as of the end of last January. The victim who was injured last month was in a 2003 Honda Civic. He had a 1\1/2\-inch piece of metal shrapnel lodged into his neck after the airbag exploded. He was airlifted to the hospital and the doctors were able to remove the shrapnel, but now he has a big scar and a constant reminder that this incident could and should have been prevented. The death that occurred in Florida was due to shrapnel cutting the jugular vein of the victim. When the police got to that accident, instead of thinking it was a traffic accident, they looked at the driver and thought a homicide had just occurred. It didn't occur to them that shrapnel from an exploding airbag killed the driver. Honda has informed us that they are sending their recall notices out in both English and Spanish in order to more effectively reach consumers. We appreciate what Takata has done in trying to ramp up their production of replacement inflators. After that Honda announcement, Honda also started an ad campaign in both English and Spanish to remind owners to have their recalled airbag inflators replaced, but obviously more still needs to be done. We need to get to the root cause of the problem, that is what we need to do, and we need to make sure we know why these defective airbag inflators are failing. It may be the inflator or it may be the propellant inside. We need to know. So, yes, we need more replacement inflators, but we need to make sure they are actually safe replacement inflators instead of potentially producing more defective inflators. It is my understanding that Honda and others are taking steps to ensure the safety of the replacement inflators. Well, that needs to happen right now and be validated right away by an independent third party. We need to make sure we are able to prevent defects like this in the future. I am going to stay on Takata. This Senator is going to stay on the automakers. This Senator is going to stay on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to do exactly that. But for right now, I urge anybody listening to me--if a defect is identified and you receive a recall notice, get your car into the dealership for repair just as quickly as you can. I also want folks to know that even if they have not received a notice from Takata, they should go to the Web site, safecars.gov and put in their car's VIN number to check and see if it is subject to this or any other recall. That is imperative. We are continuing to monitor this situation. We are going through tens of thousands of pages of documents related to this defect. I will keep the Senate updated. I am pleased to report that the Senate is very close to approving S. 304, the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act. This bipartisan legislation, which Chairman Thune and I authored, would provide financial incentives for whistleblowers in the automotive sector to step forward if they see a manufacturer that is hiding or failing to address a dangerous defect. Certainly none of us needs to be reminded about the ignition switch defect coverup at General Motors. They hid that defect for a decade, and at least 87 people died because of it. This bill will hopefully help prevent such coverups in the future. This bill, S. 304, is a small but meaningful step toward automobile safety. I hope my colleagues will urge their constituents to check on those Takata airbags by going online, and I urge my colleagues as well to clear this commonsense legislation. I certainly urge the House to do so as well. Mr. 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. President, in a few minutes, we are going to vote on the confirmation of Dava Newman, the nominee for Deputy Administrator of NASA. This little Agency happens to be one that I have some personal fondness for, having participated with NASA many Moons ago--29\1/2\ years ago--on the 24th flight of the space shuttle, a crew led by then- Navy Captain Robert Gibson, otherwise known as Hoot Gibson, and his second in command, the pilot of our mission, which was dubbed STS-- Space Transportation System--61-C. Subsequently, all of the numbers of the space shuttles reverted to their original numbering, but there was a hiatus in there where several shuttle flights had a very complicated numbering system, and ours was one of them. The pilot of that mission was then-Marine Colonel Charlie Bolden, now-Marine General, Retired, Charlie Bolden, who is the Administrator of NASA and has been for the last 6 years. But Administrator Bolden does not have a Deputy, and he needs a Deputy Administrator. So this process has been carefully conducted, and they sifted through hundreds of names to come up with just the right person, and that is in the person of Dr. Dava Newman. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame and two master's degrees and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT. She is also the director of the Technology and Policy Program there. Right off the bat, you can see there is no question as to her skills, her smarts, and her credentials, but she is also known for her leadership and technical expertise in aerospace engineering. She authored over 200 research publications, including the textbook ``Introduction to Aerospace Engineering and Design.'' I think that would be kind of interesting, that as a backup to Administrator Bolden, who is a five-time space shuttle astronaut, we have someone who is an expert in aerospace engineering design, particularly as we are creating the new rockets and the new spacecraft as we speak, for the goal, which is Mars in the decade of the 2030s. During her career, she served as the principal investigator on three space flight experiments flown on board the space shuttle and on board the previous Mir Space Station. She is tremendously known for her innovative space suit designs that use mechanical counterpressure to make the space suit formfitting, lightweight, and much more flexible than previous space suits. If you notice, when you see the astronauts outside of the International Space Station--which, by the way, blows the mind, how big it is. It is 110 yards long. From one goalpost to the other goalpost is 120 yards. That is how big the International Space Station is that is 250 miles above the Earth with six humans on board. When you watch those EVAs--extravehicular activities--when they go outside to do the repairs, well, lo and behold, Dr. Newman is the designer of their innovative space suits. She has been recognized. Back in 2007, Time magazine recognized her and her space suit work as one of the best inventions of the year. She is currently leading the development of a suit that may help astronauts overcome back problems in space. The suit is planned to be tested on the International Space Station later this year. As we go on this dual track in our civilian space program--first the track with commercial rockets that will take our cargo and is taking our cargo to and from the International Space Station and will soon be taking Americans to and from the International Space Station, and the other track of the dual tracks is the development of this huge new rocket, much larger than the Apollo Saturn V Rocket, which at the time defied the imagination of how large it could be--this is even bigger. This is called the Space Launch System, and atop it will sit the human capsule Orion, which will start the process of developing the systems, the techniques, the lifesaving, life-enhancing, and life-protecting measures and equipment that can take us all the way to Mars. So we need a professional at NASA to help General Bolden and his very dedicated team. I certainly commend Dr. Dava Newman to the Senate as that person. We should confirm her today, and we can continue this Nation's civilian space program. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, our Nation's airports are not secure. We were rudely awakened to that fact last December when it was discovered that for a several-month period at the Atlanta Airport, employees of the airport--one in particular--since there was limited, if any, screening of the airport employees coming into the airport, had concocted a scheme with another fellow to transport guns to New York, where they were sold on the streets of Brooklyn. The police couldn't figure out how in the world they were getting these guns to New York because they kept watching the roads. It was in plain sight. What they were using were the defects in airport security--if you can believe this--to bring guns to the Atlanta Airport. Then once at the airport, the airport employee would go up to the sterile passenger area, where, in the restroom, he would meet a passenger who came through security with an empty backpack and transfer the guns he had brought onto the airport property to the passenger, who then would take them on the flight from Atlanta to New York. This went on for several months. This passenger even carried a carbine. When he was arrested in December, he had 16 handguns in his backpack on the airplane. It is a good thing these guys were criminals and not terrorists because you can imagine--this is exactly what we are trying to prevent: weapons getting on airplanes. Interestingly, when I got into this from the position of having the privilege of being the ranking member of the commerce committee, where we have jurisdiction over aviation, lo and behold, what I discovered in my own State is that two airports had already solved the problem by increasing security. The security we as passengers go through--they have similar security for all airport employees. The first one to do that was Miami International Airport back in 1999 after they discovered a drug-smuggling ring. Instead of having hundreds of entry points into the airport for employees, what they had was boiled down to a handful, where they screen the employees. It was then inaugurated by the Orlando International Airport after 2007 when they discovered a drug-smuggling ring, and Orlando has boiled it down to about five entry points for airline employees. I went through those entry points at both Orlando and Miami, and it is not only what we go through as passengers, but they also have to double-check that the person is who they say they are. They have their badge. The airport employee checks the photograph on the badge with the person, and they swipe the card. In the case of the Orlando Airport, they also have to punch in an identification number. That seems to have solved the problem at those two huge airports, Orlando and Miami, but what about the other 448 commercial airports in the United States? Are they going to be the victims? Are we, the American traveling public, going to be the victims like they were in Atlanta? In this age of terrorism, we cannot afford any of those mistakes. We have been after the Department of Homeland Security and TSA to start changing this. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary just announced that they will take immediate steps to increase the screening of airport employees across the country because they indeed understand this is a problem. They are going to have a comprehensive review. They are not saying they are going to require what Orlando and Miami do, but at the end of the day, they are going to have to end up doing that. We have to simplify the system by boiling down the hundreds of entry points to just a few, and then we have to put up screening devices similar to the ones passengers go through to go into a sterile environment. I am very grateful to Secretary Johnson for calling on TSA to start this immediate inquiry and to have some action. I hope the increased attention to this matter now will get airports and airport employees more highly sensitized to what had been such a breach at the Atlanta Airport. If we can do this, then it will be another measure we can take to make sure the public is traveling safely. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Of course.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, it is 5 in the afternoon. Exactly 5 years ago, at 5 p.m., the crew of the Deepwater Horizon mobile oil drilling unit began what is called a negative pressure test of the Macondo prospect oil formation. A cascade of menacing events followed the first failed test. At around 9:40 that evening, drilling mud began gushing out onto the rig. The well had kicked. The crew activated the rig's blowout preventer 1 mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, down at the bottom of the gulf. Tragically, the blowout preventer failed. At 9:49 p.m., there was an explosion on the rig floor. The Deepwater Horizon rig quickly became an inferno. Eleven men died. Eleven families were changed forever. As morning came the next day, an oil sheen 2 miles long and a half mile wide shone on the surface of the waters of the gulf as the blaze on the rig continued. Those images are seared into our collective mind's eyes. So the owner of the well, BP, and the owner and operator of the rig, Transocean, tried and failed again to close the blowout preventer that evening. Then days later, on Earth Day, April 22, at 10:22 a.m., the rig on the surface of the gulf sank. If we can remember, we were first told the sheen that was 2 miles long and a half mile wide came from the drums of diesel onboard the rig. Then later, a revision was made that 1,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking from the well a mile below the surface of the gulf. Then that was changed to 5,000 barrels of oil per day and then to 25,000 barrels of oil a day. But none of those estimates were true. Scientists looking at the sheen from aerial observations started to grow very skeptical about what BP engineers were telling them. On the environment committee, Chairman Boxer and I started to turn up the public pressure to get BP to turn over live footage of 1 mile below the surface of the gulf, where the oil was escaping. We wanted to see how much oil the cameras were showing was escaping from the well. The spill was not out of mind; it was out of sight. As it turned out, unbelievably, 62,000 barrels of oil a day were gushing into the gulf into what is one of our most productive ecosystems on the planet. But we would never have gotten that had scientists not been able to make their estimates by virtue of the live-streaming video that Senator Boxer and I put up on our Web sites so people--unencumbered, around the globe--could make their estimates. This is a prime example of why we must independently verify what oil companies tell us about a spill. As we got into the summer, the prime of the summer beach season, especially at our beaches in Florida, that was devastating. Nearly 37 percent of gulf waters were closed to fishing. BP and its contractors had no control of the runaway well. On July 15, in the middle of the summer--87 days after the explosion--BP finally stopped the oil flow. Today is the anniversary. Our hearts collectively go out to the families that lost the 11 men. If we don't learn from this experience, shame on us. It will come back to haunt us, and in many ways it already has. If we start at the bottom of the food chain, there are impacts to the gulf environment. Bull minnows, or killifish--little fish about that size--root around in the sediment of the bays of Louisiana. In those oiled Louisiana marshes, these little killifish are showing grotesquely deformed gill tissue. And when the killifish embryos were exposed to oil sediment, they showed heart defects, and many failed to hatch. Two LSU professors told me shortly after they had done the research about a year after the spill that they found that the killifish in their reproductive cycle were mutated. They compared them to the killifish in the bays that did not have the oil come in, and there was a distinct difference between the two. As we go up the food chain, the top predators face threats from the oil. Scientists have found unusual lung damage, hormone abnormalities, and low blood cell counts up the food chain in dolphins that were exposed to the oil. And we are not going to know the full extent of the impact for years, even decades. As a matter of fact, somebody said a few months after the BP spill had been contained that there was no more oil in the gulf. There is a lot of oil in the gulf. We just can't see it. It is down there a mile below the surface. And what are the effects on the health, the future health of the gulf? We don't know, but we are going to have to research it. But even with all we learned back in 2010, to this very day, oil infrastructure in the gulf--this is just unbelievable--operated by the Taylor Energy Company continues to leak crude oil since one of the hurricanes years ago. In 2004, a hurricane caused an underwater mudslide that damaged a cluster of oil wells off of Louisiana. Need I remind the Senate, June 1 is the beginning of hurricane season. So if we are visited by another hurricane, and if it does as it did in 2004, 11 years ago, having a cluster of Taylor wells that got buried in an undersea mudslide from the hurricane--but the wells are still leaking 11 years later--what is going to happen to other oil structures in the gulf if the big one comes? According to the Associated Press investigation, the actual flow rate of those Taylor wells may be 20 times higher than originally reported. We have seen this episode before. I don't think we want to repeat this. It is so frightening. I asked the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of the Interior to provide any and all images of the Taylor spill. The Congress, in our oversight responsibility, has the right to that information. We have to know how much oil is escaping, and then we have to figure out how to stop it from underneath the undersea mudslide that covered up that cluster of wells. In the coming weeks in the Senate commerce committee we are going to examine what we have learned in 5 years since the Deepwater Horizon explosion. In 2012, our bipartisan RESTORE Act got overwhelming votes in both the House and the Senate. The RESTORE Act is a formula with which to send the money that ultimately Judge Barbier of the Federal district court in New Orleans will decide as a result of the number of barrels spilled and the culpability of the company. As a result of that, money will flow. It will flow back to the local governments, it will flow back to help the economies of the gulf, and it will flow back in order to try to protect our environment. There is more to be done. I intend to introduce legislation to make sure we prevent, prepare for, and effectively respond to the next oil spill. As we reflect on the tragic events of April 20, 2010, I hope the Senate will be mindful of this tragedy in the gulf, which riveted the attention of the Nation, that seemed out of control for 3 months, and of which we will have the very infernal consequences for years to come. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, over the course of the Easter recess, I went to meet with the President of Honduras, President Hernandez, about the limited albeit progress his country is making against crime, as well as all the drugs that are coming in. I had gone to Honduras with our four-star Marine general, General Kelly, the Commander of United States Southern Command. Between the U.S. military and the Coast Guard, we have been successful--as a matter of fact, I even went on some simulated drug interdictions out in the Caribbean off of Key West. They showed me how one Coast Guard fast boat can interdict a drug smuggler's fast boat, and basically they shoot out the engines. They can do that from another fast boat or they can do that from a helicopter. That has had an effect. There are less drugs coming out of South America going into Honduras, which is one of the three Central American countries that had become so prime for the drug trade. They arrive in big shipments into Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. Then they break them down into much smaller packets and go through this very efficient distribution system that goes north through the rest of Central America, into Mexico, and from there to the United States. It is hard to catch them when there are the much smaller packets of cocaine going north. Therefore, we have really made an effort to assist the three Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Needless to say, there is a lot of corruption in the governments and the local police of all of those three countries. As a result, the drug lords find it fairly easy pickings to buy off people and buy off judges, so President Hernandez came into office wanting to really make a difference. He started doing some shows of force. He has worked with General Kelly on this issue, but the fact is it is still a very violent country, with not only the drug trade but also human trafficking, but the trends are in the right direction. One year ago, Honduras was the murder capital of the world. It was about 86 murders per 100,000 of population. They have cut that number down to about 66 per 100,000 of population--still very high, but the trend is in the right direction. I commend President Hernandez, and I commend the First Lady of the country. They have been trying to help their country with its economy so the extreme poverty that is so evident in that part of the world is not a caldron bubbling that is ripe for corruption and for paying off people to transport the drugs. In addition, of course there is the human trafficking. There is part of it for the sex slaves, and that is a trade where often parents are sending their children north--thinking they will have a better life-- and the young girls are just brutally treated and ultimately forced into prostitution. But part of it is also, because of the poverty, the hopelessness of the parents that their children have no future. They are willing to turn--after paying thousands and thousands of dollars to a human trafficker--their children over to a coyote to transport those children to the north. Some of them don't make it, and it is true some of the reforms that the Hernandez government have been putting in place have lessened the migration of these young children, but there is a lot more to do. That is where I would commend the Senate to take a look at the administration's request for Central America. It has a name, something such as Alliance for Progress. It is about a $1 billion appropriations request that will help with the economic development and the medical care in that very poor region of the world. If the Congress will approve that request, I think we will continue to see the fruits of our labors--a very positive outcome. As long as there is such a difference between the economic elites and the very poor--a huge majority who are very poor--we are always going to have those problems, but at least we are seeing the steps in the right direction. While I was there, our Ambassador Nealon asked me in the assembled press to announce that in another week the Naval Hospital ship the Comfort will be anchoring off the coast of Honduras. For 1 week it will offer the medical services of Navy doctors, nurses, and a whole host of private doctors and nurses from this country who are volunteering their time to go to Honduras and help with the medical attention that is so desperately needed in that part of the world. I commend to the Senate that we seriously consider favorably the request of the administration for this $1 billion into Central America. At the end of the day, it is going to lessen the drug trade going north through those countries and stop the family deprivation--lessen the family deprivation--of which they would dare risk their children to be sent north with a coyote. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up my amendment No. 944.

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

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 944.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this is an issue of freedom of speech, First Amendment rights. This is in fact--

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, what this amendment does is it supports the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech, to prohibit censorship of Federal agencies and Federal employees from speaking in scientific terms about the oceans, the weather, the atmospheres, and the climate. You would think this is so common sense and so understood under our freedom of speech in our U.S. Constitution, but we have all read news reports at the State level, at the local level, and maybe even at the Federal level that, indeed, some folks are trying to muzzle scientists from speaking about the science involving the oceans, the atmosphere, climate, and the weather. I have the privilege of knowing something about the space program. When I hear people saying they don't want NASA to get involved in climate, well, NASA builds the satellites, NASA launches the satellites--but then NOAA, in the Department of Commerce, operates these weather satellites--other satellites that are taking measurements of the Earth to understand what is happening to our atmosphere, what is happening to our climate. When I start talking about the atmosphere, I can't help but flash back 29\1/2\ half years ago, looking at our planet out the window of a spacecraft and looking at the rim of the Earth and seeing the thin little film that is the atmosphere that sustains all of our life. There is a lot about it that we don't know. There is a lot about it that we, in fact, can measure scientifically. Yet for some reason, there is some commentary going on in America today that we want to muzzle our scientists. So this amendment is a simple, little, commonsense amendment that says you can't muzzle a Federal agency or a Federal employee, telling them they can't use their First Amendment right of freedom of speech to speak in scientific terms about the oceans, the weather, the atmosphere, and the climate. Imagine if we were going to muzzle researchers at the National Institutes of Health and censor them, saying they couldn't use medical terms such as asthma or cancer. What if that was off limits? There is not even a question that we would consider that. Last week, when we got into the matter of climate, a study suggested the massive Antarctic glacier is melting. The water from that melting glacier will impact global sea levels, potentially raising them by 10 feet. This week, researchers tell us the melting of Greenland's ice sheet is slowing the cyclical ocean current that drives the warm gulf stream, which comes right along the southeastern coast of my State and goes out through the middle of the Atlantic and warms parts of Western Europe. To understand all of that, it is critical we have this information, which has the potential to impact all of us, no matter where we live. At times of seasonal high tide, the streets of Miami Beach are flooded. The mayor of Miami Beach campaigned paddling in a kayak on Alton Road, which is on the west side of the city of Miami Beach. He campaigned in a kayak at the time of seasonal high flood talking about what the city needed to do because of what NASA's scientists tell us. This is what NASA has testified to before the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. This was not a forecast, they were not projections, but measurements of the rise of the sea level in south Florida over the course of the last 45 years--6 to 8 inches. Again, this was not a forecast but measurements. Do we want to muzzle that NASA scientist who testified before our committee and who, by the way, in this case is also a NASA astronaut? Do we want to muzzle him? Scientists simply must have the tools and the ability to tell us what they observe without limitation on the terms they can speak. So let us make clear that public science cannot be muzzled, that we won't support censorship, and that the taxpayers deserve an honest return on their investment. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I move to waive, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this is an amendment to call a point of order on any legislation that would attempt to muzzle Federal employees in using any scientific language that calls a change--scientific language that would apply to oceans, to weather, to the climate, and to atmospheres. This is an attempt to make clear that we do not agree with muzzling or censoring Federal agencies or Federal employees when it comes to employing their scientific knowledge. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I am going to talk about the fifth annual celebration of Congress Week, sponsored by the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. It is a national commemoration which coincides with the week in which Congress achieved its first quorums in the year 1789. Before I do so, let me make a couple of observations on other items of business in front of the Senate. First of all, we are about to embark on the annual process of adopting a budget. This Senator had the privilege as a young Congressman in my first year in the House of being assigned to the House Budget Committee. That was not long after the whole apparatus of the Budget Committees were set up requiring Congress to adopt an annual budget. The original reason for requiring it, and requiring a process called reconciliation, was so a majority vote--instead of what used to be the Senate cutting off debate at two-thirds, now it is 60 votes to cut off debate--would be required to pass a budget because of the tough decisions that needed to be made in lowering a deficit by cutting spending and raising tax revenue. But along come the administrations in the early part of the last decade, and they reversed the process, using reconciliation not to require the hard votes for Senators and House Members in raising tax revenue but to do exactly the opposite with a majority vote, instead of having to reach the 60-vote threshold to cut off debate in the Senate. So as the decade started, after the administration in 2000 transferred over to the new administration in 2001, with a healthy surplus, lo and behold the budget, in the course of the next almost decade, went completely out of whack. Instead of revenues being up and spending being here on a bar graph--the difference being the surplus of more coming in each year--it went in exactly the opposite direction. The tax revenues fell off so significantly because of the tax policies adopted through that budgetary reconciliation process in about the year 2001. The tax revenues fell off, the spending increased, and we went to huge annual deficits. I don't know what the majority is going to try to use reconciliation for this time, but this Senator is looking for balance and common sense and taking care of the needs that government needs to provide--provide for the national security; provide for those who are the least fortunate among us; provide for what a society with a big heart like in America, reflected by the people who are elected in its representative government--to reflect the American people with a big heart and to keep our fiscal house in order. So as we start this process, I think we ought to be listening to Senator Sanders, the ranking member of the Budget Committee. We ought to be listening to the members of the Budget Committee. I have served on that committee up through this last Congress for 14 years. It is an important process, and it can be effective if it is not misused. That process was misused when it took us from a position of huge surpluses in the 1990s, up through 2000, to exactly the opposite, huge annual deficits. Airport Security Madam President, I wish to mention another item I had occasion to be involved in over the weekend. If we go back to the latter part of last year, there was a 6-month period--if you can believe this--that guns were being smuggled onto commercial aircraft flying from Atlanta Hartsfield to New York City, where they were then sold on the streets in Brooklyn. We might say: Well, if this criminal ring is selling guns in a State that does not allow the possession of guns--New York--why wouldn't they just run them up I-95 in a car or a truck? Because law enforcement was on to that. So they devised this ingenious scheme where instead they were bringing the guns into the passenger cabin of a commercial airliner--not once but over a 6-month period--and hundreds of guns were transported right in the passenger cabin. Here is how the scheme worked: One perpetrator would go through TSA security with an empty knapsack, a backpack. Another perpetrator would go through security--because there was not an actual check of whether that airport employee at the Atlanta airport in fact had any contraband, he could get into the area underneath the aircraft, go up into the secure area for passengers, go into the men's room, and transfer the guns to the fellow with the empty backpack who had already come through security with TSA. They transferred--if you can believe it--an AK-47. At the time they finally picked up this fellow in December of last year, he had 16 handguns in his backpack. Naturally, in our responsibility and as the ranking member of the commerce committee, I wanted to get into this. What I found is that they weren't doing those secure checks--like we do when we go through TSA as a passenger--in the perimeter of the airport for the thousands of employees who work at the airport. That is how they got the guns in and then did this scheme of transferring the guns. It is a good thing the perpetrator was a criminal, not a terrorist, because we can imagine what it would be like had he been a terrorist. So what are the airports going to do about it? I would suggest they ought to take a look at the Orlando airport and also the Miami airport. This Senator visited the Orlando airport over the weekend. They took hundreds of entry points at the airport for their employees and boiled them down to a handful--specifically, 7 entry points for about 6,000 employees at the Orlando airport. They put up the metal detection devices, the conveyer belt that takes backpacks through the machine, that looks at their backpacks to see if there is any contraband, et cetera. So it was not financially prohibitive when they boiled down the number of entry points for their employees to a manageable number. A similar thing was done at the Miami airport. As a result, it has at first blush the appearance that this is a way of solving the problem. Now, sooner or later, if this kind of scheme happens in another airport, it is going to be absolutely unacceptable and intolerable as to what happened in the Atlanta airport. The question is, What about employees losing their badges and somebody grabbing the badge and utilizing it? Well, at these screening points, they swipe their badge, but the officers in that reduced number of entry points for airport employees are checking the badge, looking at the picture on the badge and the person with the badge, and then having the holder of the badge go over and enter a personal identification number--a PIN number--as another safeguard before going into the secure area of the airport. We are going to have to do this. There is no excuse for what happened in Atlanta. Congress Week Madam President, now I would like to speak about this great fifth annual celebration of Congress Week, and it goes back to when Congress first started in 1789, the very first quorums this Congress had. The birth of the Congress was not on a single day or an event, but it was a process of deliberation in the Federal Government that met in the spring and summer of 1787. They hashed out the Constitution, which provided for Congress to convene on March 4, 1789. On that date in New York City, which was the temporary capital at the time, the first meeting place of the Congress, cannons fired and church bells rang to announce the birth of the new Congress, but only a few Members of Congress had arrived by that date. Weeks passed before the House achieved its first quorum on April 1, with the Senate not getting a quorum until 5 days later on April 6. The House and Senate met jointly on April 6 in the Senate Chamber to count the ballots of the Presidential electors. So Congress Week's theme, ``The People's Branch,'' reflects and emphasizes that Congress is the part of the government designed to be closest to the people and the most likely to reflect the sentiment of the people--because it is those of us in the Halls of the House and the Senate who go back home and are directly reflective and responsible to our constituencies. We try to keep historical records of all of this. Our congressional papers are some of the richest sources for the study of national affairs, local history, regional issues, and, of course, for American history. They document the legislative branch, and they document the history and foreign affairs of the country. It is imperative that we manage and preserve our own papers for future historical research and study of democracy. The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress, founded in 2003, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of more than 40 organizations and institutions that preserve the papers of Members of Congress and promote a wide range of programs and research opportunities related to Congress. James Madison said that an informed citizenry was the best guarantee that this Nation's great experiment in representative democracy would work and survive for future generations. So I want to call Congress Week to the attention of the Senate and to the Nation's public--awareness of the rich and colorful history of representative democracy through the institution of the United States Congress. I encourage our colleagues to preserve their records and the history of the individuals who make up this great institution. Madam President, I yield the floor.