Jack Reed

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to voice my support for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. This is a credible compromise that accomplishes three key objectives: it prevents an economically catastrophic default, establishes 2 years of rational budgets for defense and domestic priorities, and provides our military with the resources they need without an overreliance on the emergency war fund accounts. Specifically, the agreement takes the threat of default off the table until March 2017 and provides $80 billion in sequester relief over the next 2 years, evenly split between defense and domestic spending. Throughout this process to reach a budget agreement, I have urged my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work together to find a balanced, responsible way to address defense and domestic spending-- because they are both essential to the security and financial well- being of the American people. And while this bill relies on emergency war fund accounts, it more accurately reflects the costs of our overseas military operations and provides the Department of Defense with some additional budgetary stability and flexibility to plan for the future. With the sequester relief that the bill provides, we will have greater fiscal certainty and the additional resources we need to maintain a strong defense and economy. The bill also contains offsets that improve tax compliance among large partnerships and reforms federal crop insurance. These are the sorts of new revenue and spending cuts we should see more of instead of revenue and spending cuts that come off the backs of seniors and the middle class. Now, while I would prefer to eliminate the sequester all together, this compromise sets an encouraging precedent for future sequester relief, which is balanced and allows the government to keep making investments in areas that spur economic growth like education, transportation, health care, and defense. And that is why it's important for the Senate and House Appropriations Committees to quickly reach a consensus and produce a detailed spending package before the expiration of the continuing resolution on December 11. I urge my colleagues to quickly approve this budget agreement and move on to a bill to fund the government.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I wish to comment briefly on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act that the Senate is considering. Let me first commend the sponsors, Senator Burr and Senator Feinstein, for their extraordinary work. This bill will help ensure greater sharing of cyber threat information, more rapidly and broadly, across industry and government. As we have seen with large-scale attacks against the Federal Government and companies such as Sony, there is an urgent need to start addressing these breaches. While such legislation is not going to eliminate our cyber security challenges, it should materially help to defeat and deter cyber attacks and assist law enforcement in tracking down and prosecuting cyber criminals. Information sharing will also assist the intelligence agencies and law enforcement to detect and trace the attacks originating from foreign actors, which is a crucial step in holding other countries accountable. Many of our citizens and corporations are understandably concerned about the impact of information sharing on privacy. But we also must recognize that rampant cyber crime is a monumental threat to the privacy of the American people, and that sharing information about these criminal acts cannot only protect privacy but also protect our public safety and national security. With respect to the specific privacy protections in the legislation before us, the managers of this bill have come a long way toward improving the balance between security and privacy protection, especially the changes made to the base bill by the managers' substitute. A major area of concern was whether the government should be authorized to use information shared under this bill to investigate or prosecute a host of crimes unrelated to cyber security. Now the bill is more narrowly tailored and focused on using information gathered under this bill to go after crimes that are specifically related to cyber security. The managers' substitute also adds a requirement that the information sharing procedures, required to be issued under this bill, include a duty to notify individuals when the Federal Government shares their personally identifiable information, or PII, erroneously. The managers' substitute also includes an improved reporting requirement that will show the number of notices sent because the government improperly shared an individual's PII and the number of cyber threat indicators shared automatically and, in addition, the number of times these indicators were used to prosecute crimes. So the managers' substitute has come a long way toward being more protective of individual privacy, and I would like, once again, to recognize Senators Feinstein and Burr's hard work here and their willingness to listen to their colleagues. While I might personally have set the balance slightly different in some places, which is why I have supported some of the amendments before us, I think they have done a significant job in improving the bill and providing privacy protection. I do want to draw my colleagues' attention to one important additional fact here, which in some cases has been largely overlooked. The cyber information sharing system established by this bill will require Federal dollars to implement. Many of the agencies involved-- the Department of Homeland Security being the primary portal for shared threat indicators--are funded on the nondefense discretionary side of the ledger. This is an example of why I and many of my colleagues have been urging for sequester relief for both defense and nondefense spending--because we cannot defend our homeland without funding nondefense agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and a host of other key Federal agencies. Indeed, I am encouraged that we are close to voting on a budget solution that will provide 2 years of sequester relief on a proportionally equal basis for defense and nondefense spending, and that protects the full faith and credit of the United States by taking the threat of default off the table until March of 2017. For this reason, I look forward to final passage of this legislation. I once again commend the principal authors, Senator Burr and Senator Feinstein, for their extraordinary effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jeremy Kuester, a fellow in my office, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the session.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am pleased to reintroduce the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act along with Senators Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Warren, and Franken. This bill, which I have introduced every Congress since 1999, seeks to provide a path to citizenship for qualifying Liberian refugees who came here decades ago to escape Liberia's civil wars. Since this time, they have been in our country legally through short term extensions of Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure. After years of uncertainty about whether they will be able to stay in their communities or whether their families will be split up, this bill give eligible Liberians the chance to apply for legal permanent residency, and begin the process of finally becoming citizens. Similar safeguards were included in the last Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that the Senate passed, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to provide this critical and long overdue support for our Liberian community.

Mr. REED

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

Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise once again to speak about the fiscal year's national defense authorization conference report. Yesterday I spoke at length about the OCO funding issue, and that, to me, is the most critical issue in the bill and one that has caused me to reluctantly not support the conference report. But this time I will discuss the conference report in its entirety. Again, I would like to thank Chairman McCain, Chairman Thornberry, and Ranking Member Smith for a very thoughtful and cooperative process which allowed us to reach agreement on some very difficult issues. I also thank in particular the staff of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, who worked tirelessly over several months to resolve differences on over 800 different provisions. As I stated yesterday, in many respects this is a good conference report which supports our men and women in uniform and establishes many much needed reforms and, with the exception of the OCO position, would be something that would have widespread support. There are many provisions in the bill that are commendable. This conference report authorizes a 1.3-percent pay raise for servicemembers and reauthorizes a number of expiring bonuses and special pay authorities to encourage enlistment, reenlistment, and continued service by Active-Duty and Reserve component military personnel. Significantly, it includes much needed reform of the military retirement system and brings the military retirement system into the 21st century for a new generation of recruits. It also deals with the need to begin to bring into better control personnel costs at the Department of Defense because, as we all recognize, there is a huge trendline of personnel costs that would outstrip at some point the training and equipment that are necessary to the vitality and agility of the force. One example is the pilot program to test approaches to the commissary and exchange system to see if there are ways in which that can be handled more efficiently without preventing military personnel from enjoying that benefit they have earned. The report also includes a commitment to seriously consider reforms to military health care in the coming year. All told, these personnel authorities and reforms will serve tomorrow's servicemembers and their families, and they will save the Department of Defense annually in its discretionary budget, allowing that funding to be reapplied to readiness and modernization or even to maintaining a larger force. The conference report includes roughly 60 provisions on acquisition reform. I commend in particular Chairman McCain for his efforts in this area. It is a long history and a proud history. He worked with Chairman Levin. Previously he has worked with so many others. He has made this a personal area of not only concern but of notable action. The provisions will help streamline acquisition processes, allow DOD to access commercial and small businesses, and improve the acquisition workforce. They build on the success of the reforms led by the chairman in the Weapons System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. The report also includes a number of provisions that will strengthen DOD's ability to develop next-generation technologies and weapons systems and maintain our technological superiority on the battlefield. The report strengthens the DOD laboratories and increases funding for university research programs and STEM education. It also contains a number of provisions that will make it easier for the Pentagon to work with high-tech small businesses, bringing their innovative ideas into the defense industrial base. With respect to cyber security, this report includes multiple provisions, some of which I sponsored and all of which I support. These include a requirement for biannual whole-of-nation exercises on responding to cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, independent assessment of Cyber Command's ability to defend the Nation against cyber attack, comprehensive assessments of the cyber vulnerabilities of major weapons systems, and the provision of limited acquisition authorities to the commander of Cyber Command. The conference report also has over $400 million in additional readiness funding for the military services--across all branches: Active, Guard, and Reserve. It fully authorizes the programs for modernizing our nuclear triad of sea, ground, and airborne platforms. There are also specific recommendations on many procurement programs that will help the Department improve management and cope with shortfalls. All of these provisions will ensure that our military personnel have the equipment and training they need to succeed in their mission. For the various overseas challenges facing the United States, and they are considerable, this conference report provides key funding and authority for two major U.S.-led coalition operations: the mission in Afghanistan and the counter-ISIS coalition in Iraq and Syria. It also includes additional funding for initiatives to expand the U.S. military presence and exercises in Eastern Europe, reassuring allies and countering the threat of Russian hybrid warfare tactics, and authorizes additional military assistance, including lethal assistance for Ukraine. I had the privilege of visiting Ukraine recently and being with the paratroopers of the 172nd Airborne Brigade who are training Ukrainian forces. They are doing a commendable job and it represents a tangible commitment by the United States to support friends across the globe. The conference report also includes, very notably and very importantly, the Senate provisions codifying the current policy that interrogations of detainees in the custody of any U.S. Government agency or department must comply with the Army Field Manual on Interrogation. These provisions, sponsored by Senator McCain, Senator Feinstein, and I, will ensure that detainee interrogations are conducted using noncoercive techniques that do not involve the threat or use of force, consistent with our values as a nation. I know how important this was, particularly to Chairman McCain and Senator Feinstein. It represents our best values and also from the testimony we have heard over many years, the most effective way to obtain information in circumstances as we have witnessed in the last few years. All of these provisions are commendable. They are the result of significant effort by Chairman McCain, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, and the staff who worked tirelessly. However, there are provisions that do in fact cause some concern. Let me first talk about the issue of Guantanamo Bay. The report continues the restrictions on the President's authorities relating to the Guantanamo detention facility. In previous Defense authorization bills, we had made progress in giving the President greater flexibility in streamlining the process of making transfers from Guantanamo to other locations, bringing us closer to the goal of closing Guantanamo. The Guantanamo provisions in this year's conference report, however, are in a sense a step backward. They continue to maintain the prohibitions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and on the construction or modification of a facility in the United States to hold such detainees. This deprives the President of a key tool for fighting terrorism, the ability to prosecute Guantanamo detainees in Federal court. To make matters more complicated, the conference report proposes additional hurdles on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees overseas, requiring the Secretary of Defense to complete a checklist of certifications for overseas transfers and prohibiting such transfers to certain specified countries altogether. Further, the conference report does not include a provision from the Senate bill that authorized the temporary transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States for medical reasons in the event of life-threatening emergencies. As the Guantanamo detainees get older, there is an increasing risk of a detainee suffering serious harm or death because the military is legally prohibited from bringing that person to the United States to receive necessary medical care. Both President Bush and President Obama have called for closing Guantanamo Bay. Our military leaders have repeatedly said that Guantanamo harms our national security and serves as a propaganda and recruiting tool for terrorists. This is an issue we have been wrestling with for over a decade, and I regret that we are no closer to resolving it with this conference report. This conference report also does not contain many of the cost-saving proposals that the Department of Defense requested. For example, the retirement of many aging aircraft and ships is prohibited and a BRAC round was not ever considered. Without such authorities, we in Congress are making it even more difficult for the Department of Defense to acquire and maintain the things they need because we are forcing them to keep what they consider no longer cost- or mission-effective. Finally, as I have said it many times consistently throughout this process, the one item that I find is most objectionable, and indeed reluctantly forced me to argue against the conference report, is the fact that it shifts $38 billion requested by the President in the base military budget, in the routine base budget--it shifts it to the Overseas Contingency Operations account or OCO. Essentially, it skirts the BCA. This transfer from base to OCO raises several concerns. First, it violates the consensus that was agreed to when we passed the BCA that both defense discretionary spending and domestic discretionary spending would be treated equally. Now, we find a way to avoid that consensus. In fact, that was one of the premises many of us found persuasive enough to support the BCA, but the concerns that are raised are many. First, adding funds to OCO does not solve--it actually complicates-- the Department of Defense's budgetary problems. Defense budgeting needs to be based on our long-term military strategy, which requires DOD to focus at least 5 years into the future. A 1-year plus-up to OCO does not provide DOD with the certainty and stability it needs when building its 5-year budget. This instability undermines the morale of our troops and their families who want to know their futures are planned for more than 1 year at a time and the confidence of our defense industry partners that we rely on to provide the best technology available to our troops. Second, the transfer does not provide additional funds for many of the domestic agencies which are also critical to our national security. We cannot defend our homeland without the FBI. In fact, we just heard reports today of FBI activities disrupting a potential smuggling of nuclear material in Eastern European, headed--the suggestion is--toward ISIL or other radical elements. We need the FBI. Yet they remain subject to the Budget Control Act. We need to fund the Justice Department, other aspects of their activities, the TSA, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard. These later agencies are funded through the Department of Homeland Security. Without adequate support for the State Department, the danger to our troops increases. In addition, failing to provide BCA cap relief to non-DOD departments and agencies would also shortchange veterans who receive employment services, transition assistance, and housing and homeless support. Third, moving funding from the base budget to OCO has no impact on reducing the deficit. OCO and emergency funding are outside the budget caps for a reason; they are for the costs of ongoing military operations or to respond to unforeseen events, such as the flooding we are witnessing in South Carolina. To transfer funds for known day-to- day operations into war and emergency funding accounts to skirt the law is not fiscally responsible or honest accounting. The OCO was designed for the contingencies that were non-routine and would not be recurring. In fact, we have seen OCO funds go up dramatically as our commitments both in Afghanistan and Iraq went up and then go down as you would expect. Suddenly that curve is beginning to shift up and go up, not because of the increased number of military personnel deployed--in fact, there are fewer military personnel deployed in these areas today--but because we have found a way--at least we think we have found a way--to move around the BCA for defense and defense alone. Many have argued: Well, that might be true, but this is not the place to talk about this issue. I disagree. This is not a debate about which appropriations account we put the money in; it is a fundamental debate about how we intend to fund the workings of the government today and in the future, all parts of the government, because if we can use this technique for defense, it, frankly and honestly, relieves the pressure to take the constraints off other agencies. It sets the whole table, if you will, for our budget for every Federal agency. So this is not a narrow issue of appropriations, whether it is the committee on housing and urban development or the committee on interior and environment; this is a fundamental issue. The BCA is a statute, not an appropriations bill, per se. It came to us as an independent statute. We have a responsibility to respond to the challenge it poses to the defense budget and to every other budget. This is just not a 1-year fix. If this were a bridge that we knew would take us from this year to next year, well, we might do these things in a different way. Unfortunately I think this conference report is going to be replicated in the future, because if we rely on this approach this year, there is huge pressure next year to do the same thing, unless we can resolve the underlying problems of the Budget Control Act. I believe it is essential for us to do this for the best interests of our country, for the best interests of our military personnel. I don't think by standing up and casting a vote in this light we are disrespecting or not recognizing the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States. In fact, it has not been uncommon over the years that because of issues, this bill has been objected to by both sides. Indeed, since 2005 my colleagues on the Republican side have cast votes against cloture on the NDAA 10 times and successfully blocked cloture 4 times over such issues as Senate rules and procedures, the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, and in one case gasoline prices. So to argue today that the only reason we should vote for this bill is because it is procedurally not appropriate to discuss this, well, was it procedurally appropriate to use the Defense bill to essentially register anguish about gasoline prices? This goes to the heart not just of this bill but every bill. Therefore, I don't think it is something we have to shy away from. In fact, I think we have to take it on. If we cannot fix this Budget Control Act straightjacket we are in, it will harm our national security. If we don't have the FBI agents out there trying to disrupt smuggling of uranium and other fissile materials, that hurts us. It hurts our national security. If we don't have the Department of Energy laboratories that are capable of doing research, helping us and working with foreign governments about detection of radioactive material, that hurts our national security. This is about national security, and I think we have to consider it in that light. So we are here today, and we are dealing with an issue of the authorization act in the context of the continuing resolution because we have not resolved the Budget Control Act. These are all roads coming together: the conference report, the continuing resolution, all of them in the context of trying to respond to the Budget Control Act. I think we should step up and deal with the Budget Control Act. We have had many months to try to find the answer. We haven't. When we considered this legislation previously in the Senate, it was summer time, and it appeared that there might be a coming together on a bipartisan basis and a thoughtful basis, trying to provide the relief so we wouldn't have to rely on OCO when the conference report arrived, but we are here today and OCO is still staring us right in the face. I think we have to ensure that we stand and say that is not the way we want to go forward for the defense of our country in the broadest context and for the support of our military personnel. There is one other issue I do wish to raise, too, because it has been brought up; that is, the suggestion that if this bill does not pass today, then our military will not receive their pay raises and bonuses. The provisions in this bill go into effect January 1, 2016. We still have time. I would hope we would use that time not only to make some changes--technical here and there--but also to deal with the central issue which I hope we all agree is driving everything; that is, fixing the Budget Control Act in a way that we can provide across-the-board support for our Federal agencies, particularly our national security agencies which go beyond simply the Department of Defense. I think the time is now. This is a moment to deal with the issue, not defer it and hope something happens in the future. We have to resolve the Budget Control Act. I urge, for that reason as much as anything, that my colleagues would vote against this conference report as an important step in the process and a necessary step, in my view, in the process of resolving the great budget crisis we face in terms of the Budget Control Act. In fact, one of my concerns is that if we do in fact pass this conference report and it subsequently becomes law or just the simple fact that we pass it, it gives some people the excuse of saying: Well, we have fixed the only problem that we think is of some significant concern, the Department of Defense, so we don't have to do anything else. Again, we have to fund the FBI, we have to fund Homeland Security, and we have to fund a vigorous State Department. All of those agencies, if we do nothing on BCA, will see sequestration arise, diminish their capacity, and in some way diminish our national security. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am pleased to reintroduce the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act along with Senators Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Warren, and Franken. This bill, which I have introduced every Congress since 1999, seeks to provide a path to citizenship for qualifying Liberian refugees who came here decades ago to escape Liberia's civil wars. Since this time, they have been in our country legally through short term extensions of Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure. After years of uncertainty about whether they will be able to stay in their communities or whether their families will be split up, this bill give eligible Liberians the chance to apply for legal permanent residency, and begin the process of finally becoming citizens. Similar safeguards were included in the last Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that the Senate passed, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to provide this critical and long overdue support for our Liberian community.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the conference report of the fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, which we will be voting on in the next hour. This conference report is the product of months of negotiation and compromise between the House and the Senate. I want to commend Chairman McCain, Chairman Thornberry, and Ranking Member Smith for a thoughtful, inclusive and cordial process. There are many provisions in this bill that provide the support we owe to our servicemembers and their families--the funding, authorities, and equipment necessary for our troops to succeed in combat; and significant and critical reforms to the military retirement, compensation, and acquisition systems--many of which I will talk about in further debate on this bill in the days and hours ahead. However, I regret that I am unable to support this conference report because it shifts $38 billion requested by the President for enduring or base military requirements--the base budget, if you will--to the overseas contingency operations, or OCO, account, essentially, skirting the law known as the Budget Control Act, or BCA. Again, this is a maneuver to get around a statute that was signed by the President, voted for by Congress, and which has imposed budget caps on every department. Central to that agreement was the significant consensus that domestic and defense discretionary spending would be capped. What this conference report does is violate that consensus by using OCO in a way that it was not originally intended to be so used. This budget gimmick allows the majority to fully fund the Defense Department without breaking caps imposed by the BCA on both defense and nondefense spending. However, the OCO account provides no relief for nondefense departments and agencies, and that includes many agencies that are critical to our national security. Because of this device, I and nearly all of the Democratic conferees on the bill did not sign the conference report. Abusing OCO, as this bill would do, is counter to the intent of the Budget Control Act. The BCA imposed proportionally equal cuts to defense and nondefense discretionary spending to force a bipartisan compromise to our ongoing budget difficulties. OCO and emergency funding are outside budget caps for a reason. They finance the cost of ongoing military operations or they respond to other unforeseen events such as national disasters. In my view, to suddenly ignore the true purpose of OCO and treat it as a budgetary gambit in order to skirt the BCA caps is an unacceptable use of this important tool for our warfighters in the field. Adding funds to OCO does not solve--and actually complicates--DOD's budgetary problems. Defense budgeting needs to be based on our long- term military strategy, which requires the Department of Defense to focus at least 5 years into the future. A 1-year plus-up to OCO does not provide DOD with the certainty and stability it needs when building its 5-year budget. Just to highlight how this OCO gimmick skews defense spending, consider the amount of OCO in relation to the number of troops deployed. Again, I think it is a useful metric because OCO evolved when we were deploying troops overseas--first in response to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and then with respect to Iraq. And there is a correlation, at least in the minds of most people, between our efforts overseas with troops engaged and the size of OCO. In 2008, at the height of our Nation's troop commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan and with approximately 187,000 total troops deployed, we spent approximately $1 million in OCO for every servicemember deployed to those countries. Under this bill, we will spend approximately $9 million in OCO for every servicemember deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan--roughly about 9,930 people, in DOD projections. So this increase has gone some place. It hasn't gone overseas, directly to the men and women who are fighting, but it has gone to other accounts within the Department of Defense. In addition to this phenomenon, within the next few years the services will begin procuring new weapons systems while modernizing and maintaining legacy weapons systems. For example, in the Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP, the Department will spend $48 billion to procure the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter; $10.6 billion for the Ohio-class replacement program; $13.9 billion for the Long Range Strike Bomber; and $29.7 billion for the Virginia-class submarine program. Each of these programs is critically important to our national defense, and we must ensure they are robustly funded. But if the BCA caps remain in place, it is likely tough budget choices will need to be made. As a result, if we decide to stay within the stringent budge caps, we may be forced to fund these programs at the expense of other, equally meritorious programs. We will have a choice of not investing fully in these necessary strategic improvements or using legacy systems, which are still important, to pay for them--tough choices. Alternatively, and what I think is more likely to happen, these programs will be funded in the base budget. However, in order to ensure the budget caps are not breached, funding will be shifted from the operations and maintenance accounts to the OCO account in order to accommodate increased procurement for new weapons systems. In many respects, that is what is happening with this $38.3 billion that shifted from the traditional base budget into the OCO budget account for O&M requirements. What you have here is a sense of budgetary sleight of hand. We know we have these increased demands coming to us because we do have to recapitalize on strategic systems, in particular. If we have the BCA caps in place, we have to find money some place, and that is likely to be the OCO account. We will see a fund, OCO, which was designed to support ongoing operations overseas suddenly be used to pay for long- term base budget items, i.e., recapitalization of our strategic deterrent forces. If we use this scheme this year--maybe with good intentions and the only honest intention of 1 year to get us ahead--it will be easier to do it next year and the year after that, ensuring that this imbalance between security and domestic spending continues. As we all recognize, effective national security requires that non-DOD departments and agencies also receive relief from the BCA caps. The Pentagon simply cannot meet the complex set of national security challenges without the help of other government departments and agencies--including State, Justice, and Homeland Security. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth made this point when she was before the Armed Services Committee a few weeks ago to testify on our strategy to counter ISIL, which many Americans believe to be the top national security threat facing our country. The Department of Defense is only one part of a whole-of- government approach to defeating ISIL. Secretary Wormuth said: ``It will take more than just the military campaign to be successful [against ISIL]. We also will need to dry up ISIL's finances, stop the flows of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria in particular, protect the United States from potential ISIL attacks, provide humanitarian assistance to rebuild areas cleared of ISIL forces, and find ways to more effectively counter ISIL's very successful messaging campaign.'' Unfortunately, we will effectively diminish our national capabilities to do all these things by underfunding non-DOD departments and agencies that are critical to our national security. Use of the OCO gimmick--it has been referred to that by many people--in this bill facilitates underfunding those departments, and it should not be supported. We need an all-out governmental effort to provide for our national security. Underfunding State, Treasury, and other departments is not going to get us that all-out effort. And when it no longer becomes easy to underfund nondefense agencies, my suspicion is that nondefense programs will begin appearing in OCO. There is some precedent to this. For example, in fiscal year 1992, Congress added funds to the defense bill for breast cancer research. At the time, discretionary spending was subject to statutory caps under the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990--the follow- on legislation to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1985. That was a situation where they were capping discretionary domestic spending, but defense spending was uncapped, and this is a situation that I think we are recreating in this conference report. That initial funding led to the establishment of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, and I think every Senator is familiar with this important program. It has strong bipartisan support, and each fiscal year Congress authorizes and appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars to the program for cutting-edge and critically essential medical research. In fact, since 1992, this program has received over $13 billion in funding. While this program is funded through the annual Defense bill and the program is managed by the Army, the Department of Defense does not execute any of the money itself. It is a competitive grant process, and proposals are subject to stringent peer and programmatic review criteria. Essentially, the money goes out to medical research facilities throughout the United States. For all intents and purposes, it is a medical research program much like we fund through NIH. I am a strong supporter of medical research and a strong supporter of this program, and indeed this program has, through its research and through its efforts, saved countless lives, but my concern is that under the aegis of OCO, approaches and budgetary maneuvers like this will become common. It will be a way to skirt the budget caps. If we do it this year, we have set a precedent for next year and the following year, and 10 years from now the Defense bill could authorize billions of dollars of funding for programs that may be meritorious but will have little or nothing to do with national defense and should be properly budgeted within our base budget from other departments. Indeed, some programs should be properly funded within the Department of Defense's base budget. Simply put, this approach, which circumvents the Budget Control Act, is not fiscally responsible or honest accounting. It is time we come together as a Congress--before the short-term continuing resolution expires--to fulfill our responsibilities to the American people, especially our troops and their families, to fully fund our government by revising or eliminating the budget caps proposed by the BCA on both defense and nondefense spending. In fact and indeed, if it were not for the OCO issue, I would have likely signed the conference report and voted for this bill. However, I believe this OCO issue is too important. The Secretary of Defense believes it is too important, the President believes it is too important, and he said he will veto this bill and any other bill that relies on this OCO gimmick. As Secretary of Defense Carter said last week: ``Without a negotiated budget solution in which everyone comes together at last, we will again return to sequestration-level funding, reducing discretionary funding to its lowest real level in a decade despite the fact that members of both parties agree this result will harm national security. . . . Making these kinds of indiscriminate cuts is managerially inefficient, and therefore wasteful, to taxpayers and industry. It's dangerous to our strategy, and frankly, it's embarrassing in front of the world.'' These are the words of the Secretary of Defense, echoing the comments that we have heard from uniformed military leaders about the inherent dangers of sequestration if it is allowed to continue forward. The BCA was created by Congress to address the immediate threat of what would have been a catastrophic national default and to compel Congress to come together and reach a balanced compromise on the budget. It is time for Congress to make the hard choices, modify or eliminate the caps in the BCA, and end the threat of sequestration. It is not just an appropriations issue. It is affecting everything we do. Unfortunately, it affects the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act and therefore I will not be prepared to support this legislation. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I join with my colleagues, led by Senators Coons and Baldwin, to recognize the significant role manufacturing plays in the United States and in my home State of Rhode Island. According to facts compiled by the National Association of Manufacturers, over 41,000 Rhode Islanders, nearly 9 percent of the workforce, work in manufacturing. Those workers were responsible for $4.1 billion in economic output, just under 8 percent of the State's total output, in 2013. On average these workers brought in over $67,000 in annual compensation. Manufacturing is a highly technical and innovative industry that creates good-paying jobs for skilled workers. It is also an industry that is expanding; in Rhode Island manufacturing jobs have increased by 1,100 compared to a year ago. And just last week I joined a Rhode Island advanced manufacturer, Yushin America, Inc., to celebrate a ribbon cutting for its $2 million expansion. This sort of expansion is representative of the type of highly technical growth we see in manufacturing. Moreover, these good-paying, highly-skilled, middle-class jobs are what will help further support widespread economic growth. That is why I look forward to celebrating National Manufacturing Day with the mayor of Providence and my delegation colleagues on Monday and continuing to work to advance measures that support manufacturers and job creation back home.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senator Blunt in the reintroduction of the Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, by 2025, there will be a shortage of up to 90,000 physicians. Approximately 1/3 of the shortage, up to 31,100 will be in primary care. Individuals and families living in underserved areas, urban and rural, will continue to be those most disadvantaged by this shortage. Last year, we expanded our health care system to provide health insurance to millions more Americans. In fact, recent studies have shown that the uninsured rate has decreased to the lowest level since 1997 over the last 2 years. In Rhode Island, the uninsured rate decreased by half, down to 5 percent. As a result, millions of Americans are going to the doctor for preventive health care for the first time. In order for these efforts to be successful, we must expand our health care workforce to ensure that we have enough health care professionals to treat the newly insured. The Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act would authorize programs that would grow the overall number of health care providers, as well as encourage providers to pursue careers in geographic and practice areas of highest need. Building on the success of the National Health Service Corp, NHSC, Scholarship and Loan Repayment Programs, and the State Loan Repayment Program, this legislation would establish a state scholarship program. Like the NHSC State Loan Repayment Program, States would be able to receive a dollar-for-dollar match to support individuals that commit to practicing in the State in which the scholarship was issued after completing their education and training. At least 50 percent of the funding would be required to support individuals committed to pursuing careers in primary care. The States would have the flexibility to use the remaining 50 percent to support scholarships to educate students in other documented health care professional shortages in the state that are approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act would also authorize grants to medical schools to develop primary care mentors on faculty and in the community. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, graduating medical students consistently state that role models are one of the most important factors affecting the career path they choose. Building a network of primary care mentors in the classroom and in a variety of practice settings will help guide more medical students into careers in primary care. The legislation would couple these mentorship grants with an initiative to improve the education and training offered by medical schools in competencies most critical to primary care, including patient-centered medical homes, primary and behavioral health integration, and team-based care. It would also direct the Institute of Medicine, IOM, to study and make recommendations about ways to limit the administrative burden on providers in documenting cognitive services delivered to patients. Primary care providers treat patients in need of these services almost exclusively, and as such, spend a significant percentage of their day documenting care. That is not the case for providers who perform procedures, like surgeries. This IOM study would help uncover ways to simplify documentation requirements, particularly for delivering cognitive services, in order to eliminate one of the potential factors that may discourage medical students from pursuing careers in primary care. Providers across the spectrum of care recognize that this bipartisan legislation is part of the solution to addressing the looming health care workforce shortage and have lent their support, including: the Alliance for Specialty Medicine, the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, the Association of Academic Health Centers, and the Association of American Medical Colleges. I look forward to working with these and other stakeholders as well as Senator Blunt and our colleagues to pass the Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act in order to help ensure patients have access to the health care they need.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senator Blunt in the reintroduction of the Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, by 2025, there will be a shortage of up to 90,000 physicians. Approximately 1/3 of the shortage, up to 31,100 will be in primary care. Individuals and families living in underserved areas, urban and rural, will continue to be those most disadvantaged by this shortage. Last year, we expanded our health care system to provide health insurance to millions more Americans. In fact, recent studies have shown that the uninsured rate has decreased to the lowest level since 1997 over the last 2 years. In Rhode Island, the uninsured rate decreased by half, down to 5 percent. As a result, millions of Americans are going to the doctor for preventive health care for the first time. In order for these efforts to be successful, we must expand our health care workforce to ensure that we have enough health care professionals to treat the newly insured. The Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act would authorize programs that would grow the overall number of health care providers, as well as encourage providers to pursue careers in geographic and practice areas of highest need. Building on the success of the National Health Service Corp, NHSC, Scholarship and Loan Repayment Programs, and the State Loan Repayment Program, this legislation would establish a state scholarship program. Like the NHSC State Loan Repayment Program, States would be able to receive a dollar-for-dollar match to support individuals that commit to practicing in the State in which the scholarship was issued after completing their education and training. At least 50 percent of the funding would be required to support individuals committed to pursuing careers in primary care. The States would have the flexibility to use the remaining 50 percent to support scholarships to educate students in other documented health care professional shortages in the state that are approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act would also authorize grants to medical schools to develop primary care mentors on faculty and in the community. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, graduating medical students consistently state that role models are one of the most important factors affecting the career path they choose. Building a network of primary care mentors in the classroom and in a variety of practice settings will help guide more medical students into careers in primary care. The legislation would couple these mentorship grants with an initiative to improve the education and training offered by medical schools in competencies most critical to primary care, including patient-centered medical homes, primary and behavioral health integration, and team-based care. It would also direct the Institute of Medicine, IOM, to study and make recommendations about ways to limit the administrative burden on providers in documenting cognitive services delivered to patients. Primary care providers treat patients in need of these services almost exclusively, and as such, spend a significant percentage of their day documenting care. That is not the case for providers who perform procedures, like surgeries. This IOM study would help uncover ways to simplify documentation requirements, particularly for delivering cognitive services, in order to eliminate one of the potential factors that may discourage medical students from pursuing careers in primary care. Providers across the spectrum of care recognize that this bipartisan legislation is part of the solution to addressing the looming health care workforce shortage and have lent their support, including: the Alliance for Specialty Medicine, the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, the Association of Academic Health Centers, and the Association of American Medical Colleges. I look forward to working with these and other stakeholders as well as Senator Blunt and our colleagues to pass the Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act in order to help ensure patients have access to the health care they need.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, unless we act quickly, our longest running student loan program--the Perkins Loan Program--will meet its demise on September 30. It will end not because it is ineffective or because it does not make college more affordable for needy students or because we have debated and built consensus on how best to reform our Federal student loan programs. Rather, the Perkins Loan Program might end because some of my colleagues refuse to extend it as we routinely do with other programs awaiting reauthorization. We should not allow this to happen. I hope that my colleagues will swiftly approve H.R. 3594, the Higher Education Extension Act, a bipartisan bill to extend the Perkins Loan Program that the House of Representatives passed by a unanimous vote yesterday. The Perkins Loan Program was created in 1958 as the National Defense Student Loan Program. Approximately 1,500 colleges and universities, including a dozen in my home State of Rhode Island, disburse more than $1.2 billion in Perkins loans to students who have demonstrated exceptional financial need. The Perkins Loan Program carries some of the most generous terms of all the Federal student loan programs. Perkins loans are offered at a low, fixed rate of 5 percent. No interest accrues until the student enters repayment, which starts after a 9-month grace period, giving the recent graduate time to get on his or her feet. The Perkins Loan Program also encourages public service, offering generous loan forgiveness for many public sector careers, including for school librarians, something that I have long championed. Another compelling feature of the Perkins Loan Program is that participating institutions must contribute their own resources--$1 for every 2 Federal dollars. Many institutions, including colleges and universities in Rhode Island, have invested more than their legal obligation. As students repay their loans, institutions are able to make new loans. In other words, participating colleges and universities have a real stake in students being able to repay their loans, something that is missing from our other Federal student loan programs and something that I have been advocating we need more, not less, of. In Rhode Island during the 2013-2014 school year, over 9,000 students attending Rhode Island colleges benefitted from more than $18 million in low-cost Perkins loans. Without this assistance, these students would face a gap in their ability to pay for college and could be forced into risky private loans or higher cost parent loans. We need to maintain the Perkins Loan Program as we continue working towards a comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. We cannot and should not leave needy students and families in the lurch by cutting off access to this vital program. I urge all of my colleagues to support swift passage of H.R. 3594, the Higher Education Extension Act, to ensure there is no lapse in the availability of Perkins loans.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in support of a clean, short-term continuing resolution--or, as we say, a CR--to temporarily fund the government without controversial policy riders. After the vote we just had, I hope we can move to such a measure. Even some Republican leaders have acknowledged that this previous vote was a show vote designed to appease, but to fail. It is part of a troubling pattern that has been emerging over many months of avoiding meaningful, bipartisan talks to fix the budget and waiting until the last moment to deal with issues everyone knows must be addressed. We have an obligation to the American people to keep their government working. It is one of the most basic responsibilities we have as Members of Congress. A clean CR at this juncture fulfills this obligation, keeping the government open for a few more weeks while we work on a plan to eliminate the sequester-level budget caps for defense and nondefense programs. I wish we could have begun work on an overall agreement earlier in the year, as Vice Chairwoman Mikulski and others strongly urged months ago, but at this late hour we should pass this short-term measure and move on to serious negotiations on budget caps for this year and beyond. Shutting the government down now will not serve any useful purpose. What a shutdown will do is waste taxpayers' money and hurt the economy. Indeed, the 2-week Republican government shutdown in 2013 cost our economy billions of dollars. Based on that experience, here is some of what we can expect if there is another forced government shutdown this year: The Department of Housing and Urban Development will have to furlough more than 95 percent of its workforce, impacting services to more than 60 field and regional offices nationwide. Payments will be delayed to the roughly 3,000 local public housing authorities that manage the country's publicly assisted housing programs. In fact, this shifts the burden onto them, causing them to turn to local municipalities that are equally stressed in terms of their budgets. So there is no avoiding this pain--in fact, it will be multiplied if we shut down the government. Thousands of home sales and mortgage-refinancing packages backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the FHA, will be put on standby. People who are ready to close, people who are ready to make a commitment to a home, people who are ready to keep this economy moving will be told: Stand back; wait and see. Cities, counties, and States will not be able to move forward with new community development block grant projects, preventing important local economic investment. This is a program which affects every community in this country, and it is something which is a very positive, constructive way to give local leaders the resources to fund the local initiatives the community desperately wants and needs. This is not Big Washington; this is local America getting a chance to see their projects put in place. The Federal Aviation Administration will not be able to certify new aircraft, interrupting billions of dollars in sales. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration will be forced to stop investigations and emergency response training. Classrooms will be shuttered for 700 midshipmen at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY. These are young men and women who are committing themselves to serve the Nation either directly in the armed services of the United States or as members of our merchant fleet. They will basically be told to go home. Financial support will stop for the Maritime Security Program, the MSP. This is an important public-private partnership that is critical to sustaining our troops serving overseas. These are just a few examples from two of the Departments under my purview as the ranking member of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee. There are many other examples throughout the Federal Government that my colleagues are talking about today. Knowing the results that shutdowns and these hardball tactics have brought before, it is hard to believe some still are willing to resort to budget brinksmanship again. I know many of my colleagues on the other side share my concern. I particularly wish to commend Senator Collins, who has been an excellent leader in chairing the THUD subcommittee, for her support for a clean CR. She has done extraordinary work under very difficult and challenging circumstances. Her support for a clean CR so that we can negotiate a longer term budget solution is indicative of the kind of forthright, thoughtful, and in some cases very courageous service she has rendered to Maine and to the country. While we focus on the immediate showdown threat, let's remember the bigger threats we face in 2016. We are here because of the Budget Control Act and its attendant sequester-level caps on discretionary spending. Let's remember that these sequester-level caps were never intended to be implemented. At the time BCA was enacted, the cuts were considered to be extreme--in fact, so extreme that Congress would not ever let them happen, that they would embrace defense and nondefense, and that they would be an action-forcing mechanism--not an actuality of law but an action-forcing mechanism to cause us on a bipartisan basis to come up with long-term budget solutions. Unfortunately, that solution did not materialize. Over time, we had the very good work of Senator Murray and Congressman Paul Ryan to come up with a 2-year suspension, but we are right back where we were, and these sequester caps are staring us right in the face. But today, rather than working together to tackle the sequester, we are on the verge of orchestrating another fiscal crisis. And it is not a crisis that will help the American people; rather, it will hinder the American people. And, indeed, it is ironic because Members on both sides recognize the BCA cap should be raised for both defense and nondefense appropriations. Indeed, both the Defense authorization and the Defense appropriations bills carry bipartisan sense-of-the-Senate language that says: ``Sequestration relief must be accomplished for fiscal years 2016 and 2017.'' And, ``Sequestration relief should include equal defense and nondefense relief.'' So you have a bipartisan consensus on these two committees that represent a significant number of our colleagues who are essentially saying: We have to end this. And they are saying it because they believe, as I do, that our national security rests not just upon adequate elements of the Department of Defense but adequate investment for all our Federal programs. So beyond committing a clean, short-term funding bill, we must focus on eliminating these draconian spending caps imposed on us by the BCA. We know these caps will cause real harm to programs across the Federal Government that our States and constituents rely on. These are not academic issues that could be dismissed as being some programs that are ineffective and less limiting. These are across-the- board cuts that hit all our constituents and hit them hard. Indeed, months ago Chairman McCain and I together wrote to urge the Committee on the Budget to include a higher baseline funding amount for the Department of Defense in the budget resolution. We were essentially asking them to ignore the BCA caps and produce a budget that realistically recognizes the base needs of the Department of Defense-- not the one-time spending of OCO contingency but routine spending that would be projected forth. Senator McCain in particular worked in extraordinarily good faith to try to get such a provision included in the budget resolution, but he did not succeed. And, in response, the use of OCO contingency funds was incorporated to skirt the budget caps. Essentially, what the committee has done--the defense authorization committee--is it has taken the President's budget numbers, but moved money out of the base budget into OCO, beyond the President's request. And what you are doing is creating this OCO funding mechanism--in a sense, a gimmick, really--to cover the real cost--the ongoing cost, the routine continuing cost--of the Department of Defense. That is not good budgeting, and it is not good for Defense either. Because of this I was unable to support legislation on the floor for the Defense authorization bill that in many other respects--virtually every other respect--was extremely well done and extremely thought out. Again, I commend the chairman for all his efforts and those of my colleagues. I clearly disagree that using this OCO funding arrangement--gimmick, sleight of hand, whatever you want to call it--is the way to proceed forward. Relying on it essentially preempts defense from the Budget Control Act and leaves everything else under those onerous caps. As I said, that not only does not adequately and realistically fund defense, but it seriously erodes national security because national security is something more than simply what the Department of Defense does. It is the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and it is a myriad of other functions that will not see funding. In fact, they will see their funding begin to shrink dramatically. If we use this approach this year, with the argument that it is just a bridge to the day we finally get ourselves together, I think we are deluding ourselves. It would be much easier next year to put even more money into OCO, to take programs that are traditionally funded through the base budget of the Department of Defense and say: Well, we just don't have room. Let's put it in OCO. It becomes the gift that keeps on giving, and it will not provide the real resources and the certainty the Department of Defense needs over many years to plan for their operations. To stick things in 1-year funding is not to tell the Department of Defense: You can be confident that 2 or 3 years from now, when you are developing that new weapons system platform, the money will be there. It may, but again, it may not. We can't give them that insecurity. We have to give them a sense of certainty. Now, this is a view that is shared not just by myself and some colleagues here on both sides of the aisle but by senior Defense Department officials. They have testified repeatedly before our committee that OCO funding does not provide long-term budget certainty. They need that. And the troops--the men and women they lead--need that. In fact, it really just allows DOD to plan for 1 year. And there are very few programs in the Department of Defense that are 1-year programs. A major weapons system is a multiyear development and then there is the production process. The strategy is not year by year. It is over several years at least. So this is not an efficient and effective way to run the organization. Proper budgeting and planning in the Department of Defense requires at least 5 years. That is the standard. The standard measure is a 5-year program forecast, budget forecast, and we are telling them: Well, this year you can have a bonanza of OCO funds. Next year could be more, could be less, could be much less. This is not the way to efficiently allocate resources for national security and to efficiently develop a strategy to counteract an increasing array of threats around the globe in many different dimensions in many different regions. If we go down this path, it will lead to instability for our troops, their families, and for our defense industrial base. They deserve certainty, not a year-to-year, perhaps- maybe, maybe-perhaps approach. We also need to recognize, as I have repeated before, that national security is not just the Department of Defense. Other agencies are critical--the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and Department of Treasury, which does all the terrorist financing sanctions. They have to trace funds flowing around the world to ensure they do not aid and assist terrorist activities or other maligning activities. They need resources too. Taking this approach as it stands now, using this OCO approach for defense and then letting everything else stay under BCA, will not give these agencies the resources they need. I was struck a few days ago when General Petraeus was here testifying that one of the critical areas of effort against ISIL is information warfare. They have proven to be extraordinarily adept at using social media, at communicating through the Internet. One of the questions from my colleague--which was very thoughtful and fundamental--was this: Is the State Department doing enough to counteract--as one of our major foreign policy organizations--this information campaign by ISIL? The General sort of chuckled a bit, and then he said: Let me tell you that when I was commanding, on active service, the State Department had to come to me and essentially borrow $1 million from CENTCOM funds so they could get in the ball game--to just get in the game in terms of information warfare: counteracting measures, public campaigns of information in countries throughout the globe, particularly in the Middle East. That will be much worse if we proceed down this path, and we will not be enhancing our national security. If the ISIL message is unanswered, if they are able to attract adherents from around the globe because all they can really hear is this grotesque discussion of ISIL and what they propose, and there are no counterarguments, there is no countervailing points, we lose that information war. And that is not just a DOD function. Now, we have to make investments in both defense and nondefense. But as I said before, if we stick with these BCA caps, our non-DOD programs will suffer. In addition to that, the needs of the American people will suffer. We will not be able to invest in adequate transportation and water infrastructure. We won't be able to do things that provide adequate and decent housing for our citizens. Under the budget caps we will lose jobs too. When the resources diminish, the need for workers diminishes, and that will happen. Now, we have a situation, particularly where some of our most vulnerable Americans would suffer grievously. Here are a few examples. The elderly housing program has been cut in half since 2010, even when we know the United States population today is aging faster. Every Member of this Senate has numerous elderly housing programs in their State. Their low-income seniors rely on them. I would suspect they take some pride in the fact there is adequate housing--in some cases not enough, but at least some adequate housing. They will suffer. There are 7.7 million very low income renters in the United States. That means they pay more than 50 percent of their income in rent or live in substandard housing or both. If these budget caps go into effect, then the THUD bill will not include meaningful funding for the affordable housing production program available to local governments. When we turn to Public Housing Authorities, they are facing more than $3 billion in capital needs just to keep them repaired, just to make them places that are decent to live in, where people can have appropriate hallway lighting, they can have elevators that work, they can have plumbing systems that are adequate--the basics. We are not talking about building whirlpools, spas, and Jacuzzis. This is just meeting basic requirements in maintenance and capital repairs. The level of funding PHA's are faced with is the same level we provided in the late 1980s. That is going back about 30 years. Thirty years ago, relatively speaking, we would be spending as much as we are now on simply maintaining public housing. These are real-world consequences. Again, BCA comes into play in terms of the impact on domestic programs. Funding for public transit continues to fall even while transit ridership goes up. One of the success stories over the past few years is our public transit systems. Our buses, our subway systems, our light rail systems are enjoying increased ridership. That is good for people to get to work, and it is good for our environment because of reduces the use of individual automobiles. But if our ridership goes up and the resources go down, we are going to see a system that gets less and less dependable, reliable, and effective, and we will lose not only a number of those riders but have incidents--as we have seen across the country--where there are significant safety concerns and significant disruptions. It has not been uncommon over the last several months here in Washington to hear on the radio that a whole subway line has gone down because of a maintenance problem or something else, and that day's workforce doesn't get to the office for 3 or 4 or 5 hours. Guess what. That costs a lot of private employers a great deal of money because the people aren't doing the work, and they probably would be paid. So essentially this impacts our economy, and it is multiplied. And it will be exponentially multiplied if we start cutting away the money, as suggested in the Budget Control Act. It is now time to work together and to enact first a clean CR, which will give us the time to systematically and comprehensively address the issues that are staring us straight in the face because of the BCA--the budget caps on Defense and nondefense. It is time to be able to move-- as I believe the vast majority of my colleagues want to--the excess OCO funding back into the regular budget of the Department of Defense as we raise the budget cap, and as we raise the budget cap for the Department of Defense, to recognize we have to raise the cap not only for other national security agencies to protect our country, but also for other agencies in order to invest in our economy, keep us productive, keep people employed, and also keep faith with the thousands and thousands of Americans who have worked and now may need help. There are seniors in need of rental assistance. They need the support of a good transit system to get to work or, if they are a senior citizen, to get to a doctor's appointment. They are counting on us. So I hope all my colleagues can come together, forge an agreement, avoid a shutdown, and then do something more than just keep the lights on--invest across the board in our people and watch those investments multiply to a productive, successful economy and a more secure America. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I recognize and pay tribute to GEN Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his lifetime of service to our country. His retirement marks more than 41 years of selfless devotion to our military and our Nation. A leader of exceptional character and consequence, his humility, courage, and expertise will be sorely missed. A New Jersey native and 1974 graduate of the United States Military Academy, General Dempsey was well prepared to lead our Armed Forces these last 4 years as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A career armor officer, he has commanded at every level, from platoon leader to combatant commander, and his assignments have carried him and his family across the United States and around the world. As a company grade officer, he served with the 2nd Cavalry in Europe and the 10th Cavalry at Fort Carson. Following troop command, he earned his masters of arts in English from Duke University and was assigned to the English Department at West Point. He subsequently earned additional advanced degrees from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the National War College. In 1991, General Dempsey deployed with the 3rd Armored Division in support of Operation Desert Storm. He later commanded a battalion in Germany and then served as the Army's ``senior scout'' as the 67th colonel of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment--the Brave Rifles--before reporting to the joint staff as an assistant deputy director in the J-5 and later as a special assistant to the 14th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 2003, General Dempsey commanded the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad and returned to Iraq in 2005 as the commanding general of the Multi-National Security Transition Command--Iraq. From 2007 to 2008, he was the deputy commander and then acting commander of U.S. Central Command, and from 2008 to 2011, he commanded U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Appointed to serve as the Army's 37th Chief of Staff, General Dempsey led his beloved Army a short 149 days before being tapped to serve as the 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that capacity and as the Nation's highest-ranking military officer, he has served as the principal military adviser to the President, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and this Congress these past 4 years. General Dempsey's exceptional ability to coordinate and build consensus among the office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the services, and the combatant commands has served us well and ensured those charged with civilian oversight of the military have received the best military advice possible to achieve our national objectives. Additionally, he has built trust and strengthened relations with both national and foreign leaders. During a period of complex and rapid global change, coupled with the military's exceptionally high operational tempo and unprecedented fiscal challenges, General Dempsey's decisive leadership enabled the success of military operations around the world. He masterfully guided the Joint Force to extraordinary execution of global responsibilities, from counterterrorism and crisis response, to supporting our allies, building partner capacity, and humanitarian assistance. His efforts strengthened key alliances, bolstered new partnerships, and more closely integrated the military with the other instruments of our national power against the many threats we face. Because of those many threats, General Dempsey's tenure as Chairman has been marked by significant transitions in military operations and personnel. His exemplary stewardship helped reset our forces after the conclusion of major combat operations and has prepared them for an increasingly dynamic and unpredictable security environment. His leadership was critical during the transition of authority to the Afghan National Security Forces following Operation Enduring Freedom. Additionally, in the fight against ISIL, his expert advice helped formulate the military component of a sustainable counter-ISIL strategy. He also guided the military's work as part of the U.S. interagency response to the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa. He guided the Joint Force to capitalize on the lessons learned over these past 14 years fighting as a Joint team, undertaking reforms that have driven ``jointness'' further into our military's capability development and operational planning. In addition, recognizing the shifting nature of the security environment and our ability to respond to it, General Dempsey led a paradigm shift in how we posture and employ this Joint team around the world. At the same time, the past few years have witnessed exponential growth of the cyber threat against our Nation, and, in response, General Dempsey has deftly pushed the expansion of our cyber capabilities. He has pressed hard for cyber legislation, championed the rapid development of our cyber forces, and implemented the Joint Information Environment to optimize and better defend our military's information technology infrastructure. These initiatives will be critical to the future security of our Nation. As principal steward of the military profession, he renewed an internal commitment to strengthen the profession of arms and reinvigorated education, training, and leader development. He managed historic decisions, including reforms to general and flag officer ethics, Department-wide improvements in sexual assault prevention and response, expansion of service opportunities for women, and the extension of benefits to same-sex spouses of uniformed servicemembers and Department of Defense civilian employees. His stewardship set conditions to preserve the strength of the all-volunteer force and to ensure servicemembers departing the military are successfully reintegrated back into their communities. As he retires, General Dempsey should take great pride in his role in ensuring our military remains the best supported, best trained, best equipped, and best led force on the planet. His contributions to our national security are a testament to his remarkable leadership and selfless dedication. During trying times, under sometimes harsh scrutiny and with high national security stakes at hand, his steadfast commitment to the readiness and welfare of Joint Force servicemembers and their families, as well as his exceptional support for commanders and their warfighting requirements, made significant and lasting contributions to our Nation. With over four decades of exemplary service to our Nation, General Dempsey and his family deserve our most heartfelt gratitude and admiration. He and Deanie have my very best wishes for a long, happy, and well-deserved retirement. Our Nation, our Joint Force, and our Army are all better for his leadership and distinguished service.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Madam President, I would like to echo the comments of the Democratic leader. As of today, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action goes into effect. As the leader said, it is also my assessment that this agreement is an enduring agreement that will extend beyond the end of the Obama administration. The leader cites a number of critical nonproliferation agreements that both Republican and Democratic administrations have agreed to over the decade and they have endured the test of time and change of administrations. Let's also remember that while this agreement's congressional review period is complete, there is much that needs to be done by Iran before any sanctions relief is provided to them. Iran must, as verified by the IAEA, demonstrate that it has implemented the necessary steps with respect to No. 1, the Arak heavy water research reactor; No. 2, its overall enrichment capacity; No. 3, its centrifuge research and development; No. 4, the Fordow fuel enrichment plant; No. 5, its uranium stocks and fuel; No. 6, its centrifuge manufacturing; No. 7, completing the modalities and facilities-specific arrangements to allow the IAEA to implement all transparency measures and the Additional Protocol and Modified Code 3.1; No. 8, its centrifuge component manufacturing transparency; and No. 9, addressing the past and present issues of concern relating to PMD. I also want to reiterate one point that I have made previously: while rejecting the resolution of disapproval and other similar efforts was important for the future of this deal, it is effective, unrelenting implementation of the JCPOA that will be the real test, and it is where I hope the critics of this agreement will focus their attention. Holding Iran's feet to the fire under this agreement is the critical piece at this point, and it is critical that both the President and the Congress ensure that efforts to monitor and sustain the provisions of the agreement are unstinting. This will demand constant attention and ample funding for an extended period. In this vein, I would note that the State Department has appointed Ambassador Stephen Mull as Lead Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation. Ambassador Mull is a professional with a long resume. I look forward to working with him moving forward. I thank the Democratic leader for his comments and I appreciate working with him and my colleagues as we look toward the implementation phase of this agreement--both in the near term and beyond January 2017.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, the vote the Senate will soon take on a resolution to disapprove the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, is both momentous and historic. I, along with my colleagues, have carefully and conscientiously reviewed this agreement. We have each applied our independent judgment as to whether or not it achieves the primary objectives the President set out in the negotiations when they began in November 2013--to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Since the conclusion of the negotiations, I have reviewed the text of the agreement, attended and participated in hearings of the Armed Services Committee and Banking Committee with government witnesses and nongovernment witnesses, received a series of classified briefings, and reached out to Rhode Islanders for their views. These venues--all of them--provided a full range of views and opinions and were critical in my review and decision with respect to the JCPOA. In my view, evaluating the JCPOA rests on three factors. The first is the sufficiency of the provisions to cut off all Iranian pathways to a nuclear weapon. The second is the ability to conscientiously and continuously monitor and verify adherence to these provisions. Finally, we have to evaluate whether this agreement will leave us in a better position than a rejection of the agreement. This last point of whether the agreement leaves us in a better position than rejecting it touches on two alternatives suggested by opponents of this agreement. The first suggested alternative is that there is a better agreement awaiting us if we simply reject the JCPOA and impose even more stringent sanctions. The second suggested alternative is that, without the JCPOA and with the possibility that an enhanced sanctions regime cannot be reconstituted, we can exercise a military option which will be more effective and less costly than following through with the JCPOA. For reasons I will discuss in detail in the course of my remarks today, the JCPOA, in my view, does provide adequate measures to interdict Iranian pathways to a nuclear weapon and an unprecedented monitoring and verification regime moving forward. In addition, our national intelligence means will provide further insights into Iranian activities. In this regard, we will be aided by many international partners whose intelligence activities are acutely focused on Iran. As such, I believe the JCPOA, if scrupulously implemented, will accomplish our objective of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and is a better option than the alternative suggested in lieu of the JCPOA. That is why I intend to support the agreement and will vote against the resolution of disapproval. To begin this discussion, I think it is important to recognize where we were when President Obama began his efforts to cut off all Iranian pathways to a nuclear weapon. Perhaps the most revealing description comes from Uzi Arad, who in 2009 was the National Security Advisor to newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Arad described Iran's nuclear capacity in an interview with Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper. In his words, ``The point of no-return was defined as the point at which Iran has the ability to complete the cycle of nuclear fuel production on its own; the point at which it has all the elements to produce fissionable material without dependency on the outsiders. Iran is now there.'' That was in 2009. This was the situation that confronted the President and the world in 2009. To glibly suggest today, as some do, that the international community could negotiate Iran back, after they pass the ``point of no return,'' to a position of ``no enrichment'' is to ignore the reality of Iranian efforts, particularly from the mid-2000s forward. For example, in 2006 the Iranians possessed fewer than 400 centrifuges in a research facility. By 2009 they had well over 8,000 centrifuges, together with the essential elements of a nuclear program, taking them beyond the ``point of no return,'' as indicated by Uzi Arad. Former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President George Herbert Walker Bush, GEN Colin Powell, recently made this point as well. He said that Iran has ``been on a superhighway for the last ten years to create a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program, with no speed limit.'' In a similar vein, Amos Yadlin, former head of the Israeli Defense Forces Military Intelligence Directorate and now director of the Institute for National Security Studies, made the point that any analysis or possible options regarding the Iranian nuclear program must begin with the recognition that they have already passed the ``point of no return.'' In his words, ``[t]he starting point for comparing the various scenarios is not one in which Iran has zero nuclear capabilities, but one in which Iran has been--however illegitimately--a nuclear threshold state since the beginning of the current decade.'' The Iranians advanced their nuclear program as the international community insisted on no enrichment but failed either through sanctions, negotiations, or other actions to significantly interrupt Iranian progress on its nuclear infrastructure or nuclear know-how. Instead, when the negotiations began under President Obama, Iran had already acquired approximately 19,000 centrifuges and other essential components of the nuclear program. Indeed, the administration's diplomatic effort to build an international coalition to give effect to the sanctions, which ultimately forced the Iranians to negotiate, was done with the P5+1's recognition that a ``no enrichment'' approach would not lead to negotiations. This was not a realistic option. With that prologue, let me now turn to the elements of the agreement that were critical to my judgment. In the area of cutting off pathways to provide nuclear material for nuclear weapons and Iran's enrichment capacity, this agreement accomplishes a key objective. It constrains and, through the interrelated verification measures, eliminates Iran's ability to produce either plutonium or uranium for a nuclear weapon. On the uranium pathway, the JCPOA requires Iran to cap its stockpile of low enriched uranium, LEU, to 300 kilograms over 15 years. Why is this significant? First, before November 2013 and the initiation of the interim agreement, Iran had more than 12,000 kilograms of LEU. If fully enriched, this is enough to make seven to eight nuclear weapons. Second, with this cap Iran will not have sufficient LEU in country to enrich and achieve the quantity necessary to produce a single weapon, even with additional enrichment. In other words, it will have to break a term of the agreement--the 300 kilogram cap of LEU--to have enough feedstock to further enrich and to make the quantity needed for even a single weapon. On the plutonium pathway, Iran has agreed to redesign and rebuild the heavy water research reactor in Arak. The redesigned and rebuilt reactor, the design of which must be approved by the P5+1, may only support nonmilitary nuclear research in radioisotope production. Why is this significant? Arak has been one of the most concerning elements of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons infrastructure, and this fundamental change to the reactor ensures Iran's plutonium pathway for a nuclear weapon is shut off. In an alternative scenario, if completed, the heavy water reactor at Arak could have been a proliferation risk of unmatched proportion within their program. It could have allowed Iran to take easily acquired natural uranium from the ground and, over a period of time and through a series of reprocessing steps, make weapons-grade plutonium without the need for centrifuges for enrichment. The elimination of this heavy water reactor, as the Iranians previously envisioned it, is enormously significant. Further, under the agreement, Iran will be forced to use its first generation centrifuge technology, known as IR-1s. This is a significant check on the program because these are Iran's most inefficient centrifuges. While Iran will be able to install more advanced centrifuges in the future, it will be required to abide by the enrichment plan submitted to the IAEA and to be consistent with the limitation inherent in the Additional Protocol. Also, it is significant that the P5+1 will have 10 years of evaluating, measuring, and assessing Iran's intentions to determine whether its plans and programs are indeed exclusively peaceful, as stated by the preamble to the JCPOA. More broadly, the agreement's research and development measures provide the international community with insight into Iran's nuclear program. This is a significant opportunity to gauge Iran's intentions and willingness to abide by and comply with its commitments. The JCPOA establishes limitations on advanced centrifuge research, development, testing and deployment in the first 10 years. After that period of time, the international community will continue to have a critical ``distrust-and-verify'' mechanism built into the program. Iran must abide by its enrichment and research and development plan and submit it to the IAEA. This plan is subject to all of the IAEA's inspection and monitoring tools. Furthermore, the JCPOA includes a permanent prohibition on Iran conducting research and development activities that could contribute to design and development of a nuclear explosive device. This significant prohibition goes well beyond the limitations of the non-nuclear weapons statement in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Taken together, closing off the pathways to a weapon and the constraints on enrichment and R&D, Iran's breakout time for a single nuclear weapon will remain at least 1 year for each of the first 10 years of this agreement and, critically, Iran's breakout time will remain longer than the two to three months it was in November of 2013. Before I move on to the next area of discussion, I acknowledge that legitimate concerns have been raised about Iranian activities after the first 10 years of the agreement, sometimes referred to as the ``out years.'' During this time, Iran's breakout time could shrink substantially. However, the initial 10 years of the JCPOA will be critical for the international community to measure and assess Iran's intentions. A recent analysis of the JCPOA by Robert Einhorn, a noted expert in nonproliferation and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is instructive in this area. In his words: If Iranian leaders . . . believed their national interests were best served by having nuclear weapons, they would run major risks in going forward, with no guarantee of success. Even in the `out years,' the JCPOA's rigorous monitoring arrangements will remain in force. The world will have gained intimate knowledge of Iran's nuclear program, which would give the United States prompt warning of any Iranian effort to make a dash for the bomb. In any case, the P5+1 must begin now to communicate its insistence that Iran operate consistent with a peaceful nuclear program after the initial 10-year period. The international community must convey in stark terms to the Iranians that a rapid buildup of enrichment capacity after 10 years, beyond what they need for their existing nuclear fuel cycle, will be considered an abandonment of the principles embodied in JCPOA, and that the P5+1 will need to evaluate alternative options. Now, if my colleagues will allow me to discuss the area of inspection, monitoring, and verification. For me, the agreement must be built on a principle of ``distrust and verify.'' Former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it nicely. He said: ``It's don't trust, never trust, and always verify.'' And the architecture our negotiators designed to verify compliance with this agreement took this approach and set new precedents in key areas: access, modern technological monitoring, and the requirement for affirmative approval for certain actions. Thus, this is a custom-built, rigorously ``red teamed'' verification regime that is more stringent than any other previously created. Specifically, the JCPOA does the following: Inspectors from the IAEA will have regular access to all of Iran's nuclear-related facilities. This includes Iran's two primary sites at Natanz and Fordow. Inspectors will have cradle-to-grave access to Iran's nuclear supply chain, including uranium mines, mills, and centrifuge production and storage facilities that support Iran's nuclear program for at least 10 years and in many cases longer. The verification regime established by this agreement has the effect of making the entire Iranian nuclear program auditable. This is a powerful tool that will make it possible for IAEA inspectors to know whether Iran is diverting material to a possible covert program. Iran has agreed to apply provisionally the IAEA's Additional Protocol. This Additional Protocol to the IAEA comprehensive safeguards agreement further augments the agency's ability to investigate suspected clandestine facilities and activities. Of great importance, this is an enduring requirement for Iran beyond the JCPOA's terms. A dedicated and exclusive procurement channel for Iran's nuclear program will be established to manage all purchases of the nuclear supplier group's ``trigger list'' and dual-use items. This additional step provides an intrusive authorization and transparency mechanism through which the IAEA can control what is coming into the country and gauge whether the requirement is consistent with the needs of the program and Iran's intentions. Any such procurement outside that channel would be a violation of the JCPOA. This agreement is often casually compared to the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea. Not only are there significant differences between the two, but provisions of the JCPOA were specifically written to provide more stringent verification based on the lessons from the 1994 agreement. One of the most significant differences was pointed out again by Robert Einhorn. As he indicated, a key weakness of the 1994 Agreed Framework was that ``it only provided for IAEA monitoring at the nuclear facility at Yongbyon. It did not provide for monitoring in the rest of the country because that was the only declared site.'' Under the JCPOA, Iran must implement and abide by the Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement under the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, an addendum that the IAEA designed to address the ability of a nation to covertly develop a nuclear weapons program, as Iraq did after the first Gulf War. The Additional Protocol applies to all facilities that take part in any element of the nuclear fuel cycle of a state. The JCPOA is significantly more stringent in this regard than the 1994 framework. More specifically, the Additional Protocol will allow IAEA inspectors access to suspected undeclared nuclear sites anywhere in the country so as to prevent Iran from conducting clandestine nuclear activity. If Iran does not provide access, it is in violation of the agreement and sanctions will be reimposed. Iran's compliance with the Additional Protocol in the years after the term of the JCPOA will continue to provide the IAEA with a powerful tool to conduct inspections of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Again, the creation of the Additional Protocol was in direct response to previous efforts to circumvent the IAEA's monitoring efforts in Iraq and North Korea. An additional element of the monitoring and compliance regime is the independent and unilateral role that the U.S. Intelligence Community and its intelligence liaison services will play in validating Iran's compliance or noncompliance. While we can never be certain that these intelligence efforts will provide a complete picture of all Iranian nuclear activities, they provide a critical assessment of Iran's compliance with the agreement, Iran's perceptions of the cost and benefits of compliance with the agreement, and key insights into the Iranian leadership's priorities for the program. As a member of both the Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence, these activities and insights will also serve as a critical tool for my colleagues and me to gauge the success or failure of this agreement. Over the course of the Armed Services Committee hearings, there was detailed questioning on several topics but one in particular: the 24- day period of time that Iran has available to it under the agreement to potentially delay access for IAEA inspectors to a facility suspected of prohibited activity. Secretary Moniz offered a helpful insight into this area. He said: The 24-day period is itself new in the sense there has never been any time limit in terms of access to undeclared sites. Again, to repeat, on nuclear materials we have very, very sensitive capabilities and historically those have been proved. But Secretary Moniz went on to speak candidly as he said: With regard to nonnuclear materials, it gets more difficult. However, when one has nuclear weapons specialized activity, such as explosively driven neutron initiators, we would not be without tools to detect activities in that kind of a time period. But clearly, as one gets farther and farther away into let's say, just conventional explosive testing, which is something militaries do normally, then it's a question of intelligence putting together the context for suspicious activities. But nuclear material, in the end, you need to do nuclear materials to get to the weapon and that's where we have extraordinary techniques. Now, critics of the agreement have said that this 24-day period of time is too long and offers Iran too much time to cover up its activities. As Secretary Moniz stated clearly, this is a possibility as it relates to certain non-nuclear activities. However, if Iran introduces fissile materials into these activities, Iran's ability to cover its tracks in 24 days is extremely unlikely. I also believe this part of the agreement is an area where Iran's intentions need to be subjected to constant questioning and evaluation. If Iran is challenging the IAEA inspectors at every turn, it should be interpreted as an indication of its intent with respect to the permanent commitment it made on the third page of the agreement: ``Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons.'' This is a strong restatement of its basic obligations as a non- nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A pattern of frustrating IAEA inspectors should be seen as a clear warning of possible reneging on this central commitment. Let me at this juncture discuss the duration of the agreement. Critics have made a variety of comments in this area of duration. Some argue that Iran can begin enriching beyond the low-enriched limit of 3.67 percent fissile uranium at year 16. That is true, but Iran could do that tomorrow without this agreement. Nevertheless, some argue that this agreement simply suspends Iran's program in place for a decade. In my view, this is not an accurate characterization as many of the access and verification elements of the agreement go well past 10 years or 15 years. Indeed, some are permanent. Iran's commitment under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and its Additional Protocol remain in place, and their compliance with it will be a key metric for the P5+1. Further, the international community's ability to impose sanctions always remains available. Now I want to address the area of possible military dimensions or PMD. Iran has agreed to address all the past and present outstanding PMD issues in a comprehensive and time-limited manner. This requirement is laid out clearly in paragraph 66 of Annex I of the JCPOA. It is further articulated in more detail in the IAEA's July 14, 2015, ``Road- map for the Clarification of Past & Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran's Nuclear Program.'' Resolving the issue of PMD is critical for a number of reasons. It is critical that the IAEA is able to complete its investigation of PMD and issue an independent assessment of any nuclear weapons-related work Iran has conducted in the past. The IAEA made clear in the Director General's November 2011 report on PMD that unanswered questions remain. The U.N. Security Council has endorsed and reinforced the requirement that Iran address these questions. Under the agreement, if Iran complies, the IAEA will again gain access to Parchin, and the IAEA will be provided the additional accesses to people, places, and other items it has requested. However, Iran gets nothing in the way of sanctions relief if it does not address these unanswered questions to the satisfaction of the IAEA. Some critics of the agreement have also suggested that IAEA has outsourced to Iran its inspection of Parchin, the most infamous of Iran's suspected facilities. I have been briefed extensively on this matter in a classified setting. Those briefings are consistent with the conclusion of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano. He has stated the agreement with the Iranians is, in his words, ``technically sound'' and does not--again in his words--``compromise [the IAEA's] safeguards standards in any way.'' Secretary Moniz has further assured me of this fact. We know the Iranians have repeatedly attempted to eradicate any sign of their activities at the Parchin site. Thus, it is unlikely that any significant PMD-related activities have occurred there in the last 4 years. We do not know what signs of past activities will remain at the site. Importantly, the IAEA will be able to confirm whether there is any ongoing nuclear-related activity at that location. Critics of the arrangement to inspect Parchin have also suggested that the IAEA has entered into a secret side deal with Iran. In fact, the United States and all the other NPT member countries--Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty countries--have confidential agreements with the IAEA which cannot be shared. These agreements vary by country, but they are designed to protect the integrity of the IAEA inspection process and the sensitive technical and design information about peaceful national nuclear programs. The IAEA and the Obama administration have taken extraordinary steps to brief Congress on this agreement in a classified setting. These briefings have been informative and helpful to understand more fully what we can expect in the months and years ahead. Now, I would like to discuss at this point the topic of the arms embargo and missile sanctions, which is part of this arrangement. Like many of my colleagues, I remain concerned about the elements of this agreement that relate to these issues. The inclusion of these provisions in the JCPOA is directly related to the fact that the United States secured these measures in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 to pressure Iran to address the international community's concerns with respect to its nuclear program. Since these sanctions were deemed by the P5+1 to be related to the nuclear program through the U.N. Resolution, they were within the ambit of sanctions relief. Nevertheless, moving forward, this is an area where the United States needs to leverage the available sanctions and additional tools under other U.N. Security Council resolutions to keep pressure on Iran. For example, other U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit Iranian transfers of arms to groups such as the Houthis in Yemen, nonstate actors in Lebanon, which includes Hezbollah, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Shi'a militias in Iraq, as well as North Korea, Libya, and several sub-Saharan states in Africa. This will mean the Treasury Department, the State Department, and the Intelligence Community must double their efforts to identify prohibited activities and build the international architecture necessary to counter it and deter them. It also means working with our partners on the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, to prevent the spread of critical missile technologies, and with our more than 100 partners under the Bush administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, to help limit Iranian missile-related imports or exports. It may also mean what former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns recently suggested to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is that we will need to, in his words, ``reconstitute a coalition of sanctions countries against Iran five years from now on conventional weapons, eight years from now on ballistic missiles.'' I believe the next 5 years will provide the international community a critical measuring stick for Iranian intentions, and we must be prepared to lead efforts to preclude Iran from obtaining enhanced military technologies. Now, a bulk of the work that will be done and will be so central to our efforts will be done by the IAEA. The IAEA will be responsible for carrying on the ground the implementation of this agreement on behalf of the P5+1. While critics of the agreement are quick to call into question the technical expertise and skills of the IAEA, it is comprised of individuals with extensive training and experience and a deep commitment to the importance of nonproliferation work. A recent study by Tom Shea, a noted safeguards expert with experience at the IAEA and in the laboratory community, concludes: The IAEA's capabilities have been extended, strengthened and refined over the years in response to real-world proliferation cases in Iraq and North Korea. Its current capacity reflects the international community's decades-long investment in the organization, and the continuing commitment of states around the world to its mission. I would also note that upwards of 200 IAEA technical experts will be devoted to implementing this agreement. This number far exceeds any number of experts and inspectors devoted to any one country by the IAEA. Allow me now to focus on the area of sanctions and our ability to reapply them. First, it is critical that we remember Iran will receive no new sanctions relief if it does not complete its nuclear commitments and the IAEA's inspectors verify those steps. Let me be specific here. Prior to granting any further sanctions relief, Iran must, as verified by the IAEA, demonstrate that it has implemented the necessary steps with respect to, No. 1, the Arak heavy water research reactor; No. 2, its overall enrichment capacity; No. 3, its centrifuge research and development; No. 4, the Fordow fuel enrichment plant; No. 5, its uranium stocks and fuel; No. 6, its centrifuge manufacturing; No. 7, completing the modalities and facilities-specific arrangements to allow the IAEA to implement all transparency measures and the Additional Protocol and Modified Code 3.1; No. 8, its centrifuge component manufacturing transparency; and, No. 9, addressing the past and present issues of concern relating to PMD. This means that Iran must take significant steps to roll back and freeze its nuclear program before it gets anything in the way of sanctions relief. In testimony before the Senate banking committee, Adam Szubin, the acting Under Secretary of Treasury said: We expect that [process] to take at least six to nine months. Until Iran completes those steps, we are simply extending the limited relief that has been in place the last year and a half under the Joint Plan of Action. There will not be a cent of new sanctions relief. Moreover, while the President will waive the application of the nuclear-related sanctions under the terms of the JCPOA, the U.S. sanctions, which include the Central Bank and other financial sanctions, will remain available until Congress acts to terminate them. This will allow Congress to monitor an extended period of Iran's compliance before taking any such action. This also gives the President a strong hand because the ability to quickly snap back nuclear-related sanctions means that we can again shut off, to a substantial degree, Iran's access to the international financial system, to international markets, and to international financing that relies on access to the U.S. banking system. It is important to note that this agreement does not take away the tools available to the President to target sanctions against Iran's violation of human rights or to damage Iran's ability to finance terrorism. U.S. secondary sanctions remain in place. As Richard Nephew, a fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee, under the agreement: [The] United States will still be able to pressure banks and companies into not doing business with the IRGC, the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, and Iran's military and missile forces. This is both due to direct risk of U.S. secondary sanctions, which remain in place, and an improvement in international banking practices since 9/11. These secondary sanctions are not insignificant tools, and our use of them in response to human rights violators and terrorism are not a violation of the agreement. As Under Secretary Szubin recently told the Senate banking committee on the matter of terrorism sanctions: [O]ne of the most powerful [tools] . . . is that when we sanction Iranian terrorist supporters, our designation is amplified internationally. What I mean by that is, when we name a Hezbollah financier, a Hezbollah money launderer, any bank worldwide, not just American banks, any bank worldwide that facilitates transactions for that designated entity faces very severe sanctions from the U.S., sanctions that no bank wants to face. Under Secretary Szubin has also indicated that the United States will do more in the area of terrorism-related sanctions. Should Iran decide to continue its destabilizing actions in the region, increasing the cost in this area will be critical, so it is important to note the administration's willingness to ramp up pressure in the face of such conduct by the Iranians. Particular attention has rightly been paid to the amount of sanctions relief Iran will receive and Iran's likely use of that sanctions relief. This is an important issue. While we do not know what Iran will do with it, we do know a couple of things. First, the amount of sanction relief is not $100 or $150 billion as some critics of the deal have suggested. According to the Treasury Department, the number is between $50 and $60 billion. While this number is significant, it is one-third of what many critics have asserted. Second, it is likely that Iran will invest a portion of this money into its economy to address the concerns of its people and to begin to recover from the international sanctions regime, but it may also invest in its financing of terrorism across the region. General Dempsey has rightly suggested, ``[t]he answer is probably a little bit of both.'' What we will need to do is monitor closely, particularly via our Intelligence Community, where Iran is making its investments and actively counter those maligned activities. Now, I believe the JCPOA is the best option available to us right now. Critics recommend rejecting the JCPOA and advocating a regime of new and increasingly crippling sanctions that are more effective to ensuring Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. It is my view that this alternative is not feasible at this time and may, indeed, be counterproductive. Moreover, the options for enhanced sanctions and even military operations remain available to the United States and our P5+1 partners should Iran at any time fail to comply with the JCPOA. Indeed, noncompliance would be more likely to find an international commitment for aggressive action than a rejection of the JCPOA. Such a rejection could give the Iranians the opening to argue that it can resume all of its existing activities prior to the interim agreement and insist that international sanctions have been nullified by our rejection of the JCPOA. If the United States were now to say ``this deal is not good enough,'' it would likely have the immediate effect of alienating us from our partners and, therefore, empowering Iran. Iran would seize this opening to drive a wedge between us and our European allies, as well as Russia and China. Such an action by the United States would play right into the hands of Iran, both in terms of the viability of the multilateral sanctions regime and in terms of the obligations it has already agreed to take under this agreement. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the United States can break, at this juncture, with its most critical economic partners on the Iran nuclear program and then secure more stringent sanctions. Another complicating factor in this scenario is the outcome for the hardliners in Iran. Undoubtedly, their narrative can gain additional traction in Tehran and they may be able to seize an even greater amount of power and influence. This makes the ``more sanctions'' approach more concerning because it could produce the unintended consequence of empowering the most strident elements in Iran. The second most common option discussed by critics of this agreement is the military option. In this regard, it is critical that we understand some points up front. Unless we are prepared to invade and occupy Iran, executing a military option to destroy the nuclear infrastructure will only delay Iran's nuclear program. It will not bomb away Iran's knowledge, and it will empower significantly the hardliners in Iran who are committed to developing a nuclear weapon. They will likely disperse and disguise their activities so that military strikes are increasingly ineffective and produce significant collateral damage, which will be exploited by the Iranians for propaganda purposes. On this issue of delay, General Dempsey provided two important insights. First, in response to a question asking for his military assessment on what is more effective in delaying or stopping the Iranian nuclear program at this time or in the near future, a military strike or this P5+1 agreement, he said: First . . . I would like to point out that the military options remain. Secondly, I think a negotiated settlement provides a more durable--and reduces near term risk, which buys time to work with regional partners to address the other malign activities. He also said: Our government's policy has been they will not get a nuclear weapon and nothing we're talking about here today should change that policy. This agreement does not change that longstanding and clearly articulated U.S. policy. I also agree with the assessment of former Senators John Warner and Carl Levin--both of whom served terms as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee--that a vote against this deal is a vote to undermine the deterrent value and credibility of our military option. Closer examination of the military option raises the critical question of our objective if we were to use force--to delay the nuclear program or to overthrow the regime so as to eliminate the nuclear threat? In either case, a daunting scenario emerges. As previously discussed, if our focus is limited only to Iran's nuclear program, the United States--likely alone or nearly alone--will need to conduct a similar option every few years, as the Iranians will undoubtedly make their nuclear program an operation that is conducted in smaller and more numerous locations in areas that are increasingly difficult to locate and deeper in the ground or masked by civilian activities in populated areas. If we conduct such targeted strikes, analysts suggest that the Iranians will respond. Such responses could include attacks against U.S. forces in the gulf region and Afghanistan; attacks against Israel by Iran's most capable proxy, Hezbollah; attacks against our partners in the GCC; attacks against the region's energy infrastructure; or a combination of all of the above. Along with the significant economic consequences, the loss of personnel and resource drain on our Nation's military could be severe. Ironically, an additional consequence would be a shift in resources away from the campaign against the Islamic State in the Levant--or ISIL--particularly in Iraq, and our ongoing efforts to consolidate the international community's gains in Afghanistan. On the other hand, if our military objective was regime change, I would first remind my colleagues of the Iraq war and all of the implications that exercising that military option had on the region. In 2012, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution wrote: An occupation of Iran would require up to one million U.S. and other foreign troops over an extended time and, hence, would indeed be implausible. But an invasion, with the single goal of deposing the government, could be considered a possibility under extreme circumstances--if for example there were unmistakable evidence that Iran's current government was preparing a major attack on Israel, or if it responded to any U.S. ``surgical'' air campaign with an all-out global terrorist response, using Hezbollah and various elements of its security apparatus. Although Michael O'Hanlon makes a distinction between an ``occupation'' and an ``invasion,'' our experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan should demonstrate that the deployment of ground forces to effect regime change is unlikely to produce a quick exit, so we must be prepared for his ``implausible''--an expensive occupation with a million military personnel on the ground. Thus, as some observers continue to discuss the military option regardless of the scope and intent of it, I would urge them to ensure that their analysis goes beyond the first day, first month, or first 6 months of conflict and rather considers the first year, first 5 years, and first decade of conflict. Our Nation has seen the great cost of war over the past 15 years. This agreement retains the military options for the Commander in Chief and at the same time establishes an arrangement with the Iranians that allows us to test vigorously and monitor invasively the intentions of the Iranian regime's nuclear program. This is one major reason at this point that the JCPOA is the most compelling option. A number of noted national security experts and a number of my colleagues and Americans have discussed the importance of ensuring Iran is not only constrained with respect to its nuclear program but also with respect to its regional hegemonic aspirations and its support directly and indirectly of terrorism. These negotiations did not cover other hostile, objectionable actions by Iran--namely, its support of terrorism, its destabilizing activities across the region, its abuse of its own people, and ongoing detention of American citizens. We cannot condone or ignore these critical issues, and they all must be addressed. But absent implementation of this agreement, the threats posed by Iran would likely be amplified as it returns to deliberate and focused efforts to build a nuclear infrastructure. The choice before us under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act is exclusively on the nuclear dimension. But without the JCPOA, I suspect the Iranian nuclear challenge will grow quickly, adding further menace to their regional aspirations and their support of terrorism. Critically, any of these other objectionable Iranian behaviors would be far more dangerous if Iran acquired nuclear weapons. As I said earlier, I evaluate this agreement with great skepticism. Iran is a major sponsor of terrorism and a leader in other destabilizing activities across the Middle East. As I mentioned previously, though, the negotiations to secure this agreement were not focused on Iran's support of terrorism. This matter remains outstanding, and charting a pragmatic and implemen- table strategy to counter it is critical to U.S. national security interests. More broadly, however, these negotiations are not without precedent. During the Cold War, we negotiated with the Soviets despite their persistent destabilizing activities in many parts of the world. In fact, President Nixon was still in negotiation with the Soviets even while they still supported the North Vietnamese. Graham Allison, a noted nonproliferation expert at Harvard's Belfer Center, noted in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently that ``claims that the U.S. cannot reach advantageous agreements to constrain nuclear arms with states we are seeking to contain, or subvert, or even overthrow . . . are . . . wrong. [The Reagan] administration's core national security strategy for competition with the Soviet Union . . . states that `U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union will consist of three elements: external resistance to Soviet imperialism; internal pressure on the USSR to weaken the sources of Soviet imperialism;' and `engaging the Soviet Union in negotiations to attempt to reach agreements which protect and enhance U.S. interests and which are consistent with the principle of strict reciprocity and mutual interest.' '' Even with the JCPOA, I do not suspect that the Iranian support for their proxies will automatically abate under this agreement, and I do not think this agreement is a forcing mechanism for modifying Iranian behavior in the region. I do, however, think this agreement takes the near-term scenario of a nuclear-armed Iran bent on supporting its proxies in the Middle East off the table. And I believe it is for the time being sensible for the United States and our partners to take stock of Iran's willingness to comply with this agreement; monitor its activities closely in the region to see if they increase, decrease, or remain the same; and, in parallel, work with our regional partners to counter Iran's asymmetric threats. On the matter of our regional partners in the Middle East, I see two critical matters that must be addressed. First, our partners in Israel rightly see Iran as a significant and ongoing threat to their national security. It is incumbent upon the United States to better understand the concerns of the Israelis with respect to their gaps in addressing the Iranian problem set and to identify areas of cooperation on military and intelligence matters that address these gaps and maintain their qualitative military edge at all times. Second, it is also critical that our partners and allies know that the United States will not abandon the region in the wake of this agreement. This message is critical for all of our partners to hear and understand. The May 2015 joint statement following the United States and Gulf Cooperation Council meeting at Camp David provided a roadmap for how the administration intends to proceed. The joint statement indicates that the United States will be increasing training and exercise engagements with GCC special operation forces elements so as to better enable our partners to confront Iran's asymmetric capabilities, as well as enhancing the ballistic missile defense capabilities of the GCC and improving their interoperability to increase collective defense in order to counter Iran's support of terrorist proxies. These are important and essential efforts that will consume significant time and effort in the Middle East, and it will be critical that we ensure that they are resourced appropriately. The added benefit of these activities is that they will provide the U.S. military with additional access and capabilities in the region to ensure that the military option remains credible to the Iranians and available to the President. Mr. President, I approached this vote with deep suspicion regarding Iran, and I see the agreement for what it is--a combination of opportunities and risks. I believe these negotiations were necessarily focused on denying Iran a pathway to a nuclear weapon. A nuclear-armed Iran would be a formidable force in the Middle East and, as it has repeatedly demonstrated, not a force for peace and stability. Moreover, a nuclear-armed Iran would likely prompt a nuclear arms race in the region that through accident or design could lead to catastrophe. This agreement provides a framework to close off Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon. Rejecting the resolution of disapproval is vitally important, but effective, unrelenting implementation of the JCPOA will be the real test. As such, it is critical that both the President and the Congress exert every effort to ensure that there are unstinting efforts to monitor and sustain the provisions of the agreement. This effort demands constant attention and ample--more than ample funding for the indefinite future. As Gen. Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to President George Herbert Walker Bush, recently stated in a Washington Post op-ed supporting the agreement: Implementation and verification will be the key to success, and Congress has an important role. It should ensure that the [IAEA], other relevant bodies and U.S. intelligence agencies have all the resources necessary to facilitate inspection and monitor compliance. I believe General Scowcroft is correct. Iranian compliance and the implementation phase of this agreement is critical no matter how you vote on the resolution of disapproval. It is also important that we ensure that the administration is able to follow through on the commitments they have made to our allies and partners in the Middle East, especially to the State of Israel. Again, General Scowcroft makes an excellent point. The United States must work, in his words, ``closely with the GCC and other allies to moderate Iranian behavior in the region, countering it where necessary.'' Absent support and resourcing for the implementation phase of this agreement, these efforts may not happen and our efforts to reassure our partners in the region may fail. Soon, this debate will be over. I believe sustaining the JCPOA will leave us in a strong position to counter potential Iranian proliferation. But regardless of the outcome of this debate, we must not relax our efforts in countering Iranian nuclear aspirations, regional aggression, and the sponsorship of terrorism. I believe the JCPOA will give us valuable tools to monitor and interdict their pathways to a nuclear weapon, but it will require day-to-day surveillance and, where necessary, intervention to increase our chances of success. In many respects, we are at a moment that recalls the emotional words of Winston Churchill: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. We have concluded an agreement that dramatically constrains Iran's nuclear ambitions. Now the hard work begins each day to ensure that our aspirations become real. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing legislation that extends the time period the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, would have to seek civil monetary penalties for securities law violations. This legislation continues to be necessary in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Gabelli v. SEC in which the Court held that the 5 year clock to take action aginst wrongdoing starts when the fraud occurs, not when it is discovered. Unfortunately, Gabelli has made it more difficult for the SEC to protect investors by shortening the amount of time that the SEC has to investigate and pursue securities law violations. Financial fraud has evolved considerably over the years and now often consists of multiple parties, complex financial products, and elaborate transactions that are executed in a variety of securities markets, both domestic and foreign. As a result, the evidence of wrongdoing needed to initiate an action may go undetected for years. Securities law violators may simply run out the clock, now with greater ease in the aftermath of Gabelli. Couple this with the reality that while we have given the SEC even greater responsibilities, Congress, despite my ongoing efforts to urge otherwise, has not provided the agency with all the resources necessary to carry out its duties. To give an example of the impact of this resource shortfall, SEC Chair White on May 5, 2015, before the Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee testified that ``even with the SEC's efficient use of limited resources to improve its risk assessment capabilities and focus its examination staff on areas posing the greatest risk to investors--efforts that helped to increase the number of investment adviser examinations approximately 20 percent from fiscal year 2013--the SEC was only able to examine 10 percent of registered investment advisers in fiscal year 2014. A rate of adviser examination coverage at that level presents a high risk to the investing public.'' This legislation would address some of these challenges by giving the SEC the breathing room it needs to better protect our markets and investors. Specifically, this bill extends the time period the SEC has to seek civil monetary penalties from five years to ten years, thereby strengthening the integrity of our markets, better protecting investors, and empowering the SEC to investigate and pursue more securities law violators, particularly those most sophisticated at evading detection. In addition, the bill would align the SEC's statute of limitations with the limitations period applicable to complex civil financial fraud actions initiated pursuant to the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989, FIRREA. For more than 20 years, the Department of Justice, DOJ, has benefited from FIRREA, which allows the DOJ to seek civil penalties within a 10-year time period against persons who have committed fraud against financial institutions. The SEC, which pursues similarly complex financial fraud cases, should have the same time necessary to bring wrongdoers that violate the securities laws to justice. I thank Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America, and Americans for Financial Reform for their support, and I urge my colleagues to join Senator Shaheen and me in supporting this legislation.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing legislation that extends the time period the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, would have to seek civil monetary penalties for securities law violations. This legislation continues to be necessary in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Gabelli v. SEC in which the Court held that the 5 year clock to take action aginst wrongdoing starts when the fraud occurs, not when it is discovered. Unfortunately, Gabelli has made it more difficult for the SEC to protect investors by shortening the amount of time that the SEC has to investigate and pursue securities law violations. Financial fraud has evolved considerably over the years and now often consists of multiple parties, complex financial products, and elaborate transactions that are executed in a variety of securities markets, both domestic and foreign. As a result, the evidence of wrongdoing needed to initiate an action may go undetected for years. Securities law violators may simply run out the clock, now with greater ease in the aftermath of Gabelli. Couple this with the reality that while we have given the SEC even greater responsibilities, Congress, despite my ongoing efforts to urge otherwise, has not provided the agency with all the resources necessary to carry out its duties. To give an example of the impact of this resource shortfall, SEC Chair White on May 5, 2015, before the Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee testified that ``even with the SEC's efficient use of limited resources to improve its risk assessment capabilities and focus its examination staff on areas posing the greatest risk to investors--efforts that helped to increase the number of investment adviser examinations approximately 20 percent from fiscal year 2013--the SEC was only able to examine 10 percent of registered investment advisers in fiscal year 2014. A rate of adviser examination coverage at that level presents a high risk to the investing public.'' This legislation would address some of these challenges by giving the SEC the breathing room it needs to better protect our markets and investors. Specifically, this bill extends the time period the SEC has to seek civil monetary penalties from five years to ten years, thereby strengthening the integrity of our markets, better protecting investors, and empowering the SEC to investigate and pursue more securities law violators, particularly those most sophisticated at evading detection. In addition, the bill would align the SEC's statute of limitations with the limitations period applicable to complex civil financial fraud actions initiated pursuant to the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989, FIRREA. For more than 20 years, the Department of Justice, DOJ, has benefited from FIRREA, which allows the DOJ to seek civil penalties within a 10-year time period against persons who have committed fraud against financial institutions. The SEC, which pursues similarly complex financial fraud cases, should have the same time necessary to bring wrongdoers that violate the securities laws to justice. I thank Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America, and Americans for Financial Reform for their support, and I urge my colleagues to join Senator Shaheen and me in supporting this legislation.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Layoff Prevention Extension Act. This bill would extend the financing and grant provisions for the successful work sharing legislation I authored and worked to include in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. The concept of work sharing is simple. It helps people who are currently employed, but in danger of being laid off, to keep their jobs. By giving struggling companies the flexibility to reduce hours instead of their workforce, work sharing programs prevent layoffs and help employers save money on rehiring costs. Employees who participate in work sharing keep their jobs and receive a portion of unemployment insurance benefits to make up for lost wages. Since becoming law, work sharing has helped save over 110,000 jobs, including 1,200 jobs in my State of Rhode Island, according to estimates from the Department of Labor. And it has saved States $225 million by reimbursing them for work sharing benefits they paid out to workers--benefits that helped keep people on the job. Before my bill became law in 2012, only a handful of States had work sharing programs. Now, these programs enjoy broad bipartisan support and have been established in 29 States and the District of Columbia. However, the $100 million in implementation grants expired at the end of 2014, and the 100 percent Federal financing of these work sharing benefits will expire next month. The legislation I am introducing today would extend these deadlines by 2 years so that states with existing work sharing programs, and those that are looking to enact a program, can qualify for Federal support. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting passage of this bill to keep American workers on the job, save taxpayers money, and provide employers with a practical, positive, and cost-effective alternative to layoffs.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Layoff Prevention Extension Act. This bill would extend the financing and grant provisions for the successful work sharing legislation I authored and worked to include in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. The concept of work sharing is simple. It helps people who are currently employed, but in danger of being laid off, to keep their jobs. By giving struggling companies the flexibility to reduce hours instead of their workforce, work sharing programs prevent layoffs and help employers save money on rehiring costs. Employees who participate in work sharing keep their jobs and receive a portion of unemployment insurance benefits to make up for lost wages. Since becoming law, work sharing has helped save over 110,000 jobs, including 1,200 jobs in my State of Rhode Island, according to estimates from the Department of Labor. And it has saved States $225 million by reimbursing them for work sharing benefits they paid out to workers--benefits that helped keep people on the job. Before my bill became law in 2012, only a handful of States had work sharing programs. Now, these programs enjoy broad bipartisan support and have been established in 29 States and the District of Columbia. However, the $100 million in implementation grants expired at the end of 2014, and the 100 percent Federal financing of these work sharing benefits will expire next month. The legislation I am introducing today would extend these deadlines by 2 years so that states with existing work sharing programs, and those that are looking to enact a program, can qualify for Federal support. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting passage of this bill to keep American workers on the job, save taxpayers money, and provide employers with a practical, positive, and cost-effective alternative to layoffs.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senator Capito in the introduction of the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research, STAR, Act of 2015. This legislation is an extension of ongoing bipartisan efforts in the Senate over the past decade to get us closer to the goal of hopefully one day curing cancers in children, adolescents, and young adults. Representatives McCaul, Van Hollen, and Speier are introducing the companion legislation in the other body. I first started working on this issue after meeting the Haight family from Warwick, RI, in June of 2004. Nancy and Vincent lost their son, Ben, when he was just 9 years old to neuroblastoma, a very aggressive tumor in the brain. The heart-wrenching story of Ben Haight highlights the importance of this legislation. It is my hope that one day Ben's story, and thousands of other children like him, will be one of survival. With the strong support of families like the Haights for increased research into the causes of childhood cancers and improved treatment options, I introduced bipartisan legislation that eventually was signed into law in 2008 as the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act. This was an important step. Yet, more work remains. With the STAR Act, we would take the next needed steps to advance pediatric cancer research and child-focused cancer treatments, while also improving childhood cancer surveillance and providing resources for survivors and those impacted by childhood cancer. If a treatment is working, doctors elsewhere should know immediately. The same should happen if a treatment isn't working, or if other major medical events occur during the course of a particular treatment. It is critical that doctors, nurses, and other providers are able to effectively communicate information about the disease, the treatment process, and what other health and development impacts children can expect to experience. As such, the STAR Act reauthorizes the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act to help create a comprehensive children's cancer biorepository for researchers to use in searching for biospecimens to study and would improve surveillance of childhood cancer cases. Additionally, this legislation includes provisions dealing with issues that arise for survivors of childhood cancer. Unfortunately, even after beating cancer, as many as two-thirds of childhood cancer survivors are likely to experience at least one late effect of treatment; as many as one-fourth experience a late effect that is serious or life-threatening, including second cancers and organ damage. We must do more to ensure that children survive cancer and any late effects so they can live a long, healthy, and productive life. This legislation would enhance research on the late effects of childhood cancers, improve collaboration among providers so that doctors are better able to care for this population as they age, and establish a new pilot program to begin to explore improved models of care for childhood cancer survivors. This legislation also provides some clarity for patients and their physicians attempting to access new drugs and therapies from pharmaceutical companies. When a patient has run out of other options, the last thing they and their families need is to spend months being given the run-around trying to access a potential treatment. Lastly, this bill will ensure more pediatric expertise at the National Institutes of Health to better leverage the research investment to improve pediatric cancer research by requiring the inclusion of at least one pediatric oncologist on the National Cancer Advisory Board and improving childhood health reporting requirements to include pediatric cancer. I am pleased that the Childhood Cancer STAR Act has the support of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, St. Baldrick's Foundation, and Children's Oncology Group, among others. I look forward to working with these and other stakeholders, as well as Senator Capito to urge the rest of our colleagues to join us in supporting this crucial legislation.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, let me begin by commending Senator Collins and Senator Murray for their extraordinary leadership on this TIGER program in particular but in so many different aspects, particularly with respect to transportation policy. They have done an extraordinary job, and today is no exception. I am delighted to be able to join them on their amendment to increase resources for TIGER grants. I am disappointed, as are my colleagues, that this is merely, in some respects, a discussion amendment--we can't bring it up for a vote-- because I think this is an effort, as Senator Collins pointed out, that would be supported strongly by both sides of the aisle. Since 2009, the TIGER program has helped State and local governments make critical investments in their infrastructure all across this country. In many respects, it is the final piece of a puzzle of how we get needed, necessary infrastructure in place. It has been that catalyst that has brought private funds and State funds and local funds together to accomplish something that makes sense to our economy and to the efficiency and productivity of our States. TIGER is able to leverage additional resources. It is a program that has been wildly popular to construct roads and bridges, public transit, ports, and passenger and freight railroads. It is very flexible. Its flexibility, its adaptability, and its ability to coalesce other resources has been remarkable. As a result, it has been extraordinarily popular. Through the TIGER program, the U.S. Department of Transportation has supported more than 340 different projects in all 50 States and in the District of Columbia. These projects have improved safety, they have connected workers to jobs, and they have supported economic development. By the way, they put people to work right away in an economy that needs people to be working right now. As Senator Collins pointed out, the demand has far outstripped the resources: 6,700 applications for the roughly 300 grants. We can do more. The appetite is there, the need is there, and the competitive process ensures that these needed resources are targeted to extraordinarily important programs. So for many of these reasons this is one of those programs that is just win-win-win. Unfortunately, we cannot bring it forward on this legislation. This funding is absolutely necessary. I have seen in my home State of Rhode Island that without the TIGER grant we would not have been able to jump-start a project which is the Interstate 95 viaduct. It sounds interesting, but it is actually critical. It is the center of I-95 in Providence, RI, which is the major north-south highway in New England. If this viaduct project could not be funded, then essentially there would be a roadblock on I-95. TIGER has helped this project move forward. We have to do more, but it has helped to move this project forward. It has helped ports in Providence and at Quonset Point. All of these are so necessary because they improve our economic competitiveness globally, regionally, nationally; they put people to work, and they prepare us for much more complicated issues in the world economy. As I said before, we are all disappointed that because of this process we can't have a debate and have a vote. We are also disappointed because we bypassed in this process the committees that typically do these things--the Banking Committee for transit, the Finance Committee for the pay-fors for this legislation. Again, I am disappointed we could not have done it the old fashioned way, through the committees and bring it to the floor. If we had that approach, we could have improved the offsets that we are using to pay for these programs. We could have considered amendments like this. We could have done a lot of things. Now we all have additional amendments that we are filing, but we won't be able to take them up. I have got one in terms of pay-fors that would produce $55 billion over 10 years--robust funding for a score of highway programs--and it is by capping the deduction of publicly traded corporations for employee salaries over $1 million. I think most Americans would say if someone is getting over $1 million we shouldn't be subsidizing that with tax reimbursement. They very well may be worth that money, but that is a judgment the corporation should make, and if they think it is worthwhile, they are the ones who should put the money up, not with a subsidy from the tax code. That is just an example of some of the ways we could generate real resources. Again, let me say how strongly I support this amendment, how much we really owe the determination, the vision, and the thoughtfulness of Senator Collins and Senator Murray. I must also thank Senator Inhofe and Senator Boxer for their work on getting us at least this far. We have got to go further, but they have got us at least this far. It looks as if, given that the House is leaving, this bill will not be enacted this week. Certainly, we have got a template which I hope we can improve on as we spend the few months' extension that will be the ultimate result of this week. In that time I think one of the measures that will be improved is the TIGER program and other things that we can and must do. Let me conclude where I began and thank very sincerely Senator Collins and Senator Murray. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senator Capito in the introduction of the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research, STAR, Act of 2015. This legislation is an extension of ongoing bipartisan efforts in the Senate over the past decade to get us closer to the goal of hopefully one day curing cancers in children, adolescents, and young adults. Representatives McCaul, Van Hollen, and Speier are introducing the companion legislation in the other body. I first started working on this issue after meeting the Haight family from Warwick, RI, in June of 2004. Nancy and Vincent lost their son, Ben, when he was just 9 years old to neuroblastoma, a very aggressive tumor in the brain. The heart-wrenching story of Ben Haight highlights the importance of this legislation. It is my hope that one day Ben's story, and thousands of other children like him, will be one of survival. With the strong support of families like the Haights for increased research into the causes of childhood cancers and improved treatment options, I introduced bipartisan legislation that eventually was signed into law in 2008 as the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act. This was an important step. Yet, more work remains. With the STAR Act, we would take the next needed steps to advance pediatric cancer research and child-focused cancer treatments, while also improving childhood cancer surveillance and providing resources for survivors and those impacted by childhood cancer. If a treatment is working, doctors elsewhere should know immediately. The same should happen if a treatment isn't working, or if other major medical events occur during the course of a particular treatment. It is critical that doctors, nurses, and other providers are able to effectively communicate information about the disease, the treatment process, and what other health and development impacts children can expect to experience. As such, the STAR Act reauthorizes the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act to help create a comprehensive children's cancer biorepository for researchers to use in searching for biospecimens to study and would improve surveillance of childhood cancer cases. Additionally, this legislation includes provisions dealing with issues that arise for survivors of childhood cancer. Unfortunately, even after beating cancer, as many as two-thirds of childhood cancer survivors are likely to experience at least one late effect of treatment; as many as one-fourth experience a late effect that is serious or life-threatening, including second cancers and organ damage. We must do more to ensure that children survive cancer and any late effects so they can live a long, healthy, and productive life. This legislation would enhance research on the late effects of childhood cancers, improve collaboration among providers so that doctors are better able to care for this population as they age, and establish a new pilot program to begin to explore improved models of care for childhood cancer survivors. This legislation also provides some clarity for patients and their physicians attempting to access new drugs and therapies from pharmaceutical companies. When a patient has run out of other options, the last thing they and their families need is to spend months being given the run-around trying to access a potential treatment. Lastly, this bill will ensure more pediatric expertise at the National Institutes of Health to better leverage the research investment to improve pediatric cancer research by requiring the inclusion of at least one pediatric oncologist on the National Cancer Advisory Board and improving childhood health reporting requirements to include pediatric cancer. I am pleased that the Childhood Cancer STAR Act has the support of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, St. Baldrick's Foundation, and Children's Oncology Group, among others. I look forward to working with these and other stakeholders, as well as Senator Capito to urge the rest of our colleagues to join us in supporting this crucial legislation.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I urge all my colleagues to vote yes on the Kirk-Reed-Baldwin-Brown amendment. Essentially, in this legislation--and I commend the chairman and the ranking member for all the work they have done--they have established lofty goals, but without adequate resources, all of our students cannot succeed. This amendment encourages the States to develop and report on measures of access to critical education resources; identify disparities in districts' access to those resources; develop plans with school districts to address these disparities; and include the Opportunity Dashboard of Core Resources on the State report card. Again, it is a very simple concept. Lofty goals without adequate resources will not give opportunities to American students. We hope this will help provide equitable access to critical resources.