Brian Schatz

Mr. SCHATZ

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, this morning the FAA grounded planes at LaGuardia Airport, averaging more than 1,000 flights a day. They made this decision because of a shortage in air traffic control staff, who are not being paid because the President fulfilled his promise to shut down the government 35 days ago. The FAA's website crashed as people looked for information. Stocks for airlines took a hit, and air traffic in other airports, including Philadelphia and Newark, were delayed because of staffing shortages. We will continue to see the ripple effects of this today. It is not like if travel in and out of LaGuardia is disrupted, it will be business as usual at other airports. More flights will be delayed. LaGuardia has resumed operations, but what is clear is that the ATC, or the air traffic control staff, is thin, and they are making game-time decisions--go, no go. Apparently, we need another reminder that this shutdown is stupid and dangerous, that it leaves communities and commerce on the edge, because the voices of those affected already--Native Americans, Coast Guard servicemembers, FBI agents, IRS employees, National Park Service workers, and domestic violence victims--weren't enough. The FAA is unique because they have an obligation and the authority under the law to make a go-no-go decision based on safety. They can look at their staffing numbers and say: We can't do this safely, so stop. But the FBI and the Coast Guard don't get to say: Hey, hold off, everybody. TSA agents and the TSA itself does not have the authority to make a similar call. They can raise the alarm, but they do not have the authority to stop people from coming through checkpoints. They just have to make do. The same goes for all of the families affected by the shutdown. There is no ``go-no-go'' decision. They just have to try to make it work. The FAA decision demonstrates what is happening throughout the government and throughout society right now. People are right on the edge. Some of them have fallen off that edge. Today, the shutdown became an inconvenience to the very small percentage of Americans who fly regularly, but, more importantly, today is an indicator of what is happening to the government, of who matters to the government. I certainly hope, as lots of pundits, and journalists, and politicians have mentioned, that once air traffic starts to slow, once airports get snarled, we are at the end of this process and the shutdown will end shortly. I don't know if that is true, but I sure hope it is true. On another level, it should precipitate a little shame, a little introspection about how we got here, because to fix this now, when airports are snarled, is to say we were OK with people not getting food stamps, we were OK with Native American health clinics running out of medicine, Federal workers working without two paychecks, and Coast Guard men and women deployed without paychecks, so long as the President can build his wall. But if flights are delayed, if the elites are imperiled or inconvenienced in any way at the all, game over, and shame on us if that is what it takes to shut down this shutdown. This entire time, as funding has run out for food banks and domestic violence shelters, everyone has been focused on whether or not Speaker Pelosi will win the State of the Union exchange with the President, and what are the polling numbers, and how are Democrats and Republicans positioning this, and will these polling drops matter in 2020? But the moment the elite of this country have a moment of inconvenience, this thing seems to be wrapping up, and shame on us. Everyone is focused on this slow, horrible train wreck that they can watch with some distance. Suddenly, air travel stops and everybody freaks out. Shame on us. It is day 35. People have gone without-- without food, medicine, gas in their car, paychecks--but delayed flights is the straw that breaks the camel's back. This has to end. But it should never have even started. It shouldn't have taken a day like this to be, possibly, maybe not the end, maybe not the beginning but the beginning of the end of this shutdown. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, it has been 34 days since the President fulfilled his promise to shut down the government, and the American people are not happy about it. Poll after poll shows that people are not OK with the way the President of the United States is handling his job, and it is getting worse by the day, because to any reasonable person, this shutdown has been stupid and useless and cruel. There are so many failures to talk about, but I want to talk about four specific failures that, if it were any other President, if it were any other time in modern history, would bring a President and a Congress to its senses and end the shutdown. The first failure is this. Federal workers are in food lines. Federal workers are in food lines. People with jobs are now in food lines. Hundreds of thousands of people who work for the government are either furloughed or working without pay, and, tomorrow, these American public servants will miss their second paycheck. There is a big difference between missing the first paycheck and the second paycheck. Some people can absorb missing the first paycheck, but this second paycheck is going to be really, really challenging for tens of thousands of American public servants because the rent is due, the mortgage is due, the car registration is due, the insurance is due, and the utilities are due at the beginning of the month. This brings the amount of money that American public servants are owed by their government for work already performed to $4.7 billion. Remember that about a third of all Federal workers are veterans. It may be hard for billionaires in the Cabinet to understand, but for the middle class, missing two paychecks in a row is a total disaster. I have met people working in airport security who can't concentrate. They can't sleep because they can't stop worrying about how they are going to pay their bills. I have met government workers in the midst of applying for food stamps and asking local charities for help. I met a single mom who spent her career working hard to build a life for her family, and she told me that without these paychecks, it is all going backward. As one Washington Post columnist put it, under the Republican leadership, the United States is starting to look like the failed Soviet system, with middle-class workers literally waiting in bread lines. I am grateful that for every story I have heard of someone suffering, there is also a story of people stepping up to help. In Hawaii, in particular, local utility companies, financial institutions, and others have decided that they will not penalize Federal workers hurt by the shutdown if they miss a payment. I want to thank our local banks for allowing unpaid Federal workers to make a late payment on their mortgage without a penalty, and I want to thank our credit unions for extending very cheap credit. I want to thank people who are organizing in local communities, not just in Hawaii but across the country, so that middle-class families can make it through this. Federal workers want paychecks, not food banks. They want paychecks. They don't want charity. They want to be compensated for the work that they do. They shouldn't rely on pop-up kitchens for furloughed workers or online fundraising campaigns or the kindness of families, friends, and strangers--as great as all of that is. They should just get paid, and that starts with opening the government. Here is the second failure that should end this shutdown right away, and that is that economic growth is already slowing. This week, a White House adviser said that the Nation's economic growth could be zero if the shutdown goes on. Economists and business leaders were already worried about the potential for a recession, and this shutdown is fanning those unfortunate flames. Small businesses can't get loans. Companies can't go public. This administration has stopped some of the core functions of our market economy, but there is one thing that will not stop, and that is the corruption in this administration. If you have money, this administration takes care of you, and if you don't, then they will not. Federal workers have been called back to the office to take care of oil and gas leases--to take care of oil and gas leases--and to help financial institutions. They are working unpaid so that special interests can keep making money. This is the third failure. While people who are fortunate financially are protected, this shutdown leaves the people most vulnerable to fend for themselves. Food pantries and health clinics that rely on Federal funds are out of supplies, which means that Americans are going to start to go hungry and without medicine for everything from diabetes to addiction. Landlords who provide housing for 4 million people--mostly seniors and people with disabilities and kids--will soon stop receiving rent payments. They will have to decide how long they can hold out before being forced to evict these people or lose the properties themselves. Housing authorities are delaying the release of section 8 vouchers. Domestic violence shelters that rely on Federal funds are furloughing their own workers and cutting back services that save lives. So men, women, and children who need to get out of a dangerous situation at home have fewer options to get to safety. That brings me to the fourth failure, which is that public safety is gravely at risk. This is a serious matter. This isn't about whether Donald Trump can save face or whether the Republicans can vanquish the Democrats or Nancy Pelosi makes Mitch McConnell look bad. It is none of that. Public safety is at risk. Air traffic controllers and TSA workers are working without pay. They are stressed out, and they are becoming increasingly understaffed and undersupported, and there is no ability to train new employees, and they are sounding the alarm. This isn't my rhetoric. I want you to listen to what the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said yesterday: We cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. It is unprecedented. The National Transportation Safety Board is being forced to choose which crashes to investigate and which not to, leaving us with unanswered questions and risking lives in the future. As of this week, the NTSB has been unable to investigate 87 crashes, including some with fatalities. This is a pattern. It is a pattern of recklessly endangering the safety of Americans. We are just 2 months out from a wildfire that destroyed 18,000 homes and buildings and killed 86 people. Yet the shutdown has stopped us from training firefighters. It has cancelled controlled burns. It has led to dead trees piling up in places that we know pose a fire risk. This is what happens when you shut down the government to try to get your way. You put real people at risk. The safety of Americans abroad and at home is threatened by this shutdown. The State Department cancelled a border security summit. This fight is supposed to be about border security. Yet we are not paying TSA, we are not paying FBI agents, we are about to close some of our Federal courts, and the State Department itself just cancelled a border security summit. FBI agents are working without pay. Field offices are operating in fiscal uncertainty. That means investigations into street gangs and drug dealers are on hold, training on child abductions and counterterrorism has been cancelled, and communications with sources about gangs, such as MS-13, have stopped. As one agent put it, ``Our enemies know they can run freely.'' Our enemies know they can run freely. I ask all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, why would we put public safety at risk? Why can't we reopen the government and negotiate our differences? The truth is, as it relates to border security--I am in my seventh year in the Senate, and every year, we do a bipartisan bill that includes border security in the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. We always do this. By the way, every Republican and every Democrat will quietly say: We are not doing a cement wall from sea to shining sea. That makes no sense, and nobody at the Department of Homeland Security thinks that is a good idea. So we quietly appropriate money--some for personnel, some for beds, some for courts so they can adjudicate some of these cases, and some for physical barriers where it is appropriate, to put up a wall where it makes sense. You don't put up a wall where it doesn't make sense. We do this all the time. So the idea that we are going to shut down the government and shut down portions of the Department of Homeland Security itself in order to get to a place where the President of the United States can save face is just absurd. We have to be the grownups here, and that is going to require some Republicans to craft a border security package with Democrats, as we have over the last 6 or 7 years, and we have to do that after we open the government. The reason that is so essential is that this President--certainly this President especially, but no President, Democratic or Republican, now or 30 years from now, should ever inflict pain on the American people in order to generate leverage in a policy discussion. When somebody does that--and if it is one of my friends in the Senate and they do this 10 years from now, I want them to read this speech back to me. The answer to the offer, which is, ``I am going to hurt Americans unless you do X,'' should be ``You get nothing in exchange for not hurting Americans.'' That is not a cookie for us. Barack Obama learned that lesson the hard way. Only when he finally said ``You guys want to screw with the American economy; you want to mess with the debt ceiling; you get nothing'' did they back off, and all that brinksmanship stopped. Every time we reward hostage taking, we will get more hostage taking. As painful as all of this is, we have to stand firm. We are absolutely willing to negotiate a package related to border security, which will no doubt include some physical barrier, because we do that every year, actually, but I am not doing any of that until the government is opened. That is not just a political position; that is a matter of principle because we can't live like this as a country. We cannot function like this. If we do this, if we cut a deal now and we give $2 billion for the wall, the debt ceiling is coming up in March or April, and here we go again. The fiscal year expires in September, and here we go again. We will never govern. I know the Presiding Officer was a Governor. That is no way to run a country. Let this be the last shutdown. I know the two leaders of the Senate are in what appear to be constructive conversations. I know there are plenty of adults who want to get us out of this. For the first time in several weeks, I have actually felt somewhat hopeful about the trajectory. I don't think we are going to fix this in the next hour or so, but at least we are talking, and at least there seems to be a desire to structure an off- ramp. But we have to do one simple thing first: We have to reopen the government. People are about to miss their paychecks for the second time tomorrow. It is our obligation to reopen the government. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I have a simple request for my Republican colleagues, and that is this: Open the government. Open the government. There have been too many people suffering for too long for this to go on any further. One of those people is named Scott Pekalib. He lives in Hilo, HI, and works for the U.S. Geological Survey. He has had a rough few months. In October, his husband Jay went into the hospital for a routine surgery that went horribly wrong. He went into cardiac arrest and was in an induced coma for several days. He had to be flown to another island to receive the care that was necessary. Scott and Jay spent all of their savings to get through this ordeal. After paying for medicine, hotels, and airfare, they were living paycheck to paycheck. Now, because of this government shutdown, Scott's paycheck reads zero. He doesn't know how he is going to buy gas to take his husband to the doctor or how they are going to pay the bills that are due. Scott is making impossible choices between buying the prescription drugs he needs and the ones that his husband needs. All of this pain and suffering is because the Senate will not vote to reopen the government. So I ask my Republican friends to call for a vote, and if the President vetoes the bill, let's act like a separate, coequal branch of government and override that veto. That is our prerogative in the United States, and that is our obligation in the U.S. Senate--to do what is best for the Nation, for the health, safety, and economic security of all of our constituents. Let's reopen the government. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, today, we remember the 400 American and Allied prisoners of war who died 74 years ago from friendly fire aboard the Japanese hell ship Enoura Maru docked in Takeo Harbor, Formosa-- modern-day Taiwan. Among the dead were men who left their homes in America, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Czechoslovakia to fight an enemy they did not know, in places few of them had heard of, all in pursuit of a common cause: freedom, justice, and equality. These heroes were part of the infamous 45-day odyssey of the last transport of prisoners of war from the Philippines to Japan--captive since the American territory fell to Imperial Japan in the spring of 1942 after fighting to defend the Philippines. On the morning of January 9, 1945, dive bombers from the USS Hornet attacked the unmarked freighter holding 1,300 prisoners of war docked in the Japanese colony's harbor. Two hundred died instantly. Nearly everyone else was wounded. For 2 days, the men were left in the floating wreckage before the Japanese permitted the dead to be removed. Their remains were buried ashore in mass graves. After the war, the 400 victims of the bombing of the Enoura Maru were exhumed and eventually brought to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. They rest in 20 mass graves marked only as ``Unknowns January 9, 1945.'' Their families did not learn the final fate of their loved ones until 2001. This past August, we remembered these brave men with a memorial stone on the Memorial Walk at the Cemetery honoring the prisoners of war aboard the hell ship Enoura Maru. The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society, an organization that represents the American prisoners of war of Imperial Japan and their families, organized the commemoration in Hawaii. That memorial stone is a monument to their courage, suffering, and sacrifice. It commemorates their tragic death 74 years ago and marks their final return home. Let that stone and our remembrance of the prisoners of war on the Enoura Maru remind us of our sacred commitment to veterans of all eras to ``never forget.'' May they rest in peace.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the Senate should demand a better nominee for the Supreme Court. These last 2 weeks have torn our country apart, but even before these allegations against Judge Kavanaugh became public, there was enough in Judge Kavanaugh's record to cause me to vote no. His record is clear. As a Justice, he will damage women's rights, civil rights, the environment, voting rights, and economic fairness. He will also damage Native Hawaiian self-determination. Let's start with Native Hawaiian. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he wrote that Native Hawaiians didn't deserve protections as indigenous people. He wrote an amicus brief in the case Rice v. Cayetano, arguing that Hawaii violated the Constitution by permitting only Native Hawaiians to vote in their elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs--the agency charged with working to advocate for the Native Hawaiian community. These views come from a lack of knowledge of the history of Native Hawaiians, as well as Federal law and policies related to U.S. indigenous people. Based on nothing at all, he thinks indigenous people are just another race. In his words, ``Hawaii's naked racial spoils system . . . makes remedial set-asides and hiring and admissions preferences look almost trivial by comparison.'' He also said: ``[I]f Hawaii is permitted to offer extraordinary privileges to residents on the basis of race or ethnic heritage, so will every other state.'' This is wrong on policy. This is wrong on the law. This is wrong historically, but it is also important to recognize the tone here. ``Remedial set-asides,'' ``racial spoils''--this is not someone who understands the plight of indigenous people and the history of our country as it relates to indigenous people. These views have serious consequences for Alaska Natives and also for American Indians. The Federal Government's protections for indigenous people are built on tenets of the Constitution, Federal statutes, legal precedent, and congressional actions. They exist against the backdrop of U.S. injustice against indigenous American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities. Judge Kavanaugh's misinformed views on the status of indigenous people are alarming. His views on women are also alarming. There is no doubt in my mind that Judge Kavanaugh will undermine reproductive rights. He knows better than to say in public that he is going to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. That is not what they do. The Federalist Society trains these people really well to not say what they are going to do. There is a reason everybody who wants to ban abortion is so enthusiastic about this judge. They are not dumb. They understand his views, and they understand the one thing you can't say is, yes, I will vote to overturn Roe. Here is an email from his days in the Bush administration--which, by the way, the Republicans tried to hide from the public. He said: ``I am not sure all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since the Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.'' This is exactly why the Senate deserves to know if Judge Kavanaugh would overrule this precedent. I think he will. Time after time during the hearing, he evaded answers to that question, but we already know he embraces restrictive limitations on abortion that would, in practice, deprive women of their constitutional rights. Judge Kavanaugh argued in one case that the Federal Government can and should override a young woman's constitutional right to seek an abortion because she was an immigrant. This young woman had complied with the requirements of State law to make that decision herself. She did not need the Federal Government to transport her, pay for, or in any way facilitate the procedure. She just needed them to let her out of detention to do the procedure, but they didn't want to. They wanted to pressure her to voluntarily deport herself. They put up artificial barriers to prevent her from exercising her constitutional right. Judge Kavanaugh endorsed those barriers. Making a young woman wait weeks to obtain an abortion for no reason based on the Constitution, Federal or State law, or even public policy is an undue burden. Republicans who worry about the overstepping of the State should care about this. Judge Kavanaugh's dissent shows his lack of respect for Roe, but even if he avoids directly overturning Roe, he could be green-lighting State or Federal laws that, in a practical effect, outlaw abortion. Judge Kavanaugh would also rip apart of the ACA, if given a chance. He ruled to limit access to contraception under the ACA, and he has made it clear he thinks the Affordable Care Act is a ``significant expanse of congressional authority--and thus also a potentially significant infringement of individual liberty.'' A significant expansion of congressional authority and potentially a significant infringement of individual liberty--now that sounds like something a Republican colleague would say. It is just a view about the Affordable Care Act which that is to the extent we are collecting taxes and establishing some statutory mandates to try to make sure more people have healthcare that is affordable, a zero-sum game. And the more people who have healthcare, the less liberty either the rest of us have or maybe even those people have. I don't really know how it works, but that is a view. It is a view we hear, and I respect my Republican colleagues for their views. I believe they are sincere in those views. That is not normally the kind of thing you hear from a judge. He has a clear view about the Affordable Care Act that isn't based in jurisprudence; it is based in his long history as a Republican operative. I want to be very clear. A Republican operative sounds like an epithet. It sounds like a personal insult. I work with a lot of operatives. They tend to be Democrats. Operatives--not all of them-- some of them are pretty cool. Some of them are honorable. A lot of them are really effective. It is not a bad thing to be a political operative. Someone has to run a campaign. Someone has to mobilize voters. It is part of our democracy, like it or hate it. It is just that we don't put them on courts at all. It is just that we have literally never put an operative from either political party on the highest Court in the land. In his speeches, Judge Kavanaugh has left not-so-subtle bread crumbs about how he would rule on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, which is really the linchpin of the ACA. In a lecture at the Heritage Foundation, he highlighted that the majority of the Supreme Court agreed that ``the individual mandate, best read, could not be sustained as constitutional.'' To him, the Chief Justice upheld the ACA only because he tried too hard to avoid deciding the constitutional issue. The whole speech is about how Judge Kavanaugh would not try too hard to avoid the constitutional issue. The risk that he will provide the vote to strike down the healthcare law is not a hypothetical. Now, there were a lot of what most people in the bar thought were rather nonserious challenges on the Affordable Care Act in various circuit courts across the country, but I think we have learned that the Supreme Court has an interest in the Affordable Care Act, maybe even a kind of unhealthy obsession with the Affordable Care Act. So the idea that these seemingly frivolous lawsuits will not be successful, I think, is belied by the enthusiasm with which the Supreme Court wants to take these circuit court decisions which are getting appealed and rule on them. Challenges to the ACA could come before the Supreme Court as early as this term. So I think it is really important for people to remember that. Listen, we all have our talking points on both sides of the aisle. I understand that. It is not a theoretical risk. It is a real risk that ACA is gutted; that the individual mandate is gutted; that protections for people with preexisting conditions is gutted; that what they call essential health benefits could fall away; that the whole architecture of our healthcare system could be gutted in this term. I am also voting no because Judge Kavanaugh puts corporations above people--again, not a rhetorical flourish. This is most apparent in his opinions about the environment. I want you to know about a case which concerned the EPA's authority to regulate mercury emissions. The mercury rule was based on decades of research that showed devastating health impacts of mercury on the brain, on the lungs, and on fetuses. The Obama administration found that the mercury rule prevented as many as 11,000 premature deaths by reducing heart and lung disease. Let's be clear. It happened during the Obama administration, but this isn't the EPA; these are professional scientists and researchers. These are civil servants. They are not like Obama appointees who have some ax to grind with a particular chemical. They just found that this chemical is dangerous to people. The EPA was directed by law to study the public health hazards of emissions from electric utilities, including mercury, and to regulate emissions ``if appropriate and necessary.'' That is the standard, ``if appropriate and necessary.'' Judge Kavanaugh thought the mercury rule was inappropriate because it didn't take into account the cost to the electric utilities to implement. I mean, think about that. You see a law, and it says ``regulate emissions where appropriate and necessary,'' and then you are a judge and you read that law and you say: Listen, Agency, you didn't think about the corporations enough. So somehow that is violative of the law. To arrive at his decision, he substituted his own judgment of what is ``appropriate'' for EPA. ``Appropriate'' means saving 11,000 lives. For Judge Kavanaugh, it meant not imposing too many costs on polluters. He has and will continue to fight any attempt by the EPA to keep up with evolving threats to public health from polluted air and water and from climate change. Even though Supreme Court precedent was clear that greenhouse gases fit with the Clean Air Act's ``capacious definition of air pollutant''--in other words, greenhouse gases are a pollutant. Everybody knows that. It is not a dispute among scientists or even among regular people who understand that climate change is real, but Judge Kavanaugh pushed back. When the majority of the DC Circuit followed this precedent in another EPA case, he dissented. The conservative Justices on the Supreme Court were convinced, and they voted 5 to 4 to strike down the EPA's rule. There will be a lot more of that when Judge Kavanaugh joins them. When Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, he will use a far-right doctrine to block Federal agencies from protecting Americans' health and safety. He wants to do away with something called Chevron deference, which prevents judges from substituting their judgment for that of Congress or a Federal agency. Here is how it works. When Congress passes a law, you can't-- especially as it relates to regulations about pollutants. We don't know exactly--we don't know all the science. So what we say is, for instance: Keep the air clean. Keep the water clean. You, Agency, figure out what is most important to ban, regulate on, and otherwise monitor. So it delegates that authority to Federal agencies which have the technical expertise and knowledge to implement and enforce the law. Without that authority, we wouldn't have the rules to protect our air and water from pollution. We wouldn't be able to regulate access to new dangerous drugs. We wouldn't have rules to protect consumers from unsafe or predatory products and services because everything is supposed to be legislated. If you don't believe in Chevron deference, then--we are supposed to every year come up with a new list of chemicals to ban or not ban. What do we know about that? Seriously, what do we know about that? Do you think maybe the lobbyists might be involved in that process more so than if you let the administrative agencies do that? For the life of me, I don't understand--I mean, I do understand why people want to get rid of Chevron deference, but I don't understand the legal justification for it. The reason they want to get rid of Chevron deference is because it makes life safer for big corporations and less safe for the rest of us. A vote for Judge Kavanaugh would be a vote against Chevron deference. It would allow judges to decide what a law means without considering Congress's intentions or listening to the Agency. Perhaps most worrisome for me is Judge Kavanaugh's views on Executive power. The context here is, the Federalist Society provided a list to Donald Trump and Donald Trump said, ``Looks good to me,'' as part of his sort of solidifying the primary, and then Judge Kavanaugh got added at the end. I mean, after the initial list was established, then one person got added at the end. In terms of their jurisprudence, there is not a big difference between Judge Kavanaugh and the rest of the people on the list, but here is the difference: Judge Kavanaugh has a very unique view of Executive authority and what a President is subjected to in terms of the law. In his writings and rulings, he has made clear that he thinks a President can choose not to follow the law if he thinks it is unconstitutional. Can you imagine that a President can just say: ``That law is unconstitutional, so I refuse to enforce it''? Congress couldn't do anything about it because it would all go to the Supreme Court where Judge Kavanaugh sits. Do you think Donald Trump might like that idea? I think Donald Trump might like that idea. Judge Kavanaugh thinks the President is literally above the law, not just in terms of not enforcing statutes passed by the U.S. Congress; he has made it clear in speeches and writings that he does not think a President can or should be investigated or indicted for criminal offenses while in office. He said that maybe Nixon was wrongly decided, referring to the United States v. Nixon. It is a 1974 decision in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that President Nixon had to comply with a subpoena to turn over the tapes of his conversations in the White House. He wrote in the Minnesota Law Review in 2009 that he thinks a President shouldn't be indicted for breaking the law. Let me repeat that. He wrote in the Minnesota Law Review in 2009 that he thinks a sitting President shouldn't be indicted for breaking the law. Now, near as I can tell--I am not a lawyer--but near as I can tell, this is the main difference between Judge Kavanaugh's views and the rest of the people on the Federalist Society list. I mean, the head of the Federalist Society, before Judge Kavanaugh was nominated, was asked: Do you have any favorites? He said: Anyone on this list would be great. It is just weird to me that the President of the United States picked this guy, a Bush person. It is not normally his preference to pick a Bush person, but this person has this really specific view about how powerful a President should be, and that is really worrisome. He also wrote that there is ``a serious constitutional question regarding whether a President can be criminally indicted and tried while in office.'' This is the tip of the iceberg. Judge Kavanaugh has also asserted that the President has ``absolute authority'' to pardon all offenders for any crime at any time, even before a trial or a charge; even before he or she is charged. Does he mean all offenders, even the President? Judge Kavanaugh may have refused to answer this question at the hearing, but his expansive view of Executive power speaks for him. His view puts the President above the law, and this is dangerous because right now Special Counsel Robert Mueller is in the middle of an investigation into the President's campaign. Instead of following Supreme Court case law, Judge Kavanaugh may try to undermine that investigation and stop attempts to subpoena the President or to collect evidence. The context, of course--sometimes we in the Senate pretend not to know things we know. There are a lot of smart people here, but we sometimes don't say what is actually going on, which, as everybody knows, even people who are loyal to him--or people who pretend to be loyal to him but privately grouse about him--the President demands loyalty to him, not to the Constitution, not to the country. The President is a person who demands personal loyalty. He could have picked anybody, but he picked Brett Kavanaugh, the one judge who believes the President is above the law and should be left alone. These issues have been clear since the nomination, and that is why I pledged to vote no. Others came to light last week when the whole country had the chance to hear from Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. What we saw, I think, was alarming for a lot of people. Whatever your view on all of the stuff I just talked about, actually, we saw behavior that was just weird. It was kind of manic. It was angry. It was wild-eyed. It was threatening. I mean, we talk--listen, I was in the State house of representatives, so I wasn't in a position to deal with advice and consent on State judges, so I hadn't dug into what the criteria were when you are considering a judge. So when I got to the Senate--I am in my sixth year--there were a lot of conversations about judicial temperament. You think about qualifications. You want to make sure the views are not too extreme. Then you think about temperament. This thing about temperament is being totally ignored by the majority because if you care at all about temperament, if you care at all about the idea of equal justice for all, if you care--and we are so close to the U.S. Supreme Court physically right now. If you care about that magnificent building and the idea that anybody going before that highest Court in the land is going to get a fair shake, it is just vanishingly unlikely that if you are with the National Resource Defense Council or NARO or Planned Parenthood or MoveOn, or whoever he views as part of this attempt to smear him, they are going to court and they are going to be a litigant and they are going to be looking at Judge Kavanaugh saying: Oh, yes, he is undecided. This is the important thing: Some people will argue that he is going to be an evenhanded jurist, that he sort of lost his cool, but he cleaned it up in this most recent Wall Street Journal editorial. Maybe. I don't think so. I think it is implausible. The point is, he can't even appear--you are not supposed to even appear to be anything less than impartial, and he ripped the mask off. Again, he is a Republican. That is fine. I get along with Republicans--not all of them, but I get along with Republicans--and he can have all of those views. It is just that once you start articulating really partisan views, especially in the context of a nomination process, then the mask is off, and you don't belong on the Court. You have to display the proper temperament on and off the Bench at all times. ``What that means is in dealings with one's colleagues on the bench, having an open mind, being respectful of a colleague's views, being respectful of the lawyers who come before the court and not treating them disrespectfully, but to have proper respect for the lawyers on the court.'' I am quoting Judge Kavanaugh, and I did not see that Judge Kavanaugh last week. I just want to make one minor point about that. Whatever we think of that Wall Street Journal editorial, besides the fact that there was no actual apology, it wasn't like a spur-of-the-moment thing where he kind of lost it and said a few things he didn't mean to say. He wrote the speech the day before. That speech was what he wanted to say. That is what he intended to say. So it is not like the passion--I have said lots of things I wish I didn't say, but generally when I write them down, I can't fairly characterize that as a mistake. Maybe I made a factual error. Maybe I stumble. Maybe I shouldn't have said one paragraph. That whole thing was a mess. That whole thing was an emotional mess. That actually should have been disqualifying, and that should have been the moment where Members of the Republican Party just went over and said: Listen, we have 18 conservative judges. Any of them could get confirmed. This guy is not right for the Bench. This guy is going to be bad for the institution of the Court. I want to talk a little bit about the Federalist Society, an organization with a mission to alter the legal landscape of the United States. For decades, the Federalist Society has worked to remake the Federal judiciary with the view of power of corporations, Executive authority, social conservatism, and the protection of privilege that is out of the legal mainstream. As Amanda Hollis-Brusky, a professor of politics at Pomona College and the author of ``Ideas with Consequences,'' a study of the Federalist Society, said: ``The idea was to train, credential, and socialize a generation of alternative elites.'' This is because we have Republican Presidents who would nominate and get confirmed Justices that were Republican but not as reliably conservative as they wanted. So the Federalist Society, formed for the purpose of saying, you know, we are not going to get fooled again. We want our stuff. We want our outcomes. We don't want you to actually fairly consider the law and the Constitution and just call balls and strikes and all that. That is what they say. They set up this apparatus to do the opposite; to be very outcome-oriented and to be very conservative. That is what the Federalist Society has done. This nomination is the latest success story of this ambitious enterprise, and his confirmation will, unfortunately, entrench these judicial views in the Supreme Court for decades to come. While his views on some issues are known, the Senate and the American people still don't have a full picture of who he is, and that is because at every turn there has been a concerted effort to hide the documents. Now, this feels like 10 weeks ago, but before the last scandal, what I thought was terribly scandalous was that this man had been in public life, he worked for the government, and so there are tons of records of that, right? You can FOIA it. Most of it is archived because he worked in the White House. In the end, the committee didn't receive 95 percent of the documents related to his public life. Now, we are not talking about a fishing expedition. We are talking about when he worked in the White House, where are the records of that? We didn't get to see any of it. It was, in my view, a misuse of the process in the Judiciary Committee related to what is considered committee confidential. In the past, committee confidential essentially means anything that is personally sensitive or anything that is either secret or top secret. Committee confidential is a narrow thing, but what they decided to do is say 95 percent of all the records we just don't get to see. So the U.S. Senate and the public doesn't get to review 95 percent of the records related to Judge Kavanaugh's public service. These are the reasons I find it hard to believe Judge Kavanaugh is going to have a successful vote tomorrow; and I do understand he will have a successful vote. I guess it is today because we are 3 in the morning. Judge Kavanaugh's judicial record, his temperament, his views on Executive power should be enough to scare away most Members of this body. This is a dark day for the Senate, but more important than that--I worry very much about this institution. I worry about the way we have conducted ourselves. I worry about the bastardization of this process. I worry about our ability to come back together. I worry about, the Senate's traditional role, when it is working, is to calm everybody down, is to deal with stuff that is hard. It seems to me that at every stage, instead of being the cooling saucer, instead of being a place where we can deal with tough issues, we serve to inflame the passions of folks on both sides, to cause pain across the country, and to not get to the truth. More important than the institutional aspect, it is a dark day for vulnerable people, women in particular, people of color, indigenous peoples, people with preexisting conditions, people who struggle economically, union members. The country is feeling torn apart, and the Senate has traditionally played a role in calming tensions down, moving methodically, being fair, and this process is not that. We need another nominee. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, Senator McCain may have represented the people of Arizona, but in doing so, he changed the world. His family legacy and leadership are, actually, partly rooted in the Pacific. He met his wife, Cindy, in Honolulu, and generations of McCains have left their mark on the region as his grandfather served in the Pacific theater as an admiral in World War II, as his father commanded the Armed Forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam war, and as John S. McCain III became the most famous POW of the Vietnam war. His relationship with the region began with those conflicts--with pain and with loss--but he never let that beginning define his views of the Asia-Pacific. As a Senator, he called for the United States to transform the peace we made with Vietnam into a partnership. It is thanks, in part, to him that the United States now works closely with Vietnam on everything from economic development to counterterrorism, and the people of Vietnam know it. The monument that marks where he was captured as a naval pilot in Vietnam has turned into a shrine this week, with people leaving flowers in memory of the man who helped to normalize relations between our two nations. This is just one of the ways in which Senator McCain shaped the Pacific. Just a few years ago, he designed the Southeast Asia Maritime Security Initiative in order to increase stability and to help professionalize militaries in the region, including the military of Vietnam. He was a strong advocate for freedom of navigation in the region and for human rights. He worked with Senator Cardin to introduce a bill to punish military officials in Burma for the part that they had played in waging genocide against the Rohingya--a bill that, I hope, the Senate will pass soon. He was an early voice that warned about North Korea's nuclear program, and as a longtime member and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he always stood up for our men and women in uniform. A few years ago, on the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, my predecessor, Daniel K. Inouye, planned to give a floor speech to remember the 2,400 Americans who died that day. Senator Inouye's staff made it known that he would mark the anniversary on the Senate floor. He gave that speech to a Chamber that was not full, but John McCain was there. He was there for Senator Inouye just as he was there, time after time, for our military and for our country. He was earnest and solemn when it came to fulfilling his oath to the Constitution, but he was also the embodiment of taking your job seriously, not yourself. One tribute from a former staff member recalled how Senator McCain led a codel to Estonia, where he joined Senate colleague Hillary Clinton and enjoyed several rounds of vodka shots before having decided to take a midnight stroll around town. He also remembered the Senator's holding a press conference in a geothermal pool in Iceland--in his bathing suit and all. Early on in my time in the U.S. Senate, I would pick up the phone and call my dad to tell him whenever I had had a substantive conversation with Senator McCain, because he was that much of a giant, and now he is gone. We all need people in our lives who ask us to do more, who remind us that we are capable of doing more and of doing better. The world needs heroes, and we have lost one in the death of Senator McCain. He once challenged a leader in his party to ``set the example for what our country can and should represent.'' That was also his challenge to the Senate. He demanded more of the Senate and more from us. It is for that, especially, he will be missed in this Chamber. Who will hold us accountable when we fall into a destructive pattern? When he lectured us--and he did lecture us--we took it to heart. He was true north for the U.S. Senate. He cared deeply about relationships between Members of both parties. He cared about legislating and about finding a way to govern. While he is gone, we do not need to forget Senator McCain's lessons and lectures. He is an example for us to follow, and that is as true today as it was in any of his 32 years of service to the Senate. We will miss him in this Chamber, where he cast a long shadow with moral clarity whenever he spoke. This week, our hearts are with his mother, Roberta, with his wife, Cindy, with his children and his grandchildren, and with all of those who loved him. May his memory be a blessing I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, we swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, including its First Amendment, which says, in part, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment, or religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'' We can't let statements by the President declaring the press is the enemy of the people go unchallenged. Both parties complain about the media, but who can argue with Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that ``our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost,'' or with James Madison, who said that ``the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments,'' or with President Reagan, who said that ``freedom of the press is one of our most important freedoms and also one of our oldest,'' or with Justice Kennedy, who wrote that ``the First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.'' These words of past leaders should inspire us to act, to send a message that we support the First Amendment, and we support the freedom of the press. Senators Schumer, Blumenthal, and I have introduced a resolution that does just that. It affirms that the press is not the enemy of the people, and it reaffirms the vital and indispensable role of the free press, serving to inform the electorate, uncover the truth, act as a check on the inherent power of the government, further discourse and debate and advance our most basic and cherished democratic norms and freedoms. This resolution also condemns attacks on the institution of the free press and views efforts to systematically undermine the credibility of the press as a whole as an attack on our democratic institutions. As if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 607, submitted earlier today.

Mr. SCHATZ. I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I yield the floor. nomination of a. marvin quattlebaum, jr.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I want to share an update about what is happening with the Kilauea volcano in my home State of Hawaii. The first thing people need to know is that the State of Hawaii remains safe to visit and that the Island of Hawaii, where the volcano is erupting, is also safe to visit. Let's start with a basic geography lesson. Hawaii has eight main islands, and the volcano is on the Island of Hawaii, which people often call the Big Island. It is about 4,000 square miles. This is Hawaii Island. It is about the size of Connecticut. Only 9 square miles are directly impacted by the volcano. So it is actually just this little area in this corner of the island. If you are in the town of Hilo, which is 25 miles away from the volcano, you can't even tell there is a volcano erupting for the most part. Cruise lines are coming back, and officials are trying to set up areas where people can safely view this spectacular volcano. It is that safe. People need to know that it is business as usual for lots of people on the Big Island and that both the State and the island are open for visitors. We just got the data in for the month of May, and we had again increased tourism statewide. Everyone should come to visit. With that being said, this is an extraordinarily difficult situation for the communities that are being affected, and even though people are used to living with volcanos, this is extraordinarily tough. Right here, we have fissure 8. This is about a 300-foot lava fountain that has not ceased for several weeks. As recently as 2015, lava approached the town of Pahoa in the Puna district, but we really haven't seen anything like this since the 1974 flow. For the past few months, we have had 300-foot lava fountains. We have had ash explosions that have reached tens of thousands of feet. We have also had more than 30 billion gallons of lava that have destroyed 600 homes. An estimated 2,500 people have been displaced, one way or another, by the volcanic eruption. In certain areas, there is no power, no water, and no cell phone reception. So even if your home has not been destroyed, your access now may be limited or nonexistent. Here is the really good news: There has been no loss of human life due to the volcano. Despite all that has happened, the people of Puna and the people of Hawaii Island remain extraordinarily resilient. The bad news is that no one is sure when the volcanic activity will end. Even the experts at the United States Geological Survey don't know. We have several difficult challenges in moving forward--from air quality to the need for economic relief and, especially, for housing and transportation. Hundreds of people are currently living in shelters. Hundreds of animals from homes and ranches are, in a sense, volcano refugees. So we have to secure temporary housing for people who lost their homes or who have been evacuated and then get these people permanent housing and deal with private property damage. We have to make decisions about where to rebuild and start the process of fixing roads, power lines, and other infrastructure in the Puna district. The Big Island's mayor, Harry Kim, and the entire county emergency operations center team, including first responders, have been working from day one and day and night to keep people safe and deal with these challenges. Several weeks ago, I visited the emergency operations center and saw firsthand that it is really all hands on deck. Something that distinguishes our EOCs from other EOCs and impresses our Federal counterparts is the extent to which we all work together regardless of jurisdiction. You can scarcely tell who works for State, Federal, or county government. You can scarcely tell who is a business leader or a not-for-profit leader or a university professor or a mayor. Everybody is really working together. There is a long list of people who deserve our thanks. Local media have gone above and beyond to keep people informed by assigning crews to stay in place for weeks at a time. By the way, that is somewhat unusual for a disaster, especially one that has been going on as long as this one. Nonprofits, such as the Red Cross, the World Central Kitchen, and the Salvation Army, are operating shelters and serving meals. Companies are pitching in by waiving freight charges for relief supplies or working to keep cell towers powered. I can name every single elected official on Hawaii Island, and each one of them is personally doing significant work in the recovery. Because this is an island State and because it is a small community, this isn't just a matter of their trying to secure resources from State, Federal, or county government, and this isn't just a matter of lawmaking; they are on the ground, they are listening, and they are helping with their hands. This is part of the general sense that people have of wanting to help during this extraordinary time. Several weeks ago, a resident of Puna named Ikaika Marzo took it upon himself to set up Pu'uhonua o Puna, which means ``a place of refuge'' in Puna. People can donate things or pick up what they need, whether it is information, supplies, or a hot meal. We have seen people drive 100 miles to show up and help. Ranchers are helping out other ranchers--normally they are competitors--by housing displaced cattle. On other islands, people are filling shipping containers with donations. Across the State, we are helping each other out so that people are being fed, finding shelter, and getting the things they need. Lots of good things are happening, but it is still a very tough situation, an ongoing situation, which is why we have been grateful for the Federal response. Two weeks ago, the White House approved the State of Hawaii's request for individual assistance from FEMA for residents whose homes have been lost or damaged. FEMA has also partnered with the State to open a disaster relief center. From the start, it was clear that they sent their A team. I want to thank FEMA and the White House for their quick action, which is welcome news during this challenging time for the Big Island of Hawaii. FEMA and the EPA are also working with the State and county partners to monitor air quality, which the EPA is now publishing online so that the public can make informed decisions. This may sound like a small thing, but this is everything when it comes to determining whether Norwegian Cruise Line can come to Hilo, and all that economic opportunity will either be lost or not, or whether schools in the Ka'u and Puna districts can open. What EPA is doing in partnership with the State and county government is really extraordinary. The Hawaii National Guard was able to command Department of Defense resources under a dual command agreement. General Logan, General Hara, and the National Guard have all been crucial. They are literally doing everything from collecting gas samples to providing security on the ground to providing temporary shelters. We are grateful for all the help, but we also know it is a long road to recovery because we don't know how long this is going to go on. In a normal disaster, you have sort of three phases: disaster preparation and planning, disaster response, and then disaster recovery. Because this is an ongoing situation and because we don't know when this is going to end, we have our county, State, and Federal folks, as well as the rest of the community, in disaster prep, disaster response, and disaster recovery--all simultaneously underway. This is an extraordinary situation. There are lots of terrible natural disasters all across the country every year, but this is unique in that particular way. This is also unique in the sense that most of the time--not all of the time but almost every time--people can go back to their properties. Although they still, under the law, will own their properties, when Kapoho Bay was flattened, when Vacationland was flattened, when we went from 87 homes, roughly, gone to about 600 homes gone in a very short period of time, it is difficult to imagine that these people are going to be able to remake their lives in the path of this current flow. We have to do all three things at the same time. So we are going to continue to work and to look for Federal partners for help and for flexibility. I will state that our Federal partners have recognized the unique nature of this disaster, and we really appreciate it. I have talked to Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Schumer, Vice Chairman Leahy, Chairman Shelby, and key appropriators about how unique this disaster is, and I look forward to working with the leadership in the Appropriations Committee so the communities affected by the volcano can get the help they need. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I want to thank Chairman Alexander as well as Vice Chair Leahy, Chairman Shelby, Chairman Boozman, and many other people who have made this minibus work. We are going to adopt it tonight. I hope that our work over the last week has set the tone for the Senate's consideration of the remaining appropriations bills. We have opened debate and considered a number of amendments, and we have avoided controversial issues that have too often torpedoed our work in prior years. Between rollcall votes and the managers' package, we have adopted 40 amendments, including 14 to the MILCON-VA appropriations bill. This speaks volumes to the bipartisan cooperation that I expect will continue as we try to get back to some semblance of the regular order as it relates to the appropriations process. I especially want to thank my colleague from Arkansas, Chairman Boozman, for managing a fair amendment process and for working to keep the bill bipartisan. I want to thank subcommittee staff Patrick Magnuson, Jennifer Bastin, and Joanne Hoff. And from my subcommittee staff, I thank Chad Schulken and Jason McMahon. They worked late nights reviewing hundreds of amendments. I also want to thank our counterparts on the Energy and Water and Legislative Branch Subcommittees, and their staffs, for their great work over the past few months to put together bills that I believe will pass overwhelmingly today. Lastly, it is important to thank Chairman Shelby and Vice Chairman Leahy for getting us to this point. By the end of the week, we will have reported out of the full committees all 12 government funding bills with 3 having passed the floor, and all before July 4. That is what is possible when there is a commitment to making this place work. I will just call out one particular moment that actually impressed me. Things got a little wobbly when the rescissions package, which was a privileged matter, hit the floor. We had a couple of tough conversations, but we navigated our way through that. Then there was an amendment offered that was in order, but it was about waters of the United States. Without getting into great detail about this, there is probably nothing that causes people to go put on their partisan jerseys more than WOTUS--waters of the United States. Chairman Shelby and many Republicans, including Leader McConnell, said, essentially: Listen, I am with you, Senator Lee, in principle, but this is not the bill on which to do this. That is the kind of discipline that is going to be required of both parties if we are going to keep the appropriations process on track and allow it to be held harmless from some of our more partisan disputes. Their strong leadership and that of their staffs--Shannon Hines, Jonathan Graffeo, and David Adkins from the majority and, of course, Chuck Kieffer, Chanda Betourney, and Jessica Berry from the minority-- have gotten us where we are today. I urge all of my colleagues to support the minibus package. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I am pleased to join my colleague from Arkansas, the chairman of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee in presenting this bill for consideration before the full Senate. I thank him for his work to create a fair and bipartisan bill. I also thank the Appropriations Committee chairman and vice chairman for their leadership and commitment to an orderly process to bring these bills and all the appropriations bills to the floor. This is the first set of appropriations bills before the Senate this year. We are making good progress, and in the next few days, we are going to set the tone for the rest of our work this year on appropriations. This bill builds on the progress we made in the omnibus by providing critical funding to support our veterans, servicemembers, and their families. It also funds military construction projects that are needed to continue our work to address years of budgetary risk-taking that have led to neglected facilities tied to military readiness. In total, the bill provides the VA with nearly $5 billion more than last year's bill and adds more than $200 million for military construction. I am particularly pleased that we were able to fund $500 million worth of unfunded military construction requirements. While increased funding must continue to be requested and sustained in future years, this funding makes progress to restore military readiness across the joint force, including, importantly, for the Army and Air National Guard that have served as an operational reserve for nearly two decades of war. The increased funding for the VA will go where it will do the most good for our veterans and their families, and that includes $400 million to combat the opioid epidemic, which is $18 million above the budget request; $365 million above the budget request for the caregivers program; nearly $500 million above the omnibus for mental health services; an additional $87 million to increase staffing to process veterans' disability claims appeals; and an additional $30 million to help deliver telehealth services to remote and rural areas. We also add funding for VA medical care above the fiscal year 2019 advance appropriation that we provided in the omnibus. This includes an additional $750 million for VA in-house care and $1 billion to pay for privately provided care through VA's traditional community care programs. We all agree that VA's community partners are essential to serving veterans and ensuring access, especially in rural areas, but privately provided care cannot come at the expense of VA's in-house medical services or other programs that are core to VA, and that is where the administration is trying to take us. Without budgetary relief, their efforts will leave a $38 billion hole at VA and undermine its ability to serve our veterans and their families. I know that the chairman and vice chairman of the whole committee are continuing to work with the leadership and the chairman and ranking member of the authorizing committee to fix this issue so that we can fulfill our promises to veterans, and on that, they will have my full support. Madam President, I again thank Chairman Boozman and his staff and my staff for their hard work and collaboration that went into crafting this bipartisan bill. I will have more to say as we move forward this week. In the meantime, I encourage any of our colleagues who may have amendments to file those as soon as possible so that we can ensure that we have sufficient time to review them. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Olivia Harris, Ramsay Eyre, Madeleine Granda, Brendon McGovern, and Jack Plunkett be granted floor privileges for the length of the current debate on H.R. 5895, an act making appropriations for Energy and Water Development, the Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs for fiscal year 2019.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, in December, the FCC made a colossal mistake by rolling back net neutrality protections. Today, the Senate has an opportunity to begin the process of righting that wrong with an up-or-down vote to overturn the FCC's repeal and to restore the free and open internet. This is a big deal. We just had a vote with all Democrats, Independents, and three Republicans, and we have another vote at around 3 o'clock. If we fail, the FCC will end net neutrality protections in early June. But if we succeed, then this fight will go on to the next step in the House of Representatives. This vote is a no-brainer. Net neutrality is one of the most popular issues that the Senate will consider this year. There is no other issue that polls so decisively on one side. A survey by the University of Maryland found that 83 percent of people are in favor of net neutrality, and that includes 75 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Democrats, and 86 percent of Independents. When you think about people's experience with their ISP, it makes perfect sense. People are already frustrated with the limited competitive options for the providers they have. Then, once they sign up for service, they find there are hidden fees. They have to pay for the installation. They have to wait for the installation. They have to rent the cable box. Their bill suddenly goes up within a year of service, finding out they were only engaged in a promotional offer. In other words, many people don't like their internet service providers. They like the internet, but they don't like the lack of choice and all the hassle and expense that comes with getting on the internet. So if you ask people if we should get rid of the rules that actually give consumers control over their internet access, if we should give broadband companies more power over our lives, they say no. Providers promise to be good to consumers. In fact, many of them have said that they don't need the FCC to maintain a free and open internet because they are already officially committed to the idea. But without net neutrality, there is nothing in the law that prevents companies from treating content or websites differently. In fact, many of these publicly traded companies--once the dust settles, once the politics of this net neutrality issue wanes--will be talking to their chief financial officers, and their board of directors will be asking: Why are you not maximizing revenue? Why are you not charging consumers more when you can? If the answer is ``In the process of trying to prevent a piece of legislation from passing, we made a promise,'' the board of directors will say ``Well, change your mind.'' The only thing that can stop a corporation that provides broadband services to consumers from doing all the wrong things is a law. It is not a promise; it is a law. So the question for the Senate is very simple: Whose side are you on? Are you for the consumers who are asking us to protect the internet or are you with the telecommunications companies? I want to be really clear here. There is no constituency on the other side of this, other than the telecommunications companies. You don't go to a townhall meeting and see this thing evenly split. When we were debating the Iran deal or the Affordable Care Act or an infrastructure bill or the tax bill, even in a deep blue State like Hawaii or a deep red State like those of some of my colleagues, there are always people on both sides of the issue. I have not met one human being in Hawaii who is against net neutrality, and I challenge anyone out there to find someone who is against net neutrality. The only constituency for this is the people who would benefit from what the FCC has already done. Some are pointing to a bill in the House that would take care of a few of the problems that come with getting rid of net neutrality. But when you dig a little deeper, it is clear that this is not a compromise. It doesn't offer close to the protection that net neutrality gives consumers and small businesses. In fact, it gives these ISPs the ability to charge small businesses and consumers more money for different types of content, and that is the crux of the issue. Again, go ask a consumer or a small business owner, and they will tell you that they are already frustrated with internet providers, and they expect Congress to do the right thing and look out for their interests. This issue is incredibly important to young people. They have grown up on the internet. It is part of their lives, and they do not want Congress to stand by and do nothing as this FCC allows internet providers to change the way we access the internet. It is clear to me that net neutrality is popular among everyone-- older people, young people, small business owners, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, red States, and blue States. It is also clear that the benefits of the ISPs do not come close to outweighing the benefits that students, businesses, schools, families, and others will get from a free and open internet. With this vote, every Member of the Senate will be on the record for or against net neutrality. I hope every Member will choose to vote the way nearly all of America wants us to and restore net neutrality. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, in his confirmation hearing last January, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said there was evidence that climate change had actually leveled off over the past two decades. In response to Mr. Pruitt's comments, an atmospheric scientist in California named Benjamin Santer pulled together some colleagues to study satellite data from around the world. They found that Mr. Pruitt was in fact wrong, and they prepared to publish their findings in Nature Scientific Reports. Then something pretty weird happened. A few of the scientists came forward and said that they didn't want their names listed on the research. They were worried about their ability to get a green card in the United States. Mr. Santer told the New Yorker that this was the first time in his life that he had seen his colleagues fear putting their names on research because they were worried about the negative consequences for themselves and their families. In this country, scientists should not work in fear. They should not worry about their work being politicized. But this is where we are, and it is a moment that has been carefully planned by a small group of people who do not want the United States to act on climate. Because of these groups, the United States is home to the only major political party that opposes climate action. Because of these groups, Scott Pruitt--a man who denies that climate change is real and that it is caused by humans--is running the Federal Agency charged with dealing with climate change. For too long, these groups have gone unchallenged, their web of deceit untouched. So I am joining with my colleagues to shine a light on these groups and how they have warped our ability to make good choices. The Heartland Institute was started in 1984, ostensibly by a group of Libertarians. Each of their positions boils down to the idea that the government has no role--not to work on ending tobacco use or to define what health insurance should look like. But they are especially focused on keeping the government from doing anything about climate change. The Heartland Institute denies that climate change is happening, and I disagree with them. Ninety-seven percent of all climate scientists disagree with them. But they are not playing by the average think tank rules because they are not your normal think tank. Over the years, the Heartland Institute has gained a reputation for, as one website put it, being a mouthpiece for the corporations who fund it, and their funders are very, very hard to track because Heartland keeps its donations secret. But we know that donors like the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and the Mercers are some of Heartland's biggest funders, and these donors just so happen to benefit from American inaction on climate. If the government does what Heartland wants and stops protecting the environment, these people will profit. It is almost as if the Heartland Institute exists to promote the interests of its donors. Last year, they mailed a package to hundreds of thousands of science teachers. It had pamphlets, a DVD, and a book called ``Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming.'' The mass mailing was an effort to disseminate fossil fuel industry talking points as curriculum for science teachers. They tried to send it to every middle school, high school, and college teacher in the country. The institute has also done everything it can to defend Mr. Pruitt, who is being investigated for a historic number of ethical lapses. Heartland wrote a letter to the White House just recently that called on the President to continue supporting Mr. Pruitt. The letter said the 10 ethical investigations into Mr. Pruitt amount to ``an orchestrated political campaign by [the President's] enemies.'' Heartland also supports a new proposed EPA rule, and--get this one-- it is a new EPA rule that will restrict the use of scientific studies in EPA decision making. It will restrict the use of science in EPA decision making. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Lung Association, and the National Council for Science and the Environment are some of the 50 science organizations and higher education institutions that have opposed the new rule. But the Heartland Institute is for this rule. I want to be really clear about this. This isn't about someone having a conservative ideology or different view from mine about what our energy future ought to be. There is no leftwing equivalent of the institute that acts like this. Brookings, the Center for American Progress, and other left-leaning think tanks all have dissent within their ranks, and even on the right, AEI and many others have legitimate academic discussions within the context of their political philosophy. That is not what this is. These other think tanks do not ignore scientific facts because they are real think tanks. But Heartland is not a think tank in any true sense of the word. Their work is focused not on promoting analysis based on science but on trashing analysis based on science. If you don't know that, then you can easily think they are legitimate. For example, the Heartland Institute sends a monthly newsletter about climate issues to every legislator in the country--State and Federal. It is actually a pretty good-looking product. This is a copy of it. It is actually really well done and well laid out in color, so it is not immediately obvious that this isn't even analysis. It looks like a publication from a scientific institution. The people they quote or rely on for data are almost always from industry-supported think tanks funded by the same people. This month, they highlighted one of their own policy analysts who said that Oklahoma should not subsidize wind power because the industry can't survive without subsidies. They claim that wind energy is far less reliable and far more expensive than the power derived from fossil fuel. Who benefits from that analysis? The fact is that wind energy is now the largest source of reliable electricity-generating capacity in the United States. In Oklahoma alone at least 30 percent of all power consumption comes from wind farms, and subsidies for fossil fuels are 40 times those for clean energy. Also in their April newsletter, Heartland claims that natural gas has little effect on global temperatures. But recent evidence shows that methane emissions from oil and gas are vastly undercounted. The temperature data on the back cover of this newsletter is from a climate denier at the University of Alabama whose data is considered unreliable and biased by the vast majority of the scientific community. This is not normal intellectual dissent within the scientific community. This is not normal political dissent about what our energy future should be. These people are propagating propaganda. This is not the work of a legitimate think tank. A legitimate think tank does not ignore facts and evidence. It does not publish data from a climate denier who is known in the science community for publishing work loaded with errors. They are pushing us away from science and from doing the hard work of protecting and preserving our country's clean air and water so that a few of their donors can continue to make as much money as possible. I was pleased with President Macron's speech today. There was so much he reminded us that we had in common, not just between America and France but between Democrats and Republicans. As he reminded us of our great history together, as he reminded us of our cultural exchange, as he reminded us of our military cooperation, he also reminded us that our great democracies believe in science. We have to believe in science. We have to believe in expertise. It is absolutely appropriate. The Presiding Officer and I do not share the same political philosophy, but we have to share the same set of facts. That is what is so damaging about a so-called think tank like Heartland. They are not like AEI; they are not like CAP; they are not like Brookings. They are not like any other think tank in Washington, DC, that on the level, from the standpoint of their own political philosophy and their own objectives, tries to get the right answer. That is an absolutely appropriate function for an institution to serve in this city, but what these guys do is not that. I think it is very important that we draw a distinction between those who are relying upon facts and science, and those who are not. That is why I wanted to point out what Heartland is all about. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, NASA is a science agency. Its mission is to advance science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration and enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and stewardship of the mission. That is the mission. That is why past NASA Administrators have been accomplished leaders in the fields of government, aviation, and science. The NASA Administrator in President Obama's administration was Charles Bolden. He has a master of science degree. He was an astronaut and commanding general in the U.S. Air Force. President George W. Bush had two Administrators during his Presidency. Michael Griffin was a physicist and aerospace engineer who helped to design missile defense technology satellites early in his career. Sean O'Keefe was an engineer in the Navy who worked on nuclear submarines. Before leading NASA, he served as Deputy Director of OMB, Secretary of the Navy, and Comptroller for the Department of Defense. Daniel Golden was a mechanical engineer who previously had been a vice president at a space and technology company. He was nominated by President George H.W. Bush and also served under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Richard Truly served as vice admiral in the Navy before he became the first former astronaut to head the space agency under George H.W. Bush. The reason we are having a robust debate about Mr. James Bridenstine to lead NASA is that this is the first time in history we have someone without similar qualifications to run such an important agency. Jim Bridenstine, the nominee we are considering, served as a Navy pilot, and I thank him for his service, but that does not qualify him to run NASA. Just because you know how to fly a plane does not mean you have the skills and experience to lead the Federal Government's space agency. I am not alone in that opinion. A NASA consultant wrote that Mr. Bridenstine does not have ``significant knowledge and experience with how NASA works'' or ``deep technical knowledge in aerospace systems.'' There are a lot of things a NASA Administrator has to do. Most of it is governed by law, and I expect anybody who is confirmed will follow the law, but the most solemn and serious responsibility that the NASA Administrator has is final launch authority. A launch is a culmination of work by thousands of people over many years. If something goes wrong, we could lose a payload that is worth millions of dollars or is, in fact, irreplaceable. People could die. That is why this job requires someone with good judgment and an understanding of all of the elements that go into a space launch. That is why we have always had NASA administrators who have demonstrable expertise in these fields. It is downright dangerous to have someone without this expertise with this kind of authority. Frankly, it is even more frightening to have a leader who has made a career out of ignoring scientific expertise. James Bridenstine is a climate denier with no scientific background who has made a career out of ignoring science. Now I also don't have a scientific background, but I defer to scientists. I rely on the scientific consensus, and the scientific consensus is not what Mr. Bridenstine says, which is that it is sort of difficult to tell how much climate change is attributable to human activity. The scientific consensus is that climate change is caused primarily by human activity, and Jim Bridenstine doesn't say that is true, and that is terrifying. Forget our views for the moment about what kind of energy picture we think America should pursue. This is about whether you are going to rely upon people who actually know things or you are going to rely upon your own politics and ideology. When you have final launch authority, you better rely on science. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Bridenstine testified that he did not know about the scientific consensus on climate change. He suggested there were other contributing factors that played more of a role, but the fact is this. Almost every climate scientist--97 percent of all climate scientists, to be exact--have concluded that humans are the primary cause of climate change. So there are two explanations for his answer. Either Mr. Bridenstine has not bothered to read up on the scientific consensus on the most pressing scientific issue of our generation or he does not agree with that scientific consensus. Either explanation makes him unqualified to run NASA. I want to end by reading a few quotes from one of my Republican colleagues. My colleague said that NASA is ``the one federal mission which has largely been free of politics, and it's at a critical juncture in its history.'' He also said any NASA Administrator would need to have the ``respect of the people who work there from a leadership and even a scientific perspective.'' He also said Mr. Bridenstine would add to the politicization of NASA and that NASA, at this critical stage in its history, can't afford that. I agree with my Republican colleague. I urge every Member of the Senate to give NASA the leader it needs and to vote no on this confirmation. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I am here to give some brief remarks about what we are on right now, which is a Congressional Review Act vehicle to reconsider agency guidance. There is nothing that sounds more arcane and wonky than that. The issue at hand has to do with disparate treatment of people when they go in to get a car. There is plenty of evidence that Black and Brown people are taken advantage of and treated more poorly in the credit context than White people. So the CFPB went to collect data and to require that people be treated fairly. I will be voting against this CRA vehicle, but I actually think there is a bigger, broader, more concerning issue. I am going to try to work with the Parliamentarian's office and with the leadership of both parties to try to address it. Although it is arcane, it is very worrisome for the Senate itself. The Congressional Review Act passed in 1996. The idea was straightforward: All rules have to have some authority beyond the desire for the agency to want to promulgate rules. It is subject to review by the Congress. In other words, if you don't like what an agency is doing, now there is a pathway called privileged, which allows the Congress to go ahead and overturn that rule. In the Senate, it is especially important because it is not subject to a 60-vote threshold. This is a big deal. This allows Congress to say any time there is a rule made: We are going to overturn it with a bare majority threshold. That was the will of the Congress, and that is Federal law. Here is how the statute works. The rule gets submitted to GAO and Congress, and then a clock starts and a bunch of statutory triggers go. I dug into this over the last 10 weeks. Suffice it to say it is very complicated. There is a strict timeline, and there are 60 legislative days to take action. And because we are the legislative branch of the Federal Government, legislative days are not actual days; it ends up taking four times that long. The important part is that there is a process that is prescribed for that, and there is a timeframe that is prescribed for that. That is the authority the Congress gave itself in 1996. That authority is very clear about two things: First, it is meant to apply to rules, which are binding, and it is meant to have legal force. The CRA gives the Congress a way to weigh in when an agency's interpretation of the law conflicts with the legislative intentions. Second, it only applies to rules that were recently promulgated. In other words, they specifically envisioned that a clock would run. The rule gets submitted to Congress, the clock runs, and if the Congress likes the rule or if there is not sufficient will to overturn the rule, then the rule stands. If the Congress doesn't like the rule, then a Member can introduce a CRA resolution of disapproval, and we act on it. This is why what is happening right now is totally nuts. What is happening right now is not what we have normally done with CRAs. What is happening right now is that we are submitting agency guidance--not a rule but agency guidance--which has no legal force, to the same procedures as the rules under the Congressional Review Act. The guidance in question is implementing guidance for a statute that is 50 years old. The guidance came out 5 years ago. The law that it is implementing is 50 years old. It is a piece of guidance. It is literally interpretation of an existing law for the public. And now we are going to overturn the interpretation of an existing law from an executive agency. We are not overturning a rulemaking. When you go through the rulemaking process in the executive branch, it takes anywhere from 12 to 36 months. There is a rigorous process. It is sort of quasi-judicial, and you have to really check all the boxes and do it right. Otherwise, you get sued under the Administrative Procedure Act. None of that happened. This was just guidance. So now, if the Parliamentarian and the GAO and everyone else decides that the CRA applies to guidance, then the time limits on CRA don't matter at all, and the interpretation of this statute is rendered absurd. I will point out that this is not the most well-crafted Federal law on the books. It is very difficult to interpret this Federal law, so I sympathize with the Parliamentarian and GAO and the leadership of both parties, who are trying to make sense of a statute that is unclear in some places. But when a statute is unclear, you are supposed to interpret the statute in a way that the statute functions. Right now, what we are doing is we are rendering the statute essentially absurd because if it is a rule, you have a strict time limit. If it is guidance--and I am not sure, if it is guidance, why that wouldn't also apply to an agency circular or an executive memorandum for the Under Secretary. All of this could be subject to tens of thousands of pieces of guidance and rules and views, and whatever is considered policymaking could be subjected to a Congressional Review Act action. I think that is completely bananas. We are going down a path where Congress can take an administrative action that has been done in the last 22 years and subject it to the CRA, and you will not need 60 votes. This is bad for our institution. I can't stress that enough. I understand that this is not the kind of thing that people across the country are going to be deeply passionate about and march on the streets about and be motivated to vote on, but we are in the Senate, and we have an obligation to safeguard the way this institution operates. I am deeply afraid that if we subject every piece of administration guidance--and remember, the door swings both ways in Washington. We will have a Democratic Senate. Who knows when, but we will have a Democratic Senate and we will have a Democratic House, and we can scour everything that every Republican administration has done since 1996 pursuant to any law made at any time in our American history and subject it to a majority vote. I think the last thing this institution needs is a new opportunity to go down new rabbit holes on partisan issues and a new opportunity to fight on small things and not deal with the biggest challenges of our time. I am going to oppose this on the merits, but I am more worried about what we are doing to our institution. Right now, the Senate is not functioning at a high level. We have not had any open amendment process except vote-arama, which I think 100 Senators would agree is a useless process. So the regular order, which was called for by the then- minority leader when he was criticizing Majority Leader Reid, is nowhere to be found. I am not blaming him. I am not blaming anyone in particular. But I am saying that when there is an opportunity to at least prevent this institution from falling further, we should take that opportunity. I understand we are not going to be able to intervene in this moment and stop this CRA, but let the record reflect that I do not accept that a precedent is being set. This has not been refereed yet. We have not fully had a conversation with the Parliamentarian and GAO about what exactly CRA is supposed to mean and how it is supposed to operate. If it is supposed to operate in an absurd way, I think we have a lot of work to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I thank Senator Hirono for her poignant remarks, and I want to offer my condolences to the family. Senator Daniel Kahikina Akaka died on Friday at the age of 93, leaving behind a legacy of integrity, kindness, and service to Hawaii and to the Nation. In Washington, Senator Akaka was an ambassador of ``aloha.'' He showed people kindness, respect, and hospitality rarely seen in this town. He didn't just represent Hawaii's interests in the Congress; he showed the world what Hawaii represents; in the words of President Kennedy, ``all that we are and all that we hope to be.'' He started that service as a welder in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He fought in World War II in the Pacific arena, traveling to places like Tinian and Saipan. When World War II ended, he took advantage of the GI bill to attend the University of Hawaii to become a teacher--an occupation he never fully left behind. Senator Akaka served for 36 years in Congress--14 years in the House and 22 in the U.S. Senate. He was loved by colleagues in both parties because he was kind to everyone. In fact, he never said a bad word about anyone, not even in private. The foundation for his kindness came from his faith, which he learned from his mother Annie. He was a faithful attendee of the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, where he would lead Members singing hymns. He always began with the history of each song--a tradition he passed on to our own Chaplain, Chaplain Black, who continues it today. Danny Akaka was also very humble. There were times he didn't get credit for the work he did here because he didn't care about the credit. He cared about the work, about making a difference for people, especially those whom he represented. He was deeply convinced that the government could improve people's lives because he had seen that in his own life as a beneficiary of the GI bill. He would become the Senator who modernized that bill, bringing it into the 21st century. He always fought hard for veterans--for their benefits and their recognition, no matter the color of their skin or their country of origin. When someone once challenged him on the cost of benefits for veterans, he answered by saying: ``The price has already been paid, many times over, by the service of the brave men and women who wore our nation's uniform.'' Senator Akaka never forgot the costs of war on our country, and he did everything he could to make sure his colleagues didn't either. He voted against the Iraq war and advocated for peace and nuclear nonproliferation throughout his career. He was unrelenting when it came to the causes that were most important to him. As the only Native Hawaiian to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, he never stopped working to see Native Hawaiians recognized in a government-to-government relationship with the United States. In his years on the Indian Affairs Committee, including as the chairman, he successfully sponsored the apology resolution, which recognized that the overthrow of the Queen--the only monarch in the United States--was illegal and facilitated by agents of our own Federal Government. This was the theme of Senator Akaka's career--to advocate for people who did not have power and for people who were vulnerable. He was a champion for the Federal Government employees who, to this day, continue to be a punching bag for some. He sponsored the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Act, which ensures that Federal workers cannot be retaliated against if they report waste, fraud, and abuse. That was just one of the many things he did to make the Federal Government a better employer. Senator Akaka also fought for consumers. He helped people who were trying to get out of credit card debt. He made sure investors had an advocate at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he protected people who sent remittances around the world so they aren't swindled out of their hard-earned money. Every morning he would begin his day by meeting visitors from Hawaii. Those connections to his constituents--to home--drove his work and kept him focused on helping Hawaii. Much of his work was possible because of the bipartisanship relationships he built with other Senators. Some of his best friends in the body--Senators Inhofe, Cochran, and Barrasso--were people with whom he did not agree very often. Every Member of this body--those who knew Senator Akaka and those who didn't--can learn from his legacy--a legacy of quiet leadership, of treating others the way you want to be treated, and focusing on the things that matter to the people we are here to represent. I want to end with a few words from Chaplain Black. This is what he had to say about Senator Akaka: There's something called ethical congruence--it refers to when your actions back up your rhetoric. And most of us struggle with that, because it's very easy to say something but much more difficult to live it. There's a verse in Scripture that says, we are living letters, so our lives should be something that people should be able to read. Francis of Assisi said: preach the gospel everywhere you go; when necessary, use words. Senator Akaka preached the gospel everywhere he went, and very rarely had to use words. That's the kind of ethical congruence that he had. The U.S. Senate and our country would be better off if there were more leaders like Danny. He fought for the vulnerable, promoted peace, and looked for common ground. Most of all, he embodied the ``aloha'' spirit and showed us all what it means to have a pure heart and be a true public servant. Our thoughts are with the family of Senator Akaka today, with Millie, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and his staff. He will be remembered and greatly missed. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the news about climate change certainly feels daunting. In the United States, we have historic wildfires, hurricanes, storms, and floods. Severe weather has upended people's lives, destroyed businesses and homes, and is now costing the economy tens of billions of dollars every year. Around the world, it can sometimes seem even bleaker. Cities are running out of water, and drought has distressed entire regions and pushed people out of their homes and fueled conflict. Meanwhile, here in Washington, DC, the Trump administration is actively undermining our ability to address climate change. At the EPA in particular, Scott Pruitt is allowing polluters to violate the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. He plans to eliminate limits on methane emissions and protections that keep toxic chemicals from polluting our waterways. He is rolling back the Clean Power Plan and fuel efficiency standards that keep too much carbon from polluting the air. He has cut the number of fines for polluters by more than half, and he has reduced the EPA's staff so that it is down to the same level that it was in 1984. There are 700 EPA employees, including 200 scientists, who have left since the beginning of the Trump administration. In other words, this administration is not just ignoring climate change and its impacts, it is actually throwing fuel on the fire. So is there any reason for hope? Let me give you three reasons to actually be hopeful. First, the rest of the world is going to move forward with or without leadership. Every single nation in the world is working to lower its emissions and meet its commitments as part of the Paris Agreement. Experts said that even without the United States, the Paris Agreement can succeed if nations follow through, and there are some promising signs that this is happening. In China, experts predicted that coal consumption would peak between the years 2020 and 2040, but Brookings reported earlier this year that the country's consumption of coal has already peaked. One-third of global investments in renewable energy today come from China. In 2018, they will likely make up half of the entire global market for new solar installations. China is not the only one making progress here. The world is in a race for clean energy. A coalition of 22 countries and the EU is investing more than $30 billion a year in clean energy research and development. That brings us to the second reason to have hope on climate change, and that is economics. Here in the United States, financial incentives remain the law regardless of what Scott Pruitt wants the law to be. We still have the investment tax credit and the production tax credit for solar and wind, and they are pushing us toward clean energy. Last year, more than half of the new energy generation that came online in the United States was that of wind and solar--more than coal and natural gas combined. The fact is that clean energy is now cheaper than dirty energy. In 2009, coal cost $111 per megawatt hour, natural gas $83, wind $135. Utility-scale solar cost a whopping $359--about 3\1/2\ times the cost of coal. By 2017--listen to these numbers--it was $102 for coal, $60 for natural gas, $45 for wind, and $50 for utility-scale solar. Now wind and solar are 20 percent cheaper, on average, and coal is twice as expensive as clean energy. Even the fossil fuel industry understands that we are moving toward a low-carbon economy. That is why their investors are demanding accountability. Last year, a majority of shareholders forced ExxonMobil to start reporting on how the fight against climate change will impact the oil company, which is the largest oil company in the world. TransCanada canceled its plans to build an oil pipeline that would have carried 1.1 million barrels of oil a day because of the changing economic and political calculations. Third and finally, the United States may not have the President's leadership on climate change, but when it comes to the Paris Agreement, corporations, States, and cities have stood up and declared: We are still in. Thousands of mayors, Governors, CEOs, Tribal leaders, and average Americans are working to meet our commitment to the Paris Agreement. Here is one example at the State level. More than half of the States have clean energy policies in place, and many have capped emissions. In Hawaii, we will transition to 100 percent clean energy by the year 2045, and analysts are optimistic that we may reach our goal sooner than that. These efforts are making a difference. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon found that the United States can meet our original commitment to the Paris Agreement regardless of what Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump, and Scott Pruitt want. Even if the EPA undermines our effort, we are still on track. George Washington once said that ``perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.'' He also said that ``it is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.'' By these two measures, there is even hope in Congress. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse will be remembered in history as the epitome of perseverance and spirit when it comes to climate change. He understands the moral urgency of this moment. When we look at the Senators joining him on the floor this evening, it is clear that we have more than a few good men and women working on this issue. We will continue to shine a light on the many ways that this administration is failing the American people by ignoring climate change. We will also continue to hope because the absence of leadership from this President has not stopped the rest of the country or the rest of the world from acting on climate, and it will not stop us from moving forward. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Will the Senator yield?