Pat Toomey

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I rise this afternoon to bid a very fond farewell to a man whom I have come to like very much and respect enormously. He is Christopher Gahan. He has been my chief of staff for 6 years. After 6 years of extraordinary service, he has decided that he is going to move on to the private sector. I want to say a few words about Christopher's background and his contribution to my office, to our country, and the people of Pennsylvania. Christopher is actually from New Hampshire. He is a native of Rye Beach. After growing up in New Hampshire, he earned his degree in biology at Brown University and then went on to get a law degree from Harvard. I can assure everyone he has recovered from his educational experience to a very extensive degree. He went into law and practiced at the law firm of Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles and Washington. He had a very successful time there, but he decided he wanted to come to Washington and work in government and, specifically, work on the Hill. He went to work for Judd Gregg, Senator Gregg from New Hampshire, and Christopher Gahan, I understand, had almost every job that a Senate office has. He started at the very beginning, but because of his enormous talents and his ability and hard work, he relatively quickly rose and became chief of staff for Senator Gregg. When I was elected to the Senate in 2010, I got a call within a matter of weeks from Christopher, and he said he wanted to come and meet with me and discuss the fact that I needed a chief of staff. He drove up to Allentown. We had lunch, and I decided almost immediately that this guy would probably do a great job. He clearly had the attributes that I was looking for. I should also point out some of the things that are perhaps not as widely known about Christopher outside of my office. One is that he is a tremendous athlete. He has been for a long time. When he was in college, he was on the varsity men's water polo team. He was cocaptain at Brown, he was All-Ivy League, and to this day, he gets up at 4 or 5 o'clock every morning and usually goes for a run. He occasionally bangs out a marathon and thinks nothing of it. He has quite a diverse range of talents. He also has a very peculiar taste in certain things. He loves all things related to cats, except the animals themselves. I don't understand that. Maybe it is an allergy; I am not sure exactly what it is. If you look at his desk area, he has funny photos of cats, little porcelain cats, little masks of cats, and a calendar of cats. He loves all things cats, except the animals themselves. It is quite remarkable. Having said all of that about his background, what I really want to say is how fortunate Pennsylvania and I have been to have Christopher Gahan serving in this capacity. As I said, from the day that I had lunch with Christopher, I knew he could do a great job. I knew he had that ability. I had very high expectations for what he could do, and he has exceeded those expectations every day. It has really been quite amazing. He is a very intelligent man, but more importantly, he has great judgment and a great ability to work with people. The role he has played in my office has been absolutely tremendous. For example, he is very knowledgeable about a number of issue areas, but he always understood that his role was to help the legislative assistants who had responsibilities for those areas. Christopher's role was to make sure that they were able to do the work they were assigned to do and to really shine and get a chance to excel and to grow personally. While he could have inserted himself in that dynamic, he never did. He always chose to empower the people who worked under him, and he created an environment where people loved to come to work every day. They loved to work hard. They wanted to do well for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is they wanted to continue to earn the respect of Christopher Gahan. Needless to say, he is extremely well liked, both within the office and on the Hill. I know how often other chiefs, other Members, people who come to us with concerns from Pennsylvania--they have praised his even-handed, very thoughtful, very hard-working approach. He has truly enabled us to have a very successful office for these last 6 years, and I am very grateful to him. He is moving on to the private sector, and I understand that. He has served me and my office, our State and our country very well. He deserves the change that he has embraced, and I think he is going to do very well. I am sure he will, and I wish him every success. My only insistence is that he stay in touch because he has become a very good friend and he is just a great source of advice. Lastly, he is a great patriot. He loves this country. He has served it well, and we are going to miss him. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, we all remember the very severe financial crisis of 2008, which precipitated a very severe recession from which we have had a very, very weak recovery. In many ways, we are still trying to recover from that. I want to talk a little about that, and I want to talk about the opportunity that is before us to make some very constructive changes to help us have a more robust recovery, the recovery we have been waiting for. Let's first review, very briefly, the causes of this financial crisis because the misguided response to it has contributed to our lack of a robust recovery. The causes of the financial crisis were of course principally government causes. It was principally the failure of government policy that created the financial crisis that led to this recession. What specific government policies? I would say several. Briefly, first of all, it was failed monetary policy. The policy in which the monetary authorities kept interest rates too low for too long actually had negative real interest rates, and that policy, quite predictably, created a bubble, a bubble in residential real estate, the explosion of which led to this crisis. This was compounded by the failed legislative policy, which actually required mortgage lenders, especially the government-sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to lend money to people who were very unlikely to be able to pay it back. It is generally a very bad idea to lend money to people who are not able to pay it back, and it was a bad idea in this case as well. Thirdly, I would suggest that there was a failure of government regulators. There were many thousands of regulators crawling through all of the financial institutions of America, but somehow this gigantic bubble escaped their notice, and the interconnected nature of the firms and the exposures that firms had to financial risk seemed to escape their attention. The combination of a failed monetary policy, failed legislative policy, and failed regulatory policy was the government's enormous contribution to this crisis. I think everybody would agree that one of the things we learned from the financial crisis was just how inadequate the resolution mechanism was that we had for the failure of a large, complex financial institution. We didn't have an adequate one at all. The failure of Lehman Brothers was a good case in point, and the worry at the time was that if large financial institutions were simply allowed to fail, they would have a knockdown effect that would bring down the entire global financial network and beyond so that was the concern. I think it is valid that the resolution mechanism at the time was insufficient. In the wake of this crisis, Congress stepped in and decided we have to do something about it, and of course what they did was give us Dodd- Frank, which is a law that is very badly flawed in many ways and failed, in part, because the authors failed to fully comprehend the cause of this crisis and because they took the wrong fundamental approach to dealing with it. Most fundamentally was a conceptual flaw which is that future financial crisis would be avoided by having the government impose enormous and very extensive control and not by freeing up market discipline to prevent the crisis from occurring. I think that is very much at the heart of the fundamental conceptual flaw of Dodd-Frank. Some of the specifics, broadly speaking, were to severely restrict what financial institutions could do, essentially turn medium- and large-sized banks into public utilities, give regulators, the same folks who missed the last crisis, virtually unlimited powers to micromanage these institutions with the thought that somehow in the future they will catch the next one. Then, as a failsafe in Dodd-Frank, the sort of final backstop, was to actually codify a category of financial institutions as too-big-to-fail. The terminology they use in Dodd-Frank is a little different. They call them systematically important financial institutions, but that is what it is. It is carving into law a category that we will deem too big to fail and the creation of an explicit bailout mechanism, whereby taxpayers will have to once again bail out these financial institutions if they fail. There are many problems with this whole approach, not the least of which is--there should be no institution in America that is too big to fail. A private for-profit organization, if it fails, it must be allowed to fail. There is no justification for forcing taxpayers to bail out any kind of firm, including banks. That is a bad and fundamental flaw, but there are many adverse consequences that have come along. We have seen a huge concentration in banking assets directly in response to Dodd-Frank that arguably concentrates risks. We have seen costs to consumers rise, and costs for financial services that consumers need has gone up. Liquidity and securities have gone done, and that just means pension funds and savers have to pay more to invest their savings in the stocks and bonds they are relying on for their retirement security. Innovation has dried up because bureaucrats have to approve everything and anything a financial institution can do. By the way, it actually destroyed a whole industry. This is not reported on nearly as much as I think it should be, but Dodd-Frank, together with the abnormally low interest rates we have had once again, has completely ended the entire industry of startup community banking. It is worth noting that in the United States of America, prior to the passage of Dodd-Frank, Americans launched new banks for decades. It is something business folks would routinely do. A handful of businesspeople would pull their resources together, start up a bank, contribute the capital, do their own banking business there, and then what would they do? They would provide lending services to consumers and small businesses in their towns and communities. They would be there for the local pizza shop that needs to add a walk-in cooler in the back or the local HVAC repair shop that needs to buy another pickup truck. It is community banks that provide the lending for these kinds of small business opportunities that allow families and individuals to live their dream and create jobs all across America. That is what community banks did for years. For decades, prior to Dodd-Frank, we launched, on average, about 125 new community banks per year--many more in really good times, fewer in bad times but about 125 per year. From the day they signed Dodd-Frank into law in July of 2010 through this afternoon, we have launched two new community banks in America--two in over 6 years. This industry is done. It is dead. It doesn't happen anymore because when business folks sit around the table and say, gee, wouldn't it be a good idea to launch a bank because we need one in our community, we don't have a small community bank willing to provide these loans, what they have discovered very quickly is, they can't possibly make a go at it because the regulatory expense and costs are so staggering that they can't see their way to a surviving business model. As a result, we don't have these community banks anymore. They aren't being launched and haven't been for years. Who knows how many small businesses haven't launched and haven't been able to grow because people could never get the funding. Let me just promise you, Citigroup is not in the business of doing the kind of lending that new community banks do every single day. This is just one of the many problems, and one of the most fundamental ones is that taxpayers have this big contingent liability hanging over their head in the form of that bailout mechanism I alluded to earlier-- this requirement that they will be forced to bail out big financial institutions all over again. Dodd-Frank codifies it. Dodd-Frank spells out exactly how it should happen. It is my strongly held view that we need to reform Dodd-Frank. It is overdue. It needs substantial reforms, and those reforms should include making sure taxpayers never have to bail out another giant institution. That is just wrong. That should not be on the table. In fact, it should be precluded. A second issue is, taxpayers should not be forced, through the mechanisms of this bill, to make banking products more expensive for consumers--less available, more expensive, fewer products and services. We can do this while we maintain our ability to deter, detect, prevent, and prosecute fraud when it occurs. That is absolutely a fundamental responsibility we have, and we can do that. Most importantly, we have to enable a vigorous, competitive market for financial services to respond to consumers with new services and new products at ever-lower costs and to have a market discipline that forces those institutions to behave prudently because their future depends on it. We are coming into a new Congress soon, and I am hoping our Democratic colleagues will work with us to correct the fundamental flaws in Dodd-Frank, repeal the things that don't work, and roll back the problems with this legislation, but the incoming Senate minority leader is on record in interviews already declaring they will not do so. They will not help us in this endeavor. They are not interested and can deny us the 60 votes we will need to make substantive reforms to Dodd-Frank. Let me suggest to my colleagues that--first of all, I hope there is a change of heart on the other side. I hope, first and foremost, as we go through this process, that some of our Democratic colleagues will work with us and will agree that there are changes that need to be made and that we can make them, hopefully, with a very broad consensus. If that is not possible, I suggest there is an alternative. The alternative is that we use a budget resolution that would contain reconciliation instructions to the Banking Committee. For that matter, this could apply to other authorizing committees, but I am specifically referring to the Banking Committee. The reason that is important is because that will allow us to pass subsequent legislation in compliance with the reconciliation instructions that can pass the Senate with a simple majority vote. That is not my preferred way to do it, but we have to do this. We have to get this done. This change in Dodd-Frank will have a very profound impact on our economy. It will encourage and enable us to have growth that we have been waiting for, for too long. This device might be what we need to get there. Let me point out that there are precedents for this. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 used a budget resolution to create reconciliation instructions, which in turn switched some of the FHA funding streams from mandatory spending to discretionary spending, from spending that is on autopilot to spending that is at the annual discretion of Congress. That was done through exactly this mechanism. The FDIC and NCUA are deposit insurance funds. They were restructured and reformed, and it was done under the same device using the same procedural mechanism. Those changes were possible because they had a very significant budgetary impact, and that is one of the criteria for using the reconciliation device, which in these cases was something on the order of a couple of billion dollars of taxpayer savings over 10 years. Reforming Dodd-Frank can save taxpayers a lot of money. The CFPB alone, over 10 years, is expected to consume--on its current path--over $6 billion. That is a lot of money. Some real sensible, thorough reforms there could save taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Orderly Liquidation Fund will cost taxpayers $20 billion over the next 10 years. By the way, that $20 billion is bailout money. We can fix that. The office of financial research costs over $1 billion. There are many cases in which we can save serious taxpayer money, in the process reduce our deficits, thereby achieve the goal of the reconciliation instructions given to the Banking Committee, and along the way help encourage stronger economic growth by modifying some of these misguided policies in Dodd-Frank. I suggest that the election we just went through was about several things, but one of them was certainly shaking up the status quo and getting some things done and not just continuing what we have always been doing. Well, for too long now we have been putting up with the Dodd-Frank bill that is costing us a lot of economic growth and opportunity. I am hoping our Democratic colleagues will work with us so we can begin to make the constructive changes we need, but, if not, I think we should use all tools available to get this job done. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I have spoken before on the floor about the tremendous dangers that arise from cities across America that choose to be sanctuary cities. Recent events compel me to come back to the floor today. Just this week, Federal law enforcement officers finally found Winston Enrique Perez Pilarte. Pilarte was an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic. In July of 2015, a little over a year ago, Philadelphia police arrested Pilarte, a 40-year-old man, for the rape of a child. He had previously been convicted of drug trafficking, resisting arrest, and theft--convicted, sentenced, and went to jail--but he was released and rearrested. In 2015, when he was rearrested, he managed to raise the money necessary for bail. When the background check was done, Federal law enforcement asked the city of Philadelphia to hold him temporarily, after he had raised the money for bail, rather than simply releasing him--to hold him temporarily so they could pick him up and begin deportation proceedings. The city refused to cooperate, and they instead released this dangerous, previously convicted man who was here illegally, released him back onto the streets of Philadelphia. Pilarte roamed the streets of Philadelphia for a full year, doing who knows what, until just this week when Federal officials managed to find him and took him into custody. Consider the case of Jose Palermo Ramirez. In 2013 this 43-year-old illegal immigrant was convicted of indecent assault on a 7-year-old girl. Federal immigration officials asked the city in this case to notify them when Palermo Ramirez completed his sentence and prior to his release so they could pick him up and begin the deportation proceedings of this person who was here illegally and obviously a dangerous and convicted criminal, but the city refused. Instead, they released this convicted child molester back out onto the city streets. Luckily for Pennsylvania families, Federal law enforcement officers were able to find and deport him, despite the lack of help from the city. Maybe the most heartbreaking story is that of Ramon Ochoa. Ramon Ochoa is a Honduran immigrant who came here illegally in 2009. He was caught and he was deported. He found his way back into the United States and managed to get to Philadelphia. Last year Philadelphia police arrested him, and they had him in custody on charges of aggravated assault, making terrorist threats, resisting arrest, and harassment. Again, when the background check was done, Federal law enforcement officials realized they knew who this was. He was here illegally, he had been deported previously, and he was violent and dangerous. They asked the city to cooperate with them so they could pick him up and begin deportation proceedings. Once again, Philadelphia refused. Instead, they released him back onto the city streets, where he continued to prey on others, and just 4 months ago, Ochoa was arrested, this time for raping a child under the age of 13. How can this possibly happen? How can this possibly happen, that a city would knowingly, willfully, and repeatedly choose to release dangerous criminals, including child molesters who don't even have a right to be in the United States in the first place because they came here illegally? It is just unbelievable, but this is what is happening, and it happens because Philadelphia is a sanctuary city. Let's be clear about what that means. That means it is the legal policy of the city of Philadelphia to forbid local law enforcement from even cooperating, even sharing information with Federal immigration officials when the person in question came here illegally. In many cases, we confer this special legal privilege on dangerous, violent criminals because they came here illegally. It is unbelievable. This isn't the police's fault. Police would much rather be cooperating with Federal immigration officials. They are not allowed to because local politicians in cities across America have decided they will not allow it to take place. This is absurd. This is very dangerous, and small children in my State are paying the price for this. This is why earlier this year I introduced legislation, which is called the Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, and it would solve this problem. It does it with two components. The first is to eliminate the perceived, and understandably perceived, legal liability that communities have, municipalities have, and here is the nature of their concern. There is a court order that says if the Department of Homeland Security issues a detainer request--the request that you detain a person who is here illegally that they believe is violent--and you comply with that request, you detain the person, and it turns out the Department of Homeland Security had the wrong guy, the concern on the part of our municipalities is they can be sued for that. My legislation solves that problem. It says: In a case like that, where a municipality complies with a bona fide detainer request, if the person is wrongly held and they have a cause of action they can take, they can do so, but that has to be against the Federal Government. It has to be against the entity that asked for the detainer. That makes perfect sense, and it completely eliminates any legal liability on the part of the municipality that would then cooperate with these detainer requests and information requests. That is the first part, eliminate any danger of a legal liability. The second part is, if a city, nevertheless, chooses that it wants to be a sanctuary city, then we should withhold some of the Federal funding we currently send to these cities. Specifically, my legislation would withhold community development block grants--very cherished by the city governments all across America--if they choose to endanger all of us by continuing to be sanctuary cities. We had a vote on this. Last summer we had a vote. A majority of this body voted in favor of my legislation to bring an end to sanctuary cities this way, but unfortunately we didn't have the 60 votes we needed to overcome Senator Reid's filibuster on this. I am suggesting we revisit this because these appalling crimes are continuing to be committed, as of course they will, if cities keep releasing violent criminals back out onto our streets. In the meantime, I will suggest there is something that President-Elect Trump can do when he becomes President, and that would be he could issue an Executive order which would, I think, significantly limit dangerous sanctuary cities. Let me be clear. The Executive action he could legally pursue would not be permanent. I don't think it would be as effective as the legislation I have introduced. It wouldn't have the legal force of a new law, but it would be a good start, and it would be fully consistent with his constitutional powers. That would be progress. I think it is very clear that we have to act. How important is the rule of law to all of us? How important is the safety and security of the American people? How important are the childhoods of the victims we are hearing about repeatedly as recently as just this week? To me, the answer is clear. These are very important priorities, and we need to act. While we await the opportunity to enact this legislation, I hope our new President will take the Executive order steps he can to at least diminish this problem. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, today I wish to honor Charles E. Rudler, a World War II infantry soldier and prisoner of war who selflessly served his Nation with distinction. Born in Linesville, PA, on March 26, 1925, Charles Rudler was an 18- year-old truck driver when he began his service in the U.S. Army in 1943. Serving as a rifleman during WWII, he landed on the beaches of Normandy and fought through northern France, the Ardennes, and Central Europe. Unfortunately, Rudler was captured while fighting the Nazis and held as a POW through the end of the war at Stalag 3A, a brutal prison and work camp near Brandenburg, Germany. He survived this ordeal and separated from the service at the end of the war with an honorable discharge in 1945. For his bravery and determination, Rudler has been awarded the WWII Victory Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, a Purple Heart, and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with four Bronze Stars. For these reasons, I wish to honor Charles Rudler for his service and sacrifice in defense of our Nation.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, let me briefly observe what is going on here. I don't think it is any mystery to anyone who has been following what is happening here.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this morning to speak on S. 1831, the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, also known as the PACT Act. This is a bipartisan bill. I thank my colleague Senator Blumenthal for coauthoring this and the 33 cosponsors I have. This is a commonsense bill. This is the first Federal law that would protect all animals from torture, maiming, and abuse. The PACT Act allows Federal law enforcement to intervene when this kind of abuse occurs where the Federal Government has jurisdiction, on Federal property, in U.S. territories, and in relation to interstate commerce. The act specifically bans the most appalling forms of animal abuse. It is often known as crushing. This is when a deranged individual actually tortures and sometimes sexually assaults household pets for some perverse enjoyment that they get. There are people who are in the business of soliciting animals over the Internet so they can conduct this appalling activity and then sell the images. It is unbelievable, but it happens. This legislation is not controversial. Stopping this kind of obscene animal abuse is not controversial at all. There are no Republicans objecting to this legislation. The next Democratic leader on the other side is a cosponsor. Senator Schumer is a cosponsor of this legislation. There are 27 Democratic cosponsors. Over half of the Democratic caucus are cosponsors of this legislation, and a majority of House Members have cosponsored companion legislation. We worked with all of the relevant committees to make sure all concerns were addressed. It has been endorsed by every major animal welfare organization, including the Humane Society, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Animal Welfare Institute. We worked with agricultural and sporting groups. There is no organized opposition to this at all. This legislation is necessary because there are many hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of cases of this kind of horrific abuse of animals occurring every year. We have seen appalling cases. I will submit for the record examples that are too appalling to discuss. Frankly, it is just that bad, and we need to bring this to an end. It is also important for me to briefly point out that academic research has found a very strong correlation between people who abuse animals and then subsequently commit violent crimes against human beings. This has been documented by the National Institute of Mental Health. They say that a history of sexually assaulting animals is the single largest risk factor and strongest predictor of increased risk of committing child sexual abuse. A 2013 Northeastern University study found that half of all school shooters had harmed animals before harming humans. It is very clear that if we can stop people from this appalling abuse of animals, we will also be protecting human beings, and that is why law enforcement agencies endorse my legislation as well. The PACT Act is endorsed by the National Sheriffs' Association, Fraternal Order of Police, Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, and nearly 200 local law enforcement agencies. As I have said, this is a very simple issue. It is not confusing or complicated, and it is not controversial. Animals are not adequately protected across America. Many of our constituents feel very strongly and passionately about this issue, as well they should. Passage of this legislation will help protect people as well as animals, and Congress should act on this legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 1831 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the Toomey substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I believe I have the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I would observe for the record that we have been waiting for about 2 weeks, looking for the opportunity to do this and work with every Member on the other side, and we accommodated the leader's schedule when he said this was the only time he could do this--this and one other time. I will close by saying this: Look, we all know what is going on here. The Democratic leader stands up and complains that we have not been productive and not gotten things done, and then when I propose a unanimous consent request on a bipartisan bill that has a majority of Democratic Senators as cosponsors, has been thoroughly vetted, and is supported by every outside group, he raises a completely unrelated issue and uses that as the basis to block this noncontroversial legislation. This is exactly what the American people are so frustrated about with this body and some of the leadership in this body when this kind of completely partisan-driven agenda blocks progress even on modest and noncontroversial legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that either directly or indirectly, the Senator from Oregon controls the time, but he has agreed to yield up to 10 minutes to me to make some comments. I wish to confirm that.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I had the nature of the courtesy slightly wrong, but nevertheless the principle remains, and I appreciate the cooperation of my colleague. I will keep my comments to 10 minutes, especially if the Presiding Officer is kind enough to inform me when the 10 minutes has expired. Opioid Epidemic Mr. President, I wish to speak about an epidemic that every one of us knows is raging across every one of our States and is absolutely the case in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that is the heroin and opioid epidemic. This is excruciating to so many families. I think at this point we all know people who have been victims of this epidemic. I certainly do. We have to do all we can about this issue. I have the privilege of being the chairman of a health subcommittee on the Finance Committee. In that capacity, I have tried to learn what I can about this epidemic. I have traveled all across Pennsylvania hosting roundtable discussions, field hearings, and getting as much input as I can. What I have learned is that there are at least three things that we could be doing here in Congress to at least help address this terrible epidemic of opioid and prescription drug abuse. None of them is a silver bullet that will end this epidemic, but it can help, and we need to do what we can to help. No. 1, we can reduce the diversion of these powerful prescription narcotics, and there are ways we can do that. No. 2, we can deal with overprescribing because that is a problem. No. 3, we can improve access to and the quality of treatment for people who are already addicted. We have an opportunity to make progress on all three of these really important areas if we will just approve the conference report on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. We know it as CARA, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which we will be voting on soon. Let me quickly run through how this bill helps in all three of these areas. No. 1, I mentioned reducing the diversion of powerful narcotics. The Government Accountability Office estimated that in a single year, 170,000 Medicare beneficiaries were doctor shopping. That is to say they were going to multiple doctors getting multiple prescriptions, getting them all filled at multiple pharmacies, and ending up with a commercial-scale quantity of these powerful, addictive narcotics. And 170,000 is a tiny percentage of Medicare beneficiaries, but it is a big number. When Medicaid and commercial insurers discovered there were people on their plans doctor shopping, they came up with a device to stop it. It is called lock-in. What they do is, when they discover a person is doctor shopping, they require that person to get their prescription from a single doctor and a single pharmacy so they can't continue the abuse. This tool does not exist in Medicare. I sat down with Senator Brown, Senator Portman, and Senator Kaine and wrote a bill that would give Medicare the power that Medicaid and private insurers already use that would allow Medicare to lock in a patient to a single prescriber and a single pharmacy when they discover doctor shopping. This has broad bipartisan support. The President called for this legislation in his budget. The Pew Charitable Trusts, law enforcement officers, doctors, and seniors groups all support this legislation. It will help stop fraud, help coordinate care, reduce costs, but most importantly, it will safe lives. It will reduce the diversion of addictive narcotics onto the streets, and that is something we can do. This bill that Senators Brown, Portman, Kaine, and I wrote is in CARA. It is in this legislation. It is a good thing. No. 2, I mentioned reducing overprescribing. The Centers for Disease Control has found that we are, in fact, overprescribing opioids for many medical conditions, and doctors don't always know this when they are seeing a patient. They don't know that maybe there is another doctor who is maybe providing similar or equivalent prescriptions. There is an electronic database system that would allow physicians to know what a patient has already been prescribed so they wouldn't create an excessive or inappropriate prescription. It is a called prescription drug monitoring program, or PDMP, and it will provide that information, such as the patient's history. Senator Shaheen was the lead on the bill. Senator Collins and I joined her on this legislation in order to provide assistance to States to make sure their prescription drug monitoring programs are interoperable across State lines. This is a tool that will help reduce the overprescription and end up making sure we have better care and diminish the incidence of these narcotics getting into the wrong hands. Finally, I mentioned that we need to improve access to and the quality of treatment. The CARA bill does that in a number of ways. It will establish a demonstration program for evidence-based treatment programs. It will help connect individuals battling addiction with services. It expands access to naloxone, or Narcan, which is a drug that immediately reverses the effects of the overdose and saves lives. CARA will help law enforcement set up heroin task forces, and it will increase opioid drug disposal sites. There is a lot here. This is very constructive. The bill has enormous and broad bipartisan support. CARA passed in the Senate 94 to 1. It passed in the House 400 to 5. The conference report we will be considering is substantively the same as the bill that passed the Senate. In fact, it is broader and does more to help deal with this terrible problem. It has the support of all kinds of public health groups. It has Democratic and Republican ideas. It is exactly the kind of thing that we should come together and get done. I urge my colleagues not to play politics with this one. I know this is the political season and there is a temptation. It has happened with other pieces of legislation. But this is too important. There is broad bipartisan support. It is constructive. It won't end the epidemic, but it will save individual lives and help us make progress for the people we represent. I hope that very soon we will approve this conference report and get it over to the House so they can approve it and get it to the President's desk. I am sure the President will sign it. That is exactly what we need to do. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, by Friday a lot of American families are going to be packing up the car and the kids and going somewhere to celebrate the holiday or gathering in the backyard to fire up a barbecue to celebrate the Fourth that way. But one father will be marking the day quite differently. For Jim Steinle, Friday marks the 1- year anniversary of the murder of his daughter. On July 1, 2015, as Jim Steinle was walking on a pier in San Francisco with his daughter Kate, the gunman opened fire, shot Kate, and she bled to death in her father's arms. Her last words were ``Help me, dad.'' As outrageous as this is, one of the aspects that is particularly maddening about this is that the shooter never should have been on the pier that day. The shooter was an illegal immigrant. He had been convicted of seven felonies and had been deported five times. But what is truly maddening is that 3 months prior to his murdering Kate Steinle, he was held in the custody of the San Francisco Police Department. They had him, and when Federal immigration officials learned that the San Francisco police had this guy, they asked them to hold him until they could get someone there because they knew he was here illegally. They knew his background, they knew how dangerous he was, and they wanted to deport him. What did the San Francisco police do? They refused. They did not cooperate with the Federal immigration officials, and instead they released him onto the streets of San Francisco. Why would the San Francisco Police Department do a thing like that? Why in the world would they do a thing like that with a seven-time convicted felon, five-time deported person whom Federal immigration officials were asking them to detain? They did it because San Francisco is a sanctuary city. That means it is the legal policy of the city of San Francisco to forbid their own police department from cooperating-- from even cooperating--with Federal immigration officials. Even when the police would like to, they can't. It is against the law in San Francisco. So think about that. Even when President Obama's administration and the local police are in complete agreement that this person is dangerous and they want to work together, they want to remove this person and the threat he poses to their community in a sanctuary city, the local politicians override that and they decide it would be illegal for the local police to cooperate. So the San Francisco police had no choice. They were forced by their own city government to release the man who would go on to kill Kate Steinle. If Federal officials had called about almost any other crime--if it had been about bank robbery, a trademark violation, car theft--it would have been perfectly legal for the San Francisco Police Department to cooperate with the Federal authorities. But because this involved an illegal immigrant, the San Francisco Police Department's hands were tied. They were forced to release Kate Steinle's eventual killer. As the father of three young kids, I can't even imagine what Jim Steinle and his wife have endured and what they are going to go through this Friday. Sadly, the Steinles are not alone. According to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo, during an 8-month period in 2014, sanctuary jurisdictions--cities and counties and towns that have chosen to be sanctuaries--have released 8,000 immigrants during this period in 2014, and 1,800 of those released were later arrested for new criminal acts, including two cities that released individuals who had been arrested for sexual abuse of children. Not surprisingly, these individuals were arrested yet again for sexually molesting additional children because that is what these monsters do. Let's be clear. This is not about immigration. This is really not about immigration. The vast majority of immigrants in this country would never commit a heinous crime against anybody, but any large group of individuals is going to have some bad actors. With roughly 11 million people here illegally, among them there are absolutely violent criminals. It is completely unavoidable. It makes absolutely no sense to insulate those violent criminals from capture by law enforcement. I should point out that the dangers posed by these sanctuary city laws are not limited to domestic crimes, as appalling as they are. Obviously, the sexual abuse of children and murder are more than sufficient reason to make sure we are not conferring a special benefit on these people. But the fact is, sanctuary cities are impeding our ability to prosecute the war against terrorists. I will give a case in point. Last month, President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Johnson, took a trip to Philadelphia with a modest request, because Philadelphia has a very extreme and radical sanctuary city policy. So President Obama's Homeland Security Secretary went to Philadelphia and asked Mayor Kenney of Philadelphia to make very narrow exceptions to the sanctuary city policy of Philadelphia. Specifically, he was asking that the Philadelphia Police Department be permitted to cooperate--just sharing information is what they were asking for--with the DHS if they were dealing with a suspected terrorist or someone who had been convicted of a violent felony or someone who had been convicted of a gang-related offense. Just those cases. Just those. Mayor Kenney refused. The city refused and made no change whatsoever to their sanctuary city status. So as we gather this evening, the Philadelphia Police Department is absolutely forbidden from cooperating with Federal officials unless the Federal officials can prove that the person in question has already been convicted of a violent felony and they have a warrant for the arrest, which, of course, since the police are not allowed to even communicate with the Federal officials, how would they know to seek an arrest warrant? The fact is, none of this makes any sense. Imagine the Department of Homeland Security calling the Philadelphia Police Department and complaining that they discovered that the city has in custody an illegal immigrant who the FBI suspects is plotting a terrorist attack. So the Department of Homeland Security asks the Philadelphia police for information about this guy--when did they pick him up, did he have other people with him, who were they, what were they doing, when are they going to release him. There is a lot of information they might like to have. And they might say: Hold this guy until we get there in the morning so we can interrogate him and begin deportation proceedings. That would be a reasonable request from the Department of Homeland Security, but under the current sanctuary city policy of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia police have no choice--their response has to be and is ``Come back after the crime has been committed. Come back after he has committed his terrorist offense, and then come back with a warrant, and then we can cooperate with you.'' Sometimes I wonder if we have learned anything after 9/11, after the Boston Marathon bombing, after the San Bernardino murders, and after this horrendous massacre in Orlando. When are we going to start taking this threat seriously? It is here. We see it. We are living through this. Well, in my view, we have lived through too much--way too much. So today I am continuing my ongoing fight to end these sanctuary cities that endanger all of our communities. I am introducing the Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, S. 3100, and it tackles two problems. Part of the reason some communities have chosen to be sanctuary cities is in response to court decisions. There are two court decisions that we need to address--one is by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the other by a Federal district court in Oregon. These court decisions hold that if the Department of Homeland Security makes a mistake in issuing a detainer in a request to hold someone, if it turns out that the Department of Homeland Security made a mistake--maybe they got the wrong guy--and if the local law enforcement cooperates, as we think common sense has suggested we would like to see, according to these court decisions, the local law enforcement and the local government would bear the liability. They can be sued. That is a problem for communities. In fact, it has driven over a dozen Pennsylvania communities, counties, and municipalities to say: We can't take that legal risk, so we will, quite reluctantly, become sanctuary cities. There is a simple solution to this. In my bill, the first action my bill takes says that when a local officer is complying with a legitimate, bona fide immigration detainer duly issued by the Department of Homeland Security, then the local officer has the same authority as the DHS official. A way to think about it is that the local police would be considered agents of the Department of Homeland Security for this purpose. If an individual's rights are violated somehow, the individual would still have every right to sue, but they would not sue the local police department, which was just acting in good faith in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security; the person would sue the Department of Homeland Security. There would be no diminution of the person's legal rights or their ability to redress anything that went wrong; it is just that the liability ought to attach to DHS, not the local police department. With this change in the law, there would no longer be any pretext or any justification whatsoever for these sanctuary cities and denying the cooperation with Federal officials which we need. The second part of my bill says that once that is in place, once we fix that legal liability problem, if a community nevertheless decides they still want to be a sanctuary city, they still want to refuse to cooperate with Federal law enforcement, then they would lose some Federal funds. They would lose some of the CDBG money, the community block grant money, and I know every Senator is very familiar with how much every city and every municipality gets because the local politicians get to decide how to spend it. In my view, if you are going to impose the kinds of costs on all of us that sanctuary cities impose, the additional cost for Federal law enforcement, the additional cost to the American people in living in an area where they are at greater risk--it is unbelievable and impossible to quantify the cost to people like Jim Steinle, who lost his daughter--if you are going to impose those costs, then it is reasonable for the Federal Government to choose not to subsidize that. That is my goal. It is pretty simple. Frankly, I don't think it should even be controversial. Leaders across the political spectrum have criticized sanctuary city policies. Former Pennsylvania Governor, lifelong Democrat, and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ed Rendell, has criticized the sanctuary city policies of Philadelphia. The Secretary of Homeland Security has clearly gone out of his way to try to get Philadelphia to change its misguided policy. Pennsylvania law enforcement officers from across the entire political spectrum, across the entire Commonwealth, all agree we got this right. Last October the Senate considered a similar measure, and it got bipartisan support, but it didn't have enough to overcome a filibuster. I hope now we are finally going to fix this. This bill is a simple, commonsense bill. I had this conversation with my constituents, and everyone is shocked that we haven't already fixed this problem. The bill stands for the simple proposition that the safety of the American people matters, that the life of Kate Steinle matters, and that protecting our homeland from violent criminals, including terrorists, matters. As the Steinles observe the tragic anniversary of their daughter's death this Friday, I think they deserve to know that the Senate cares about that loss, too, and that we are going to do what we can to prevent another senseless and avoidable death from happening again.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, by Friday a lot of American families are going to be packing up the car and the kids and going somewhere to celebrate the holiday or gathering in the backyard to fire up a barbecue to celebrate the Fourth that way. But one father will be marking the day quite differently. For Jim Steinle, Friday marks the 1- year anniversary of the murder of his daughter. On July 1, 2015, as Jim Steinle was walking on a pier in San Francisco with his daughter Kate, the gunman opened fire, shot Kate, and she bled to death in her father's arms. Her last words were ``Help me, dad.'' As outrageous as this is, one of the aspects that is particularly maddening about this is that the shooter never should have been on the pier that day. The shooter was an illegal immigrant. He had been convicted of seven felonies and had been deported five times. But what is truly maddening is that 3 months prior to his murdering Kate Steinle, he was held in the custody of the San Francisco Police Department. They had him, and when Federal immigration officials learned that the San Francisco police had this guy, they asked them to hold him until they could get someone there because they knew he was here illegally. They knew his background, they knew how dangerous he was, and they wanted to deport him. What did the San Francisco police do? They refused. They did not cooperate with the Federal immigration officials, and instead they released him onto the streets of San Francisco. Why would the San Francisco Police Department do a thing like that? Why in the world would they do a thing like that with a seven-time convicted felon, five-time deported person whom Federal immigration officials were asking them to detain? They did it because San Francisco is a sanctuary city. That means it is the legal policy of the city of San Francisco to forbid their own police department from cooperating-- from even cooperating--with Federal immigration officials. Even when the police would like to, they can't. It is against the law in San Francisco. So think about that. Even when President Obama's administration and the local police are in complete agreement that this person is dangerous and they want to work together, they want to remove this person and the threat he poses to their community in a sanctuary city, the local politicians override that and they decide it would be illegal for the local police to cooperate. So the San Francisco police had no choice. They were forced by their own city government to release the man who would go on to kill Kate Steinle. If Federal officials had called about almost any other crime--if it had been about bank robbery, a trademark violation, car theft--it would have been perfectly legal for the San Francisco Police Department to cooperate with the Federal authorities. But because this involved an illegal immigrant, the San Francisco Police Department's hands were tied. They were forced to release Kate Steinle's eventual killer. As the father of three young kids, I can't even imagine what Jim Steinle and his wife have endured and what they are going to go through this Friday. Sadly, the Steinles are not alone. According to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo, during an 8-month period in 2014, sanctuary jurisdictions--cities and counties and towns that have chosen to be sanctuaries--have released 8,000 immigrants during this period in 2014, and 1,800 of those released were later arrested for new criminal acts, including two cities that released individuals who had been arrested for sexual abuse of children. Not surprisingly, these individuals were arrested yet again for sexually molesting additional children because that is what these monsters do. Let's be clear. This is not about immigration. This is really not about immigration. The vast majority of immigrants in this country would never commit a heinous crime against anybody, but any large group of individuals is going to have some bad actors. With roughly 11 million people here illegally, among them there are absolutely violent criminals. It is completely unavoidable. It makes absolutely no sense to insulate those violent criminals from capture by law enforcement. I should point out that the dangers posed by these sanctuary city laws are not limited to domestic crimes, as appalling as they are. Obviously, the sexual abuse of children and murder are more than sufficient reason to make sure we are not conferring a special benefit on these people. But the fact is, sanctuary cities are impeding our ability to prosecute the war against terrorists. I will give a case in point. Last month, President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Johnson, took a trip to Philadelphia with a modest request, because Philadelphia has a very extreme and radical sanctuary city policy. So President Obama's Homeland Security Secretary went to Philadelphia and asked Mayor Kenney of Philadelphia to make very narrow exceptions to the sanctuary city policy of Philadelphia. Specifically, he was asking that the Philadelphia Police Department be permitted to cooperate--just sharing information is what they were asking for--with the DHS if they were dealing with a suspected terrorist or someone who had been convicted of a violent felony or someone who had been convicted of a gang-related offense. Just those cases. Just those. Mayor Kenney refused. The city refused and made no change whatsoever to their sanctuary city status. So as we gather this evening, the Philadelphia Police Department is absolutely forbidden from cooperating with Federal officials unless the Federal officials can prove that the person in question has already been convicted of a violent felony and they have a warrant for the arrest, which, of course, since the police are not allowed to even communicate with the Federal officials, how would they know to seek an arrest warrant? The fact is, none of this makes any sense. Imagine the Department of Homeland Security calling the Philadelphia Police Department and complaining that they discovered that the city has in custody an illegal immigrant who the FBI suspects is plotting a terrorist attack. So the Department of Homeland Security asks the Philadelphia police for information about this guy--when did they pick him up, did he have other people with him, who were they, what were they doing, when are they going to release him. There is a lot of information they might like to have. And they might say: Hold this guy until we get there in the morning so we can interrogate him and begin deportation proceedings. That would be a reasonable request from the Department of Homeland Security, but under the current sanctuary city policy of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia police have no choice--their response has to be and is ``Come back after the crime has been committed. Come back after he has committed his terrorist offense, and then come back with a warrant, and then we can cooperate with you.'' Sometimes I wonder if we have learned anything after 9/11, after the Boston Marathon bombing, after the San Bernardino murders, and after this horrendous massacre in Orlando. When are we going to start taking this threat seriously? It is here. We see it. We are living through this. Well, in my view, we have lived through too much--way too much. So today I am continuing my ongoing fight to end these sanctuary cities that endanger all of our communities. I am introducing the Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, S. 3100, and it tackles two problems. Part of the reason some communities have chosen to be sanctuary cities is in response to court decisions. There are two court decisions that we need to address--one is by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the other by a Federal district court in Oregon. These court decisions hold that if the Department of Homeland Security makes a mistake in issuing a detainer in a request to hold someone, if it turns out that the Department of Homeland Security made a mistake--maybe they got the wrong guy--and if the local law enforcement cooperates, as we think common sense has suggested we would like to see, according to these court decisions, the local law enforcement and the local government would bear the liability. They can be sued. That is a problem for communities. In fact, it has driven over a dozen Pennsylvania communities, counties, and municipalities to say: We can't take that legal risk, so we will, quite reluctantly, become sanctuary cities. There is a simple solution to this. In my bill, the first action my bill takes says that when a local officer is complying with a legitimate, bona fide immigration detainer duly issued by the Department of Homeland Security, then the local officer has the same authority as the DHS official. A way to think about it is that the local police would be considered agents of the Department of Homeland Security for this purpose. If an individual's rights are violated somehow, the individual would still have every right to sue, but they would not sue the local police department, which was just acting in good faith in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security; the person would sue the Department of Homeland Security. There would be no diminution of the person's legal rights or their ability to redress anything that went wrong; it is just that the liability ought to attach to DHS, not the local police department. With this change in the law, there would no longer be any pretext or any justification whatsoever for these sanctuary cities and denying the cooperation with Federal officials which we need. The second part of my bill says that once that is in place, once we fix that legal liability problem, if a community nevertheless decides they still want to be a sanctuary city, they still want to refuse to cooperate with Federal law enforcement, then they would lose some Federal funds. They would lose some of the CDBG money, the community block grant money, and I know every Senator is very familiar with how much every city and every municipality gets because the local politicians get to decide how to spend it. In my view, if you are going to impose the kinds of costs on all of us that sanctuary cities impose, the additional cost for Federal law enforcement, the additional cost to the American people in living in an area where they are at greater risk--it is unbelievable and impossible to quantify the cost to people like Jim Steinle, who lost his daughter--if you are going to impose those costs, then it is reasonable for the Federal Government to choose not to subsidize that. That is my goal. It is pretty simple. Frankly, I don't think it should even be controversial. Leaders across the political spectrum have criticized sanctuary city policies. Former Pennsylvania Governor, lifelong Democrat, and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ed Rendell, has criticized the sanctuary city policies of Philadelphia. The Secretary of Homeland Security has clearly gone out of his way to try to get Philadelphia to change its misguided policy. Pennsylvania law enforcement officers from across the entire political spectrum, across the entire Commonwealth, all agree we got this right. Last October the Senate considered a similar measure, and it got bipartisan support, but it didn't have enough to overcome a filibuster. I hope now we are finally going to fix this. This bill is a simple, commonsense bill. I had this conversation with my constituents, and everyone is shocked that we haven't already fixed this problem. The bill stands for the simple proposition that the safety of the American people matters, that the life of Kate Steinle matters, and that protecting our homeland from violent criminals, including terrorists, matters. As the Steinles observe the tragic anniversary of their daughter's death this Friday, I think they deserve to know that the Senate cares about that loss, too, and that we are going to do what we can to prevent another senseless and avoidable death from happening again.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Mr. President. (The remarks of Mr. Toomey pertaining to the introduction of S. 3100 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. TOOMEY. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I rise this afternoon to discuss the pending legislation that would prevent terrorists from being able to legally purchase guns. This general topic of background checks for legal firearms sales is not new to me. It is an issue I have been wrestling with for some years now. Shortly after the horrific murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, my Democratic colleague, Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, and I teamed up and worked together and produced a bipartisan bill designed to ensure that we would do background checks for commercial gun sales. So if someone wants to buy a firearm through a commercial mechanism--not a private transaction, like from a sibling or a neighbor or friend, but a commercial sale-- they would be subject to a background check so that for the very criminals who have forfeited their Second Amendment rights and those who are dangerously mentally ill who also should not have guns, we would find a mechanism to prevent the sales. That was legislation that I worked on with Senator Manchin. As I said, it was bipartisan. It still marks the closest the Senate has come to passing legislation dealing with background checks in a meaningful way in quite some time. But we were not successful. It did not pass. Then on June 12, we saw the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11, an unbelievable massacre in Orlando that left 49 people dead and another 53 grievously wounded. It has raised the question of whether now there is an opportunity to do something to make it illegal--make it more difficult, if not impossible--for a terrorist whom we already deem to be too dangerous to board a plane to buy a firearm. There are other things we need to be doing--a lot of other things we need to be doing--to keep us safe from the terrorists who want to kill Americans. We need to take stronger measures to keep them from entering the United States in the first place. We need to make sure they can't escape detention and capture. We need to make sure that local law enforcement is cooperating with Federal law enforcement and DHS folks. There are a lot of things we can do. But one of the things we can do is the very simple measure that the Collins legislation addresses. This is too important an issue to be partisan. I took to the Senate floor last week to urge my colleagues. We had a number of our Democratic colleagues engaging in a filibuster, in an impassioned series of speeches about how important it was that we do something. My message was simply this: Let's stop talking, and let's actually do it. Let's actually find the mechanism, find the solution here. There are two aspects we need to consider, in my view, in this legislation. One is that we want to block a terrorist from buying a firearm. I don't think that should be terribly controversial. But the second thing that is also very important to me--and I think to many of our colleagues--is to make sure that an innocent American who is wrongly put on the list has the opportunity to clear his or her name so that their Second Amendment rights are not infringed upon. That is the challenge, it seems to me, and it is not rocket science. This is something we can do. So I actually drafted a bill that does that. I think the bill works very, very well. Senator Collins took a different approach and used a different mechanism for getting the same result. In the end, Senator Collins has legislation now that has significant bipartisan support. It is a compromise bill that I think strikes the right balance. As I announced yesterday, I intend to support her legislation. There is no question--it is an objective fact--that if Senator Collins' legislation becomes law, the Attorney General will have a tool that the Attorney General does not have today. It is a tool that will stop terrorists from being able to legally buy a gun. It is as simple as that. That is what it does. Importantly, to me and to many of my colleagues, it also provides the mechanisms whereby an innocent law-abiding American who is wrongly put on a no-fly list will be able to clear his or her name. I think that is very, very important. The starting point for the Collins legislation is that if you are on the no-fly list, then you don't get to buy a gun. Now, let's think about this. If we deem a person to be so dangerous that we deny them the opportunity to board a commercial plane, should we really allow that person to walk down the street, walk into a firearms dealer, and buy an AR-15? I don't think that makes sense. I think most of us probably agree. That is a short list, actually, of people we deem to be so dangerous that we don't let them board a plane. It is pretty sensible, from my point of view, to also preclude a firearms purchase. Then we have the selectee list. That is a separate list that subjects people to enhanced scrutiny because there is serious suspicion. It doesn't quite rise to the level of the no-fly list, but there is serious suspicion. So those people also would be denied a firearm. Now, as with the approach that I took, Senator Collins' legislation has a whole series of procedures, policies, and mechanisms to ensure that if someone is wrongly put on this list, they will have a way to get off the list. We know for a fact that eventually some people will be put wrongly on the list because people make mistakes. Governments make mistakes. In fact, someone could even try to abuse the list. So we need to have a mechanism to make sure that an innocent person can have their name taken off. Senator Collins, I think, achieves that. She creates an adversarial challenge mechanism in court where the burden of proof is on the Federal Government to prove that the individual who has been denied the opportunity to buy a gun should be denied that--in other words, that the person is properly on the list. As in my legislation, if the individual succeeds in his challenge--if he says: I was denied the opportunity to buy this firearm; I am not the John Smith that you think I am and here is my proof--and the person wins, the U.S. Government would pay all of his reasonable attorney's fees and costs, as should be the case. The person shouldn't be financially penalized for simply clearing his or her own name. Also, there needs to be a meaningful deadline for a court to make a decision. In the case of the Collins legislation it is 14 days. Otherwise, a court case could go on indefinitely. That wouldn't be right, either. So the bottom line is simple. This legislation is a sensible, reasonable way to achieve the balance that I have been calling for--to make it illegal for a suspected terrorist, someone we won't allow to board a plane, to buy a gun, and, at the same time, to create a mechanism for someone wrongly put on the list to clear their name. Last week we had quite a number of our colleagues down here on the Senate floor. As I said, they were giving impassioned speeches about how essential it was that we do something. What we are going to find out is whether that was sincere or whether that was political. That is what we are going to find out because this legislation achieves exactly what our colleagues said they wanted. It may not do it in exactly the same fashion in every little detail. It is not exactly the same as the legislation I have proposed. But it is bipartisan. There are, at last count, at least five Members of the Democratic caucus who are on this bill. There are at least a comparable number of Republicans. There are probably more who are going to support this. It is really going to be a test of whether this body is serious about what it says it is serious about--whether the folks who came down here and gave impassioned speeches about how important it is we do something really want to get something done, or do they want a political message to run ads about? I hope it is the former. I hope we are going to be able to get something done. As to Senator Collins and the other Senators she worked with, I appreciate the input she took from me and my office to craft a sensible, workable compromise bill that has bipartisan support that will achieve those two important goals of making sure that the bad guys can't buy guns and the good guys get a chance to clear their name and don't have their Second Amendment rights infringed. That is what this is about. We need to have a vote on this, and we need to have a vote soon. I hope we will have a vote this week. But this is an opportunity for this body to take a big step forward and get something done with a bipartisan compromise bill that makes a lot of sense. We are going to have a test, and I hope this Chamber will pass the test. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. I thank the Senator from Iowa for yielding to me. Mr. President, what I really wish to do is express my deep frustration that we are here with what is about to happen on the Senate floor because we are talking past each other. We have a system, a series of votes, all designed to fail. We are going to accomplish nothing. That is what we are making sure of tonight. It doesn't have to be this way. That is what is so maddening about this. I will briefly give you one aspect of this. The background check legislation we are going to vote on is the version that goes further than the bipartisan compromise that Senator Manchin and I worked out a couple of years ago. What are the chances that is going to pass? I would say pretty close to zero. We know that. If we are going to have a vote on background checks, it ought to be the only bill that I am aware of in recent time that has had bipartisan support. It may not pass, I understand that, but at least it would have a chance. We are not even going to have that vote. Let's talk about the other big, controversial issue that we are going to vote on--we already know the outcome of this vote--and that is about terrorists and whether terrorists can buy guns and what do we do about this. Let me start with what ought to be a pretty simple goal that we ought to be able to agree on. No. 1, terrorists shouldn't be able to buy guns legally. That shouldn't be terribly controversial, but it also shouldn't be controversial that if an innocent American is denied his or her right to buy a gun because they are alleged to be a terrorist, they ought to have an opportunity to clear their name. Guess what. Governments make mistakes. The Federal Government makes mistakes all the time. The mere fact that they have a list almost guarantees that somebody is wrongly on that list. That is not a reason to do nothing, but it is a reason that you have to have a meaningful process whereby people could challenge their status on the list. I think the bills we are going to vote on tonight have serious flaws. First, the Feinstein amendment. There is no due process at all, nothing to speak of. Think about the way this is designed--the way this bill is designed. By the way, we have already had this vote, and it failed overwhelmingly. Under the Feinstein approach, the Attorney General can put anyone he or she wants on the list. There is no judicial review; there is no kind of review. She can create the criteria, she creates her list, and now all of a sudden anyone on that list is denied the opportunity to buy a gun. Proponents will argue that there is an opportunity for the gun buyer. The problem is that person has to go to court. The burden is on the buyer to prove his innocence, and he doesn't even get to see the evidence. How can you possibly prove the evidence against you is flawed if you are not allowed to see the evidence? Clearly, that is not a serious attempt to give someone who is wrongfully placed on the list the chance to clear his name. The Cornyn approach. The Cornyn approach is better than what we have now because it creates a new tool. It provides a new tool that the AG does not have--the Attorney General doesn't have--and that is a 3-day period during which the Attorney General would have an opportunity to make and win a case. I think that is a difficult thing for an Attorney General to do, and I have suggested this legislation is flawed because of that. It is better than what we have now, but it is probably not enough in many circumstances--which is why we shouldn't just be talking past each other and revoting on things we know are going to fail. I have legislation, and Senator Collins is working on legislation. What we both have tried to do with different mechanisms is to make sure that a terrorist cannot buy a gun legally but also to make sure that the people on the list are put there properly and, if there is a mistake, a law-abiding American citizen has a reasonable opportunity to litigate that to get his or her name off the list. In my approach, the Attorney General can come up with a list, but it has to be vetted by a court. If someone is not on the list, there is an emergency mechanism available to the Attorney General that would block the sale--it would block the sale if the Attorney General said so--and then provide a reasonable and manageable amount of time during which this could be litigated. In other words, if the buyer says ``Wait a minute; I am not the John Smith you think I am, and I shouldn't be denied my Second Amendment right,'' under my approach--and I believe under Senator Collins' approach--that innocent American would have a chance to have his or her day in court, which is denied under the Feinstein approach. The bottom line is we know the Feinstein bill is going to fail. We know the Cornyn bill is going to fail. They are both going to fail tonight. There is nobody who disputes that. Why aren't we working on something that could actually get done, something that would actually stop terrorists from being able to legally buy guns and at the same time give a law-abiding American the opportunity to clear his name if he is wrongfully put on the list? That is what we ought to be doing. I am not saying I have the only way to get this accomplished. I think Senator Collins' legislation is going to be unveiled soon. I know she has been working on this very constructively with a group of folks. But one or the other of these approaches--either the Collins approach or mine--needs to get a vote in this body because it is the only kind of approach that really is a serious way to balance these two important priorities and has a chance to earn bipartisan support. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield without yielding the floor?

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, my only problem is that I will be in the Chair at 3 p.m., at which point I will not be able to participate in the discussion.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I know and fully respect the passion that both Senators from Connecticut, as well as many others, have about this issue. I am of the view that it is time to get something done. We have been doing a lot of talking. We have two alternatives to this issue about what to do with people we have very good reason to believe are terrorists and what to do when they attempt to buy a gun. We had a vote on a version that I think was badly flawed. It was badly flawed because it provided no meaningful process for someone who is wrongly on the list. Errors happen. Actually, they happen all the time. One thing is for sure; innocent people and law-abiding citizens will eventually be on a terrorist watch list. What I think we need to do is everything we can to make sure that terrorists are not able to buy guns--at least not legally--and we also need to have a meaningful mechanism for people to challenge their status of being on that list, and that is what we haven't put together here. I think the Feinstein approach doesn't provide any meaningful opportunity to appeal one's being put on this list erroneously, and, frankly, I think the Cornyn approach doesn't give the AG the opportunity that an AG needs to make a case against someone who is actually a terrorist. There is an obvious opportunity to work together and find a solution. I have been speaking with some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I think there is an interest in doing this. What I am suggesting is that we get to work. Let's sit down together and figure out how to achieve this. I think everybody ought to be in agreement in principle. We don't want terrorists to be able to walk into a gun store and buy a gun, and we don't want an innocent, law-abiding citizen to be denied his Second Amendment rights because he is wrongly on the list with a bunch of terrorists. This is not rocket science. I thank the Senator for yielding the floor. I will take my turn in the chair, but I would love to continue this conversation. I thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for giving me this moment.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, today I wish to honor Ms. Teresa Scalzo, who recently passed away after a 23 year legal career focused on public service, supporting the victims of violence and sexual assault, and advancing the prosecution of those horrible crimes. After a battle with an aggressive cancer, Teresa passed away on Monday, May 23, 2016. A native of Easton, PA, Teresa earned a law degree from Temple University School of Law in 1993. Over the next 23 years, she held numerous legal positions, all focused on giving victims a voice and advancing the prosecution of these complex cases. Most recently, Teresa served as the deputy director of the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps Trial Counsel Assistance Program. In this position, Teresa helped cultivate and hone the skills of multiple generations of Navy prosecutors, enhancing the Navy's ability to support victims of sexual assault and to hold perpetrators accountable. Among the many prestigious and important positions throughout her career, she also served as senior policy adviser for the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, director of the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women, chief of the sex crimes unit at the Northampton County District Attorney's Office, and a member of the sexual assault response team at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Teresa radiated that special balance of determination and compassion that enabled victims of sexual assault and family violence to find their voices in the pursuit of justice. In recognition of her accomplishments, she received the 2009 Visionary Award from Ending Violence Against Women International. In 2001, she received the Allied Professional Award for Outstanding Commitment to Victims' Services from the Crime Victims Council of the Lehigh Valley. I would like to recognize Ms. Scalzo's honorable commitment and exceptional service to victims, the justice system, and our country. She is survived by her mother Marie; her brother Carl; his wife Theresa; and her nephew and nieces, Brett, Paige, and Maggie. It is an honor to stand in recognition of this compassionate advocate and seeker of justice.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the National Defense Authorization Act, which we will be processing this week, I hope. Particularly, I want to talk about Section 578. Section 578 is a provision designed to protect the children of our servicemembers and specifically to protect them while they are at school from convicted pedophiles and other dangerous felons. This is an issue I have been working on for 2\1/2\ years. My involvement resulted from hearing about a horrific story that is about a little boy name Jeremy Bell. The story begins at a school in Delaware County in Southeastern Pennsylvania. A schoolteacher there had molested several boys--had raped one. When the school officials and the local law enforcement figured out that something very, very wrong was going on, they unfortunately concluded that they just did not have enough evidence. They did not have a strong case that they could bring against this teacher. The school wanted to get rid of him, and tragically they were OK with letting him become someone else's problem. They wrote a letter of recommendation with the understanding that he would leave. This monster took the letter of recommendation, went across the State line to West Virginia, was hired as a teacher, and several years later he had become a principal. Of course, these people don't change their ways, and he didn't. He continued to molest and attack little boys. It ended when he raped and killed a 12-year-old boy named Jeremy Bell in West Virginia. That time, justice caught up with this teacher. He is now serving a life sentence in jail for that murder, but of course it is too late for Jeremy Bell. Tragically, Jeremy Bell is not alone. Since Joe Manchin and I first began this effort in this Chamber 2\1/ 2\ years ago, at least 1,150 school employees have been arrested across the country for sexual misconduct with the kids whom they are supposed to be looking after, they are supposed to be caring for, and they are supposed to be teaching--1,150. That is more than one a day. Of course, those are the ones where the officials knew enough to feel confident that they could make an arrest and actually press charges. How many more cases are actually happening? I would stress that these aren't just numbers. Every one of these 1,150 arrests represents a horrific tragedy and, in many cases, more than one. Consider a few examples from my State of Pennsylvania. Just this past January, the parents of children at Trinity High School in Washington County learned something absolutely horrific. They learned that a special education teacher there was charged with raping a little girl over a 15-year period. It started when she was just 3 years old, and they didn't discover this until she was 18. He had raped another little girl who was only 6 years old. Or consider the Phoenixville Area Middle School in Chester County. In November 2013, the school's principal was sentenced to 2 years in prison for having child pornography. A month later, a special education and math teacher at the school was arrested for possessing child pornography, some involving very, very young children. It is hard to even talk about these things. It is very uncomfortable to hear about this, to talk about this, but we can't shy away from this. If we think it is uncomfortable to think about it, talk about it, and hear about it, what about the experience for the child and the child's family? Every day it seems there is a new story. In Pittsburgh, Plum High School, two teachers have pled guilty to having sex with younger students. A third one is awaiting trial on related charges. The DA is investigating allegations that the school superintendent and principal might have ignored reports of abuse along the way. Another teacher has been charged with witness intimidation. He made one of the victims, a girl who is a victim, stand up in front of the class, and he mocked her because she brought the issue to the attention of the authorities. This is outrageous. This has to stop. I have vowed that I am going to do everything I can to try to provide greater security to our kids in our schools. This past December we took a big step in the right direction, in my view. Congress passed legislation, and President Obama signed it into law. It was legislation in the broader education bill we passed that had my legislation which now explicitly prohibits, forbids, knowingly recommending one of these monsters for hire. So exactly the circumstances that gave rise to the murder of Jeremy Bell--where a school knows they have a pedophile, they discover it, and they still send along a letter of recommendation so that he can become someone else's problem--are now illegal, as well they should be. It is not as rare as you might think. In fact, the practice is so common that it is well understood in the circles of child advocates and the people who prosecute these crimes and who defend children when they have been victimized by these crimes. It is so common that it even has its own name. It is called ``passing the trash.'' But, unfortunately, when we got that piece of our legislation passed, we were not successful in persuading all of our colleagues that we also had to have another element to this. To really keep our kids safe, we need to make sure that we have a rigorous background check and that people aren't able to skirt--and we know that does happen. I promised I would be back on the Senate floor to try to address this weakness, this loophole--the fact that we don't have consistently rigorous background checks--to make sure that we are not hiring these creeps in the first place. I am very pleased to announce today that I think we are very close to taking another step forward in this legislation, thanks to Chairman McCain, who just left the floor. But the senior Senator from Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, incorporated into this legislation, the national defense authorization bill, the bill that I introduced to protect our servicemembers' children. That is what it is called; it is called the Protecting Our Servicemembers' Children from Sexual and Violent Predators Act. It simply states that a school district that accepts Impact money--that is the funding we approve in Congress; it runs through the Defense Department, and it goes to the school districts that are educating the children of our servicemembers when they are on a base. What our legislation says is that such a school district has to have a safe environment for kids. That is all. They have to have a policy requiring criminal background checks for all the school workers, any adults, who have unsupervised contact with children. If a person applies for a job with such a school and it turns out they have been convicted--not alleged, but convicted of a serious crime, including murder, rape, or any violent or sexual crime against children--then such a person may not be employed at a school in a capacity where they would have unsupervised access to children. As I said, this applies only to those school districts that receive Federal Impact Aid; that is, those school districts that receive money to help compensate them for the fact that they are educating our military families' children. It is about 17 percent of America's school districts that receive this Federal Impact Aid. It is roughly 8.5 million kids. The legislation also applies to the DOD-operated schools. The Defense Department operates its own schools to educate the children of our military personnel. To the credit of the Defense Department, it is already their own internal policy to require these appropriate background checks that are rigorous enough to make sure that we stop a violent predator from being hired in this capacity. Because it is just internal policy, it could change, and enforcement could lapse. What our legislation does is codify it because this is the right thing to do. Let's codify it. Since it is the right thing to do and we are doing it at our DOD schools, let's also do it at the other schools that are educating our military families' kids. I don't think this should even be controversial. Pennsylvanians whom I talk to don't think this is controversial. Of course, they think we should insist that our schools are at least as safe an environment as we can make them. While the men and women are providing enormous service to all of us--the sacrifice they make by wearing the uniform, committing to serving in our Armed Forces--don't we owe it to them to provide the level of protection that we can provide to their kids? I think we do. In addition, it shouldn't be controversial because, substantively, this isn't anything new. Last year every Member of Congress but one--the vote was 523 to 1, the House and the Senate--passed almost identical background check legislation with respect to daycare workers who worked for a daycare that got funding through the childcare and development block grant bill. In other words, we have already agreed. With 1 dissenting vote-- out of 100 Senators and 435 House Members, there was 1 dissenting vote. Every other Senator and House Member on both sides of the aisle agreed that this level of background check security ought to be provided for very young kids. Why wouldn't we do it for slightly older kids--the kids who are in primary and secondary schools--as well? Despite that, there is opposition. Just last week, the senior Senator from Illinois came to the floor to criticize my legislation. He stated: ``This provision fails to provide adequate due process and civil rights protections for innocent individuals.'' I want to address this because I couldn't disagree more. First, it is important to note that our legislation--the legislation that forbids the hiring of these pedophiles, people who have committed these terrible crimes against kids--applies only if the applicant has been convicted of a crime. If you have been alleged or rumored--that is not what the legislation contemplates; it is only someone who has been convicted. The last time I checked, our criminal justice system was loaded with due process rights. In order to get a conviction, we have very elaborate processes that someone can avail themselves of, and of course they always do. So nobody has been convicted without having had the opportunity for all of us to pay for their lawyer to defend them, for instance, if they need to; to have a jury trial if they want to do that; all the civil rights guarantees throughout the Constitution. It is all there. Due process--they have already had enormous due process or they wouldn't have been convicted. But our legislation goes a step beyond that. What we do is we say that the applicant is entitled to a copy of the background check, so they get full disclosure of whatever was discovered, and the school district must have an appeals process if it turns out the applicant is denied, because we acknowledge that it is conceivable that there could be a mistake. It could be like the wrong John Smith who is applying for a job at a school. There could be an error of some sort. In the first place, you have to have been convicted, and in the second place, you get to appeal. What more due process is necessary than that? Well, I can tell you because we have had this debate before, and some on the other side have suggested that they want something that I don't even think qualifies as due process. It is a totally different category, but they call it due process. What they want is a carve-out. They want a minitrial. They want to give the convicted pedophile the opportunity to make the case for why an exception should be made in his case. It is unbelievable to me. How do I know this? Because last year 39 special interest groups sent a letter to the Senate asserting that it is unfair to deny even a convicted child molester a teaching job. They wrote this. I am going to quote from the letter briefly. It says: We believe that individuals who have been convicted of crimes and have completed their sentences should not be unnecessarily subjected to additional punishments because of these convictions. Let's think about what they are saying. What they are explicitly saying is that a person could admit to and be convicted of raping a child, serve a sentence, walk out of prison, go down the road to the local elementary school, apply for a job as a teacher, and they should be hired. It is unbelievable. I am not suggesting that the pedophile should never be eligible to do any work at all, never have any job. That is not what I am saying. But how about we keep them away from young kids? Is that really unreasonable? That is all we are asking for. That is what we are saying. We have other colleagues who object to this notion, this legislative approach, on the grounds that it offends their sense of federalism. They think we should leave it to the States to decide whether and to what extent the States and school districts will protect kids from predators. I strongly disagree with that for many reasons. We might well have an extended debate about that, but let me just give two brief ones. First, I think we have an oversight responsibility. I think the Pennsylvanians who send me to the Senate and know I am casting votes on how we are going to spend their tax dollars expect that I am providing some kind of oversight--such that, for instance, their tax dollars aren't used to hire a pedophile in a school. That would not be a controversial notion with my constituents. The second thing is that the folks who are hung up on the federalism issue insist that every State is free to do what it wants to do. They have to be able to pass whatever laws--or not--as they see fit. What about the military family who can't determine which State? They don't get to pick the State in which they are based--not always. They are in a State. It is not their native State. They are assigned to that base in a particular State, and they have to live with whatever the laws are there. Don't we agree that every child in America deserves to have protection from these predators? I do. Our legislation doesn't go that far. I wish it did. We tried, and I am not going to give up. But can't we at least provide that security for the children of our military families? That is what our legislation does do. Again, I want to thank Chairman McCain. He has been a consistent advocate for providing this level of protection to children. He was a cosponsor of my legislation that prohibited passing the trash. His support was essential in getting it passed last year, and I am really proud of and grateful to him for working with me to incorporate the language of my legislation into our NDAA legislation. I strongly urge my colleagues that it is past time to act on this. As I said, Senator Manchin and I have been pushing this for 2\1/2\ years, and in that time another 1,150 school employees have been arrested for sexual misconduct with the kids they are supposed to be taking care of. Clearly, we are not doing enough. And we really need to ask ourselves: How much bigger does that number have to get? How many more children have to have their childhoods ruined? How many families need to be torn apart before we are willing to pass this measure? I would argue that we have seen more than enough, the children of America have seen more than enough, and the children of the men and women who wear the uniform of this country and who make the sacrifices to protect and defend all of us absolutely deserve this protection. So I hope we will pass this Defense authorization bill with this language intact, and I once again express my appreciation to the chairman for putting it into the base text. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the sacrifice of our soldiers at the Malmedy massacre. As we prepare for Memorial Day, it is important to remember the 87 Americans who were killed in action during the Malmedy massacre and honor the brave few who survived this terrible ordeal. One of the survivors of this massacre, Harold W. Billow, is a proud resident of Pennsylvania. On December 17, 1944, Mr. Billow and Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion were riding in a convoy of vehicles towards the Belgian town of St. Vith. The convoy was attacked outside of Malmedy by a Nazi SS unit called Kampfgruppe Peiper. While a few soldiers were able to escape the initial attack, the other 130 Americans were forced to surrender to the SS troops. Given orders to take no prisoners and violating the rules of war, German tank gunners lined up the Americans and gunned them down in cold blood. Worse yet, these Nazi troops searched for anyone showing signs of life and shot them repeatedly at point-blank range. However, 40 men, including Mr. Billow, were able to play dead and escape the massacre. Many of these survivors traveled to Nuremburg after the war to testify in the war crimes trials and demand justice for their fallen brothers in arms. Today Mr. Billow is one of only two men from the 285th Battalion known to be alive. Mr. Billow dedicates his life to remembering his comrades who did not survive this massacre. Every Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Veterans' Day, Mr. Billow decorates his front lawn with 87 American flags, one for each man who fell on that terrible day in 1944. Today I wish to remember the ultimate sacrifice made by those killed in the Malmedy massacre and also to honor and thank the survivors, including Mr. Billow, who keep the memory of their fellow soldiers alive.