Thom Tillis

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the military service of CAPT R. Andrew Murray on the occasion of his retirement from the U.S. Coast Guard. I commend Captain Murray's Coast Guard career and offer my thanks for his 35 years of faithful service to our country. Although he has gone ashore for the last time as a coastguardsman, his commitment to public service continues in North Carolina. As a civilian, Captain Murray has acted as the elected district attorney of Mecklenburg County since 2011. Captain Murray enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1980, serving 6 years of Active Duty as an aviation electronic technician and helicopter flight crewman. He then became a Reservist and received a commission as an officer through the Reserve Officer Candidate Indoctrination School, ROCI. Meanwhile, Captain Murray graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1992 with a bachelor of arts in political science. He received a juris doctorate from the University of North Carolina School of Law, and he is a member of the North Carolina Bar. Throughout his career as an attorney and eventually as district attorney of Mecklenburg County, Captain Murray also served in a number of roles as a Reserve officer. He acted as the senior Reserve officer of Group Charleston, SC; a senior analyst for the Coast Guard Counter Terrorism and Defense Operations Unit; and the senior Reserve officer of Sector Charleston, SC. As a Reservist, Captain Murray has also been called to Active Duty. In 2013, he received the call to serve as the legal adviser for the Gulf Coast Incident Management Team in New Orleans, LA, where he contributed to Operation Deepwater Horizon, the Federal cleanup effort for the massive oil spill of 2010. Captain Murray most recently served as the Western Rivers and Coastal Region senior Reserve officer for the Eighth Coast Guard District. He was responsible for monitoring the readiness of 870 Reservists assigned to the Coast Guard's Eighth District, which comprises of seven sectors, spans 26 States, and covers more than 12,000 miles of river and coastline. His outstanding leadership assured the availability of a robust reserve capacity to respond to all subsequent contingencies, including a 30,000-gallon fuel spill and extreme Midwest regional flooding. At his recent retirement ceremony, Captain Murray was honored with the Coast Guard Meritorious Service Medal for his leadership in this post. Captain Murray's other decorations include three Coast Guard Commendation Medals, the Coast Guard Achievement Medal, and the Coast Guard 9/11 Service Medal. I offer Captain Murray my warmest congratulations and appreciation for the many years he has spent protecting this Nation, saving lives, and performing his faithful duty as a U.S. Coastguardsman. I ask my fellow Senators to join me in saluting Captain Murray for his service.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, my colleague from Ohio and I have worked on a number of different measures on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and I hope to continue to work with him. I wish to talk a little bit about the process here. It may seem odd, on a bill on which I am one of the lead Republican sponsors, to come to the floor and object to the UC, but let's talk about structurally what is going on here. We said that the only reason there is a problem is there is no pay-for. In other words, we are trying to pass a policy that we haven't taken the time to make a decision about how to pay for it. We can say that we are authorizing the VA to pay for it, but what are they going to do? We haven't provided them with any funds to do it, so what potentially suffers as a result? That is one piece. We just heard a number of speeches here with Republican freshmen and a couple of veteran Members on the floor talking about being responsible in the budgeting process and actually living within our means and paying for things. Now I am in the uncomfortable position of having to object, potentially--reserving my right to object--to a measure that includes policy that I fundamentally support. What I don't want to do, though, is send something half-baked to the House and pretend that somehow it is going to be taken up before we get back from the recess. It won't be. As a matter of fact, if we don't do our job here, it will probably not move in the House. So why not work with Senator Isakson, who has done a remarkable job of trying to work with the veterans service organizations that have a concern with the direction we were going with the pay-fors, to find a legitimate way to pay for this policy before we send it to the House and make it more likely that before we get out at the end of the year, this bill will be passed? This is just about being responsible and doing both parts of our jobs--coming up with good policy and then coming up with a way to pay for it. So for those reasons, I do object.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my colleague and friend from the great State of Georgia for taking a leadership position to really cleanse the dysfunction and the problems that are going on. Mr. President, Senator Perdue is only a 2-year politician. His tenure in the Senate is actually only 2 years. He has spent all of his time in business. He spent time in business, where you didn't keep your job if you couldn't balance your budget. You didn't keep your job if you couldn't make the difficult decisions year to year--making payroll, making strategic investments, and doing the kinds of things good business leaders do. That is what he has done all of his life. Now he finds himself in the U.S. Senate, where that is almost the exact opposite of what we do. We just had passage of a continuing resolution today for a few weeks because we can't come to terms on long-term spending measures. Over a dozen bills passed out of appropriations with strong bipartisan support and within the constraints of the bipartisan budget, and now we can't get them passed. Why is that a problem? Because when you have the world's largest and most complex entity that has ever existed that can't figure out how much money it is going to spend or commit on more than about a 12-month cycle--and sometimes only a few months--how on Earth can you save money and make long-term investments? We were in a committee hearing yesterday where we heard that right now it takes an average of 15 years from the concept of a new satellite to the time we are launching it into space. How on Earth can we make those long-term investments when we can't even be clear on what we are going to be spending money on but for every 12 months? This is a threat to our national security. This is a threat to our economic security. This is a threat to the security of every man and woman in the United States because they can't rely on the government to provide businesses or individuals with any kind of certainty whatsoever. It is tough to make budget decisions, but they need to be made. I know a little bit about this because I was speaker of the house in North Carolina in 2011. We had a budget crisis. We had a $2.5 billion debt and 6 months to solve it. Unlike the Federal Government, where you can run up a deficit every year--it is now almost $20 trillion--most States, with the exception of maybe one or two, have a constitutional obligation to balance the budget, so we did it. What was the result of providing that long-term certainty? Living within our means and actually having a transparent and decisive budget process. We had one of the greatest economic turnarounds in any State in the Nation in the last 5 years. Being decisive and making the tough decisions accrues a benefit to the business community, accrues a benefit to every man and woman who lives in the United States, and it actually settles the global economic condition more than most people know. At the end of the day, let's start doing our job. Let's not just create a budget like we did, a bipartisan budget, set it on the shelf, and then pass several appropriations bills and kill them on the floor. That is what is going on here, and I think my freshmen colleagues think it is time--there are a lot of people who put posters up here saying ``Do your job,'' but they are failing to do their jobs by preventing us from doing one of the most important things we can do--make the tough, long-term fiscal decisions that are necessary for this great Nation. I say to Senator Perdue, thank you for allowing me to speak. I thank Senator Perdue for bringing up this very important subject. We need to stay in front of this and recognize that doing our job is tackling this budget crisis, tackling the uncertainty that we, by failing to do our jobs, are placing on every hard-working American and business in this country. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, today I rise to honor the memory of Tim Brackeen, a K-9 police officer with the Shelby Police Department in North Carolina. Officer Brackeen was tragically killed after succumbing to gunshot wounds he sustained in the line of duty just last week. On September 10, 2016, Officer Brackeen was doing what he did every day--going to work, trying to put his life in the way of others to keep them safe. He said good-bye to his wife and his family, and he went to work. Unfortunately, on that day, in the middle of the night, Officer Brackeen responded to a call to bring a wanted robbery suspect into custody. Officer Brackeen attempted to arrest the suspect. The suspect resisted and opened fire, critically wounding Officer Brackeen. The people of North Carolina and citizens from across the Nation prayed for Officer Brackeen and his family as he received treatment. Unfortunately, on Monday, we heard the tragic news that Officer Brackeen, only 38 years old, had passed away. When we lost Officer Brackeen, we lost more than a dedicated K-9 officer who had served the Shelby Police Department for 13 years. Above all else, we lost a devoted husband to his wife Mikel and a loving father to his 4-year-old daughter. He was well known as a loving family man and was deeply respected and admired for the dedication he had to the department and the community which he served. Many had the chance to meet Officer Brackeen during a class or seminar he held with his K-9 partner called Ciko. He was honored as Shelby police officer of the year in 2012. For anyone in this country who has ever had a trace of doubt over the true character and motivation of the vast majority of brave men and women in law enforcement, Officer Tim Brackeen was exactly the kind of officer who would instantly erase any of those doubts when you met him. As Officer Brackeen's family, friends, and colleagues mourn this tragic loss, I hope they find comfort in knowing that his death was not in vain. The outpouring of love that we have seen in his honor has been tremendous. On the night of Officer Brackeen's death, hundreds of people came together in Shelby to hold a vigil outside the police department. Attendees adorned his patrol car with flowers and candles. Shelby police officers all received a standing ovation, and the crowd came together to sing ``Amazing Grace.'' That symbolizes the profound impact that Tim Brackeen had on people's lives and how grateful they are for his selfless service to the community of Shelby. May God bless Officer Tim Brackeen's family and friends and give them strength in these difficult times. Let them know that the community of Shelby, the people of North Carolina, and Americans from across the Nation will continue to pray for them and stand with them during this difficult time. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, the constituencies in North Carolina are as varied as any in America. I am honored to represent America's largest Army Post--Fort Bragg--as well as 45 percent of the U.S. Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point. Because of their presence and our proud military tradition, by 2020, one in every nine North Carolinians will be a veteran. We are also home to outstanding companies that serve our disabled citizens like the Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. The confluence of these two communities-- veterans and services for the disabled--and how each is treated by the Federal Government is of particular concern to me. For decades, both the general disabled community and the disabled veterans' community have existed in a harmonious balance when it came to securing jobs and competitive contracts with the Federal Government. The Javits Wagner O'Day Act of 1938, the AbilityOne Program, and the Veterans Benefits, Health Insurance, and Information Technology Act of 2006 assist Americans who are blind, citizens with severe disabilities, and our U.S. military veterans through leveraging the procurement power of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Unfortunately, the recent Kingdomware Technologies, Inc. v. United States Supreme Court ruling reinterpreted these acts to preclude certain disabled groups from bidding for jobs and business with the Department of Veterans Affairs. These are not laws designed to build barriers to stop disabled veterans from bidding for work outside of the Veterans Administration or the blind for bidding for work within the VA, but that is what has happened. I am asking my colleagues in Congress to take another look at this situation. Level the playing field. These laws should continue their mutual coexistence by maintaining set-aside opportunities that create sustainable employment opportunities for the 70 percent of blind or severely disabled Americans who are seeking jobs, in addition to competitive contract opportunities for veterans who take the initiative to start their own small businesses. Let's get this right.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. I thank Senator Daines for all the work he does in supporting our troops, and Lieutenant Colonels Sullivan and Ernst, I thank them for their service to the Nation--their continued service. I thank Senator Sullivan for continuing to pound on this. It is important. Yesterday, or earlier this week, I talked about how this is approaching personal with me. I am going to try and not get as loud as I got a couple of days ago, but I want to talk about what this means. I want to talk about the process, an appropriations process where all 30 members of the Appropriations Committee, including 14 Democrats, voted for this bill. What we are trying to do now is have the broader membership vote for it and send it out of the Chamber. All Democrats--and I would not be surprised, if you went on their social media presences or if you took a look at press releases, that they rightfully announced to their constituents how they voted to support a bipartisan appropriations bill coming out of committee. Now, I want them to follow up with a press statement that says Harry Reid tells me I have to vote no now. I have to say no to troops. I am not going to support providing critical funding for training and readiness and overseas contingency operations. I don't know about you all--in the Gallery or people watching on C-SPAN--I don't feel particularly comfortable with the situation around the globe. I don't like what Russia is doing. So we have to put resources in portions of Europe to make sure we can counter the potential threat there. I don't like what China is doing in the South China Sea. So we are having to pay more attention to that and have resources looking at it to protect that region. I generally don't like what Iran is doing. I mean, they have welched on commitments they made in the Iran nuclear deal. They are funding Hezbollah and Hamas and the Iran terror network across the world, including this hemisphere. I don't like what is going on in Syria. I think Iraq has problems, much of it created as a result of the President's withdrawal. Well, good news. He recognizes that maybe we need to increase our presence there. How are we going to pay for those extra 564 soldiers that are going to secure the airstrip that was won over by the Iraqi forces? Where does it come from? That is a commitment he has made so it is going to come from somewhere else. It is certainly not going to come from the increased funding we are trying to get through this appropriations bill. I don't know about you all, but I believe the generals and the intelligence community that come before our committee and say we are in some of the most dangerous times in their lives. The threats are everywhere. America has to lead because when America doesn't lead, the world is a less safe place. America leads. The tip of the spear is our armed services, our presence across the globe to protect the freedom of other nations and to protect our own freedom. Failing to vote for this bill is failing to make sure they are trained, equipped, and capable of defending freedom. I want to talk about the personal side of things for the folks down at Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune and Seymour Johnson and New River and Cherry Point--marines, airmen, people in the 82nd Airborne, the 18th Airborne Corps, and the conversations I bet they are having with their husbands or wives. When they come home from training and they hear the commanders down at Fort Bragg say: We are just not getting enough repetition in. We are trying to teach these men and women how to jump out of planes in hostile situations with 100 pounds of equipment connected to them and do that safely. I don't know about many people, but I don't think I would want to do that if I weren't trained and ready and had the muscle memory to make sure I was going to do that safely. The Global Response Force down at Fort Bragg takes it to another level. They not only have to drop 1,000 or so men and women out of planes, they also have to drop entire cities out of planes: earth movers, weather stations, medical hospitals, all the things you need to provide relief in the event of a disaster or that you need to support a combat operation. We are sapping the resources to be able to do that. So here is how the discussion, I think, goes with the men or women who go home before they get deployed: Honey, I am about to be deployed somewhere. Maybe it is Iraq, maybe it is Afghanistan, some other part of the world. I am a little bit nervous because I only got about 80 percent of the training I really needed, that the Army or the Air Force or the Marines deem necessary for me to be able to do that job safely and be certain I can complete the mission. I am sorry, Hon, I have sworn to defend this country. So I am going to do it, but I know I am not at the level of training and capability I should be. Then they say goodbye and that spouse, hopefully, sees that person come home again. So, you know, guys, politics is an interesting thing. Debate is an interesting thing. We have heard the theater on the floor today that has nothing to do with the vote we have before us. We have heard global warming. We have heard all of these other things. What we have not heard is from the Democrats who voted for this precise bill. Some people lead you to believe it has changed since they voted for it. It has not changed. It is precisely the same bill, but they have a minority leader who says: Don't vote for it. Play my game. Let us then come down here and say: Do your job. We are doing our job right now. Joni Ernst is doing her job. Dan Sullivan is doing his job. Steve Daines is doing his job. I am doing my job by saying: You guys went into a committee and you voted for this bill. You went home and told everybody you are supporting our troops. Now you have a minority leader who is telling you: Don't do your job and let's go on the floor and pretend those of us who want to support our troops are not doing our job. It is disingenuous, at best, and it is dishonest, at worst. My colleagues here, we need to pound this issue. I need to go home and be able to tell the story and say: We support you, Fort Bragg. We support you. We are going to do everything we can to get this bill passed.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I want to get back on doing my job. I promised the people of North Carolina I was going to help fund the VA. That is why I am proud to be a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I told the soldiers down at Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune and across this Nation we were going to work to fund the Department of Defense. What I wish to do is see if we can get back to these matters that are necessary and important. They will save lives. They will equip our men and women to take the fight wherever we may go. Today I want to talk specifically about the MILCON-VA-Zika bill that is before us. It is a conference report. For those who are not familiar with conference reports, they are unamendable. We need an up-or-down vote, and we need to send it to the President's desk. That is what lies before us. That is a bill we can pass this year, funding that the Democratic conference in large numbers supported at $1.1 billion when it went to the House. What is that funding going to do? It is going to fund remediation programs to make sure we don't have an epidemic that is spread through mosquito bites. Right now, the known U.S. cases are all travel related, but we are afraid of that threat--particularly as mosquito season sets in across the Nation. It has been going on in North Carolina and the South for several months. We want to give local health professionals and the CDC the resources they need to find a vaccine that the CDC promises we can get in a matter of 18 months, and we want to make sure we do everything we can to educate people about the potential dangers of this disease. That is what approving this conference report will do. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2577 and that the conference report be agreed to with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and I will be very brief--sometimes when I hear these debates, they seem to be far-ranging and they are getting off the main subject. The motion that is before us would basically unwind a carefully crafted compromise that could come crashing down if we don't move forward with this deal. What the minority leader has suggested takes us back to a process that takes days or weeks. We can't afford days or weeks; we need to get this done now. The motion we should be considering--that the Senator from Nevada objected to--is the one that would get this to the President's desk. The Senator's request adds time, complexity, and most likely is going to suffer the same fate in the House, so for that reason, I object.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and, of course, I will. I would like to put all this in perspective and talk about the theatrics that we sometimes call the discussion on the Senate floor. You know, I think that we have a tendency here--maybe it is because we are busy and we have got a lot of other things we are doing, but we have a tendency to have very short memories. We should remember that we confirmed a judge last week and the prior week. In fact, one of those judges was a judge put forth, supported by Senators from the State of New Jersey, both Democrat Senators. We moved forward with the confirmation. I also want to talk a little bit about history because I am new here. But my facts seem to stand in contrast to what is discussed on this floor from week to week. When it comes to judicial nominations, the President has been treated much more fairly, I would submit, than President George W. Bush. To date, the Senate has confirmed 329 of President Obama's judicial nominations. At this point, President Bush had only 312 judicial nominations confirmed. In fact, President Obama has now surpassed President Bush in terms of the total judicial nominees confirmed for the entire Presidency of George W. Bush. During his entire Presidency, the Senate confirmed only 326 of President Bush's judicial nominations. We have already confirmed 329. So I would submit, that is getting the work done. That is getting the job done. That is doing our job. I know the other side of the aisle does not like the fact that they don't set the floor agenda. But any reasonable, objective review of the record demonstrates that President Obama has been treated more fairly than his predecessor, George W. Bush. So, for that reason, I do object.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. Sometimes when I come to the Senate floor, I can't help but think that people who are watching me in the Gallery and watching on C-SPAN are thinking: What's going on? I thought we were working on funding the veterans, coming up with a solution to Zika, funding the DOD, making sure States and localities have adequate resources to combat drug addiction and the opioid epidemic. Instead, we get floor speeches that have nothing to do with doing our jobs. I am doing my job today in objecting to these measures so we can actually get back to the pressing matters that hopefully will get passed out of the Senate before we go to the state work period and return in September. Mr. President, for that reason, I object to the motion from the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I wish to just touch briefly on what the distinguished Senator from Hawaii mentioned regarding vacancies. If you take a look at the average number of vacancies over the last 25 years or so, during every presidency, the average vacancy rate has been higher than it is in 2016. It is a natural part of the process that when judges move up to senior status, we are filling the vacancies. This goes up and down. This is not a crisis. It is no different than a situation the Senate has dealt with long before I got here. Mr. President, so that we can dispense with these matters and move back onto the legislation before us that can fund the VA, that can address the Zika crisis and do things that we need to do before we get out of town, I object.

Mr. TILLIS. No.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I want to thank my friends and colleagues from Montana, Alaska, and Iowa for being here. I particularly want to thank Lieutenant Colonel Ernst for her service. She is now a veteran, but she served bravely. I want to thank my friend from Alaska. He is a marine, and he still answers the call. He is doing the work here in the Senate, but he is prepared to go on a moment's notice wherever we have to go to defend freedom. I come from North Carolina. This is almost getting personal with me. I am going to talk a little bit about that, but I want to explain to the people who may be watching this on television or to those in the Senate Gallery what we are talking about. We use the word filibuster, and it is kind of hard to understand, but it is actually pretty straightforward. The Democratic conference has decided to say no to funding our troops. They have decided to say no to providing them a much deserved pay raise. They have decided to say no to funding important training that is necessary to make sure they can complete these highly dangerous and complex missions wherever a threat may occur. Now, why is it personal to me in North Carolina? Because I have about 100,000 Active-Duty personnel in North Carolina. Fort Bragg in North Carolina is the home of the Global Response Force. That is the base that gets the call from the President when, on a moment's notice, we may have to send hundreds or thousands of men and women to drop out of airplanes anywhere in the world. It is not just jumping out with a parachute. It is jumping out with a hundred pounds of equipment attached to them, it is dropping earthmovers, weather stations, a small city operation anywhere in the world to support a relief effort or to support a combat mission. That takes training. That takes constant training. It takes hours and hours of training to make sure they can complete their mission but, even as important, to make sure they do it safely and that they themselves do not get injured or killed in the process. Now, we have already heard it said multiple times before, but I think it bears repeating. Why on Earth would the minority leader prevent us from moving to a vote? A filibuster is nothing more than saying no to sending this bill to the President's desk, after 30 Democratic members in the Appropriations Committee said yes. We only need six of them to move this bill to the President's desk. I guess the minority leader has a hammerlock on all of the Members who want to vote for this bill. They won't come to the floor and show the courage and commitment to the men and women in uniform to do the right thing. That is where we are. That is why it is personal to me. What do I tell the 100,000 Active-Duty military in North Carolina when I go home? I am sorry, but the minority leader has decided you are not a priority, in spite of the fact that we go to Committee on Armed Services hearings weekly and we hear the threat level has never been greater and in spite of the fact that we see the rise of ISIS across all of the Middle East, now in Europe, and it is threatening our homeland. In spite of all of these threats, we tell the men and women in uniform and their commanders that politics win over the principle of funding our troops and saving our Nation and protecting our Nation. I think that is despicable. We know we have enough votes to send this bill to the President because they voted for it before. We only need a third of them to vote for this now and send it to the President's desk. I could go on, and if we have time, I hope Senator Sullivan will ask me some questions because I have spent a lot of time down at Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg. Ask me about whether or not the leader of FORSCOM and the leaders down there responsible for the 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps think they have enough money and they can keep our men and women safe. Ask them about the conditions at Camp Lejeune and the conditions we ask these men and women to serve in after we tell them we are not going to give you money to keep you safe so that you can complete your mission. This is politics at its worst. We need to send this bill to the President's desk. We need to show respect for the men and women who have sworn an oath to lay down their life for the cause of freedom. This is a failure on the part of the minority leader and on the part of any other person who would sit there and refuse to move to a bill that every single one of them in the Appropriations Committee supported. I appreciate Senator Sullivan's elevating this dialogue to the extent that he will, and we shouldn't stop until we fulfill the promise that is our first and foremost constitutional obligation, which is to protect this Nation. The people voting against this bill and preventing it from getting to the President's desk, in my opinion, are failing to live up to their oath. I want to thank Senator Sullivan and Senator Ernst again for their service, and I thank my colleague for bringing this to the attention of the American people.

Mr. TILLIS. Senator Sullivan asked Senator Ernst whether people in uniform are watching. Let's talk about other people watching. What about the families of those men and women in uniform, the ones whom Democrats have decided to say no to for a pay raise? My wife and I have adopted Fort Bragg, where she started a program called Baby Bundles where we create these bundles to give to expectant families, E4s and below. These men and women have very little. They are serving their Nation and are not making a lot of money. We are trying to do our best to make up for that by providing them with these gifts as they bring a child into the world. But what about the mother or father who is left behind as their loved one is somewhere in harm's way? What are they thinking about when they come home during training and say: You know, we are just not getting the jumps we were getting. We are not getting the equipment we were getting. And, sweetie, I am about to be deployed. That is happening. That is what this ``no'' stands for. That is what this action on the part of the Democrats stands for. We need to vote for this bill. We need to show military families and men and women in uniform that we support them. I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to move this bill to the President's desk.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, the Presiding Officer and I are fairly new to this Chamber. I know Senate rules prevent me from engaging anyone who happens to be in the gallery, so I will not do that. But I have to admit, watching what has gone on here for the last 15 or 20 minutes, I can't help but think at least one or two are saying: What on Earth is going on down on that Senate floor? We have heard arguments embedded in arguments. The issue we have before us today is on the biotechnology labeling vote. We have heard about judges. Look, everybody says we are in gridlock here. There are obviously instances where we disagree. Let's set those aside and address legislation where we do agree we have pressing issues, and we have two of those before the Senate today. The one immediately before us is on biotechnology labeling, and I am going to get to that in a minute. The other has to do with funding Zika. It has to do with trying to understand why some 38 of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted for $1.1 billion in Zika funding, and now it is back before us. It is one vote away from going to the President's desk, and now they are all voting against it. Collectively, the Members who voted for the $1.1 billion and now vote against it represent States that have 671 Zika cases reported to date. It looks as if we are going to be here a little bit tonight, and I will get into the details and share the roll call vote, but today I want to talk about biotechnology. I want to start by thanking Senator Roberts and Senator Stabenow for the work they did in reaching a bipartisan solution to this controversial issue. We voted on cloture yesterday, and we had a majority of over 60--65 to be exact-- Members vote. What cloture means is to get on the bill. Now we are on the bill. What does this bill do? What it is trying to do is avoid the confusion and the cost when a State implements a law that becomes de facto Federal law of the land and increases the cost of food prices to consumers. This is what we are proposing to avoid in the language we have before us that I hope we vote on and I hope we focus on. This is only one choice of one State-- the State of Vermont. There are several dozen States that plan to have their own variance, and I will talk about the absurd exemptions and exceptions later on. The bottom line: Complexity creates cost--cost to the American consumer. In Vermont alone, the Vermont law will increase the annual cost of food per family--in Vermont alone--by about $2,000 a year. There are people struggling to pay for the food they have right now. There are people trying to decide, do they pay to heat their home or eat? Now we are talking about raising food costs, for some of the poorest people, by $2,000 a year. Complexity equates to cost. This provides clarity. I am going to talk a little bit about that, but I do appreciate Senator Roberts and Senator Stabenow for getting those of us who are willing to work together, who are willing to say to people at either end of the spectrum: Guys, we are going to come up with a compromise and solve this problem. We have that opportunity before us now, and I hope we will get to an affirmative vote later today. As I said earlier, the state-by-state patchwork is unsustainable. Right now, we are talking about what Vermont decided to do. What about California? What about my State of North Carolina and all the other ones? Some people say: Well, you are preempting State law. When a State law affects interstate commerce across the Nation--because if I am a Campbell Soup Company or a Kellogg's or a small mom-and-pop shop trying to distribute in Vermont--if I don't get the labeling exactly right, I could be subject to millions of dollars of fines just because I have a jar or a can or a box on a shelf that isn't consistent with their labels. I live in Charlotte, NC. Charlotte is right on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina. If you have a truck carrying cans of Campbell's soup, it has to be labeled one way in North Carolina and another in South Carolina. Does that make sense? It adds cost. It doesn't add value. That is why we are trying to prevent this patchwork of laws that could go on the books. I want to talk a little bit about biotechnology for a minute because Senator Durbin said something that I think is very important. I sit on the Agriculture Committee. I asked all the heads of the FDA, the EPA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture the same question in the same committee hearing several months ago. I said: Do you have any scientific data whatsoever--let's go to the FDA first, Food and Drug Administration--that would suggest that food containing biotechnology represent any threat to health? The FDA leader, appointed by the Obama administration, said: None whatsoever. Then I moved to the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. I asked precisely the same question. I got precisely the same answer. Then I went to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I asked precisely the same question and got precisely the same answer. When we walk the halls here, people say: Thom, I know. I know they are safe. But for some reason we have lost the argument. Ladies and gentlemen, the reason we can't lose the argument on agricultural biotech--what some people call GMO--is that our Nation and our world's food supply rely on it. Over ninety percent of all corn grown in Iowa is grown as a result of biotech--not some sort of Frankencorn, but corn that is heat resistant, corn that is moisture resistant, fungus resistant. If we were to roll back 30 or 40 years of progress in agriculture biotech and take it out of our food supply chain, we could literally be in a position where people will starve--maybe not in the United States but all the nations we export to--because we simply cannot produce the world's food supply if we go back 10, 20, or 30 years. So it is a very important part of our food supply, it is a safe food, it is an environmentally sound food, and it is one that we just have to understand. Having said that, I firmly believe that everybody has the right to know what is in their food. That is why I love the compromise bill that Senator Roberts and Senator Stabenow have before us today. It is pretty simple. Again, I know I can't interact with the gallery, so I will not. But my guess is that most of the people in the gallery over the age of about 12 have a smartphone. One or two may have flip phones--and there is an alternative that I will talk about--but most probably have smartphones. As a matter of fact, 207 million people in the United States have smartphones. I know Senator Durbin is not familiar with it, but many of them come with what is called a QR code reader. I will give those watching from home a chance to actually scan it while hearing me talk live. I remember--I think it was President Bush back in the 1990s who went through a shopping line and was astounded because he saw a bar code reader. He said: Wow, that is new technology. It had been around for a while. Guess what, folks. QR codes have been around a while. As a matter of fact, yesterday when the distinguished gentleman from Oregon spoke, he had a QR code up on the screen. I said: Heck, I want to see what that is. So I clicked on the QR code on the Campbell's can. It brought up on Wikipedia the history of the New York Yankees. But it proves the point that you can go directly from that QR code to the Internet and get the information you need in real time. What is the other advantage of QR codes? You can board an airplane with them, you can get information about your fuel, you can get medical services. It is everywhere. It is ubiquitous. It is prevalent. Everywhere you go, you see them. When I go to the store, because my wife is pretty strict on how much money I can spend, I will scan a QR code to see if I can find a comparative shop, and maybe I need to go down the street to buy that same product. In other words, it is an integral part of our lives. For somebody to say it is new, weird, different, hard to use--it only takes one button, one click on your phone, to actually get to the rich information on the Internet. That is what this bill is about. So what if that QR code is on the product--a can of soup, a bag of flour, or any product you buy in the grocery store that is subject to this law. You go to your phone, you hit QR code reader which is on your smartphone, and it would immediately bring you to a website. This is what this proposed law requires. It immediately brings you to a website, in the cases I have done it, in 2 or 3 seconds. The minute you get to the site, you get all kinds of information. You get nutritional information, caloric value, and all kinds of things you need to know about what is in your food. Right on the page you can click down, and you can see whether it has any agriculture biotech content. Then you can even draw down further and find out what that means. It is in this bill. It can be done. Small businesses use this. Political people use this. Everybody uses this as a way to rapidly get to the Internet. I don't know about you all, but I think this Internet thing is going to take off. I think it is going to be here for a while. So I think we are going to be increasingly comfortable with this sort of way to get the richest information available on the food we are going to eat. For those who say this is some sort of weird code or outdated, I don't know about you all, but that is not the world I live in. I think it is a very effective way to get it. Let's assume you are a small business and you don't have the ability to create a QR code. Frankly, I would tell that small business to do it because that creates a competitive advantage. That makes you look as big as Campbell Soup Company and lets you compete. It is easy to put up a website. Most of us have them or know how to get them up pretty easily. I can put one up in 2 or 3 hours and then have a QR code to go to it. But let's assume they don't want to do it. It is a mom-and-pop shop, and they just don't like QR code readers. You can have a 1-800 number if you satisfy certain thresholds: For more product information, call this number. And they have a statutory obligation to disclose to you the contents of the food and whether or not it has any agriculture biotech products in it. If you don't want to do a 1-800 number, you can also do a simple Web address. Key in thomscornerstore.com, or whatever, and get to the same information. The fact is, this bill does that. It fully discloses and creates a statutory requirement that says the food manufacturer must disclose the content of their food, the nutritional information, biotech content, et cetera. It is mandatory. There were disagreements on our side because we had Members on our side of the aisle who said they didn't like ``mandatory.'' We decided in the interest of compromise to accept the mandatory requirement. It takes 2 years before the rules are made and about 3 years before most businesses will have to be fully phased in. Quite honestly, most manufacturers are going to do it because they understand, as I do, the advantage of quick access to having a consumer get to their Web presence, and there are other things they can do once they get there. We know that the QR code, the URLs, and the 1-800 numbers work. We know that everybody has the right to know what is in their food. This law mandates that this happens. It eliminates the absurd exceptions and exemptions. For anybody who wants to do this, I know this code works. If you are at home right now and you see this code, you should be able to take your QR code scanner and go up to your TV, like I did yesterday, and go to this website and see in real time what I just demonstrated on the prior slide. Why do we need to do this? Why do we need a Federal consistent framework for doing this? Why is it the Federal Government's responsibility to get involved in this? Going back to the first slide, I don't want families in Vermont to pay an additional $2,000 a year for their food. I don't want families in North Carolina to pay an additional $1,100 a year for the same food they bought last year only because of these state mandated labeling requirements. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I am talking about in the Vermont law. Imagine if this were multiplied by 2-dozen or 3-dozen other States. Frozen pepperoni pizza is exempt from the Vermont law. Frozen cheese pizza has to be labeled. Vegetable beef soup is exempt from the Vermont law. Vegetable soup has to be labeled. Multiply that by dozens and dozens of other States. Think about all of these absurd exceptions and exemptions that can occur if we have 50 statehouses trying to create a patchwork of laws. For an American family, the Vermont law will add an additional cost of about $1,200 a year to the grocery bill. Imagine if we had 24 or 36 different States that we had to interpret, the cost would go up. The food is no more nutritious. It just costs more. That is why we need a Federal standard. To my friends on the other side of the aisle and a handful on this side of the aisle, folks, this is just common sense. Anybody should be able to figure this out on 8 hours of sleep. This is not a difficult decision. We need to solve this problem now. Then we need to get on to Zika, which I will come back and talk about a little bit later on, and then we can get to all the other myriad of things we need to get done here. When I came here in January of last year, I was accustomed to getting things done in the North Carolina House. This is an opportunity to get something done that makes sense, that removes the threat of raising food costs and not producing one iota of positive difference in health outcomes. I hope my friends on both sides of the aisle recognize that this is an opportunity where we can prove to the people in this gallery and the people in this Nation that we can actually get things done. This is a compromise. This is something my friends on the right do not necessarily like and I know some of my friends on the left don't like, but it is right. It is necessary now so we can protect the people who don't know that, if this bill doesn't get passed, they are going to be paying more for food for no more value.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for once again reinforcing why it is so important for us to get this compromise bill-- this bipartisan bill on agriculture biotech--to the President's desk so we can move on to take on other matters, and that is one of the matters I want to talk about now. Again, I know that when we come into this Chamber and are on C-SPAN, sometimes for people who are watching or may be in the gallery, it is hard to understand some of what we are talking about. What I am talking about is a bill that I hope we vote on next week. It is a bill that in two separate measures went to the House with strong bipartisan support. Now it is coming back in what we call a conference report, and we are one vote away from potentially sending this bill to the President's desk. It has two parts. I am going to speak predominantly on the second part, but the first part has to do with funding our veterans. I come from the State of North Carolina. We have a population of 10 million. Ten percent of our State--nearly 1 million of our citizens-- are veterans. We are very proud of our military tradition, and we are certainly proud of those who have decided to call North Carolina their home after their military service. As a matter of fact, I think everybody in the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--has veterans as a priority. I firmly believe that. That, I guess, is one of the reasons I am stunned that we have reached an impasse in moving forward and providing appropriations that will let us increase funding to veterans. The bill that we seem not to be able to get consensus on--although we had consensus when we first sent it out of this Chamber--provides critical funding for veterans housing, for their disability compensation, for suicide hotlines, for treatment for PTSD, and for opioid addiction treatment. For all the promises that we are not keeping today, we can help fulfill those promises by providing the desperately needed funding the VA needs. But instead of working to get this funding done, we are at an impasse now, and I simply don't understand it. To me, some of them may be genuine disagreements with the policy, but in some respects it feels a little bit like scoring political points, and I don't get it. What I really want to talk about tonight is the other provision of the bill, and that has to do with something that is desperately needed in our Nation. It is funding--and taking seriously--the threat of the Zika virus. Zika is here. We are in mosquito season. I went hiking this weekend, and I know mosquitoes are out in North Carolina. In fact, they are all over the Nation. We need to work quickly to get a vaccine. We need it desperately. We are told by the CDC we could be 18 months away from having a vaccine for Zika. What we need to do is make sure we are funding research efforts so that we can win the fight against Zika. But I will tell you, we can't do this without providing financial support. As I said before, the Senate passed a bill earlier this year, and we sent it to the House. Now it is back in the Senate, and it is one vote away from going to the President's desk. The bill spends over $1 billion to fight Zika in all of its forms, and my Democratic friends voted for this bill earlier in the spring at the same funding level we talked about. There is discussion about spending more, but it seems illogical that we would spend nothing at all. That seems to be the position that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are taking right now. We stand ready as Republicans in the majority to provide this funding, but it appears as though, because we have reached this political impasse, we could put Americans' health and safety at risk. Again, we have a rollcall vote from earlier this year where most of us--virtually all of us--voted for $1.1 billion in funding. I will talk a little later about what that funding was directed toward. We have Members who voted with us on that bill who are not willing to vote now to send this to the President's desk. I am going to submit for the record the list of people who voted for this bill the last time it was on the floor and are now voting against it. I am not going to spend time today with limited time to go through each of the Members. But it doesn't make sense to me when you have cases reported--5 cases in Colorado--yet we have someone opposing the bill. There are 24 cases in Pennsylvania, and before they supported it, and now they are opposing it. There are 27 cases in Virginia, 26 cases in Maryland, 52 cases in California, and 198 cases in New York, for a total of 671 cases that have been reported to date in the United States. Most of these are travel related, but we have the threat of sexual transmission. Now that we are in the height of mosquito season, we have the real threat of mosquitoes infecting American citizens, and the threat is real. Without going through the whole list, Florida is another example, with 162 cases reported already. It would seem to me that the Senators from Florida would want to get this funding to the President's desk so we can start solving the problem. Again, Members who now oppose this funding voted for it just a couple of months ago. Again, if you add up the numbers, that is 671 cases solely in the States where Members now are opposing the bill, and the cases are growing. We now seem to be engaged in this political divide, which really is the Senate at its worst, and we are better than that. I know there are a lot of reasons that have been put forth to oppose it in this version where they weren't against it before. There were some that said it is because we are not funding or we are preventing funding for certain organizations. It is not true. The funding can flow through Medicaid to any organization which provides health services that would be relevant to the disease. The way you control the population of the mosquitoes that can potentially carry the disease is to kill them--to kill them where they breed. Right now we think, temporarily, for this mosquito season we should do whatever we can to make sure that we kill the potential source of the disease that is transmitted through these mosquitoes. It can be done. It can be done with chemicals the World Health Organization says is safe in so many other jurisdictions. All we are saying is during this mosquito season, before we get a vaccine, we use this chemical--this compound--that can kill Zika mosquitoes and prevent them from transmitting the disease. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to do. For 180 days, allow us to try to dramatically reduce the threat to the population. These are commonsense policies. The fact that we are having this discussion, the fact that we can't get it, the fact that time is running out and we have to get it done next week is ridiculous. We are well into the mosquito season. There is probably not anybody listening to this or in this Chamber right now that has not been bitten by a mosquito already this year. Let's do what we have to do to keep America safe. Let's stop the partisan politics. Let's get this bill to the President's desk, and then let's move on to the many other things the American people expect us to tackle while we remain in session.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, last week we were reminded of the tragic history of the 20th century and the reemergence of the State of Israel from the embers of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and the voice of the unconquerable human spirit, died. Wiesel summed up his mission and what should be the driving creed of American Foreign Policy in 1986 when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize: ``Whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.'' On the cornerstone of the Holocaust Museum here in Washington are his words: ``For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.'' Wiesel defended Soviet Jews, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, and the victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. He was Israel's most vocal supporter, although he was criticized by the left for his friendship with and support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Congress last year, denouncing President Obama's appeasement of the Iranian mullahs, Wiesel was the guest of honor. Elie Wiesel's passing comes at a time when the specter of anti- Semitism is gaining new life across the globe and sadly within the United States. On many campuses, including some in my State, we have seen the advancement of the ``Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions'' Movement--an orchestrated campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel, shun Jewish academics, boycott Jewish goods, and disrupt Jewish commerce. Israeli flags and books are burned on campuses in the United States and Western Europe, recalling the words of the German Jewish poet Heine, who warned that ``where one first burns books, one then burns people.'' We have seen this all before, and we know where it can lead. Formally launched a decade ago, BDS advocates divestment by companies with holdings in Israel and boycotts by academics and artists. In May 2013, Cambridge Physicist Stephen Hawking pulled out of a conference hosted by then Israeli President Shimon Peres. Strangely, Professor Hawking has been all too happy to pay visits to Iran and China and praise the tyrants who rule those countries. Musicians Elvis Costello and Annie Lennox have refused to perform in Israel. It now makes news when a performer shows up in Israel. Two years ago, Sir Elton John courageously stood up to the mob and proudly shouted from an Israeli stage, ``Shalom! We are so happy to be back here! Ain't nothin' gonna stop us from comin', baby!'' Our own Department of Education has awarded millions of dollars to so-called Middle East Studies National Resource Centers, NRC, on 16 college campuses. According to published reports, fully half of the directors of these federally funded centers have called for support of the BDS Movement and six signed a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli universities and scholars. The open promotion of anti-Israeli boycotts by academic officers is a direct violation of Title VI of the Higher Education Opportunity Act and is an open assault on fundamental rights to freedom of association and expression. BDS is not a typical act of political correctness, undertaken by radical academics whose usual prey is the youth of America. This is a worldwide movement designed to destroy the one democracy in the Middle East and the hopes of people who have occupied that land for over 3,000 years. Indeed if the BDS Movement was isolated to a few tenured college outliers, that would be easy enough to handle. Unfortunately, it is not. Iran has pledged to wipe Israel off the map. It has tipped its missiles with the warning ``Death to Israel'' written on the cones in Hebrew. Hamas and Hezbollah shower missiles upon Israeli schools and villages. If Israel did not exist, the United Nations would go out of business. Last year, the General Assembly adopted 25 resolutions against particular countries; 22 were aimed at Israel--the others at Bashar Assad's regime in Syria and Kim Jong-un's prison state in North Korea. All of this for the 153rd largest country in the world, a place that is one four-hundredths the size of the United States. Enough is enough. We can't remain silent. As Elie Wiesel said, ``we must bear witness.'' The Obama administration must end its indifference. It must cut off and defund those organizations that promote the hate that fuels anti-Semitism. Standing up for Israel at home validates those fundamental principles of freedom enshrined in our Constitution. I will close with the words of John F. Kennedy: Israel was not created in order to disappear--Israel will Endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and the sword of freedom.

Mr. TILLIS

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

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 537, S. Res. 482.

Mr. TILLIS

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

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 529, S. Res. 506.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported amendments be agreed to, the resolution, as amended, be agreed to, the committee-reported amendment to the preamble be agreed to, the preamble, as amended, be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. TILLIS

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

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.