Chris Van Hollen

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I share the concerns expressed by my colleague, the Senator from Florida, about the situation in Venezuela. I have met with many of my constituents of Venezuelan heritage and have discussed with them the crises that their relatives back in Venezuela face every day--shortages of food, water, medicine, and state-sponsored violence, which has caused 4.3 million people to flee the country. That is exactly why I joined many of my colleagues in supporting legislation from many months ago of granting temporary protected status to people who flee the horror in Venezuela. Of course, the House of Representatives passed legislation to do exactly that. I have a copy of H.R. 549 in my hand, and it is sitting here in the U.S. Senate. I say to my colleague, the Senator from Florida, that I am happy to sit down with him and discuss how we can revise and reform the entire TPS system in our going forward. In fact, I introduced legislation back in March of this year, S. 879, to extend temporary protected status to all of the people who are, right now, in great fear of being deported from the United States when their protected statuses expire. Yet I recognize there may be reforms we can make to the overall system. I suggest that a bill that is just focused on TPS to Venezuela is not the place to try to reform the entire TPS system, about which I am more than happy to have a discussion. As the Senator knows, we have people with TPS status from many countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, and a number of African countries. To try to overhaul the entire system in one piece of legislation by passing something right now for Venezuela doesn't make a lot of sense, which is why I support what the House did, for it immediately addresses the situation in Venezuela with our current TPS system. Let's not try to rewrite the whole TPS set of rules now. Let's address the emergency situation right now. The Senate can do that by passing the House bill, which, in a moment, I will ask to take up. I object to the Senator's request to pass this version, which also tries to overhaul the entire TPS system.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 549. I ask unanimous consent that my amendment at the desk be agreed to, that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I would just say to the chairman of the HELP Committee that I believe the best judge of what is good for HBCUs is HBCUs themselves. They have asked the Senate to act immediately on the legislation that passed the House unanimously on a voice vote. So while we all would like to work toward comprehensive reform and reauthorization of higher education, there is no need to wait on this provision that is sitting in the Senate. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letters we received from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and from the UNCF, both organizations that advocate on behalf of HBCUs.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 549 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I support the resolution that the Senate is voting on today to disapprove of new rules from the Trump administration to diminish the value of tax credits offered by State and local governments. From the very beginning, I have been against the 2017 tax bill that became law. At a time of skyrocketing economic inequality, this tax law has given the largest tax cuts to the wealthiest people and biggest corporations. But in Maryland, 376,000 families are paying higher taxes according to our Bureau of Revenue Estimates, due in large part to the tax law's $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction. According to the IRS, 46 percent of households in Maryland claimed the State and local tax deduction prior to the new tax law, which is the largest share of any state in the country. The average State and local tax deduction in Maryland was roughly $13,000--well over the $10,000 limit. Everything in the Maryland State budget, such as education, transportation, and state Medicaid funding, is now more burdensome for Maryland taxpayers to finance. To make matters worse for working Marylanders, on June 13, 2019, the Treasury Department issued a regulation against tax credits offered by State and local governments for charitable giving. This misguided regulation reduces a taxpayer's Federal deduction for charitable donations by the amount of any tax credit the taxpayer receives for their donation from State or local governments. The effects of this regulation go well beyond programs recently established by some States attempting to mitigate the damage of the new tax law. These rules will be deeply detrimental to longstanding tax credit programs throughout the Nation. In Maryland, this will affect tax credit programs for affordable housing, conservation, and community endowment funds. Ultimately, allowing this regulation to take effect will make it even more difficult for State and local communities to fund our schools, emergency responders, health care, roads, and other critical services. That is unacceptable, which is why I support the Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn the Treasury Department's June 2019 regulation.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I would like to start by thanking my friend and colleague from the State of Maryland, Senator Cardin, for bringing this resolution to the floor of the Senate--as he said, we will be voting on it tomorrow--but also for his longstanding support and efforts in trying to protect our environment, to protect the Chesapeake Bay, and to address the urgent issue of climate change, which anybody with eyes can see is already having a devastating impact on communities throughout our country and, indeed, throughout the world. I am also very pleased to be here with our colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, who has made this such an important cause and has kept the Senate focused on this pressing issue. As Senator Cardin indicated, under the previous administration, under the leadership of President Obama, as a country we adopted something known as the Clean Power Plan rule. This was a historic step forward. It was a blueprint to create more good-paying jobs in the clean energy sector. In fact, we have seen a tremendous growth of those jobs in the area of solar and wind power and other jobs. That Clean Power Plan rule, under the Obama administration, also really addressed the issue of carbon pollution in the atmosphere, beginning to reduce it significantly, to offset the damage and real costs we are already experiencing in communities from that climate change. As Senator Cardin said, this is an area where there are huge communities, if our country moves forward, in the area of clean energy jobs. Right now, with this new Trump administration action, we are ceding the playing field to China, which is happily seizing the initiative and moving forward and creating more and more jobs in the clean energy sector. If we don't wake up, we are going to lose that important global competition in the vital sector to China, which has established a goal of dominating the area of clean energy technologies by 2025. Instead of building on the progress of the Obama administration, on June 19, the Trump administration decided to repeal and roll back these important rules that have been put in place and substitute them with something that, in the worst case, actually makes the situation much worse than even before these Trump rules and, at the very least, is a huge retreat from the progress we were headed toward under the rules of the previous administration. Let me just point out the analysis that was done by a very good organization called Resources for the Future. They looked at their analysis of this Trump proposal, which I agree with Senator Cardin is better termed the ``Trump dirty power plan,'' and they concluded it would do very little, if anything, to address climate change and would have an adverse air quality impact in many of our States. Some people may recall when the Trump version of this power plan, the ``dirty power plan,'' was released last year, people looked at the EPA's own analysis of that rule, and it showed that 1,630 of our fellow Americans would die prematurely under the Trump provisions compared to the Obama-era provisions. So when the Trump administration released this most recent version of their amended plan back in June, they made it really difficult to put together all the data so people would not be able to connect the dots in many of these areas, but Senator Cardin has presented some of the results of this. I want to emphasize those and put them in somewhat different terms, which is, what does the Trump rule accomplish compared to the Obama rule on some of these issues? So with respect to carbon dioxide emissions, the Trump rule would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, carbon pollution emissions, by 2.7 percent of what the Obama administration would have done--2.7 percent of what the rule they are replacing would have done. With respect to sulfur dioxide, the Trump plan reduces sulfur dioxide emissions by only 1.9 percent of what the Obama administration's rule would have done. When it comes to nitrous oxide, the Trump proposal, the Trump plan, reduces nitrous oxide by only 2.5 percent compared to what the Obama provisions would have done. If you take all of these together, you can see it is a really anemic proposal that takes us way backward compared to where we were. That is why I support Senator Cardin's efforts on the floor, with the vote tomorrow, to say no, to say no to the Trump administration's efforts to roll back the progress on clean air, to roll back the progress on clean water because a lot of that pollution settles in places like the Chesapeake Bay, and to roll back progress on climate change, which we know is hitting our communities as we speak. I want to give some additional Maryland examples here. The Baltimore Sun ran a story a little while back about the staggering costs that Maryland and Marylanders would have to pay to build seawalls to protect communities from sea level rise. A study from the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development found that in the coming decades, seawalls to protect thousands of homes, businesses, and farmlands from Ocean City to Baltimore City will cost more than $27 billion--$27 billion. We have also seen dramatic flooding in the city of Annapolis that is already hurting the Naval Academy. This past week, we just had a famous national boat show, and in the middle of this boat show, there was huge flooding in the city of Annapolis. The costs to the city and that community are rising rapidly and have been well-documented. I ask my colleagues to support Senator Cardin's motion. Let's not go backward. Let's not go backward in terms of protecting our air. Let's not go backward in terms of the battle against climate change because going backward means less good jobs in America, it means more dirty air and more asthma, and it means ceding this important area to China and others in the global economy. I urge my colleagues to support the motion of Senator Cardin. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, today I wish to discuss the impact of Parkinson's disease in the U.S. and across the world. While significant progress has been made in managing certain symptoms and identifying potential risk factors, we still lack a clear understanding of the underlying causes of Parkinson's disease. To that end, I continue to support the strongest funding possible for biomedical research under the National Institutes of Health and its Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies--BRAIN-- Initiative, as well as the Parkinson's Research Program at the Department of Defense. These investments are necessary to sustain efforts by our Nation's scientists at the helm of innovative research and discovery, with the hope and resolve that we will one day find a cure. I would like to highlight a recent study entitled ``The Economic Burden of Parkinson's Disease,'' which was brought to my attention in a meeting with constituents led by Dan Lewis, a longtime advocate for Parkinson's research. Commissioned by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, this study places the annual economic impact of Parkinson's at $52 billion in 2017, nearly double the previous estimates. Approximately half of that total reflects the medical costs of Parkinson's patients, primarily paid by Medicare. The other half reflects the real indirect costs shouldered by patients with Parkinson's, their caregivers, and our society. The effects of living with Parkinson's disease permeate so many aspects of patients' lives, from personal finances to workforce participation to caregiver time and effort. With a rising aging population, the burden will only grow from here; the number of people with Parkinson's disease is projected to double by 2040. By shedding light on the human and societal impact of Parkinson's, this study illustrates the critical need for sustained research toward better treatments and a cure. I ask unanimous consent that this study be printed in the Congressional Record and encourage all Senators and staff to review it. Thank you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I am going to read from just two of those letters that expressed the urgency of Senate action on this. This is a letter from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, from the president and CEO, stating that the Thurgood Marshall College Fund ``strongly encourages the Senate to take-up the FUTURE Act immediately and pass the bill before the opportunity slips away. While we appreciate the prospects of a longer-term or `permanent' solution to Title III, Part F, we are skeptical that such a proposal would receive the requisite approval by Congress before September 30th.'' I think we can understand their skepticism given the fact that the 30th is Monday and the Senate is going to be out this afternoon. They go on to say: Therefore, it is imperative that the Senate act with all deliberate speed on the bi-partisan, bi-cameral FUTURE Act. Mr. President, I have another letter from the UNCF, which is another organization dedicated to supporting these important institutions. Quoting from the letter from their president and CEO: It is imperative that the Senate pass the FUTURE Act because funding for HBCUs, TCUs, HSIs, and other [minority- serving institutions] expires September 30, 2019. While we support a permanent extension of mandatory funding, H.R. 2846, due to its passage in the House of Representatives, is the surest way for these institutions to maintain funding for FY 2020 and FY 2021. We strongly believe that passing this bill now will address the immediate funding needs of our institutions. This is a bill that has broad support. This is a bill where--the program expires on Monday, just a few days from now. There is really no excuse for not taking this up and voting on it now. I hope, since that is obviously not going to happen--my colleague tried to get unanimous consent earlier today to take up and vote on this bill--I hope we will move with all deliberate speed as soon as the Senate reconvenes so that we can get this important work done. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by saluting my friend, our colleague, the Senator from Alaska, for his moving and powerful statement and for his service as a marine and now a Senator from Alaska. It has been a great honor to work with him on many issues, including national security issues. I thank you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

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

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor to urge adoption of two resolutions that are going to be considered by the U.S. Senate, instructing the conferees to the NDAA bill, which is the Defense authorization bill. One of those motions urges the conferees, or directs the conferees, to adopt bipartisan legislation introduced by Senator Cotton, who is now the Presiding Officer in the Chair, and me and others. It is called the 5G act, and it deals with Defending America's 5G Future Act. What it does, very simply, is codify the Trump administration's Executive order putting Huawei on what is called the entity list and then making sure that before there is a change to this, if you wanted to take them off entirely, that would require a congressional action. But it also says that if you want to seek waivers under that act, you should come to Congress and at least give Congress the opportunity to disagree. This is very important to protect our security, to protect U.S. technology from theft. I urge my colleagues to support that resolution. DETER Act Mr. President, I am also here to urge my colleagues to support another resolution. This one is directing the conferees to the Defense authorization bill to support a motion and resolutions put forward by Senator Rubio and me and others--again, a bipartisan resolution, making it clear that we should deter foreign interference in U.S. elections. It is based on the principles of bipartisan legislation, a bipartisan act that we have introduced called the DETER Act. The idea is very simple, which is this: We want to say up front that our intelligence communities, or others in the administration, should inform Congress immediately if there has been interference in our elections. If the answer is yes, that would trigger immediate and stiff sanctions on whatever foreign government is acting to interfere in our elections. We can spend a lot of money and resources protecting our election infrastructure and our election systems, and we should do that. We can urge all of the social media companies to improve their platforms and make it more difficult for foreign governments and adversaries to use those platforms to influence and impact our elections. None of those measures actually impose a big cost on a foreign government like Russia for interfering in our elections. All those things do is make it harder, and we should make it harder. In this case, the best defense is a good offense, meaning the best defense to having a foreign government interfering in our elections is to discourage and deter them from doing that in the first place. Right now, what we have learned is there is no cost to Vladimir Putin and the Russians for interfering in our elections. In fact, they assess that they get a significant benefit from creating division within the United States. If you are Vladimir Putin and you are doing a cost benefit analysis--should I interfere in the U.S. elections or not?--you conclude: Hey, I am going to gain something by creating this kind of division and confusion within the United States. What we should be doing is saying in advance and up front to Vladimir Putin and Russia or any other foreign leader or government, if we catch you interfering in our elections, you will definitely pay a price in the form of sanctions against some of your financial institutions or key aspects of your economic sector. We need to spell that out in advance. This resolution requires that Congress be notified after the election as to whether we have detected foreign interference. Next time, someone like Vladimir Putin will know in advance that if we catch them, there will be a price to pay, a penalty to pay. That will, of course, discourage the activity in the first place. It doesn't cost us a dime to do this. Yes, we should continue to spend money, as I said, to harden our systems at home and better defend ourselves. For goodness' sake, we should at least take the position that we are going to let foreign powers know in advance, if we catch you--and by the way, we will catch you if you interfere in our elections--there will be an immediate and severe price to pay. I urge my colleagues to unanimously support this resolution. It is appropriate that we are directing the conferees to the National Defense Authorization Act to include this provision because, after all, the reason we invest in our defense is to protect our country and to protect our democracy. That bill should include a provision telling foreign powers: If you mess around and interfere in our Democratic elections, you will pay a price. That will make it less likely they will do so to begin with. I urge adoption of the resolution. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I oppose the nomination of David Black to be Deputy Commissioner of Social Security. I have longstanding concerns about how management at the Social Security Administration has treated the unions representing their workforce, and I am concerned about the role that Mr. Black may have played in these anti-union practices. SSA was especially hostile towards its workers when it implemented the anti-union Executive orders that President Trump issued on May 25, 2018. SSA was one of the few agencies to evict unions from office space pursuant to the Executive orders, in the brief time before a Federal district court issued an injunction blocking key parts of the Executive orders. SSA also abrogated its unexpired contract with administrative law judges who are represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which even the Executive orders themselves expressly prohibited. After the Executive orders were blocked in court, SSA went to the Federal Service Impasses Panel to impose a contract on workers represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, and the terms of this contract were highly similar to provisions of the Executive orders. SSA is now using similar tactics against workers represented by National Treasury Employees Union. We need to stop a bad situation from getting worse. The Senate should demand stronger commitments to improve labor relations from President Trump's nominees for leadership positions at SSA. When SSA took these anti-union actions, Mr. Black was the White House senior adviser at the Social Security Administration. Despite Mr. Black's responsibility for SSA, he claimed in a letter to me that, ``I was not involved in SSA's implementation of the EOs.'' It is my understanding, however, that there is a pending Freedom of Information Act request that may shed new light on Mr. Black's involvement with the Executive orders. SSA has stated that an email records search generated thousands of emails that need to be reviewed for pertinence and disclosure in response to the request, and that review is still ongoing. I certainly hope that SSA's response will confirm Mr. Black's statement that he was not involved with the Executive orders, but the Senate should wait until all the facts are in before moving forward with his confirmation. For those reasons, I will oppose Mr. Black's nomination at this time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania for his leadership on this issue and his very clear remarks and call to action. I am also very pleased to be here on the floor with my friend the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy, who has been at the forefront of this battle for many years. We will not let up until we see meaningful action here in the Senate, because we have an epidemic of gun violence in this country. The only question is, What are we going to do about it? We have seen 293 mass shootings in the last 9 months. We see people being killed by gun violence in our streets and in our neighborhoods every day. All told, 100 of our fellow Americans die from gun violence every day. It can happen anytime, anywhere, to anybody. It can happen in our schools, our movie theaters, our homes, our concerts, our bars, our shopping centers, our streets. No one is immune or free from this violence. If this were an epidemic caused by a preventable disease, this Congress would convene on an emergency basis. We would be having a bipartisan gathering to immediately pass legislation to help discover new cures and vaccines for whatever disease was killing 100 of our fellow Americans every day. When it comes to gun violence, here in the U.S. Senate, there is nothing, no action. Inaction is complicity. It is complicity in the carnage when we know there are commonsense measures we can take together to reduce the gun violence. Are we going to stop every single gun death? No. But we know that these commonsense measures can save thousands of American lives. Yet we do nothing here in the Senate. That is despite the fact that we have at the desk a bill that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives 202 days ago. I have a copy of that bill in my hand. It is H.R. 8. If you look at it, it says: ``Read the second time'' and ``Placed on . . . Calendar.'' For people who may be listening in, what it means to be placed on the calendar is that it is here at the desk in the U.S. Senate. It means we could take it up anytime. We could take it up right now. In fact, now I am holding what is called the Calendar of Business for Tuesday, September 17, 2019. If you look at it--No. 29, H.R. 8--how does it describe H.R. 8? Very simply, ``An act to require a background check for every firearm sale.'' It is very simple. It is something supported by over 90 percent of the American people, regardless of party. I have in my hand a copy of the U.S. Constitution. I want to read article I, section 1, because it is very straightforward. It says: ``All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.'' The House of Representatives has acted. As I said, H.R. 8, a bill for universal background checks, is at the Senate desk. It is the Senate that hasn't acted. Yet I heard the Republican leader said as recently as today at a press event, when asked when the Senate was going to take up gun safety legislation, when we are going to take up universal background checks, ``Ask them,'' meaning ask the President, ask the executive branch. I don't know when we, the U.S. Senate, contracted out our constitutional responsibilities to the executive branch and to the gun lobby and others when we have it in our power right here tonight to take up a lifesaving measure. The majority leader also said that we are in a holding pattern. What are we holding for as more and more Americans die--100 per day--from gun violence? In my State of Maryland, we have been the victims, like every other State, of people dying by guns. We had a mass shooting. It was at the Capital Gazette newspaper. Five souls were taken. We had a school shooting in Maryland, at Great Mills High School in Southern Maryland. Every day, we see people in Maryland being harmed by gun violence in our streets and neighborhoods. Maryland has actually done something about it. As a State, we passed some important gun measures. We closed the gun show loophole. We require universal background checks in Maryland. We have actually banned semiautomatic assault weapons--a law that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. We require a permit to purchase a gun. Someone might ask: OK, well, Maryland has passed these laws, the State. Why do you have a gun violence problem? If you look at the figures from the ATF, if you look at their gun- tracing statistics, you find that 54 percent of crimes committed in Maryland with a gun come from guns from outside the State of Maryland, from our surrounding States. Maryland is not an island; we are part of the United States of America. Our State can pass sensible gun laws. We can help reduce the carnage in Maryland, and we have. Until we act as a country, until we pass universal background checks, Maryland will continue to be vulnerable to the negligence of other States and most of all, the negligence of the U.S. Senate, which has refused to act. The President knows where the American people are on this issue. After we have a mass shooting, the President always makes public comments about how he is going to do something about it, including addressing background checks. After the slaughters in El Paso and Dayton, on his way to visit those grieving communities, the President said: ``I'm looking to do background checks. I think background checks are important.'' He went on to say: ``I think we can bring up background checks like we never had before.'' After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, he called some Members of Congress to the White House, including Senator Murphy. Senator Murphy talked about the importance of background checks. The President told him: You know, we have a new President now, and we are going to work together to get this done. We have a different attitude. That is what the President always says after a terrible shooting, but then the President gets a call from the NRA, gets a call from the gun lobby, and you get a headline like this one, which we saw on August 20, 2019: ``NRA Gets Results . . . in One Phone Call With Trump.'' The President knows how the country feels. The President knows the country wants action. The President knows the country wants the Senate to act, so he says those things publicly, but then he gets a phone call from the gun lobby, and then he backpedals. That is where we are now, with the Senate stalling, pretending, going through these sorts of fake actions, pretending we are going to get there. I hope we do get there, but what the President has said and done in the past gives me no confidence, which is why I come back to the very place I started, which is that this body, the U.S. Senate, has its own responsibilities under the Constitution. The Constitution--article I-- gives the House and the Senate the lawmaking power, not the President of the United States. We shouldn't be looking down Pennsylvania Avenue and saying ``What is the President thinking?'' before we take action to help save lives. We are the U.S. Senate. We now have right in front of us at the desk, right here, a bill that will save lives, passed by the House of Representatives 202 days ago. It is for universal background checks. Senator McConnell and other Senators--if they don't want to support the position taken by 90 percent of the American people, then they can vote no on H.R. 8. If the majority leader doesn't think the people of Kentucky support H.R. 8, it is his prerogative to vote no. That is the right of every Senator. What is outrageous is blocking every other Senator in this body from exercising their right to represent their constituents and help save lives around the country. We support the voices of 90 percent of the American people, who want us to take action to reduce gun violence in the United States of America, to address this like the epidemic it is and to address it like we would address a disease epidemic that was killing 100 of our fellow Americans every day. Let's stop ignoring our responsibilities. Let's stop pointing to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. There is really no time to wait. ``Thoughts and prayers'' will not end the gun violence. Senate action and a vote on H.R. 8 can help save lives in the United States of America. Every single day that goes by that we don't take that vote is a day that this body is complicit in more deaths by gun violence. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I start by thanking my friend and colleague the Senator from Illinois, Ms. Duckworth, for her service to our country many years ago in the military, for her serving in Iraq, and now for her serving our country in a different capacity; that of standing up in the U.S. Senate to defend the Constitution and to defend this institution against what is clearly an unconstitutional power grab by the President of the United States. When I took my oath of office--when we took our oaths of office--we all swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Back in March of this year, 59 Senators kept that promise when we stood together, on a bipartisan basis, to say no to a gross abuse of Executive power--to an unconstitutional power grab--when we said: No, Mr. President, you may not ignore the will of the Congress. You may not ignore the appropriations that were passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by you. You may not ignore them and rob critical military projects across the country to fund an unnecessary wall. Now, we can all debate--we have debated many times--the merits of this wall, but there really should be no debate about the fact that the way the President has gone about it undermines the Constitution and undermines the powers given in that Constitution to the Senate and to the House. We made that statement on a bipartisan basis back in March-- 59 Senators. Mr. President, don't go robbing military construction accounts and defense accounts to finance the wall. Yet here we are, 6 months later, and the President is attempting to do exactly that. He is diverting important investments in our military in places across Maryland and around the country. As has been pointed out, the President said repeatedly that Mexico was going to pay for this wall. Instead, taxpayers are having to pay for this wall, and service men and women and the families of service men and women are bearing the brunt of the President's latest raid. I see the majority leader is on the floor. Just yesterday, the majority leader said he was going to fight the President's effort to take money away from a middle school in Kentucky to build the wall. I have a question for the majority leader and all of my colleagues who want to fight to protect the projects in their States. Are they willing to stand up for projects in every State that hurt military families? Here is what the Air Force wrote about a Maryland project. It is one that is not very far away from here--at Andrews Air Force Base. It is an air force base that, I dare say, every Member of this Senate has had the occasion and honor to visit from time to time. I have in my hand the budget request from the Air Force for a project at Andrews to help the service men and women who work there. Their article reads: Not providing this facility forces members to use more expensive, less convenient and potentially lower quality off- base programs. These off-base child development centers typically cost $9,400 more than on-base, creating a severe financial strain on military personnel. That is what the Air Force writes--an additional $9,400 a year for military men and women who we know are not getting big paychecks. That is not all the Air Force wrote. It went on to write in its justification for this investment: ``Quality of life will be severely degraded, resulting in impacts to retention and readiness because Airmen and their families will not have a safe and nurturing environment for childcare.'' That is from the U.S. Air Force. I invite all of our colleagues to visit that base and look at the current conditions there because here are the current conditions at the current childcare center that the Air Force is seeking to remedy with this investment. Again, this is a quote right from the Air Force: The existing facility has suffered from sewage backups, a leaking roof, HVAC failures, along with mold and pest management issues. Work orders continue to pile up . . . making it more difficult to ensure accreditation each year. The bathrooms are constantly flooding, and drainage issues in the kitchen result in monthly backups. That is from the Air Force. Those are the conditions our men and women at Andrews are currently facing in the childcare center. That is why the Air Force asked for this money that the President is now trying to take away. It turns out that when you do the math and when you look at the cost, the money being taken away from this childcare center that would address these awful conditions that exist would build about a half a mile of a wall--a wall that is unnecessary. Yet, even if you believe we need to build this long wall, you should agree that we should not be robbing moneys out of the accounts that help the families of our service men and women. That was one of the projects in Maryland the President raided. He also raided two others, including one to address traffic congestion at Fort Meade, which is the home to many facilities, including, of course, the National Security Agency. In all, $66 million was robbed from service men and women in the State of Maryland. That was just Maryland. We have heard about other States. We have also heard about cuts around the world--cuts from a program that was originally known as the European Reassurance Initiative--funds that we were investing, along with our allies, to deter Russian aggression in places like Ukraine. We called it the European Reassurance Initiative. I don't know what is reassuring now about robbing those accounts. That will have a direct negative impact on our national security and the readiness of the U.S. forces and those of our allies. We are going to have a lot of opportunities in the coming weeks to address this issue. I hope we will address it on a bipartisan basis. I hope we will address it as U.S. Senators who recognize that the President's actions here are a direct assault on article I--that they are a direct assault on the spending powers given to Congress under article I. We have our differences. We had a markup in the Appropriations Committee today. Members had a chance to offer their amendments. Some were accepted. Some were rejected. It was the democratic process at work, and that is the same democratic process we used to put these investments for our military families in place in the first place. The Senate acted. The House acted. In fact, the President signed the bill, and now he comes back to grab that money through this unconstitutional power grab. I will end with this, because I think all of us recognize the danger and the precedent that will be set here. We may agree or disagree with the President's decision to build a wall, but beware--beware, everybody--of a future President--a Republican or Democratic President or of some other party--using the same mechanism to undermine the Constitution and to undermine article I. Let's unite as U.S. Senators to stop that from happening. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, just a little bit earlier today, the Senate voted to confirm President Trump's nomination of Dale Cabaniss to lead the Office of Personnel Management. I voted against this nominee, but now that she is confirmed, it is more important than ever for the Senate and the House to fulfill our oversight duties to protect our civil servants from political interference. I know the Presiding Officer has a keen interest in this subject as well, in his capacity as chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management, overseeing Federal civil service, and I appreciate his work on that front. In order to do their jobs for the American people, our Federal employees must be able to perform their duties free of politics. They must be judged on the merits of their work, not political favoritism or cronyism. They must be able to present factual information and analysis without fear of retribution. Yet time and again, we have seen that this President, President Trump, views civil servants as his adversaries. The President has sought to silence those whose work or words contradict him, even when the facts are clear. We saw that most recently when the National Weather Service tried to calm residents in the State of Alabama after President Trump falsely stated that Hurricane Dorian would put them at severe risk. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross reportedly threatened to fire the agency's leadership after they corrected the President's false statements about Hurricane Dorian and Alabama. Just within the last hour, the New York Times is reporting that the order to change the statements at NOAA came directly from the White House in the form of a directive from the Acting Chief of Staff to the President, Mick Mulvaney. We have also seen this pattern at other times. We saw President Trump standing side by side with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, while President Trump sided with Putin's claims about noninterference in the 2016 Presidential elections, and where President Trump threw our own U.S. intelligence agency experts under the bus. These assaults on the Federal civil service and the efforts to undermine the integrity of the Federal civil service have also included an assault on Federal employees. This administration knows that workers are stronger when they are organized and have representatives who can speak on their behalf. Many--not all, but many--of the Trump agency heads have repeatedly refused to comply with the law and to bargain in good faith with their workers. Instead of trying to negotiate, they have tried to impose contracts and terms unilaterally. This has already happened at the Social Security Administration, where agency management has shown particular hostility to the unions representing their workforce. Some of these issues are now tied up in the courts, but I would hope we could work on a bipartisan basis to address these challenges. Now, President Trump is trying to abolish the Office of Personnel Management. That brings me to the nomination of Ms. Cabaniss, because she will be directed to preside over the dismantlement of the agency-- that is, if the President has his way. I know those of us in Congress with a different view will be weighing in as well. The Office of Personnel Management is an independent Federal agency with an absolutely vital mission--to strengthen and protect the Federal civil service system. Their role is to protect the integrity of our Federal civil service and prevent it from being hijacked by political forces. I know there has been a lot of talk that this is all about civil service reform. As I look at the proposals, I don't see it that way. I see these proposals as an attack on the institution that defends our civil service system. The Office of Personnel Management needs a strong, independent leader who will protect the Federal workforce from partisan interference and defend agencies from the administration's attacks. After looking at Ms. Cabaniss's record, she is not the right person to lead OPM. When she chaired the Federal Labor Relations Authority, morale was dead last among small Federal agencies. That is the agency that is supposed to resolve disputes between Federal workers and management, but 55 percent of their decisions were overturned under Ms. Cabaniss's jurisdiction. OPM's mission is vital to the success of our Federal civil service and their ability to deliver services to the American people. We need a leader who is going to stand up for the integrity of that system, not one who is going to preside over the dismantlement of that agency. So I hope we can work on a bipartisan basis to ensure that this country preserves one of its vital assets, which is a nonpartisan civil service. Presidents come and Presidents go, and Presidents, of course, give direction to the different agencies, but we will be doing a great disservice to the people of this country if we allow political cronyism to seep into this system and create an environment where people fear speaking out, telling the truth, and providing the facts. I want to take this opportunity today, as we discuss the nomination of the Office of Personnel Management, to raise that larger issue, and I hope we will be united in that effort because lots of countries around the world suffer from political cronyism. The United States has helped shield itself from that by establishing decades and decades ago a system that tries to immunize ourselves against that kind of political infection in terms of the day-to-day work that we ask people to do and carry on, on behalf of the American people. Let's work together to accomplish what I believe is a bipartisan goal. I yield the remainder of my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the confirmation of Judge Stephanie Gallagher to serve as a Federal judge for the U.S. District Court of Maryland. Judge Gallagher has an impressive legal background and has provided years of service to the State of Maryland. She is currently a U.S. magistrate in Maryland having served in this capacity since 2011. Moreover, she has occupied the position of Assistant U.S. Attorney office for the State of Maryland. Finally, she clerked for the Honorable J. Frederick Motz, a Judge in Maryland's Federal district court. Judge Gallagher has been lauded repeatedly as a rising star, as one of Maryland's Super Lawyers, and has received a number of awards and commendations from a number of Federal agencies. Moreover, she has strong academic credentials having graduated from Harvard Law School, J.D. cum laude. I cannot think of anyone more qualified to occupy this critical position at this important time and am grateful for her nomination and the Senate's overwhelming support for her confirmation to serve as a Judge in Maryland's Federal District Court.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, on Saturday, June 29, 2019, more than 125 members of the Class of 1969 of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, MD, held their 50th graduation class reunion celebration. Over the years, Walt Whitman High School has been recognized as one of the best high schools in the Nation. The WWHS class of 1969 is an outstanding representation of that excellence. The Mighty Sixty-Niners, as they call themselves, have earned the characterization of ``mighty.'' From its beginning in 1962, Walt Whitman High School was experimental and forward-looking. The original school setting included a Buckminster Fuller-type geodesic dome that served as the school's main gymnasium and auditorium and as its unique visual focal point. For years afterwards, WWHS was locally and proudly known as ``The Home of the Dome.'' The WWHS class of 1969 contributed much to the rich history of the school. In 1968, a time of heightened racial tensions throughout the country, Whitman students and faculty established an exchange program with several high schools in the District of Columbia. Participating Whitman students lived for a week and attended classes at DC's McKinley High School and Cardozo High School. The following week, the McKinley and Cardozo students spent a week at WWHS with their Whitman counterparts. Those exchanges helped develop greater understanding between the participants. The WWHS class of 1969 also instituted a weeklong Experiment in Free Form Education. This novel educational program gained nationwide media attention and accolades, including a tribute on the floor of the U.S. Senate on April 25, 1969, by then-U.S. Senator Joseph Tydings of Maryland. The Mighty Sixty-Niners have served our Nation in many productive ways, and they continue to do so, excelling in many fields--the arts, politics, government, education, literature, engineering, law, business and publishing, among others. I ask my colleagues to join me in sending our very best wishes and congratulations to the Walt Whitman High School class of 1969 on the occasion of its 50th reunion.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Here is what yesterday's Baltimore Sun editorial states: President Trump, whose early career was marred by a federal housing discrimination suit, may be interested to know that Baltimore was something of a pioneer in that regard. It enacted the first housing segregation ordinances, which were soon invalidated by the Supreme Court, leading to subtler and more nefarious tactics. Racially restrictive covenants, privately enforced, prevented the sale of homes in certain neighborhoods to minorities. Redlining prevented minorities from getting financing to buy homes in white neighborhoods. And blockbusting made rich the unscrupulous men who capitalized on racism and fear to drive white flight. They profiteered on blacks who sought security and better opportunities but instead found themselves exploited and impoverished. They go on to make the point: Those days aren't nearly so far in the past as we might like to think. Just seven years ago, Baltimore settled a landmark lending discrimination suit against Wells Fargo, which steered minority borrowers into subprime mortgages--the sort of abuse the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Mr. Trump has eviscerated, might have prevented. Landlords in Baltimore continue to take advantage of rules stacked in their favor to evict low-income (and frequently minority) tenants; in a particularly egregious example, the Kushner Cos. (as in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) has aggressively sought to jail tenants who fall behind on their rent. We do have a legacy of discrimination in Baltimore City to overcome. The President, instead of challenging that legacy, has decided to pile on in the manner he did with his comments. I know that Baltimore will rise above this. I know the city is resilient, and I know this great city's greatest days are still ahead as we tackle that legacy and move on to the future. But I think we as a body--both Republicans and Democrats alike--have an obligation to also stand up for our country. We cannot allow these kind of remarks out of the Oval Office to go unanswered. We cannot allow silence when the President of the United States challenges the very idea of what it means to be American, which is a place where people of all different backgrounds, all different races, and all different religions can come together: ``E pluribus unum.'' The President wants to drive a stake in that idea. He wants to divide the country, and we cannot be silent while he soils the Oval Office. I ask all of us to speak out, wherever we are, when we see this kind of attack by the President of the United States. It is wrong for our country. It is bad for our country. It is a disgrace to the Oval Office. The one thing I can say is that, in the face of that disgrace, Baltimore has shown great dignity, incredible dignity, the dignity of a city of people who see a wonderful future ahead, and we should all work together to make that future as bright as possible. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from today's Baltimore Sun editorial board.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. With that, I yield to the senior Senator from Maryland, my friend, Ben Cardin.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Cardin, for talking about some of the highlights of Baltimore City and the storied history of Baltimore City. It is a history of much good but also a lot of challenges that I recounted earlier. It doesn't do Baltimore City or any city in this country any good when the person in the highest office in this country launches these nasty, personal, racial diatribes. I know the President had a history of these kinds of comments before he came to the Oval Office. But now that he is in the Oval Office, all of us have an obligation and responsibility to speak out when he fouls the office in that way. If the President really wants to help cities like Baltimore, he can do some of the things Senator Cardin talked about. On a bipartisan basis in the Appropriations Committee, we are working to make investments that will help that city and many other cities with things like the CDBG--community development block grants--things like economic development administration proposals, things like financing through CDFIs, and things like minority business enterprises. Those are four investments. They don't solve the problems, but they certainly help. Here is the thing. In President Trump's budget, zero--he zeroed out every single one of those programs. I propose a major additional investment in our schools throughout this country, including title I schools, which are schools in lower income areas. That would be a huge boost to education throughout the country and to the city of Baltimore. As Senator Cardin said, we need to make investments in our national infrastructure. We have a great, thriving port in Baltimore with good- paying jobs, so we need to expand it. There are so many things we can and should be doing, but the President, apparently, according to many, has this political strategy where he doesn't want to talk about those things. It is a political strategy that seeks to divide this country, not to unite this country. If you think about that, that is a pretty sick political strategy. It is sick for the country, sick for Maryland, and sick for Baltimore. So I hope all of us will work to focus on the things we can do to make Baltimore and Maryland and this country stronger and end this kind of divisive rhetoric. Part of ending it means speaking out against it when we see it. We need everybody in this body to join us in doing it. Again, I think when it comes to the city of Baltimore, it is going to rise way above the President's comments. It understands it has challenges, but it also understands it has a great future. Let us--all together--be part of a great future for Baltimore and this country, and that means coming together to serve the interests of all of our constituents. I thank the Senate for the time Senator Cardin and I have had here. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor today with my friend and colleague, the senior Senator from the State of Maryland, Mr. Cardin, and I think we both agree that we would rather not be here today to talk about this subject. But I feel compelled to come to the Senate floor today because, in my view, we have a duty to speak out when the President of the United States of America engages in conduct that brings dishonor and disgrace to the Office of the Presidency. That is what we witnessed, once again, over the weekend when President Trump unleashed a torrent of personal, nasty, and racist attacks on Congressman Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore, and President Trump has continued his poisonous barrage for days. Congressman Cummings can defend himself. He grew up having to confront racist bullies. In the face of these attacks, he has shown great strength and great integrity--the same strength and integrity he has brought to his efforts to fight for his dear city of Baltimore, his entire congressional district, and his constituents over many years. Baltimore is a great American city with great people, great spirit, and great heart. Yes, of course, Baltimore faces many challenges. It is facing those challenges with determination, with unity, and with grit. The President's attacks on this great American city have only served to rally the people of Baltimore, the people of Maryland, and, in fact, the people of the United States of America to support the city and the people of Baltimore. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an op-ed that appeared in the Baltimore Sun today entitled ``Baltimore leaders: `Proud not only to be in Baltimore, but of Baltimore.' ''

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. This is signed by many of the leaders in our community, including the President of Johns Hopkins University; the head of Under Armour, a great American company; the head of a number of major companies in the city of Baltimore; the Casey Foundation; Morgan State University, a great HBCU; Eddie Brown, one of our great civic leaders; and many other leaders of Baltimore--diverse leaders who have come together to stand up with pride for the city of Baltimore. I would like to read to the Senate what they say in the first paragraph: We are proud and privileged to call Baltimore home. Baltimore is a city of creativity, optimism, and determination. Home to leading public and private research universities, world-class medical institutions, and a diverse business community, Baltimore is a city where both artists and start-ups thrive. From creating one of the nation's first racially integrated library systems to producing today's modern medical and technological breakthroughs, our city has a proud legacy of leadership in improving lives and setting a national example for a stronger tomorrow. I want to pay particular attention to these next sentences: It's no wonder we are often named as a place where millennials are moving and staying. This is a city where people not only want to live, but love to live. If you come to Baltimore today, you will, in fact, find lots of young people from other parts of the country coming to settle, work, and raise their families in this great American city. The President may say that nobody wants to live in Baltimore, but the facts show a very different story about young people--young people who understand that they have a great future in Baltimore and are moving to that great city. Of course, it is true that Baltimore faces a series of problems. In Baltimore we have had a legacy of racial discrimination and segregation. I would like to read from yesterday's editorial in the Baltimore Sun. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the editorial from the Baltimore Sun, dated July 29, 2019.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

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

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.