Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown our country into a nightmare level crisis of joblessness. The Congress has not done enough to stop it and has not done enough to save the jobs of our people. I have come to the floor this evening to call for the Senate to pass legislation that is all about saving the public sector jobs that form the backbone of our local communities, our firefighters, our first responders, our teachers, our families, and so many others. They need our help. They need it now. Senate Democrats have been warning since March that when COVID-19 cases exploded and our economy went into lockdown, our States, our cities, and our towns are now facing budgetary disasters unlike any they have gone through in recent memory. The shortfalls that State and local governments are facing due to the pandemic make the great recession look like a modest little economic hiccup. Layoffs are now happening at nightmarish levels. In March, April, and May, there were 1.5 million job losses. Among these key individuals were the firefighters, the first responders, our public employees, folks who teach our kids, work in public health, emergency response, and play a key role in maintaining our roads and highways. I am just going to take a few minutes to run through some specific examples of why Senate Democrats think this is so important. First, what kind of sense does it make to sit back and allow thousands and thousands of first responders to lose their jobs in the middle of a pandemic? COVID-19 cases have spiked now in places around this country. Our public health systems are getting hit like they were hammered with a wrecking ball. State and local governments are being forced to cut EMS workers at the exact moment they need more first responders who know how to keep the ailing of this country safe. Second, let me mention education. Our country is in danger of losing a generation of teachers if Congress does not act to save their jobs. The official jobs data showed that in April alone, just 1 month, nearly half a million K-12 employees lost their jobs--half a million. Education experts have estimated that hundreds of thousands of teachers could be permanently laid off without action. Schoolchildren are already facing major setbacks due to the fact that they can't get the same level of face-to-face instruction during the pandemic. Far too many kids come from working families and are falling behind because they don't have the technology, and they don't have the support at home. Too many kids are hungry. Too many kids are neglected. Nobody knows when they are going to be back in class full time. Helping those young people catch up when this pandemic ends is already going to be incredibly hard, and it will be even harder if the Nation loses hundreds of thousands of dedicated teachers in the meantime, and that is just K-12. The COVID-19 crash is a disaster for Americans who want to get an affordable college degree as well. Our public colleges and universities are taking enormous losses. In my home State of Oregon, the losses added up to $130 million this spring. States are facing big, higher education budget cuts. School administrators are doing their best to plan for the future, but, still, they don't know when their campuses are going to go back to normal. You only have to look back to the great recession to see what is likely to happen next. More and more costs getting pushed onto more and more students and their working families. Two-thirds of the class of 2018 borrowed to pay for college, and those borrowers held an average of $30,000 in debt on graduation. Someday soon, that may be something like a bargain. Third, our country's already crumbling infrastructure is going to get even worse if communities can't afford to invest in roads and highways and other essential infrastructure projects. It is a self-defeating prospect. If the Congress doesn't help communities tackle the projects now, they will cost even more down the road and when the maintenance backlog grows. Delaying these kinds of projects makes it even harder for local economies to recover because all those workers will be out of a job, and a lot of businesses don't want to invest in places where there is a crumbling infrastructure. The proposal I offer tonight with the Democratic leader will help to save these jobs and stave off a whole lot of preventable economic hardship. One of the key lessons the Senate ought to remember from the great recession is that failing to support State and local budgets will prolong suffering across this country. It will slow down the recovery, and it will guarantee the country does not bounce back quickly in 2020. Our proposal builds on legislation that has already passed the other body. It incorporates State and local portions of the Heroes Act that rescues firefighters, first responders, infrastructure jobs, and teachers. It also includes an important proposal for the rural West-- Secure Rural Schools and Payments in Lieu of Taxes, what is call SRS and PILT. Even before COVID-19, our rural communities started with weaker economies, fewer public health resources, and worse access to healthcare. They were bound to have a harder time responding to and from the pandemic. Secure Rural Schools, which I authored with our former colleague, is all about bringing certainty and stability to communities and counties, often the frontline healthcare providers in far-out places. These are places where you have seen boom-and-bust traditional dependence on resource extraction, and there have been cycles where it is almost impossible, as the Presiding Officer knows, to plan for what is ahead. Our proposal would create a permanent endowment of funds to provide a predictable source of funding for rural economic development, roads, and schools. Payment in lieu of taxes is all about providing that same kind of certainty to those who live in rural areas dominated by Federal lands. They have the same right as anybody else to reliable services: firefighters, safe roads, highways, and schools. Ten years of permanent mandatory payment in lieu of taxes will help those counties budget for the future. I am going to close with one last argument I have heard from the other side and then yield to the distinguished Democratic leader. The other side often says that our ideas are some sort of blue State bailout. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Teachers are going to get pink slips in Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Florida, and they aren't going to believe that saving their jobs is a blue State bailout. Of the 42 States and Territories covered by Secure Rural Schools, less than a handful are blue States. The virus has absolutely no interest in political parties. It might hit Democratic States first, but it is now sweeping many parts of the country, including States that voted for Donald Trump. Despite being small and rural and, generally, relatively remote, county governments that rely on Secure Rural Schools and payment in lieu of taxes are responding to the same national public health crisis facing larger cities and urban areas. This economic crisis is hitting everybody. I don't want to see hundreds of thousands of teachers laid off anywhere--not in Oregon, not in Iowa, not in Texas, not in Kentucky. Especially when it is safe for kids to go back to school in person, I don't want them packed into classrooms with 40 or 50 other students. I don't want first responders to be laid off in the middle of a pandemic. I don't want our Nation's roads and highways to crumble into even worse disrepair because the Congress failed to address the nationwide budget crisis. The Senate has an obligation to act. I am now going to yield to the distinguished Democratic leader, and then I will offer a unanimous consent request to actually advance this critically important cause.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, to make a very brief response--and I know my colleagues have been very patient--I just want to make sure that everybody really put in context the remarks the Senator from Florida made. He is basically saying that if you don't address healthcare now, if you don't address education now, if you don't address roads now, that somehow there aren't going to be any consequences. There are going to be very real consequences. People are going to be sicker, for example. We are going to spend much more down the road. We have a weakened and smaller economy, and we will have that for an unknown amount of time. My colleague mentioned his concern about weakened national security. How can a semi-permanently weakened economy not affect national security? Of course it is going to affect national security, and it is going to affect national security badly. Finally, I will make one additional point, and I know my colleagues will address this as well. My colleague from Florida talks about deficits. I am the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, where we sat through my colleagues' tax bill--a bill that he voted for, and he strongly supported it and said it is going to pay for itself; what is to worry about? Nobody does deficits better than that side of the aisle. Nobody does them better and bigger and in a more irresponsible way. I wanted to put that in context. I look forward to the remarks of my friend from Connecticut and Nevada.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues. A number have already given eloquent remarks, and we still have more to come. I know, per the agreement, that it is time to propound the unanimous consent request. So, with the support of thousands of firefighters, first responders, teachers, county health providers, and thousands more Americans of both political parties with an extraordinary work ethic, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the State, Local, and Tribal Fiscal Relief and Rural Stability Act, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, across the country, there has been a national outcry for justice and for real changes in law to address police brutality and reflect the undeniable truth that Black lives matter. This week should be our opportunity in the U.S. Senate to come together--Republicans and Democrats--to begin to fix our broken policing system, which is what so many people in big cities and small towns in Oregon and in every State across America are demanding of us. Yet, instead of allowing that kind of bipartisan discussion, Leader McConnell is plowing ahead with partisan business, as usual, on a bill that falls very short of what the Senate ought to accomplish. I see my friend on the floor, Mr. Scott, the distinguished Senator from South Carolina. I want to make it clear that I have great respect for Senator Scott. He is an important member of the Senate Committee on Finance, on which both of us serve. I appreciate every opportunity to work with him. In fact, I think a fair number of people around the country will note the work we have just done in the last few weeks on nonprofit organizations. So we will be working together, I know, in the days ahead. Unfortunately, the majority leader is giving short shrift to this debate on ending systemic racism by putting forward an inadequate bill and essentially daring the other side to oppose it. That is not the way you bring together both sides to address big, important national challenges. Let me take just a few minutes to talk about some of the specific shortcomings of the legislation that Senator McConnell wants to bring to the floor. For example, how can 100 Senators not agree that choke holds are wrong and ought to be banned? That is what my Democratic colleagues and I have called for: a nationwide ban on choke holds, period--full stop. The Republican bill does not take that same strong, firm position. In my view, you cannot equivocate when it comes to a reform as basic as banning the choke hold. Anything short of a ban creates loopholes for the use of choke holds, and that is the wrong way to go for our country. Second, this bill doesn't create any real accountability for police misconduct. It doesn't set up independent investigations for prosecutions of police abuses. It doesn't create national standards for law enforcement. It does not end qualified immunity. Those issues are right at the center of the challenge of reforming policing in America, and they are the issues the American people want to see addressed head-on. A lot of what the majority's bill--Senator McConnell's bill--does with respect to police conduct is essentially collecting data. Nobody is protesting collecting data. What people are protesting on is they want to save lives. The Senate ought to do better and make those real changes that improve public safety. Third, the extreme militarization of our police forces in recent years. It is actually an issue that goes back more than a few years, but the danger of a military mindset in domestic law enforcement was never more clear than when Trump officials started talking about ``dominating the battle space.'' Our communities are not war zones; our citizens are not enemy combatants; and our police officers should not be occupying forces, so why has the United States undergone this years' long military mobilization on its own streets, against its own people? It is long past time for this to end and for all our communities to institute 21st century community policing policies, but the Republican bill does not do that either. The truth is, Senator Scott's bill does take a few good steps, like establishing the duty to intervene and making lynching a Federal crime. Those are issues that I and other Democrats would like to work on with Senator Scott on a comprehensive bill, but that is not what Senator McConnell has put on offer this week. My concern is that if the Senate takes up the McConnell bill, it is going to just be business as usual under the Republican leader: a short debate cut off arbitrarily, not enough votes, and not enough improvements to the actual bill. I just don't believe that, when millions and millions of Americans are demanding more, that business as usual is somehow acceptable. That video of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police stirred a part of America's national consciousness. There have been peaceful protests in all 50 States over the last few weeks calling for us to stamp out racial injustice--people of all ethnicities, of all ages, all genders. It has been a rare display of common purpose and common engagement in America. As Senators, we have an obligation to respond to that call with something significantly better than business as usual. I know that Senator Scott wants to get there. I know that my Democratic colleagues and I want to get there. I am proud to support Senator Booker and Senator Harris, who have been doing outstanding work on this issue, and I know that, regardless of the outcome of tomorrow's vote, we are going to keep working. As for this week, the Senate would be wrong to just rush this process and just check the box with a partisan process, a partisan approach, before shrugging its shoulders and moving on to the task of dealing with more far-right judges. So I am going to vote against cloture. I urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before she leaves, another good idea from Senator Stabenow--pass the Equality Act today. Too logical, I guess, but it is another good idea, and I thank my colleague for it. I also want to commend my partner from Oregon, Senator Merkley, who has been leading this fight for years now. Wisconsin often partners with Oregon, going all the way back to our shared ownership of Wayne Morris. I just want to thank my colleagues for the great work they have been doing and just take a couple of minutes to talk about my pride in standing with them to fight for the passage of the Equality Act. We have come together during the middle of Pride Month. In 2020, with the pandemic continuing to spread, Pride Month looks a little different than it has in the past--no parades, smaller celebrations--but it still has been a historic month when it comes to LGBTQ rights, perhaps more so than any other since marriage equality became the law of the land in June 2015. A few days ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ Americans against discrimination in the workplace. The majority said an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law. Now, this ruling was a little bit of a surprise. I mean, it was absolutely correct in that it recognized that the law offered equal protection for LGBTQ Americans--a fact that should never have been in doubt. I also want to say on the floor today we are going to have to continue to be on guard that this administration's judges will use the approach underpinning this ruling as cover to strip equal protection from other people in future rulings. When you get the wrong approach resulting in the correct ruling, we have to be vigilant--vigilant, vigilant, and more vigilant in fighting for the correct results again and again and again. The ruling came just a few days after the Trump administration tried to take America in exactly a different direction, announcing that it was green-lighting healthcare discrimination against transgender Americans--an ugly, shameful action to take. How cruel that the administration actually said: We are going to announce this during Pride Month. We are actually going to use Pride Month to be cruel. It was a reminder to a lot of people that the fight for LGBTQ rights didn't end with the victory on marriage equality. For every landmark ruling that moves the cause forward, there is somebody like Donald Trump, who is always looking to see if they can drag the Nation back to the days when discrimination was business as usual. Until Monday's ruling, employers in more than half the States were allowed to fire employees for their sexual orientation or their gender identity. That was in more than half the States, but that injustice is now a thing of the past. We can't count on this week's Supreme Court ruling against workplace discrimination to bring on the end of discrimination in other parts of life in our country. The Senate can't wait for any other court cases to move forward before we take real action on this floor. That is why my colleagues and I are here today. We want to call for the immediate passage of the Equality Act. If discrimination against LGBTQ Americans is illegal in the workplace, then it is illegal in housing; it is illegal in education; it is illegal in public services and more. That is what the Equality Act is all about. It is about recognizing the dignity and the humanity of LGBTQ Americans, and, most importantly, enshrining it into the law. It is the next step that will move the cause forward, and there is bipartisan legislation that reflects the will of an overwhelming majority of the American people. The Senate ought to come together and pass it now. Justice Kennedy wrote--and I will close with this because it sums up what is in my heart today, ``The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach.'' There is much to be done on delivering on that promise outlined by Justice Kennedy. So we are going to be back here on the floor of the Senate, fighting for the passage of the Equality Act. Senator Stabenow was spot on. We ought to have done it today, and we are just going to be back here again and again and again in the weeks and months ahead until we have that promise of equality in every corner of the land. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

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

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the Senate has taken up and will be voting soon--I hope successfully--on watershed environmental legislation that will provide for municipal, county, State, and national parks and public spaces in America for generations to come. This is legislation I have been working on for years--legislation that I pushed hard to advance as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and legislation for which I am now a cosponsor. The bill is going to repair public spaces, making them usable by all, while creating new public spaces that reflect the continuing story that is our great country. In my view, when the Senate debates this kind of legislation, the debate also has to include a discussion about a particularly important topic, and that is jobs. A major component of this bill is, of course, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which puts funding into natural wonders all over the country, in cities and in rural areas. Today, I want to speak for a moment specifically about those rural areas and rural economies. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has hit so many of our rural communities like a wrecking ball. These are communities that have been struggling going back a long time, and building back up after COVID-19 is going to be enormously challenging. So the Senate ought to be looking at every good idea that can help get these rural economies moving again. The Land and Water Conservation Fund isn't just about opening up the country's treasured areas for everyone to enjoy and to help people get outdoors. It has a proven track record of boosting the economy in communities near those lands. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is the ultimate win-win approach because with this program you focus on recreation that involves protecting our natural wonders and jobs. That is a big step forward. So what I wanted to do was just spend a few minutes talking about how we could do even more. For some time now, I have been working with my colleagues from the Pacific Northwest--Senator Crapo, Senator Merkley, and Senator Risch-- trying to help secure two economic lifelines for the rural communities of the Northwest and for much of our Nation. I am talking about Secure Rural Schools and Payments in Lieu of Taxes Programs. They are known as SRS and PILT. In the West, there are a lot of areas that have long depended on resource extraction and a lot of areas made up of Federal lands. So we went through a lot of boom-and-bust cycles that defined those economies for generations, and nearly always those boom-and-bust cycles proved to be harmful and unsustainable. So some time ago--a number of years ago-- former Senator Larry Craig and I wrote the bill that created the Secure Rural Schools Program. It provided years and years of reliable revenue for rural counties so they could plan budgets and provide services for people who live in their borders. But after a while, Secure Rural Schools got caught up in the knockdown, back-and-forth fiscal battles that happen in Congress too often. So once in a while, the program would lapse. It then meant that from all over the country, county leaders from rural communities came to Washington and had to plead for extensions of the Secure Rural Schools Program that has always been successful and a model. It involves local input. Extending this program should have been a no-brainer all along. It expired just last year before Congress stepped up at the last minute to reauthorize the program, but these start-and- stop authorizations do nothing for certainty. I remember one year that to keep the Secure Rural Schools Program up, the distinguished Senator from Alaska, Ms. Murkowski, and I were involved in selling off the helium reserves. That gave us some money-- some key money--for the Secure Rural Schools Program in the West. I remember when we sold off the helium reserves to get money for Secure Rural Schools, a number of editorial writers out West had a lot of fun with it and basically said: Well, we always knew Ron Wyden was full of a lot of hot air. The point is, we have got to end that cycle, that boom-and-bust cycle, instead of going through these routines at the end of the period, when Secure Rural Schools was helping the roads and schools. I worked with Senator Crapo to propose reforms that would upgrade the Secure Rural Schools Program into a stable, predictable source of funding for rural counties. Our bill would establish a permanent endowment fund, like funding for county economic development and roads and schools. That is where the money goes. It goes into economic development. It goes into roads and schools. By the way, when you are helping those rural communities with their budget, when they have those funds secure, it frees up money for them for important things like mental health. We have certainly seen a demand for mental health increase dramatically in the last few months. After Congress makes an initial investment into the fund under our proposal, which would establish a permanent endowment to provide funding for county economic development into roads and schools-- Congress makes that initial investment into the fund--the principle will be invested, and the interest will be used to make SRS payments to counties. So you have Senator Crapo, Senator Merkley, Senator Risch, and I proposing a way to move away from this roller coaster in the West to upgrade Secure Rural Schools into a stable, predictable source of funding. You have a permanent endowment fund that provides money for the roads and the schools and the counties, and the principles are invested, and the interest will be used to make SRS payments to counties. The proposal is backed by 100 percent of Oregon's U.S. Senators and 100 percent of Idaho's U.S. Senators--four U.S. Senators, two Democrats and two Republicans, having worked closely with rural groups, the National Associations of Counties, and others to advance this idea. Our proposal also directs revenue-sharing payments from forest management to be deposited into the endowment each year. That way, the payments to the counties will grow, and the safety net they provide for their constituents can expand. In my view, these are the basics of an economic toolkit for rural areas. If you focus on roads, if you focus on schools, if you make sure that counties have the money for services so they can, for example, take care of mental health needs, that is the key to building up rural economies and helping to create good-paying jobs for residents. Now, payments in lieu of taxes is a program that exists for similar reasons. People who live in these rural counties dominated by public lands also deserve support. They, too, rely on local governmental services and deserve a safety net like everyone else. They ought to be able to budget and plan and create jobs like bigger cities can. Our amendment to really promote Secure Rural Schools and PILT would extend PILT for 10 years to give these counties the certainty and predictablity they need. I am going to wrap up here in a moment, but I just hope that the majority leader is going to set up a process for real debate on these ideas and these amendments. This is a bipartisan proposal. When we have offered in the past-- Senator Crapo, Senator Merkley, Senator Risch, and I and others--to extend this program, we nearly always get at least 70 votes here in the U.S. Senate because there is an awareness of how important it is that these rural communities have certainty for schools and roads and basic kinds of services that our efforts support. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing enormous pain everywhere, but we have seen big corporations--we talked about this yesterday in the Finance Committee. Some colleagues think: Well, we ought to cut the unemployment benefits in half, but it is fine to make available trillions of dollars to the biggest corporations in America. So the COVID pandemic is causing pain everywhere, but it seems to me, with so many resources going to big corporations and powerful interests in intensely populated areas, the U.S. Senate has an obligation to make sure rural economies and rural workers and rural businesses aren't just left behind. Upgrading Secure Rural Schools and extending PILT is a targeted way to advocate for rural communities. We are going to be home for several weeks in July, and my hope is to be able to have conversations with folks in person in those areas. I haven't been able to do as much of that. I have had 970 townhall meetings in person, just there to be able to respond and answer questions. So I really hope that we are going to be able to do that again soon. When we have those discussions, you can be very sure that, in those rural communities, front and center will be Secure Rural Schools, and front and center will be Payments in Lieu of Taxes. Folks will zero in on those areas because they will say, as they have to me since Larry Craig, our former colleague from Idaho, and I wrote this program: Ron, what Secure Rural Schools is doing is giving us a chance to make sure we have a real education program. Before we got that program going, people thought they would have school 3 days a week. So people will say: Ron, we need Secure Rural Schools. We need it for education. It is a key to our roads program. The roads program for these smaller counties is an absolute key to being able to have rural life. Without those rural roads and without rural schools, the heart of Secure Rural Schools, you can't have rural life. So these two programs are a solution based on providing certainty and predictability to help build thriving economies and good jobs in rural areas. I am going to keep pushing for support here in the Senate. I know my colleagues Senator Crapo, Senator Merkley, and Senator Risch are going to continue to do so as well. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, before Senator Cardin leaves the floor, I want to tell my colleague and friend on the Finance Committee that it has been a pleasure to team up with him to try to deal with these challenges in terms of getting the help out to small business people. We know that it has been needlessly challenging, looking back at the experience. I am just glad my colleague is going to prosecute the case until there is justice for these small businesses

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to give notice of my intent to object to any unanimous consent agreement regarding S. 482, the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act. I want to first start by making myself clear: I support the vast majority of the provisions in this bill. It has now been over three years since Russia meddled in our last presidential election, and Congress has yet to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for it. I commend the bill's sponsors for coming together, on a bipartisan basis, with legislation that would take real steps to address Moscow's aggression. Unfortunately, the bill is burdened by one extremely problematic, unrelated section, Title IV, or what was previously known as the International Cybercrime Prevention Act. This is now the fourth time my colleagues have attempted to jam that bill through this very chamber. In fact, the same exact language was first floated in 2015, only to be defeated. It was brought up again in 2016, and was, again, defeated. Once more, in 2018, this bill was introduced as a standalone bill and, again, defeated. The authors of this problematic legislation are giving it one more try, this time by attempting to bury it within a largely unrelated 100- page, bipartisan legislative vehicle. And, by adding this language onto an extraneous foreign relations bill, my colleagues have been able to bypass the jurisdictional scrutiny of the Senate Judiciary Committee altogether. Title IV of the bill is, at best, an extremely misguided piece of legislation. While its proponents claim the language is meant to fight botnets and other malicious cybercrime in a limited context, its effects would be far more broad-reaching. What this bill would do, in reality, is significantly expand the badly outdated Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or the CFAA--a law that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has time and time again abused against cybersecurity researchers and activists, including the late Aaron Swartz. Mr. President, advocates and legal experts have long warned that the CFAA chills legitimate speech and research. DOJ has adopted an interpretation of the CFAA so extreme that it has argued in federal court that it is illegal merely for someone to violate a website's terms of service, such as by lying about their height, weight, or age in an online dating profile. While I take a back seat to no one when it comes to protecting Americans from hackers and improving our nation's cybersecurity, DOJ has stretched this Reagan-era hacking law to absurdity. The last time the International Cybercrime Prevention Act was proposed in this chamber, I voted against it because I believed then, as I do now, that the draconian CFAA must be modernized. I have sought to reform the CFAA, and rather than addressing its many serious flaws, Title IV of DASKA expands it, creating broad new prohibitions and harsh penalties. Mr. President, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The bill before us is a resoundingly good bill--but it is one that is held back by one small and unrelated section. My hope is that, working in a bipartisan way, we can resolve this glaring problem with DASKA. However, until that happens, I will object to any unanimous consent request to proceed to the legislation.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate is going to vote on the nomination of John Ratcliffe to be Director of National Intelligence. I have come to the floor to discuss this important nomination. Senators often come to this floor to talk about the importance of speaking truth to power. John Ratcliffe, in his statement before the Intelligence Committee and in his written responses, revealed he would not speak truth to power; he would surrender to it. He demonstrated that he is so eager to serve power, he will twist the truth, and he showed this again and again. For example, in the name of helping power, we saw him dance around direct questions about whether he would respect or even understood the law. John Ratcliffe made a number of extremely disturbing statements that make it clear that he has and will misrepresent and politicize intelligence without a moment's hesitation. I asked the Congressman at his hearing about a law that requires a public, unclassified report on who was responsible for the murder of the Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident, Jamal Khashoggi. This was a law passed by the Congress and signed by the President of the United States. This law required the Director of National Intelligence to produce that unclassified report on who killed Jamal Khashoggi and what the circumstances were in February. That has never happened. At his nomination hearing, I simply asked the Congressman whether the government was bound by the law. In his response, the Congressman called the law a request for unclassified information. That is how he referred to this law. Then the Congressman promised to take a look at it. In his own words, John Ratcliffe wouldn't commit to following that important law without knowing the circumstances of who killed Jamal Khashoggi. I believe it is open season on journalists. How John Ratcliffe danced around that question of whether he would comply with the law is a disqualification by itself to be the head of national intelligence. This was a pattern throughout the hearing. John Ratcliffe had his talking points down, but the moment he was asked anything specific, he danced away. I am just going to take a few minutes to give some examples. Obviously, it is critically important to know a nominee's views for this position on the question of spying on Americans. I asked John Ratcliffe three times in prehearing questions, at the hearing, and again after the hearing, whether the statute that prohibits warrantless wiretapping on Americans was binding. Each time, John Ratcliffe left himself lots of wiggle room to suggest that whatever this law said, the President might have ways to go around it. He also said he would work with the Attorney General, who we know has explicitly said that he doesn't believe the foreign intelligence surveillance law is binding on the President. This is really where John Ratcliffe could be dangerous. With Donald Trump as President and William Barr as Attorney General, the leadership of the intelligence community is one of democracy's last lines of defense. That is why the American people need a Director of National Intelligence who understands how the law protects their rights and won't start conducting warrantless wiretapping on Americans just because the Attorney General wrongly claims that it is legal. Nothing that John Ratcliffe has said during his confirmation process or throughout his career provides a glimmer of hope that he is a person who would speak truth to power and stand up for the rights of Americans. There are plenty more reasons to oppose this nomination, but in the interest of time, I am going to focus on just one more, and that is John Ratcliffe's blatant misrepresentation and politicizing of intelligence. This was obvious in how he talked about the intelligence community's assessment that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. This is a view undisputed within the intelligence community. The Senate Intelligence Committee looked at it up and down, and it was the unanimous judgment of the Intelligence Committee that it was true. Yet for John Ratcliffe, the intelligence really doesn't matter. All that matters is that he makes Donald Trump happy. If Donald Trump doesn't want to acknowledge that the Russians helped him, then those are John Ratcliffe's marching orders. It is the exact opposite of speaking truth to power and that is why, at the beginning of my remarks, I described his views with respect to power as not speaking truth but totally surrendering to power. He is also perfectly happy to misrepresent the intelligence even when it is public and we can read it with our own eyes. Three times during his hearing, he said that the Russians did not succeed in changing the outcome of the 2016 election. This position of John Ratcliffe directly contradicts what the Intelligence community had written in plain English. It said: ``We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.'' So I asked John Ratcliffe where he got his information. He referred back to the Intelligence community's assessment and the committee's report, neither of which supported John Ratcliffe's statements. You have to ask yourself, Why would John Ratcliffe say something that is obviously not true? That is because Donald Trump wants us to believe that he didn't benefit from Russian interference, and that, first and foremost, is what matters to John Ratcliffe. If John Ratcliffe is willing to misrepresent intelligence assessments that are already public that anybody can read for themselves, my take is there is no telling how he would misrepresent intelligence that is still classified. There is every reason to believe his public statements would be designed for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to make sure that Donald Trump is pleased. Neither the Congress nor the American people have any reason to trust that John Ratcliffe's testimony or his other public statements are accurate. My view is this kind of approach taken by the Director of National Intelligence is a real threat to democracy. When the Director of National Intelligence demonstrates that he is willing to bury the actual intelligence and say whatever makes Donald Trump happy at any particular moment, the American people are going to lose confidence and lose confidence quickly. It is not just about foreign interference in our democracy. That is plenty serious as it is. It is about other threats from countries like Iran, North Korea, and China. It is about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It is about whether the government is secretly spying on Americans without a warrant or committing torture. Ultimately, it is about the issue of war and peace and whether Americans will be asked to die for our country. The American people look to intelligence leaders for the facts--the facts, the unvarnished truth on these and other issues, which is why it is so important this position must have a foundation of credibility. Time and again, John Ratcliffe has demonstrated that he does not clear that lowest bar; that bar that means you have to have credibility in this position, and I urge my colleagues, when we vote in a few minutes, to reject John Ratcliffe's nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, on Monday, our country will celebrate Memorial Day. It is a very special day--one that we, as Americans, set aside each year to honor those members of the military who have given their lives in sacrifice to their country. Right now, this is typically the time when I am getting ready to travel home and go to Southern Oregon--to Eagle Point and to Central Point, wonderful communities to spend Memorial Day with hundreds of veterans and members of their families. These are events that take place each year and are inspiring and affirming and basically a time when Oregonians, from very young to often approaching almost 100 years old, assemble and are part of a centuries-long lineage of patriots who have been willing to serve and sacrifice for our great Nation. There are other communities that come together to remember lost friends and loved ones, but at home in Oregon, we have always said: Eagle Point and Central Point are the gold standard in terms of services and programs to recognize our veterans, and members of their family, who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation. I think we all know that this Memorial Day is going to be different. There will not be the same big gatherings, and there will not be as many parades. But one of the reasons I want to come to the floor of the Senate today--and I will be home this weekend thinking about Eagle Point and Central Point--is I want to make sure our country never ever diminishes the significance of this day. Never should our country take away our determination to honor those who pay the ultimate price in service to America, and it shouldn't cause us to forget that Memorial Day can be hard--very, very hard on the parents and spouses and children and friends our fallen heroes left behind. I know when I am recognized to speak in Central Point and in Eagle Point, I look out in the crowd, and I always see family members with a Kleenex by their eye, trying to remember and at the same time deal with the inevitable grief. This Memorial Day, I am going to be thinking of all of those who have come year after year to Central Point and Eagle Point in Southern Oregon to do something very, very important: to speak up for Oregon on the importance and appreciation we have for those who made the ultimate sacrifice. My view is, this year, on Memorial Day, it is more important than ever to reach out and connect with those folks who are remembering loved ones they have lost in the line of duty--to give them a call, ask how they are holding up--because the last few months, in particular, have been tough on everybody, and their sacrifice shouldn't be forgotten. I know when I am home in Southeast Portland this weekend, I am going to be thinking about whom I am going to be talking to, checking in with, and see how they are doing just for the reason I mentioned. These have been tough times for everyone, and I think this is going to be a very difficult Memorial Day for those Americans who are remembering loved ones they have lost in the line of duty. It is also more important than ever to remember for ourselves that as Americans, we owe so much to so many. The parades and the services may have to wait until Memorial Day 2021, but our deep respect and gratitude for sacrifice does not. Just on a very personal note, apropos of the respect and gratitude for sacrifice, I think about my late father and my mother, both of whom fled the Nazis. Not all of our family got out. My great Uncle Max was one of the last who was gassed in Auschwitz. My father basically talked his way into our Army because he was a fluent young man in German, and he convinced our military that he could be part of our propaganda unit to drop the pamphlets on the Nazis, making it clear that they could never defeat our great troops. My mother, on the other hand, was a WAC, and I look often at the picture that is on my wall of my mother in her WAC uniform. For them, during their lives, Memorial Day was a really special day because they were so thrilled to be able to come to the freest and most open Nation on Earth and to be able to serve in our military. They, in particular, would say, if they were here today: Ron, this is a special day for showing our deep respect and gratitude for those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and we are never going to miss a Memorial Day without expressing that sentiment. I am going to be, this weekend, thinking about how much I want to be back in Eagle Point and Central Point to celebrate Memorial Day, and I am going to be thinking about how now we have to find a way to honor and remember our fallen servicemembers a little bit differently than before. I would close--and perhaps I am the last speaker today in the Senate. I think I can speak for every Member of the Senate that this is especially important now to keep in our hearts all of those who have died serving our country, and let's do right by their families who are still with us. I close my remarks by wishing all Oregonians and Americans from sea to shining sea a healthy Memorial Day. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, each year, I look forward to National Foster Care Month as an opportunity to honor the more than 440,000 children and youth in foster care nationwide. It is also an opportunity to honor the foster and kinship families and child welfare workers who support them. This year, in particular, the importance of supporting the children, youth, families and skilled workers in the foster care system has been underscored by the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is essential that Congress not only honor those who give and receive care as part of this system, but also those who take meaningful action to protect families, children, youth, and workers from the spread of the virus. In my home State of Oregon, more than 11,000 children and youth enter foster care in a given year, and about 7,900 children and youth are living in out-of-home placements on any given day. Oregon provides transition services to about 1,350 young adults, but many continue to struggle to find work, go to college, or complete technical training. The COVID-19 virus has hit these older youth particularly hard. As we consider actions to help the nation weather this pandemic, I would like to recognize a nonprofit organization in my State that represents a critical part of the response to COVID-19 for children and youth in the foster care system and those who have aged out of the system without finding a home to call their own. FosterClub is based in a beautiful town on the Oregon coast, Seaside. FosterClub is marking its 20th anniversary working to improve the lives of children and youth in foster care by connecting them to resources, teaching them how to become self advocates, and helping elevate their lived experiences and voices to members of Congress. By doing so, they are able to inform positive changes in our federal foster care system. And that is what this month is about: honoring the strength of those currently in and those who have exited the foster care system. It is about listening to their experiences and their needs. Over the years, I have been proud to work with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to craft and get across the finish line legislation to strengthen and improve the foster care policies in Oregon and around the country. Not too long ago, then-Chairman Orrin Hatch and I were able to come together and pass into law the landmark Family First Prevention Services Act, commonly known as Family First. Family First was Children Defense Fund Founder Marion Wright Edelman's vision for a better Federal foster care system focused on helping families stay together. This bipartisan legislation transformed the child welfare system to provide parents the help they need to prevent the trauma that occurs when children and youth are removed unnecessarily from their homes and placed in foster care. I remain committed to responding to the needs of children and youth in foster care and am dedicated to pursuing bipartisan ways to address the challenges faced by children, youth, families, and workers in the foster care system and especially now during the COVID-19 public health emergency. I call on my colleagues, especially those across the aisle, to remember our Nation's foster care recipients and acknowledge the strain our Nation's most vulnerable are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we work towards future ways to address the COVID-19 pandemic, we must act swiftly to provide support for the children, youth, families, and workforce involved in the foster care system and especially the young adults who have aged out of the system without finding a forever home. I encourage my colleagues to listen carefully to the voices of children and youth impacted by the foster care system, act quickly to support these young people through this pandemic and help them transition to adulthood successfully. They deserve nothing less from their representatives in Congress.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1583.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Montana for our work on this effort, and I hope we can count on strong support from his caucus, the Senate majority, when we vote in a little bit. I rise to offer this bipartisan amendment because I think a basic question needs to be asked at this unique time: Is it right, when millions of law-abiding Americans are at home, for their government to be able to spy on their internet searches and their web browsing without its having a warrant? Should law-abiding Americans have to worry about their government's looking over their shoulders from the moment they wake up in the morning and turn on their computers to when they go to bed at night? I believe the answer is no, but that is exactly what the government has the power to do without this bipartisan amendment. I start by reflecting for a moment on how Americans are using the internet these days. They are helping kids with homework, checking out prescription drug prices for a sick parent, and visiting scores of different websites. In a pandemic, the internet may be their only connection to the outside world. So the questions we are presenting are, Don't those Americans deserve some measure of privacy? Don't they deserve better than their government's snooping into the websites they visit? How can this be that the government can spy on them when they are not suspected of doing anything wrong? Most importantly, how is this OK in America? With web browsing and searches, you are talking about some of the most intimate, some of the most personal, some of the most private details of the lives of Americans. Every thought that can come into people's heads can be revealed in an internet search or in a visit to a website: their health histories, their medical fears, their political views, their romantic lives, their religious beliefs. Collecting this information is as close to reading minds as surveillance can get. It is the digital mining of the personal lives of the American people. Now, typical Americans may think to themselves: I have nothing to worry about. I have done nothing wrong. The government has no reason to suspect me of anything. Why do I need to worry? Unfortunately, the question is not whether you did anything wrong. The question is whether government agents believe they have the right to look at your web searches. In other words, without this bipartisan amendment, it is open season on anybody's most personal information. Now, there is a simple solution: require a warrant. With this amendment, the government can go to court and, with a warrant, collect whatever it needs from those who actually threaten the safety of our people. In an emergency--something I feel very strongly about and worked for as a member of the Intelligence Committee--the Government can use emergency provisions, collect the information immediately, and settle up with the court later, proving once again that liberty and security are not mutually exclusive. This type of amendment helps to get you both. Now I will give a brief explanation of how we got here. Right now the Government can collect web browsing and internet search history without a warrant under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. Section 215, from the beginning, has been the most controversial and dangerous provision of the FISA law. That is because it is so extraordinarily broad and so vague. Under section 215, the Government can collect just about anything, as long as the Government believes it is relevant to an investigation. This can include the private lives of many innocent, law-abiding Americans. As I indicated, they don't have to do anything wrong. They don't have to be suspected of anything. They don't even have to have been in contact with anyone suspected of anything. Their personal information in some way just has to be connected for relevance to what the Government is looking for. Back in 2001, when Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, Americans were rightly concerned about their Government collecting their library borrowing records without a warrant. My colleagues and the Presiding Officer might remember it because this was nationwide. People were up in arms about the prospect of the Government looking at library records of books they borrowed and the like. Well, I will state that what we are talking about today--looking at web history, browsing--it is thousands of times more invasive of privacy than the library records Americans were concerned about years ago. There is, regrettably, a long history of abuse of section 215. A few years ago, the Government decided it could use section 215 to justify the collection of every American's phone records. The Government secretly decided that phone records of millions of innocent law-abiding Americans were, again, somehow connected, somehow relevant to something the Government wanted. They wanted to get it without a warrant. It was only when this abuse was publicly revealed that Congress stepped in and began reining in the Government's phone record collection. The Supreme Court did determine recently that physical tracking of Americans as they move around requires a warrant. In this bill, Congress is finally getting around to stopping the Government from using section 215 to conduct warrantless collections of certain location data. The irony is--and I say this to my colleagues because of this unique time--that now that Americans have been asked to stay home and not move around so as to help our country fight this unprecedented contagion, they are more vulnerable to abusive surveillance than ever before. I think that is wrong. Whether they are in North Dakota, Washington State, Montana, Oregon, or in any of our home States, people are at home and they are living their lives online. Now more than ever I would say to Senators of both political parties--because I have long felt that these issues were fundamental to ensuring that we prove, as I stated earlier, that liberty and security are not mutually exclusive--that smart policies give you both, and not-so-smart policies don't give you either. During this pandemic, Americans deserve assurances that the Government isn't spying on them as they are home, where they think they are going to have some measure of privacy, and, probably, until they heard this debate, didn't know the Government could spy on them at home while they move around the internet. Americans deserve to know at this unique time that the Government does not engage in digital tracking of their personal lives. The warrantless collection of Americans' web browsing history offers endless opportunities for abuse. Donald Trump has called for an investigation of his political enemies. Attorney General Barr has injected himself into investigations that affect the personal interests of Donald Trump. All it would take is some innocent American's web browsing history to be deemed relevant to an investigation, and the Government is off to the races, collecting all of that personal information. Then, it wouldn't even matter whether that web browsing history had anything to do with the original goal of the investigation. For any number of reasons, the web browsing history of that innocent American could reveal, potentially, such embarrassing information that the person would be humiliated--humiliated--for years to come and, of course, it can be used against him or her. This is not a partisan proposition. Any administration given the direction of the law absent this amendment could be tempted to collect the web browsing and internet search history of political enemies-- politicians activists, journalists. Just before I wrap up, I am going to touch on some of the arguments against this amendment, because having served on the Intelligence Committee and having followed these issues closely, invariably, at some point in this discussion, someone is going to come and say: This bipartisan amendment is going to be pretty much the end of Western civilization as we know it. We are not going to be safe. It is not going to protect our liberties. It is going to set up arbitrary policies. I want to show how these arguments don't hold water. The first argument is that the Government needs this information before it can get a warrant. But without web browsing history, there is still plenty of information available to the Government, even without a warrant-- phone and email data, subscription data, business records. The biggest response to this argument is that it is Congress's responsibility to determine when some information is so sensitive that it requires a warrant. In this bill that was done with respect to geolocation information. I believe that digital tracking of innocent Americans demands the same protection. Let me say, as I did earlier, when there is an emergency, something that I have made a priority in my work on the Intelligence Committee, the government can go get the information immediately and then come back to the court later on and settle up. The other argument that I imagine we will hear is that this amendment will create protections for Americans that don't exist in the criminal context. The problem with that argument is that Congress isn't legislating on the criminal law right now, but it does have a unique opportunity to prevent intrusive surveillance of Americans to prevent abuses. FISA requires an extra layer of protection. That is because, unlike criminal law, FISA is secret. It is also a nonadversarial process. It relies on Government representations that we have learned, from the inspector general, are frequently inaccurate. When the Government uses FISA information against Americans, there is little or no notice or opportunity to challenge the surveillance. Most of all, it is subject to something that I have come to call ``secret law.'' It is a law that nobody knows about in a coffee shop in Washington, North Dakota, or Montana. It is basically secretly interpreted. As I pointed out on the floor in the past, warning the American people about these secret interpretations, Americans sometimes don't learn about them for years, and when they find out, they are really unhappy. So I want to touch briefly on the amendment of the Senate majority leader, the McConnell amendment. Not only is the majority leader trying to block the bipartisan effort that we have been talking about, but his amendment would actually make the situation even worse. Right now the Government can collect web browsing internet searches of Americans without a warrant under section 215, but so far there has not been explicit congressional authorization for the Government to do it. The McConnell amendment would, for the first time, provide that authorization. The McConnell amendment would, in effect, tell the Government that Congress approves of the warrantless collection of Americans' most private information. Wrap your arms around that one-- Congress explicitly approving of the warrantless collection of Americans' most private information when millions of Americans are sitting at home today in Kansas, South Dakota, and all across the country, sitting at home believing that they have some expectation of privacy. The McConnell amendment pretends to limit the collection of this personal information of Americans, but it is just a fake. What the amendment really does is meaningless, since the Government cannot collect content. But no one knows what that means when it comes to web browsing and internet search history. There is no clarity in the statute. There is no settled law in the courts. The Supreme Court has not weighed in. What the McConnell amendment does is invite the Attorney General to produce yet more secret law, yet another secret interpretation, designed, as these things always are, to allow for the collection of the broadest set of Americans' most private information. At some point, I believe the Senate needs to focus on a little bit of history. Section 215 was secretly interpreted and abused in the past. The use of these authorities to spy on Americans' web browsing and search history is a screaming alarm, warning us of future abuses. What the American people deserve and what this amendment provides is clarity and transparency about what the government cannot collect without a warrant. One last argument is that we have heard that, if the Senate amends this bill, oh, my goodness, the House just will not do anything at all. Well, there were 75 House Democrats and many Republicans--I want to underline that, 75 House Democrats and many Republicans--who voted against this bill because it didn't include enough privacy reform. Adding key reforms like this amendment could only strengthen its support in the House. Americans will not tolerate warrantless Government spying on their most private information when they find out--when they find out that right now, during a pandemic, the Government has the authority to do that. I can't accept that level of unchecked surveillance. I am very grateful for the sponsors that we have. They were listed by my colleague from Montana. There are a great array of organizations that share our view that liberty and security are not mutually exclusive. I ask unanimous consent that a list of those organizations be printed in the Record

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I will state that I think right now, during a unique time in American history when millions of Americans are at home and on line, they deserve to have the U.S. Senate step up, defend their privacy and constitutional rights, and protect them from abuses. This is the moment to stand up for those millions of people who have to be at home because we come together to deal with this contagion. I believe the Senate ought to pass the Wyden-Daines amendment and oppose the McConnell amendment to protect those people at home. In wrapping up, I also want to commend our friends Senators Leahy and Lee. As was noted, they have worked with us on a host of these efforts. I think they have a terrific amendment to strengthen the oversight role of the independent amici of the FISA Court. I hope Senators will also support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the confirmation of William Evanina, whom we will be voting on shortly. Because of his failure to protect whistleblowers, leading whistleblower protection organizations support the opposition to Mr. Evanina's confirmation. I ask unanimous consent that the statements of two organizations, true advocates of whistleblower rights at this crucial time, be printed in the Record

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, it is currently open season on whistleblowers under the Trump administration. Donald Trump and those around him have made it clear that anyone who speaks up about waste, fraud, abuse, or lawbreaking can be punished. If you are a whistleblower under the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself and his echo chamber will publicly call you a liar. They will threaten to make your name public, even at the cost of your physical security. They will prevent your complaints from getting to the Congress, and they will fire the inspectors general who investigate your complaints. Now, more than ever, courageous whistleblowers deserve leaders who are going to protect them, defend them, and vigorously advocate and work for them. They deserve leaders who are going to stand up to Donald Trump and anybody else who tries to punish those who are going to speak truth--truth, especially, to those in power. I am rising today, taking this time of the Senate, to speak on behalf of whistleblowers who feel under siege right now. I am on the floor to oppose the confirmation of William Evanina's track record of inaction and why he should not be the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. The fact is that Mr. Evanina has failed, repeatedly, the key test on protecting whistleblower rights. Specifically, he failed to enact whistleblower protections that the Congress required in 2014. Think about that--all those years to get the job done and he didn't do it. That is a 6-year track record of letting down whistleblowers and failing to follow the law. Today, Congress ought to stand up for whistleblowers, protect our democracy, and the rule of law. And when Congress does act and pass whistleblowers' protection legislation the way this body did in 2014, the Congress must not reward those who ignore the whistleblower protection laws. Here, you have a case of exactly that, refusal to implement it for almost 6 years, and the person we are discussing with that track record of not being there for whistleblowers at a crucial time is being considered for a job promotion in the Senate. I want to unpack, for a few minutes, what the world looks like now to a potential whistleblower in today's intelligence community. One of the biggest threats faced by whistleblowers who work with classified information is that their bosses are going to retaliate against them by revoking their security clearances. Without clearances, they can't do their jobs, their livelihoods are ruined, and their families suffer. That threat has a chilling effect on potential whistleblowers and makes it less likely that abuses are going to be investigated and brought to light. The Congress has cared about this for years. It is why, in 2014, the Congress passed legislation specifically prohibiting the revocation of security clearances as a form of retaliation against whistleblowers. Here is what the questions were. What happens if a whistleblower's boss simply insists that they revoked the clearance for some other reason? What if they say it wasn't retaliation for being a whistleblower? Does the whistleblower have any recourse? Is there an appeals process? Or are whistleblowers, who stick their neck out to report waste, fraud, and abuse, just out of luck? The Congress then stood with whistleblowers. In that same 2014 law, Congress required the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, to develop and implement policies and practices to make that appeals process for whistleblowers a reality. In other words, the Congress recognized that if whistleblowers were truly going to be protected from retaliation, there had to be a meaningful process for them to defend themselves against agencies that always have all the power and always have an obvious incentive to silence and remove those who speak up about abuses This important law was passed by Congress in July 2014. As of that day in 2014, the Director of National Intelligence should have been drafting those policies, but they didn't do it in 2014, or in 2015, or in 2016, or in 2017, or 2018, or 2019--all those years of inaction--and certainly they haven't done it in 2020, especially because of the pandemic, because this is a crucial time when whistleblower protection is needed, now more than ever, because we need those folks to be speaking truth to policymakers. I ask the Senate: Who is at the helm every single one of those years of inaction? The person the Senate is thinking about promoting today, William Evanina. Six years have passed, and Mr. Evanina has not produced those whistleblower protection policies required by law. During that time, there had been five Directors of National Intelligence. The Congress made the Director of the NCSC a Senate- confirmed position. Mr. Evanina kept his job, becoming both Acting Director and the nominee. Meanwhile, Congress reached out to ask: What is the story on these policies? Is anybody actually moving to protect the whistleblowers, as Congress required in 2014? I want to say it again. On Mr. Evanina's watch, nothing happened in 2014, nothing happened in 2015, nothing happened in 2016, and nothing happened in 2017, 2018, 2019, and not in 2020--no policies, lots of empty rhetoric and no policies. Without the actual policies, whistleblowers are vulnerable, and when they tell the truth and push for accountability, they suffer. Every day, Donald Trump steps up his attacks on whistleblowers, on inspectors general, and on the whole system of accountability that has traditionally been bipartisan. Congress has pushed back, passing laws to protect whistleblowers, but the laws have to mean something for the sake of whistleblowers and the rule of law. Congress should not reward those who ignore the law and leave whistleblowers vulnerable. That is what Mr. Evanina has done for 6 years. That is why I cannot support his confirmation. He has defied the law and failed to protect whistleblowers. I am going to state the obvious. When the Congress passes a law, it has to be implemented. When Congress directs the government to protect whistleblowers, that is something that is priority business. In 2014, this body tried to protect whistleblowers. A law was passed. Mr. Evanina has ignored it all these years. That is just not acceptable. Now, with Donald Trump and his administration feeling free to publicly attack whistleblowers again and again and conduct an unremitting assault on the entire whistleblower system, laws to protect them are especially important to our democracy. Day after day, we see the costs of a campaign to silence people who speak up about abuses. We see it in his efforts to cover up his failed, often corrupt, responses to the COVID-19 crisis. We see it across the board. Now is when this country needs officials who are going to demonstrate leadership, who are going to stand up for the brave and the people who are willing to put their neck out to report misconduct. Whistleblowers deserve it, and the country deserves it. Now, the last point I am going to make--my colleagues probably have heard it, and they are going to hear it, I believe, again--is that Mr. Evanina is going to promise once more, after 6 years of empty promises, to complete these critical whistleblower protection policies. What I would ask Senators is this: Enough is enough, right? After 6 years--6 years of unfulfilled promises--the Senate ought to say: The country deserves better. The country deserves action, and the country deserves real protection for whistleblowers. Mr. Evanina remains the Acting Director. I want him--even after he hasn't done it for 6 years, I want him to complete those whistleblower protection policies. When they are completed and the law Congress passed is implemented, it seems to me that is the time for the Senate to discuss again whether Mr. Evanina should get a promotion. Now, last, I just want to come back to how I started. I am not the only one who feels this way. The country's leading whistleblower organizations have made it clear they oppose Mr. Evanina's confirmation due to his failure to produce policies. They include such organizations as the Government Accountability Project, the Project on Government Oversight, Whistleblower Aid, and National Security Counselors. It is not just one Member of the U.S. Senate who is here to say that it is time to finally ensure that these courageous Americans, these patriots, who are willing to come forward when all the incentives in American Government are to stay quiet, not put yourself at risk, don't put your career in jeopardy--when all the incentives are for them to stay quiet, in this country right now, we need them speaking truth more than ever before. I oppose this nomination because there is a long, long track record of not being willing to stand up for these courageous whistleblowers, and I intend to vote against the nominee I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, several Senators on the other side have been arguing against the provision in this bill to supercharge unemployment insurance right now, which is something on which Senate Democrats have negotiated with the Trump administration, Secretary Mnuchin, and Chairman Grassley. Based on what I am hearing from the Senators on the other side, you would think that this provision was pretty much going to end Western civilization. Now, supercharging unemployment benefits has long been a priority for Senate Democrats, and we have been fighting for those improvements in unemployment since the process began. In our view, it is the key to getting help to where it is needed the most. Believe me, colleagues, when you see the unemployment claim numbers tomorrow, if the numbers are accurate, this Chamber is going to see that the unemployment crisis will be exploding in America I don't believe anybody in our great country should fall into destitution as a result of this pandemic, so I, obviously, disagree with my colleagues who oppose so strongly our amendment to improve unemployment benefits. I just want to make a few key points in response to their argument. First, I start with an argument that just about knocked the wind out of me when I heard it earlier. It is the idea that nurses are going to quit their jobs as a result of this legislation. Nurses are not going to be quitting their jobs to get unemployment benefits because that is not how nurses think when they get up in the morning. By now, everyone has seen the Herculean efforts of our nurses who have been fighting the pandemic. Nurses in America are brave, and they care. They are true professionals. From Portland, OR, to Portland, ME, they are on the frontlines of this fight and are putting themselves in harm's way to save the lives of our neighbors whether they be in South Carolina, Oregon, or anywhere else. They don't cut and run. Also, contrary to the suggestion of my colleague from Nebraska, retired nurses have been coming out of retirement in droves to help treat patients who are suffering because of the coronavirus. Second, it is a head-scratcher to me that my colleague from Nebraska is raising this objection now. I am the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Finance. I learned about his objection when I watched his press conference, and then I called him about it. The proposal has been out there for days, and Senators have known about it the whole time. It is not a drafting error, and it is not a last-minute surprise. What the Senator from Nebraska wants to drop now, in effect, was part of the bill. The Presiding Officer is a member of our committee, and I enjoy working with him. What the Senator from Nebraska wants to drop now was, in fact, part of the bill that Republican Leader McConnell introduced on Saturday. He introduced it on Saturday because the Senate Democrats insisted on its being part of the package, and as Secretary Mnuchin said this afternoon on national television--we all heard it--the Republicans agreed. I will have a little more to say about Secretary Mnuchin's remarks in a minute. Third, I want to talk about why this is so needed--why my Democratic colleagues and I have worked so hard to help the millions get through these horrendous times who have been hit by this economic wrecking ball. For most Americans, the old unemployment rules would cover only a third to a half of their lost wages. That was it. It is pretty hard to pay the rent and put food on the table with that. Even before this crisis, the Federal Reserve found that nearly half of Americans wouldn't have been able to have come up with $400 cash to cover costs in an emergency. Let's face it. Millions of Americans were walking on an economic tightrope of balancing their rent against the food and the food against the fuel, and that was before the pandemic. That is why we on our side feel so strongly and are so appreciative of the work of Senator Peters and Senator Menendez, who helped in the negotiations, and, of course, of the leader's work. We all said we need an improved, supercharged unemployment benefit to replace people's lost wages. These are people who shouldn't face a choice between homelessness and hunger or bankruptcy because a virus has shut down our economy and cost them their jobs. This isn't the fault of any workers in South Carolina or in Oregon or anywhere else. While the consumer economy is shuttered, Congress has a responsibility to make sure that Americans can bounce back in a matter of weeks or months. Otherwise, millions will struggle and be slow to recover from the economic crisis, and many might not make it if the Senate doesn't move to help them now, now, now. The panic people feel over the virus is already too much, and the least we can do as lawmakers is to have their backs when it comes to their surviving this economic crisis. All of my colleagues know we are on the third bill in the fight against the virus. Mitch McConnell's first version of this bill did virtually nothing for those who lost their jobs. I read it carefully. Out of 247 pages in the Republican leader's first bill, only 8 lines of text--not 8 pages but 8 lines--dealt with filing for unemployment online. That bill had an awful lot of corporate goodies and lots of slush funds for big corporations but just a few measly lines for people who were hurting--for workers who were hurting, for workers who were losing their jobs. The Senate Democrats fought for and won the changes that make up this robust, expanding, supercharged program of unemployment insurance. It is based on a bill that I and our colleague Senator Peters introduced not long ago. First, in these punishing economic times, Americans are going to need more weeks of coverage than they would otherwise get from unemployment insurance. The existing length of unemployment benefits will not cover the time this crisis will last. Second, the Senate needs to modernize the unemployment insurance program because it really hasn't changed much since it was developed in Wisconsin in 1932, and, in 1932, nobody was talking about gig workers. The unemployment program that was invented then has not changed all that much. It certainly wasn't built to take on the kind of challenge our country faces right now. The Democratic Senators and I looked at that system and said this old system wouldn't be good enough for independent contractors, the self- employed, gig workers, part-time workers, and freelancers who are a big part of the face of the modern economy. They are not the kind of workers anybody was thinking about in 1932, when the program was invented. The Senate Democrats led the effort to get those people coverage. I am glad that, at one point in the negotiations, we could get bipartisan support for it. For the people who still have their jobs but who have had their hours slashed, we are going to bat for them. For the people in the service economy, who are those in the restaurants, salons, gyms--you name it-- all of those people who are suffering because their jobs and their businesses have been put on pause--we are going to bat for them. We are talking about millions and millions of Americans--people who are looking at hard times ahead and who need our help now. The old unemployment insurance system wasn't working, so the Senate Democrats said: We are going to come together, and we are going to go to bat for all of those independent contractors, those who are self- employed, the freelancers, and the gig workers. Now I think that not only are we going to help them over the next 4 months, but I think we have developed some ideas that can be part of reforming the unemployment compensation system after those 4 months. Now I want to turn to why this agreement raises benefits specifically by $600 per week. I have heard my colleagues and their strenuous objections to that amount. The reason it is $600 is because Labor Secretary Scalia, after meeting with the Senate negotiators--myself, Senator Grassley, Secretary Mnuchin, Senator Menendez, Senator Portman; a big group of us--Secretary Scalia, after meeting with Senate negotiators, left us with no other way to get benefits to workers quickly. Secretary Scalia said that the States had no other way to get the benefits to workers in time. We needed a simple solution. And I know my colleague, the distinguished President of the Senate, and others who are sponsoring this proposal to unravel what Senate Democrats did with Secretary Mnuchin, the Trump administration, and Chairman Grassley may not believe me, but I want to share the words of Secretary Mnuchin himself, and specifically on this question of why we were focused on making sure that workers could get that extra $600 a week. Just today, Secretary Mnuchin said: Most of these state systems have technology that is 30 years old or older. If we had the ability to customize this with much more specifics, we would have. This was the only way we could ensure states could get the money out quickly and in a fair way so we used 600 dollars across the board. I don't think it will create incentives, most Americans want what they want: they want to keep their jobs. That is what Secretary Mnuchin said today in defending the language that is in the bill as, in effect, the fastest, simplest way for workers to get their benefits and why we disagree so strongly with the amendment from the Senator from Nebraska to unravel that approach. The math shows that standard payment of $600 is the simplest way to get to full wage replacement without causing, as of now, an administrative train wreck. So I am going to close on this. I am sure that everybody here read that unemployment claims are expected to go up by 2.5 million in 1 week when the statistics are released tomorrow. Let me say that again--2.5 million. That is almost as many jobs that were lost in the entire year of 2008 when the great recession hit our country so hard. It is the single largest rise in unemployment since that figure began to be tracked. Twelve entire months' worth of great recession job losses-- that is how many unemployment claims economists expect to see in a single week. This country has never faced anything like it. It is not a normal recession. This isn't a normal bill to try to stimulate the economy in which the government tries to give the economy a shot of fiscal adrenaline. This is a time when we face a shutdown of entire sectors of our economy. What the Congress needs to do is keep our economy alive and act now. We are not going to do that by shortchanging workers who are losing jobs, losing hours, or losing gigs. I feel so strongly that Americans want to work. Businesses want to keep their employees on the job. Americans want the economy to spring back to life once the pandemic is under control, and that is what supercharging unemployment benefits is all about. So here is the bottom line on the provision that Senate Democrats agreed with the Trump administration, Secretary Mnuchin, and Chairman Grassley on--our proposal was not a drafting error. It didn't pop out at the last minute. It is not going to bring about the end of Western civilization. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will review what Secretary Mnuchin had to say this afternoon on national television, supporting what Senate Democrats negotiated with him and the administration, and join us in making sure millions and millions of Americans don't fall into destitution. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, shortly, the Senate will vote on the Paul amendment, and I want this body to understand why I strongly oppose it. The Paul amendment, in its essence, has nothing to do with the underlying proposal responding to this enormous COVID-19 crisis. The Paul amendment is a poison pill that essentially focuses on an old political issue that this body has debated before and very likely is going to debate again. I just don't believe the Paul amendment has any place in a debate on an emergency coronavirus bill. Every Member of this Senate understands our country is facing and dealing with a national health and economic crisis. The country wants us to focus like a laser on emergency measures that can help save lives and keep families from falling into destitution. The Paul amendment says, in effect, that immigrant families with kids are going to pay for the emergency with their kids' well-being. These families, like so many others, are especially vulnerable at this moment. It is just wrong to bring misery into their homes. I would just ask my colleagues to save the immigration debates for another time when we are not in the middle of a pandemic. Today, the focus is about that pandemic and acting in an emergency, where we come together, both political parties, both sides of the aisle. When you are dealing with this kind of pandemic, your focus is helping families and workers, small businesses, and all of those people who are walking on an economic tightrope. They are not getting paychecks, is what we are hearing, and they are trying to figure out how to pay the rent. If they pay the rent, do they have money for food? If they have money for food, what do they do about out-of-pocket healthcare? Folks want our support with those survival issues. On the Finance Committee--I am very pleased to see the distinguished President of this body working with us on the Finance Committee. What we have tried to do is focus on modernizing unemployment insurance. I have said to my colleagues: Let's just face it--unemployment is a system that has been in a time warp. I think we have a very important proposal that is going to help an enormous number of people from sea to shining sea. We need to do so much right now, particularly in terms of saving lives and getting healthcare to our people. What I hear from home is people who are following this are saying: There is so much to do. Act now, then get on with the additional steps that have to be taken. But for today, get on with this. Get on with passing this bill and getting ready to move to the next bill. Those in need of healthcare and citizens struggling to make it through these unprecedented times want action now. They all realize that there will be several additional pieces of legislation--hopefully sooner rather than later--but our job today is to make sure we pass this bill. I urge my colleagues, when we vote on the Paul amendment very shortly, to oppose it. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the majority party's anti-women healthcare agenda has certainly been on display in the last few days here in the U.S. Senate: two votes on Tuesday, more votes and debate today. Every time it is the same basic proposition on offer: legislation that squeezes Republican politicians in between women and their doctors. I have said the old GOP slogan used to be ``a chicken in every pot.'' These days it is ``a Republican in every exam room.'' Not only does this legislation discount the fact that reproductive healthcare, including abortion, is healthcare; it would make women's healthcare services more expensive. This would head this country back to the days when the healthcare system was just for the healthy and the wealthy. My view is decisions about the healthcare of women, especially reproductive healthcare--including abortion--are enormously personal. They ought to be decisions made between women and their physicians. Politicians ought to stay away. They ought to stay out of it all. That is what the Roe v. Wade case is all about, and it is the law of the land. So because I believe in keeping politicians out of the medical exam room, I object.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, 9 years ago this month, citizens of Bahrain took up banners to demand a greater role in their society and political process. Bahrain's ruling monarchy cracked down on the peaceful protestors; State police and security forces arrested hundreds and killed more than a dozen, according to press reports at the time. Bahrain's leaders promised accountability and reforms in response to international condemnation, but they would implement hardly any of them, and they rolled back some of the few they did implement. Indeed, the situation in Bahrain has only grown worse. Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain wrote last year that ``since 2017, the government has intensified the repression through the arrest, detention, and conviction of individuals who draw attention to the kingdom's human rights record or criticise the government.'' Last month, Human Rights Watch wrote, ``Bahrain's human rights record worsened in 2019, as the government carried out executions, convicted critics for peaceful expression, and threatened social media activists.'' It gives me no great pleasure to point out the monarchy's increasing repression. I have no personal animosity toward Bahrain, which remains an important U.S. ally. But the U.S. Government has a duty--an obligation--to be honest with friends and allies and to hold them to a high standard. I regret to say that the Obama administration did not do nearly enough to hold Bahrain to that high standard, as I repeatedly came to this floor to discuss. The Trump administration has, for its part, been even more callously indifferent to the regime's abuses, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaking many times about the importance of human rights. Just last year, Secretary Pompeo said America can effect change ``[b]y articulating abuses and pressuring noncompliant regimes.'' I agree. So where is Secretary Pompeo when it comes to articulating Bahrain's abuses and pressuring Bahrain's rulers to do better? The Secretary, like his boss, is missing in action. I urge my colleagues to take a hard look at Bahrain's human rights record, to talk with victims of the regime and hear their stories of persecution. As I do every year, I renew my call on Bahrain's rulers to change course and open space for dialogue, for free thought, and for peaceful expression and protest.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this week, the Senate is having yet another debate on legislation to restrict healthcare for women, and I am going to take just a few minutes to talk about what this debate is really all about. The old Republican slogan was ``a chicken in every pot.'' The new Republican slogan is ``a Republican in every examining room.'' The Senate has done remarkably little legislating while under the recent control of the other party, but somehow, some way, there always seems to be time to have an attack on women's healthcare. It has come up again and again, and it is always the same basic proposition on offer: Republican politicians trying to somehow squeeze themselves in between women and their physicians. My view is that the government ought to make sure that women can get healthcare from the doctors they trust and that politicians ought to stay out of things. Roe v. Wade says that is supposed to be the law of the land when it comes to access to abortion. More than four decades of settled law says that these are choices to be made by women and their doctors, and the ideological agendas of politicians ought to have nothing to do with it. The legislation up for debate this week, based on yet another far-right cause, says the opposite. Amongst other problems, one of the proposals on offer this week would actually criminalize the practice of intensely personal healthcare. It would essentially say to doctors: Just throw out your training. Throw it away. Discard your medical judgment, and forget what is in the patient's best interest. Rightwing politicians are going to call the shots in the exam room. Doctors who provide necessary medical treatment and care that can be lifesaving could be thrown in jail if they run afoul of these new ideological government standards. Now, this isn't a debate just here in the Senate. There have been hundreds of bills brought forward in States across the country restricting women's healthcare, including safe and legal abortion. Among the people hit hardest by these proposals are the millions of women in this country who are every single day walking an economic tightrope. If they can't see the doctor they trust and if their local Planned Parenthood clinic is forced to shutter its doors because of these harsh new rules, they may not have anywhere else to turn to for vital healthcare. It is another way in which the far right and the Republican agenda supporting it goes back to the days when healthcare was really just for the healthy and the wealthy. Bottom line: This debate is fundamentally about whether the government gets to control women's bodies. It is a dangerous, in my view, unconstitutional proposition that just throws in the garbage can decades of settled law. This Republican majority has proved that we can always find time here in the Senate to go after women's healthcare with ideological bills, regardless of what other healthcare challenges Americans are facing at home. I guarantee that across this country right now there are persons lined up at pharmacy counters with every last penny they have who know they are about to get mugged when it comes to paying for the cost of prescription medicine. Millions of Americans struggle to pay for their medications, but the majority leader of this body has blocked our best efforts to give them a hand. Instead, the Senate is debating yet another ideological attack on women's healthcare that really has no chance of becoming law. The likelihood is these attacks, in my view, based on what we know, are going to keep coming. It will only get more serious in the months ahead. Four more years of Donald Trump would mean the end of Roe v. Wade. It would guarantee more healthcare discrimination against women, and it would mean a whole lot more government control over women's bodies. Again and again, we would see the government in the exam room. I urge my colleagues to reject these proposals when they come up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, we are running a little bit behind, so I would ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes, which reflects the amount of time we are running behind. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes.