Mark Warner

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the dedicated career and service to the Congress and the intelligence community of Kerry Sutten, who is retiring at the end of this month after more than 20 years of service in both the executive and legislative branches of our government. Kerry dedicated his professional career to help keep our Nation safe and to improve our government and intelligence community. We thank him for his dedication. Kerry is leaving the Senate as the deputy minority staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a post he has held for the last 2\1/2\ years. He first joined the committee as the head of the committee's collection review, a study looking at the intelligence activities of all the IC. During his time on the committee, Kerry has worked tirelessly to help the committee rigorously oversee the 17 intelligence agencies that make up our national intelligence community and has especially dedicated himself to improving the oversight of the IC's inspectors general and to the protection of IC whistleblowers. His efforts in these subjects have been invaluable. Prior to joining the committee, Kerry served in a variety of roles in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), including spending almost 5 years as the lead for intelligence community strategic planning in the Office of Systems and Resource Analysis, (SRA). In that capacity, Kerry was responsible for helping provide resource direction for the entirety of the IC, developing integrated planning guidance for the various intelligence programs, and managing the development of strategic priorities. In addition to his time in SRA, Kerry held important roles in the Business Transformation Office at ODNI and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. Kerry was also instrumental in helping to create the national counterterrorism budget, a key accomplishment in his time at the National Counterterrorism Center, (NCTC), where he served for almost 2 years as a Senior Program and Resource Officer. Prior to joining the IC, Mr. Sutten spent almost 5 years supporting the Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce, was the Director for Congressional and Intragovernmental Affairs at the Economics and Statistics Administration, and worked for 2 years at the Bureau of the Census. Kerry began his governmental career as a Senior Economist at the Joint Economic Committee in July 1997. During his time in the government, Kerry won a wide variety of performance awards for his work. However, I am sure that he feels his most important award is his forthcoming and well-deserved retirement. Kerry plans to relocate full-time to the Sperryville, VA, area, where he owns and runs a popular coffee shop. Kerry's plans include expanding the services offered by his shop to include a wine bar, and he has expressed an interest in raising chickens and miniature goats. While these subjects are far from the expertise he has shown in his time in and around the intelligence community, I am sure he will excel at them just as he has in his time with SSCI. Kerry Sutten, we wish you great success and great happiness in your retirement. Thank you for your years of service.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I want to echo a number of the comments my friend, the chairman, the Senator from North Carolina made. Ten days ago, we asked for reauthorization of section 702, and I came to this floor and advocated that this was a critically important tool. Part of the reforms of that legislation would even give us more insight into how that tool was used. We said, at that point, not only to those Members who didn't agree with us on that but to all of the Members--for that matter, the American people--that the Intelligence Committee would continue its vigorous oversight of that program and other programs. Being on the Intelligence Committee, at least until recently, has not been necessarily all that high attention and profile. We spend hundreds and hundreds of hours every month in a SCIF. One of the things I find so rewarding about the Intelligence Committee's work is that on issue after issue, you couldn't tell who is a Democrat and Republican. We all take extraordinarily serious our oversight responsibilities. If this exemption is granted, you could potentially have an administration--any administration--go off and take on covert activities, for example, with no ability for our committee, which spends the time and has the oversight, to say timeout or to say we actually disagree with that policy. I have been very disturbed about the whole process that arose in the House, how it was attempted to get slipped in. I hope, as well as the chairman, that no Member would choose to object. If they do choose to object, I hope they will be able to explain to the American public why they would want to remove the Intelligence Committee's ability to monitor, and then if we make a decision, withdraw funds if we don't agree and have that ongoing tool that is one of the most key components of our oversight responsibility--why they would want to, in effect, give any administration, for that matter, a blank check. Again, my hope is no one will object to this request; that we will continue the policies that existed for as long as I have been on the committee; and that those of us on that committee will continue to take the responsibility of oversight very seriously and will continue to do it in a bipartisan way. With that, I yield back to the chairman.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise very briefly to thank my friend, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. One more time, I urge all of our colleagues to vote for S. 139, which will be coming up for a vote in a few moments. This is a critical tool that our intelligence community uses on a regular basis to keep America safe. It is a tool that--as someone who has more, perhaps, observance of this program than most--I do not believe has been abused or will be abused. This legislation includes meaningful reforms on furthering civil liberties protections and making sure that a year from now, the questions that many Members have asked over the years, particularly of the Bureau, will be answered. I think this foreminded legislation needs to pass and needs to pass with an overwhelming majority. Again, I thank the chairman for his good work. We had a 12-to-3 vote out of our committee on this legislation. We had a 60-to-38 vote that moved us forward on the cloture motion. My hope is that many other colleagues who care deeply about national security will join us in the final passage of this legislation.

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

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the chairman of our committee, the Senator from North Carolina, for his work on this important piece of legislation. I obviously rise today in support of passage of S. 139, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017. This bill would provide significant reforms that enhance the civil liberties and privacy protections of individuals, while preserving an authority critical to our national security for an additional 6 years. As vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have long advocated for reforms to surveillance authorities that balance the imperatives of national security and counterterrorism with the privacy rights and civil liberties of Americans. Section 702 stands among the most important of our intelligence programs. To illustrate, I wish to highlight very briefly one recently declassified success story involving a terrorist by the name of Hajji Iman. Hajji Iman was the second in command of ISIS based in Syria. NSA spent more than 2 years looking for him. This search was ultimately successful, primarily because of FISA section 702. NSA used collection permitted and authorized under section 702 to collect intelligence on the close associates and the network supporting Mr. Iman, including their location in Syria. Between section 702 and other intelligence that was developed, the IC was able to track down the movements of Mr. Iman and ultimately resulted in taking him off the battlefield. This is but one of numerous examples in which information obtained pursuant to section 702 has proven critical to addressing threats to Americans both domestically and abroad. For much of the past year and a half, I have worked closely with Chairman Burr and a bipartisan group of Senators to pass legislation to reauthorize section 702 for an extended period while incorporating substantive reforms. In October our Senate Intelligence Committee passed, in a bipartisan way, with a vote of 12 to 3, comprehensive reauthorization legislation. Since that time, we have worked with our counterparts in the House, as well as representatives of the executive branch, to ensure that the final bill that we will be voting on tonight and tomorrow garners widespread bipartisan support and includes enhancements to civil liberties and privacy protections. The bill before us here today is the product of extensive bipartisan, bicameral negotiations. Now, this bill is not perfect. Rarely have I worked on or voted on a bill anywhere that is perfect, but I believe this measure represents a significant compromise and preserves the operational flexibility of section 702, while instituting key reforms to further protect U.S. personal privacy. Let me take a moment to identify a few key items in this legislation that I believe bear mentioning. First--and I have seen my friend from Oregon, who has argued long and hard in committee for a provision like this, and he would like to see it broader, but it does include a warrant requirement--for the first time in section 702, the government would be required to obtain a court order before FBI criminal investigators are permitted to view communications collected pursuant to section 702 concerning a known U.S. person. Such a court order, based on probable cause, would apply in the context of criminal investigations opened by the FBI that do not relate to national security. This bill also mandates that a study be conducted by the inspector general of the Department of Justice of the FBI's querying practices 1 year following the enactment of this legislation, making sure that such practices have been approved by the FISA Court and implemented appropriately by the executive branch. This is an important provision in ensuring transparency. It includes an assessment of the interpretations of the FBI and the DOJ of querying procedures. It includes the handling by the FBI of individuals whose citizen status is unknown at the time the query is conducted, and it includes the scope of access by the FBI's Criminal Division to section 702 information. While this will not answer all of the questions asked by my good friend from Oregon, it will finally put the FBI on record answering questions that I deserve to know and that I believe he and other Members deserve to know. In addition, in terms of querying procedures, S. 139 includes a section mandating a new series of procedures to be drafted and approved by the court and implemented by executive branch agencies. The legislation also requires new public reporting of statistics about activities conducted under FISA. As has been mentioned by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, S. 139, for the first time, extends whistleblower protections to contractors in the intelligence community. This addition is essential to ensure that those in the IC have an avenue to report abuses. Congress must not further delay consideration of a long-term reauthorization. We have been debating this issue for the past 18 months. Indeed, Congress has known about this deadline since the prior reauthorization occurred in 2012. Numerous committees have had extensive hearings on this important issue, including in our committee, both open and closed hearings. I believe this bill will strengthen and protect Americans. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I again want to thank my friend, the chairman of this committee, the Senator from North Carolina, and look forward to his comments. I yield the floor and yield back to the chairman.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me join my friend and colleague Senator Kaine. We and some of the folks who are in the Gallery today were not sure if this day would ever come. Even in the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate, occasionally we get things right. And, boy oh boy, this is a day where we get things right on a civil rights basis, on a moral basis, and on a fairness basis. To our friends who are representatives of some of the six Tribes who are finally going to be granted Federal recognition, we thank you for your patience, your perseverance, and your willingness to work with us and others. This has become an issue over the last 20-plus years. Democrats and Republicans alike in Virginia have acknowledged the fact that these six Tribes, whose history predates any European settlement in this country, whose history goes back, as Senator Kaine mentioned, where they were recognized by the United Kingdom and recognized by the British Government when they controlled our country--but through a series of circumstances, in many cases abetted by a backwards-looking government earlier in the 20th century in Virginia that discriminated against these Native Americans in ways that were outrageous, where in many ways records that told of their proud history in our Commonwealth were destroyed after the Civil War in fires and courthouses--these Tribes have persevered. Today, finally, they are going to be granted Federal recognition and the respect that goes with that Federal recognition, and they will be granted certain additional opportunities in terms of special education, housing grants, affordable healthcare services, and most importantly, the ability to recover important artifacts in their history. As has been mentioned, this bill has already passed the House. Rob Wittman, a Republican Member, has been a champion. Senator Kaine and I, both as Governors--in that role of Governor, one of the things that happen every day--every Thanksgiving day, these Tribes come in and, in effect, pay their taxes to the Commonwealth of Virginia. While Virginia has recognized these Tribes for some time, every year when we would have this ceremony--one of the most moving ceremonies that I know I have participated in as Governor, and I think Senator Kaine and Senator Allen, who was also a champion on this issue before us--these Tribes would come in and say: When will the U.S. Government recognize our existence, our history, and our legacy? Well, that wait is finally over. In a moment, I am going to be asking for unanimous consent, and the long, long wait will come to an end. As in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Indian Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 984 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. WARNER. I know of no further debate on the measure.

Mr. WARNER. I further ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today concerned about the threats to the special counsel's critical investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible and reckless voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Mueller's investigation. At first, these calls came from the fringes of our political discourse--those who refuse to put our country and our security before base political instincts. Earlier this year, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle were right to push back on these misdirected calls and urge that the special counsel be allowed to do his job without interference. However, in recent weeks, those voices seem to be growing in stridency and in volume. Just this weekend, one major news organization suggested that Special Counsel Mueller could be involved in a coup against the President. One senior adviser at the White House has now outrageously alleged that ``the fix was in against Donald Trump from the beginning.'' Those statements are reckless. They are inappropriate, and they are extremely worrying. They are also at odds with the President's own lawyers who have pledged to cooperate with the special counsel. Beyond being irresponsible, the seemingly coordinated nature of these claims should alarm us all--particularly since, in recent days, these baseless accusations have been repeated by several Members of the House of Representatives. I believe it is up to every Member of this institution, Republican or Democratic, to make a clear and unambiguous statement that any attempt by this President to remove Special Counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses in any effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities. These truly are red lines, and we simply cannot allow them to be crossed. Let's take a moment to remember why Special Counsel Mueller was appointed in the first place and why it remains so critical that he be permitted to finish his job without obstruction. Recall, last spring, when we were all reeling from a series of confounding actions by this President, beginning with the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey on May 9. Mr. Comey was fired just 2 months after publicly revealing the FBI's ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign and--as we would find out later--after several attempts by this President to improperly influence Director Comey. Try to put yourself back into those dangerous days. Director Comey's dismissal was met with confusion and widespread condemnation. We needed a stabilizing action from our Nation's law enforcement leadership. We needed some certainty that the facts would be found and brought to light, regardless of what they were. Eight days after Mr. Comey's firing, Trump appointee and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation into ``any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump'' and ``any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.'' His appointment reassured Americans that there will be a full and thorough law enforcement investigation. The announcement was met with support on both sides of the aisle and received nearly universal praise. In fact, many of the same people who are attacking him today praised Mr. Mueller's appointment just months ago. Indeed, there is much to praise. The fact is, Robert Mueller has impeccable credentials as a man of the law. He has assembled a team that includes some of the Nation's best investigators, and he is leading the investigation with the professionalism it deserves. Mr. Mueller is a dedicated Vietnam war veteran and a lifelong Republican, appointed to his current role by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, also a Republican. In fact, all of the major players to date in this investigation--former Director Comey, current FBI Director Rosenstein, and even Attorney General Sessions, who has had to recuse himself--are all Republicans. The charges that some have made that somehow Democratic political bias has crept into this investigation are baseless, given the makeup of the leadership team. In recent weeks, much has been made of some political opinions expressed by an FBI agent during the election last year. This specious line of argument conveniently ignores the fact that as soon as Mr. Mueller learned about those comments, he immediately removed that agent in question from the investigation. If anything, this incident only adds to Mr. Mueller's credibility as a fair and independent investigator. I stand here as the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We are in the midst of our own investigation into Russian incursion, and I am proud of the way Chairman Burr and our committee has taken on this very difficult task. We have made tremendous progress uncovering the facts of Russian interference in our elections. Our committee's work helped expose the dark underbelly of disinformation on many of our social media platforms. We have successfully pressed for the full accounting of Russian cyber efforts to target our State electoral systems, and, despite the initial denials of any Russian contacts during the election, this committee's efforts have helped uncover numerous and troubling high-level engagements between the Trump campaign and Russian affiliates, many of which have only been revealed in recent months. We have a lot of work to do. Our committee has gone out of its way to ensure continued bipartisan backing for this effort, and I am committed to seeing the effort through. However, it should be very clear that our committee cannot and will not stand as a substitute for Mr. Mueller's investigation. As Chairman Burr and I have noted on numerous occasions, the FBI is responsible for determining any criminal activities related to this inquiry. As such, Mueller has already moved to indict two individuals and has negotiated two additional guilty pleas. This was an investigative path reserved solely for law enforcement, and it is essential that it be permitted to go on unimpeded. The country no doubt remains severely divided on the question of the last election. However, the national security threat facing us today should demand that we rise above partisan differences. No matter the political divide, surely each of us--and all Americans--should want to know the truth of what happened during last year's election, and, no doubt, we want to know that as quickly as possible. The President has long called the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election a witch hunt, and he has done much to discredit the intelligence community's unanimous assessment of Russian interference in our election. The failure of this White House to lead a whole-of-government approach to prevent this type of election interference in the future--either by the Russians or some other adversary--defies understanding. The President's refusal to accept the intelligence community's assessment and his blatant disregard for ensuring that Russia never again infiltrates our election process has been unnerving and cause for significant concern. In recent days, the President has said he is not considering removing Special Counsel Mueller, but the President's track record on this front is a source of concern. I am certain most of my colleagues believed he wouldn't fire Jim Comey either. Firing Mr. Mueller, or any other of the top brass involved in this investigation, would not only call into question this administration's commitment to the truth but also to our most basic concept, the rule of law. It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis. In the United States of America, no one--no one--is above the law, not even the President. Congress must make clear to the President that firing the special counsel or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses is unacceptable and would have immediate and significant consequences. I hope my concerns are unfounded--in many ways, I had hoped I would never have to make this kind of speech--but there are troubling signs. It is critical that all of us, as elected officials and as citizens, speak out against these threats now before it is too late. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WARNER

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

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. On a sunny day. We have a church that has to regularly change its schedule of worship, not because the Lord has asked them to change the schedule of worship but because it floods on a regular basis. Let me also thank him for his comments about the tax legislation. I share his concern as somebody who feels very strongly that there is a right way and a wrong way to do tax reform. Unfortunately, the product I believe we will be voting on next week, not only the provisions the Senator from Rhode Island talked about, will also add close to $2 trillion to our debt. In many ways, it does not even take care of the problems we are supposed to solve, in terms of the ability of companies to bring back profits from overseas in a way to reinvest in this country. Frankly, it exacerbates the problem where companies can further hide their profits abroad. I share his doubt about whether our colleagues will join us in starting anew, but if they would, I would join with them and others in trying to make sure we do tax reform in a fair, balanced way that is fiscally responsible. I thank Senator Whitehouse for his comments.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, first of all, I thank my friend, the Senator from Rhode Island, for two things--one, for being a constant voice on the need for us to diversify our energy sources and supplies and for recognizing the enormous challenge around climate change. I come from a State that is not too dissimilar from his in terms of its having a great deal of shoreline. We see the effects of the changing climate each and every day. At high tide, we have parts of the city of Norfolk that have never before flooded that flood on a regular basis.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I stand today to talk about a different subject; that is, to stand in solidarity with over 12,000 of my Virginia constituents who are students, entrepreneurs, members of our military, and individuals who have the distinction of being Dreamers, like the nearly 800,000 Dreamers across our country. These people, many of them young folks, are worried about facing deportation--not for anything they have done wrong but because the vast majority of these young people were brought to this country as children many years ago. Today, unfortunately, due to no actions of their own, they are caught up in some of the worst of our Nation's politics. Up until this past September, these young people were living in the United States legally under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program or what has been called DACA. As part of this program, these young people came out of the shadows, paid a fee, went through an extensive background check, and complied with all the other requirements of the DACA Program. Unfortunately, Dreamers and their families are now in a perilous situation because, unfortunately, President Trump ended the DACA Program, literally putting hundreds of thousands of these young people in a state of legal limbo. Unfortunately, while a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to work through this problem, we hear the Republican leadership has done nothing to provide that permanent solution for these hard-working young Americans. That is who they are, folks who have lived here oftentimes for decades. This is not how the greatest country on Earth should treat anyone, especially these young people who, in most cases, have only one nation they have called home, and that is our country, the United States. I am not the only one who thinks this. As I mentioned, there are colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have been coming to the floor for weeks making this point. The fact is, more than three-quarters of Americans of all political stripes support a pathway to permanent legal status for Dreamers. Here in the Senate, my friends, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Dick Durbin, have introduced the bipartisan Dream Act and have been actively working toward its passage. In the Senate and the House, there are enough votes to pass this bipartisan legislation if leadership would only bring it to the floor, and that is just not the case in the Senate. Last week, my friend Congressman Scott Taylor, a fellow Virginian and a Republican, led a bipartisan group of 30 Members in the House again asking the House leadership to find a legislative solution--not next year, not next month but now. Unfortunately, it seems like folks on the other side of the aisle would rather treat this as a political issue and a political pawn to be negotiated, probably not even this year but at some future date. By doing so, they leave these young people in a state of limbo and really subject to a great deal of legal uncertainty. For many of these young people, as they cycle out of the program--close to 1,000 a week--even if we come up with a legal solution, their ability to rejoin the program and reclaim their legal status may be extinguished. The truth is, this is not just another political leverage point. Let me take a moment or two and talk about some of the folks who are affected in my State--folks in my State, folks whom I call real Virginians. I think about one young student from Northern Virginia, whom I chose as my guest to the President's State of the Union Address a few years ago. I was so impressed with her work ethic and her passion for improving the lives of others that I asked her to serve after that as an intern in my office, where she did great work serving fellow Virginians. I think about a law student I met recently in Williamsburg who was born in England and brought here when she was just 1 year old. Right now, it is getting close to the holidays. She is probably tucked away in some corner of the library studying for her law school exams. She told me she wanted to get that law degree to help fellow Virginians when she graduates. I say we shouldn't stand in her way. I think again about a young man I met from Newport News whose mother brought him to the United States when he was just 6 years old. Sadly, his mother passed away before he graduated from high school, but I know when he walked across the stage of that graduation as valedictorian of his class, his mom would have been proud. Hopefully, if this program is renewed when he graduates from Virginia Tech next year with a degree in engineering, he will put those skills to work. These are just a few examples about the smart, successful, young Virginians who also carry the categorization of being called Dreamers. The truth is, in Virginia, we have a vibrant and growing immigrant community that contributes to all facets of life in the Commonwealth. While I talk today about Dreamers, I also want to make mention of another program that is caught up in some of these last-minute negotiations, the so-called TPS individuals--oftentimes individuals from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and certain folks who have lived in this country for decades whose legal status is also in jeopardy. The truth is, whether they are a Dreamer or someone who has been a beneficiary of the TPS Program, the truth is, immigrants in Virginia are all across our community. They are doctors, caretakers, small business owners, high-tech entrepreneurs. Quite honestly, they are also our next-door neighbors. They are motivated, talented individuals who want to help and continue contributing to the Commonwealth of Virginia and to our country. What we tell them every day that we fail to act, every day that more and more of these young people fall out of eligibility, we tell them, in pretty direct ways, that actually even though they have served, studied, and worked here, that at least some in this Chamber don't really want them here. They would rather urge them to take their talents elsewhere. As somebody who has been in business longer than I have been in politics, I can state that these young people are an enormous asset, and urging them to leave the Commonwealth or our country is a bad business decision. As I said, unfortunately, with every day that passes, more and more Dreamers face the very real and terrifying prospect of being oftentimes sent to a country they barely know or may not know at all for an offense they were too young to even know they committed. That is just not right. It is not right that their lives should hang in the balance as they wait and wait and wait for Congress to solve this problem--a problem that I know, if it were brought to the floor, would receive overwhelming bipartisan support. These young people can't wait any longer and shouldn't wait any longer. It is time to pass the Dream Act right now. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to join other colleagues from both sides of the aisle to talk about this tax debate. We don't do tax reform nearly enough here in the United States. It seems we have taken it on about every 35 years whether we need to or not. But if there is one lesson we have learned from previous tax reform efforts, it is that while they can do a lot of good, they can also do a lot of harm. I have to start by expressing my extraordinarily deep frustration with the process we have gone through. Today we are considering a bill that was drafted in secret, designed with more gimmicks and loopholes than I have ever seen, and is being rushed through the process without input from all of us on this side of the aisle and without even appropriate analysis of its true financial impact. In many ways, to quote the President, what got us here is the worst of Washington. If you want to see swamp 101, look at the process of this tax bill. It is a 300-page tax bill that was released on the eve of a holiday weekend, only days before it was marked up in committee. Over a 4-day markup, two significant rewrites of this bill were presented. One consisted of over 100 pages of changes, and a second was released a mere 30 minutes before Members were asked to vote on its myriad of provisions. Now, less than 2 weeks later, we are considering that bill or a variation of it on the Senate floor. We are voting to proceed to the bill later today and then maybe on amendments tomorrow, before we even have any analysis from JCT. We know that near the end of the debate on the floor, another bill will magically appear from the majority leader's office without any time for those of us who want to do tax reform to have a chance to genuinely review or analyze its provisions. I believe it makes this process enormously dishonest. I know my friend from Delaware has just come on. I will speak quickly because I know he will raise some of these same concerns. One of the things I have been most involved with since I have been here in the Senate is trying to grapple with our Nation's overwhelming debt. We are a country that has run up close to $20 trillion in debt, and both sides--both sides--have been a party to that over the last 70 years. But what I have heard from colleagues on both sides of the aisle is that when you are in that deep of a hole, you ought to stop digging, and that we need to make sure that if we are going to do tax reform, we do it in a fiscally responsible way. This legislation is the absolute opposite of any kind of fiscal responsibility under anybody's guideline. It starts with a $1.5 trillion acknowledgement that that money will somehow magically appear through magical growth. But when you peel that away a little bit, it is bad enough that it is not really $1.5 trillion in additional debt that we are adding, the real number is $2.2 trillion. Let me tell you why. Off of the over $1.4 trillion of additional debt that is added, that alone will generate more than $230 billion of additional interest payments over the next decade, raising the cost of the bill from over $1.4 trillion to roughly $1.7 trillion. And then, in an effort that really takes the cake in a place where both sides have been known to use gimmicks, this legislation includes 37 different expiring provisions--provisions that are popular, provisions that a number of my colleagues have said give middle-class tax relief. The interesting thing is, all of these provisions are due to expire in 5 to 6 years, within the 10-year window. Rather than acknowledging the true costs of the bill, what people have said is, we know what we are going to create. We are going to create a whole new series of fiscal cliffs, in the neighborhood of $500 billion, that the expectation will be that it will become so popular that Congress will go ahead and have to extend these provisions, again, without paying for them. In terms of gimmicks, don't take my word for it; you only need to listen to the words of the President's own OMB Director, Mick Mulvaney, who recently acknowledged that the tax bill had a lot of gimmicks to it. Well, if we add that over $500 billion and the $230 billion of additional interest and the $1.4 trillion that we start with, what we are talking about today is a $2.2 trillion addition to our debt. All my friends who for years have stood with me on the floor of this Senate and spoken out against adding this additional burden to our kids and grandkids, I hope they will take a moment and rethink their support for this legislation. Some have asked: Well, how will this get paid for? I believe there might be some dynamic growth. I believe there might be some addition from some smart tax reform that would add to the growth of our economy but nothing near what this bill assumes. In fact, it is even worse than that in certain ways. Not only will this add over $2 trillion to our debt and deficit, but we have even had the audacity of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Mnuchin, who said that this bill is going to be so good for our economy, it is going to decrease our debt by $1 trillion. Yet there is no responsible budget projection of any economist from left to right that makes any kind of assumption that would make that kind of prediction true at all. And, if we go back and look in recent American history, when you pay for tax cuts with borrowed money, you end up with a pretty bad situation. Many of my friends on the other side of the aisle like to cite Ronald Reagan. I think President Reagan was a great President, in many ways. President Reagan's 1981 tax cut did provide a short-term stimulus, but then that stimulus ran out and our debt and deficits grew dramatically, and President Reagan himself had to raise taxes in 1982 and 1984. Likewise, again, President Bush, in 2001, inherited a surplus. He promised to give the magic of tax cuts that would grow our economy. Instead, we ended up with very little job growth and a debt and deficit now that is rapidly approaching the full size of our economy. When we look at the scoring of the effects of this kind of tax cut, we see that the Tax Policy Center did a dynamic score, saying: How can we build in growth that would come from a tax cut? They said again that this bill would cost $1.5 trillion. The Penn-Wharton Budget Model--again, an organization that is well respected by both sides of the aisle--did a dynamic score on this legislation as well. Again, they are saying the bill would still cost $1.5 trillion. Congress's official scorekeeper, the group that we look to for outside advice, the Joint Committee on Taxation--we are rushing this bill through so quickly that we have not even allowed our official scorekeeper to come up with a score. This is not the way to do a once-in-a-generation tax reform process. The truth is, when you do a tax cut with borrowed money, in periods similar to where we are right now--relatively full employment--there is no historical precedent at all in which you will see any kind of economic growth. Again, don't take my word for it. Alan Greenspan, the respected Fed Chair, pointed this out just within the last 2 weeks: Tax cuts paid for with borrowed money do not provide the kind of growth that this budget projects and that this tax reform bill projects. I could go through a whole litany of other concerns with this legislation. I, for one, believe we do need to do international tax reform. I, for one, believe we need a corporate tax rate that is more competitive. I, for one, believe we need repatriation and we need to bring back tax profits that have gone abroad. But we have seen analyses recently that show that this legislation may actually increase the amount of American jobs that are pushed overseas, for example, because of the average of tax rates in their so-called territorial system, where a company can go ahead and build that factory in a relatively high tax State, move their intellectual property to a tax haven like the Cayman Islands, average out the tax bill combined, and end up paying our country nothing and, at the same time, continue to see job loss around our country. There are a group of us--close to 17 of us, and many of them are my colleagues who are on the floor today--who came together yesterday and said to our Republican colleagues: Time out for a few minutes. We will work with you to do a responsible tax reform effort. We share many of the same goals. But, unfortunately, the process we are going through here today--to reach some kind of arbitrary Christmas present for the President--is not the way we ought to be doing responsible tax reform. I hope my colleagues will reconsider. I hope they will take the offer of the 17 of us who said that we will look at corporate tax reform, we will look at lower rates, we will look at repatriation, we will look at ways to make businesses more competitive, and join with us to do this in a way in which we can all be proud. If we are going to do tax reform only once every 30 or 35 years, we sure as heck owe the American people a product that we can all be proud of, not a product that is rushed through with one party only and that, at the end of the day, will leave our kids and grandkids paying the bill for decades to come. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

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

Mr. WARNER. I am pleased to yield to my friend, the Senator from Texas, for a question as long as I still get a chance to finish my comments.

Mr. WARNER. Five minutes to answer the Senator's question and to make my very short statement.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his comment. Let me say where I might agree with some of Senator Cornyn's principles. I believe that we need a more simplified Tax Code. I believe that a goal of our Tax Code ought to put American business on a competitive basis with those of other countries around the world. I believe, as well, that to do that, one of the goals of tax reform ought to be to lower corporate rates. I will point out, though, three quick things so that I may get back to finishing my comments. One, let's actually look at where America's tax burden stands versus those of other nations that actually have lower corporate tax rates, for example. Out of the 34 OECD nations--35 now--if you were to listen to some folks on this floor, you would think that America must rank at the top of that list, but we are 31 out of 35.

Mr. WARNER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me thank my friend, the Senator from Delaware, for his kind comments. More importantly, I thank him for his good work that he brings to the issue of fiscal responsibility. Before he served here in the Senate, he served as the head of one of the largest counties in Delaware. Whether you serve as a county chairman or as a Governor, you are used to the notion that you have to pay your bills. I very much appreciate his support for this amendment, that of keeping pay-go in place. Let me also echo that I absolutely support his notion that the American citizens in Puerto Rico deserve not to be forgotten and deserve to receive the same attention we have bestowed upon Americans in Texas or in Florida or in Louisiana or elsewhere around our great country when they were victims of national disasters. I hope the Senator from Delaware gets a chance to submit his amendment. While Puerto Rico is not receiving sufficient attention, there is another American territory nearby, the U.S. Virgin Islands, that also has those same kinds of challenges. If the Senator gets a chance to submit that amendment, I hope he will include the U.S. Virgin Islands in there as well. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1138, which I filed at the desk.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, since I had a few moments and I was trying to give courtesy to answer my colleague, for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of my amendment to strike language in this budget resolution that would exempt the $1.5 trillion tax reconciliation instructions from Senate rules that are meant to prevent this body from dramatically increasing our debts and deficits. I know that everybody is coming back from lunch, and they probably feel pretty good and do not want to get indigestion, but remember, our country is sitting on top of a $20 trillion debt at this point, an accumulation in which both parties have unclean hands. In the years that I have been in this institution, I have worked with my Republican colleagues on issues that try to address debts and deficits, but there is the notion that we are about to take on a budget resolution this afternoon and start with the premise that the rules that are there to try to protect us from being fiscally irresponsible are going to be blown off at the outset. To say that we are going to start with $1.5 trillion in the hole before we start counting is beyond irresponsible. I thank my friend, the Senator from Delaware, for joining me in offering this amendment.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I want to welcome all my colleagues back to the Capitol. Obviously, we have a busy time in front of us. I would appreciate a moment of personal privilege to thank my colleagues--including the Senator from Colorado--who reached out to me in the wake of the horrible events 4 weeks ago in Charlottesville, VA. I appreciated the messages of support for the Charlottesville community and the bipartisan condemnation of the White nationalists and anti- Semitic activists who chose my State and the home of the author of the Declaration of Independence to show the world their hateful, misguided, and violent beliefs. I have partnered with my fellow Virginian, Senator Kaine, and with Senator Gardner, Senator Isakson, and others on a bipartisan basis to create a resolution condemning the hatred and violence we saw on display in Charlottesville. Our resolution condemns the White nationalists and White supremacists, the KKK, and anti-Semitic groups. Our resolution also honors the memory of Heather Heyer and the two Virginia State police officers, Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper Berke Bates, who lost their lives in Charlottesville. Our bipartisan resolution also calls upon the Trump administration to do more than track the recent and distressing increase in these violent discriminatory attacks but to actually counter these efforts with a coordinated response that draws upon all the resources of our Federal Government. Our Nation is better than the vileness and violence we saw in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12. Our Nation also deserves clear and unequivocal condemnation of racist and discriminatory attacks from our Nation's leaders. We are introducing the resolution today, and I encourage my colleagues to show their support for the people of Charlottesville and the people of the Commonwealth by cosponsoring this initiative.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado. During his time in the Senate, he has been an advocate for stronger, more diligent policies with the rogue State of North Korea, and I appreciate very much his comments this morning. (The remarks of Mr. Warner pertaining to the introduction of S.J. Res. 49 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')