the presiding officer: under the previous order, the time until 2:10 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders and their designees. the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to reserve the last three minutes of the debate for my time and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: without objection, and the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president -- madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: madam president, in just a few minutes now we are going to vote to proceed to debate on the protect women's health from corporate interference act or as we call

it, not my boss's business act. it's straightforward, it's simple legislation that would ensure that no c.e.o. or corporation can come between you and your guaranteed access to health care, period. women across the country are watching. madam president, affordability of care equals access to care, and we know that millions of americans lacked health insurance prior to the affordable care act because they couldn't afford it. not because it wasn't available to them to purchase. contraception should not be an a la carte option in women's health care because it is an essential part. don't want single out other benefits for employees. why should we single out a benefit that's so important to women in this country? madam president, now is the time for our colleagues to answer a few basic questions. who should be in charge of a woman's health care decision?

should it be the woman making those decisions with her partner and her doctor and her faith, or should it be her boss, making those decisions for her based on his own religious beliefs? to me and to the vast majority of people across the country, the answer to that question is obvious. women should call the shots when it comes to their health care decisions, not their boss, not the government, not anyone else, period. but, madam president, we are here today because five men on the supreme court disagreed. five men on the supreme court rolled back the clock on women across america. we are here today because we simply can't allow that to stand. in the aftermath of that decision, women across america turned to us in here in congress and demanded that we fimple this. i've worked with my partner, the senior senator from colorado to introduce this bill, and we have 46 cosponsors here in the senate and over 120

organizations who have voiced their support now. so i sincerely hope that our republican colleagues will join us and allow us to proceed to debate on this important bill. madam president, i'd like to remind them that women across the country are watching. in fact, we have a number of them here in the nation's capital today and i think they will be very interested in seeing who is on their side. thank you, madam president. i yield back the time. and i ask consent to give back all rye mange time. the presiding officer: without objection -- remaining time. the presiding officer: without objection, all time is yielded back. the clerk will report the moachtion. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 459, s. a 4578 to ensure that employers cannot interfere in their employees' health care and

other decisions. signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by you know -- by unanimous consent, the question is: is it the sense of the senate to debate on the bill s. 78 that employers cannot interfere in their employees' birth control and other health care decisions, shall be brought to a close? the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber

wishing to vote or change their votes? if not, on this vote the yeas are 56, the nays are 43. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to. the majority leader. mr. reid: i enter a motion to reconsider the vote on which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to s. 2578. the presiding officer: the motion is entered. mr. reid: i would note the absence of a quorum -- i'm sorry. i didn't see the distinguished chairman here. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont.

mr. leahy: madam president, could we have order. the presiding officer: the senate will be in order. mr. leahy: i'm afraid to start to speak because i don't want to interrupt all the conversations going on all around me. i'd hate to distract them from their conversations. he said, subtly. i ask consent those last remarks be stricken from the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: madam president, over the years i've frequently spoken on the senate floor about refugees. i've asked my fellow senators to support a humanitarian refugee efforts in far-flung corners of the world. in doing so i cite america's role as a human rights list. i also remind people of a time

in the past around world war ii where this country unwisely closed its borders to people who are fleeing the holocaust in germany. they came here, they were turned back, sent back, many of them to certain death in the death camps. that was a sorry part of our history. usually our history reflects what we see in the statute of liberty -- statue of liberty, a beckoning torch. but now the refugee crisis has come back to our border. it's a complicated problem. i would hope that we would stop trying to react to whatever was the latest news cycle of 12 and a half seconds ago so we can get to the next sound bite 12 1/2 seconds from now, resist sist

the urge to let politics shape our response. the critics of this administration say the increase in accompanied children ariechg at our border is driven by recent changes in our immigration policy. that's a sound bite. the facts, of course, are a lot different. they tell a different and more complicated story. the united nations high commissioner for refugees has found over 50% of the children aijts 12-17 arriving from guatemala and el salvador and honduras have been forcibly displaced and have claims to international protection because of the violence they've encountered. if changes in immigration policy were the primary factor we'd expect to see an across-the-board increase in children arriving from mexico and central america. but what guatemala, el salvador and honduras have no in common is widespread corruption and

weak governments, they fail to implement effective social and economic programs or to protect their most vulnerable citizens from record levels of violence. this reality more than any change in u.s. policy is responsible for the massive increase in unaccompanied minors arriving on our southwest border. it's true many of these children do not have claims to immigration relief. they're going to be returned. for them, the danger of this trip were not worth it, and we must discourage them from making the arduous journey alone. but others are fleeing murder or being forced into gangs, the girls in their early teens being raped and impretty good neanted. that's what -- impretty good

there is no doubt if you maintain the status quo, that's not an option. we should take up and bass past the administration's emergency supplemental request without delay. but it's supporting the supplemental the republicans are trying to use the crisis to promote fear and their enforcement only agenda. it's not worked in the past, it will not work now, these children coming across the border are not trying to flee from enforcement. if they see somebody in uniform, they run to them. they think finally they are escaping the gangs and the murderers and the rapists and they suddenly feel safe because thee they see an american in uniform. as we know from the experience of other countries facing far greater refugee crisis, messages of deterrence do not persuade desperate people from taking dangerous journeys.

some members of congress are proposing the way to solve this problem is by amending the trafficking victims recollect protection act to make it easier to deport these children by rushing them through a superficial hearing -- and it would be superficial -- without access to counsel or welfare specialists. in a strange -- a country strange to them and the language different than theirs. that's unacceptable. we're talking about young children, 6 and 7 and 8 years old who have experienced horrific violence and now in a country they don't even speak the language. it's unconscionable to push them through our complicated legal system terrified, alone without a lawyer, and with the ultimated i had they'll be summarily deported back into the very danger they fled. i will vote against anything that allows such a travesty.

the trafficking victims protection act is not a windfall for these children. it hasn't been from the time president george w. bush signed it until today. it simply provides commonsense protections by requiring the children who arrive here alone be interinterviewed viewed by a child welfare specialist, have a meaningful opportunity to tell their story to a judge. that's how we identify victims of trafficking or sexual violence or persecution. if improving the efficiency of the process is the goal then the administration already has the discretion to do that. and the funding for immigration judges and legal assistants in the supplemental will further help. we could address the humanitarian crisis without watering down our law. we don't have to turn our backs on our own basic values as

americans. the basic values that brought my grandparents to vermont from italy or my great great grandparents from ireland to vermont. from italy to vermont or ireland to vermont. it's our humanitarian values. let's not turn our back on that. and the problem, in fact, we're facing now could be alleviated in part if the republican-controlled house of representatives would allow a vote on the senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill, s. 744. we had hundreds of hours of hearings, of markups, of debate, sometimes going late into the evening and then days of debate on the floor and we passed it by a strong bipartisan majority. we passed this bill a year ago.

and the republican leadership in the house won't allow it to come to a vote even though it would probably pass in the same form as we did. they won't let it come to a vote because when you vote for it or against it, there will be some who disagree with your vote so it's easier to vote maybe. no matter what the humanitarian crisis you are have, vote maybe. don't vote yes, don't vote no, vote maybe by not voting. but then blame it on the president, blame it on everybody else. we stepped up and we passed a bill that the president said he would sign. the senate passed bill calls for nearly 20,000 border patrol agents, 3,500 additional customs and border protection officers, 700 miles of fencing. we've heard people stand up and say as though they suddenly found this out we need tougher laws to fight back against

coyotes and cartels who exploit these vulnerable children. i've heard some of the same people refuse to vote on a bill say we need the protection. read the bill. s. 744 does that too. it has tougher provisions to fight against smuggling, enhance penalties in situations that result in death, bribery, or corruption. we've done it. we've done it here in the senate. why isn't there a hue and cry -- i understand it is very easy. you got do a sound bite for the evening news or something with somebody saying, why hasn't obama and the democrats acted? it takes a little bit more time to say, why haven't you voted for a bill that does everything you say is needed? why won't the republican leadership even allow house members, republicans and dernlings tdemocrats, to vote ol

that does everything they say they need? i want to thank senators harkin and feinstein and durbin for their comments in the last week's appropriations committee hearing. it's clear to me that they, too, understand that our nation is in a crossroads with this crisis. the world is watching how we're going to respond. how is the greatest nation on earth going to respond? i know one person who's spoken on it: pope francis. he's urged us to protect these children. i think the pope is right. we have a choice. we can either make good on the promises that we have already written into our law, that republicans and democrats i have voted for. or we can decide, gosh, we didn't mean t w it. we voted for it. we gave great press reports, but

we didn't mean t so let's just rewrite the law. if we did that just send these children back to the murderers, the rapists, the gangs. doesn't that turn our back on the very principles on which this nation was founded, the principles that brought my paternal grandparents here from italy, my great-grandparents from ireland? where are those principles? we forgot them. look at the holocaust, the number of people that died. the number of jews that died because we forgot our principles. well, president george w. bush was right in signing the bill the democrats and republicans voted for. let's not turn our backs. if we want to do something beyond the sound bites, something realistic, pass the

supplemental for the people we need and allow the house of representatives to vote up or down on the bill that the republicans and democrats voted for here in the senate a whole year ago. but don't let the supplemental request be a political football. it should be passed clean, without delay. don't try to remove all protections for victims of human trafficking. pass the supplemental and then have the courage to stand up and vote "yes" or "no" on s. 744. we did here in the senate. republicans and democrats came together. a large majority of us passed it in the senate. why can't the house of representatives do the same thing? i'll tell you why. they're frai afraid whichever wy they vote, it might be

unpopular. i've cast more votes that all but a half a dozen -- than allbaugh half a dozen senators this the history of this country. can anyone go back and find some they can attack me on? of course. can i find some that i probably on second thought which i had cast differently? of course i can. but i had the request urge to vote "yes" or no. i was criticized when i became the only vermonter to vote against the war in vietnam. today it would be hard to find anybody that supported that war. my point is, not whether the senator from vermont votes right or wrong or any one of us as a senator from our state vote right or wrong, but at least vote. that's what we said we'd do if we were elected -- vote. stop talking about what's wrong with immigration law when you

are afraid to even vote one way or the other. but let's not turn our back on the principles that this country stands for. let's not just say to 7-, 8-, 9-year-old children trying to escape a fate that my grandchildren or your grandchildren would ever face, sorry, we're too great and busy a country to worry about you. go back and face your fate whatever it might be, because we don't care. that's not the america i serve. that's not the america i love. that's not the place where the senate should be if we're going to be the conscience of the nation. madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. coburn: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i'd ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: i wanted to just spend a few minutes discussing the effect and the premise of the legislation we just decided not to move forward on. you know, i've spent 25 years of my life caring for women. there is not a complication of pregnancy that i have not handled. i've seen every aspect of it. i've delivered babies the size of my little finger and watched them move their little arms, not yet far enough along to survive. i've cared for women in the midst of lost pregnancies and the tragedy and trauma and the heartbreak. i've cared for women that have had abortions and the

complications that that has completed and exacerbated in their own lives, from psychological to real physical problems. i've actually performed abortions to save women's lives who had severe congenital heart defects and would have died had their pregnancy continued. but the premise under which this bill was brought forward is an absolute false premise. you see, i come from oklahoma. david green and his family come from oklahoma. they are the owners of hobby lobby. they're one of the finest group of people i've ever met in my life. they are responsible corporate citizens, but everything they've don't know in their life is guided by their faith and their ethics.

and, therefore, they're not open on sunday because they feel their employees have a right to a restful weekend. they pay a very livable wage. they've always had health insurance. the supreme court decision was about religious freedom and whether or not i as a private businessperson am still entitled to that, as i carry on commerce in this country. and what has been described -- mamaybe not specifically but negatively -- is that hobby lobby and the green family don't appreciate women or their contributions or their rights or their freedoms. nothing could be further from the truth. they had a very personal objection to four abort fascias, not birth control pills -- four

medicine devices that actually kill a living human being. what we don't think about very often -- and i think about all the time -- is that when an egg and a sperm unites, there is created something that's never been created before: a unique human being. being -- the genetic material will be no different at conception than it is when you're 85 years old. it's unique. it's nevad never before been he, will never again be here. so based on these deep i had held beliefs and ethics -- and what i would say is morals --

they chose to supply ... their entire network was 16 types of birth control. but the four that actually kill a baby, they thought it was their religious right to be able to say they shouldn't have to take money out of their pocket to pay for something that goes against their strongly held moral, ethical, and faith beliefs. so we've had a reaction. it's political in nature. it doesn't have much to do with the facts. it has a lot to do with darkne darkness. of saying something is s is so t isn't true and saying it often enough so we can tell people that here are those terrible republicans and they want to hurt women of i dedicated 25 years of my life to helping women in every type of tragedy, every type of disease, whenl itr

it is cancer, diabetes, miscarriages, hypertension or just the common cold, and before the senate forced me to stop delivering babies, i was delivering babies that i delivered. in other words, it was the third generation. that's how crazy the senate ethics rules are. and so the very undercurrent of what we heard couldn't be further from the truth. and what we heard the implications were is that the green family is somehow this negative corporate monster who wants to take women's rights away is absolutely untrue. the other falsehood that we hear is that if you don't have health care, you don't have available birth control.

we spend $400 million a year on title 19, most most of which in birth control pills given out to women who don't have access. it costs $7 a month to buy birth control pills and most physicians like myself who had women who could not either access title 19 or didn't have $7 a month, gave the pills themselves out of their stocks, their samples. so there is a reality than what has been painted in the senate, and i couldn't sit by and let this hang out, this terrible untruth. i don't know of a family business, i don't know of a business in america that cares more about its employees than hobby lobby. and it's manifested through the employee loyalty and also the success of their brand, because they really have a team. and you don't have a team if you

don't feel like you're being cared for, that you're not one of a group. there are a lot of problems in front of this country, but the one described in this last piece of legislation isn't one of them. the green family doesn't keep anybody from buying an abortifacient if they want it. it's not all that expensive. the morning after pill is over the counter. but the force -- but to force a person of faith to pay for an action against what they believe is morally wrong is a far way from the religious liberties that our constitution guarantees

us. and i know we can get hyped up on emotion, but the emotion we ought to get hyped up on is preserving the rights that our founders guarantee when they started this country, and they were based on the same set of beliefs that the green family inculcates into everything that they do with hobby lobby. pretty ironic to me that we've become so postmodern, so smart, so for what the government can do and mandate that we're willing to destroy the very freedoms that created this country in the first place. this bill was a cynical attack on truth. i'm glad it's not proceeding. it's time to quit wasting the senate on political games and start addressing the very real

problems that this country has, like the fact that social security disability will run out of money next month, the fact that a third of those on disability who aren't truly disabled are threatening the livelihood of those who truly are, the fact that now medicare, 17 years from now or 16 years from now will be out of money. the fact that social security will be out of money in 18 years. the fact that we're having corporations leave this country in a mass flood because we have a tax code that's not competitive with the rest of the world. the fact that we're wasting $250 billion a year on duplicative programs that don't accomplish the goals which the congress set out for them to do, but yet we have no leadership that says we're going to address the very real problems in front of the country. it's not a great record to be proud of. i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mr. isakson: i'd ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. isakson: and i be recognized to speak to the senate as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. isakson: thank you, madam president. madam president, i want to share an experience i had a couple of weeks ago riding in the mountains of north georgia to my home. i was in the car -- actually, i was in the pickup truck, driving my red silverado pickup truck from a place in the mountains. i spent a lot of time thinking which i try and do when i get a few moments to myself. and i started thinking about all the difficult positions that we're in as a country right now. i thought about our border with mexico and all the central american kids who are coming through and huddled on the border and the crisis that we have there. i thought about syria and the tragedy of that civil war. i thought about the fact that the israelis and hamas are firing rockets back and forth from gaza and the mainland of israel.

i thought about the fact that we're now negotiating with iran, our arch enemy. i thought about the fact that vladimir putin decided to take advantage of a vacuum that's been created in world leadership and moved into the crimea and is threatening kiev and threatening the ukraine. i thought about all the crises we have along the way, and then i came to a little town of georgia known for its apples and its population of 2,000 great citizens. and i came to pool's barbeque which is a landmark along the highway there in georgia. i stopped and all of a sudden all of those thoughts of the wars going on, the conflicts going on, the strife and the trouble going on, they all culminated in gilmer county, because in gilmer county in 2005, i attended the funeral of noah harris. noah harris was killed in iraq in 2005. i thought about his story and i thought about our position now and i thought about a message that i wanted to send to my country and to this body of the united states senate. let me tell you about noah harris. noah harris was a cheerleader at

the university of georgia. on a saturday in 9/11, 2001, he was in a stadium with the georgia bulldogs cheering his team on. then like the rest of the world he saw the terrible attack of 9/11 in 2001 in new york city, in shanksville, pennsylvania, and in washington, d.c. the morning of the 12th, he got out of bed in the dormitory, he went straight to the army rotc buildings in athens, georgia, and he told them he wanted to sign up for an rotc commission because he wanted to go fight whoever it was that killed those 3,000 citizens of the world tragically in new york city. they said no, you can't get a commission in just a year. you have only got a year left. he said i can double up and do it. he said i want to go for my country. i want to fight for america. he became a second lieutenant in the third infantry division. sure enough, three years after that, he was in iraq. he became known as the beanie baby soldier because he had his pockets stuffed with beanie babies. as he would go through gazaria where he was stationed near baghdad, he would hand out the

beanie babies to the iraqi children. he was like the pied piper going through his tour. but unfortunately he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and he and two of his buddies were killed in iraq. i went to the funeral even though i didn't know him. but i wanted to pay my respects. so when i was riding through gillmer county a couple years ago thinking about the crises we have today around the world and then thinking about noaa harris, i thought there's a message all of us need to remember. those soldiers should never have died in vain and we've got to make sure they did not of the in iraq, 4,486 american soldiers were killed in operation iraqi freedom. in afghanistan to date, 2,319. a total of 6,805 americans, many of them -- most of them americans, some of them immigrants seeking citizenship in america and fighting for america in our armed forces. fought for the rights and

freedoms that all our founding fathers stood for. fought for all the reasons we serve in this body today. fought for all the reasons that america is great and noble country it is today around the world. but right now there's an absence of leadership in the world and because of it we're seeing one crisis come up after another. and i worry that noaa harris, who died in iraq in 2005 might -- and i underscore the word "might" -- might have died in vain if we don't recognize our responsibilities to see to it that we try and prevent what's been happening lately from continuing to happen. and there's a decision point coming for the united states of america and it's coming next year. it's one i want to encourage the president to think about deeply and for all of us to think about deeply. we have lost iraq to isis. isis is a renegade group of terrorists who've basically taken over that country and partnered with some of the terrorists in syria to control iraq. one of the reasons they did that is we left a huge vacuum in iraq when we pulled out. we pulled every american soldier out. i know it was our goal to leave after the surge had worked and that was the right thing to do but it wasn't the right thing to

pull out every single soldier. because we abandoned all the infrastructure that we built. we abandoned the image of american strength and power. we abandoned the ability for us to be agile in a dangerous part of the world. in afghanistan, we're supposed to pull our troops out beginning next year and some of them should come home but not all of them. we've invested billions of dollars in american hardware and american money to see to it we had the best support in the world for our soldiers in afghanistan. if we abandon baghram, if we an kabul, if we an afghanistan, the same thing will happen in afghanistan as has happened in iraq. and those soldiers, 2,319 who've died in afghanistan, will have in part died in vain because we abandoned what they built, we abandoned what they protected, we abandoned the investment that they made. and we need to also remember what happened in 2011 -- 2001, 9/11, when we decided to go into iraq and then later into afghanistan. we didn't have enough infrastructure in that part of the world to make an invasion. we had to rent the cer cirg kyrn

airport near russia to begin positioning our troops outside the tora bora area in afghanistan. we have tremendous infrastructure and bases and tremendous assets the taxpayers of the united states have paid for. we should maintain a presence there so we are age i'll, so our seals teams if needed to can be positioned. and so while the rest of the world knows the war may be over but the u.s. hasn't left and abandoned. and an american presence will remain, just as we have in germany and japan and south korea. our best friends today were our enemies, 40, 50, and 60 years ago because america didn't leave when the fight was over. we need to make sure that relationship happens in afghanistan so we can begin to build our presence in that part of the world and be somebody that prohibits and inhibits terrorism and people like isis from taking over countries. make no mistake about it, vladimir putin's been encouraged by an absence of leadership. isis took advantage of an absence of leadership. what's going on between hamas and israel in the gaza strip is

an absence of leadership in part on our part. we can't sit around and be bystanders, we have to recommit ourselves to the effort in that part of the world. because in the end the peace and security in america, from terrorism and those that would bring us down, is us looking the other way and not living up to our responsibility to the noah harrises of the world who gave the ultimate sacrifice in iraq in 2005, all because he watched what we all watched that morning on 9/11/201. this should not stand. i want to fight for my country and did so. god bless noah, god bless his parents, rick and lucy. god bless the united states of america. and may we remember what we built and be a beacon of peace and liberty around the world. and i yield back and success the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: