last week as having produced one civilian casualty, is this the operation for which video of an airstrike against a cash storage site in mosul has been released, the money being stored in the house of this a mere of finance and what happened to the emir of finance, was he killed by the strike? >> david, we have run -- >> we are going to leave this briefing to return to live coverage of the senate. bill setting 2017 spending on federal energy and water projects. justice sandra day o'connor in 1981. in fact, 75% of all supreme court justices have been confirmed within 31 days.

but today, 40 days after the nomination, many senators haven't even extended judge garland the simple courtesy of a meeting, and we don't see -- seem closer to holding a hearing. the majority's refusal to hold a vote is without precedent. and the majority has cited none. instead, the majority is trying to shift the blame. incredibly the chairman of the judiciary committee recently came to the floor to blame, of all people, not other senators, not other politicians, but the chief justice of the united states of america for politicizing the court. ten days before justice scalia's death, the chief justice said -- quote -- "the process is not functioning very well. that turns out to be something of an understatement, mr. president. the chief justice went on and

said the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees. again, he wasn't referring to what's going on now in the senate. this happened before justice scalia passed away. there was no way he was to know there was going to be a vacancy. he continued, supreme court justices don't work as democrats or republicans. and i think it's a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process. his words struck me, and particularly given what's gone on since, as a candid expression of his concern for the court as an institution. but this concern apparently upset the chairman of the judiciary committee. he took to the floor. he came down here to say that the chief justice -- quote -- "the chief justice has it exactly backwards. the confirmation process doesn't make the justices appear

political. he said -- quote -- "the confirmation process has gotten political precisely because the court has drifted from the constitutional text and rendered decisions based instead on policy preferences." it is absolutely breathtaking, mr. president. that the chief justice would be criticized for -- quote -- "drifting from the constitutional text" when for the past ten weeks the majority has drifted from article 2, section 2, clause 2, which sets out in very clear terms, sets out our constitutional responsibility to advise and consent. and worse, the majority's drift isn't even about policy. it's about politics. it's about rolling the dice on an election instead of following the plain text of the constitution. this is absolutely unprecedented

in the history of the united states senate. throughout our history the senate has confirmed 17 nominees in presidential election years to serve on the supreme court. the last of these was justice kennedy in 1988. in the last -- and i should say when the president made this nomination, he had more than 340 days left in his term. we're talking about almost a quarter of the president's term. so that's a lot more time than most of these 17 justices were before the senate. in the last 100 years, every nominee to a supreme court vacancy that did not withdraw -- and a couple did -- received a timely hearing and a vote. on average the senate has begun hearings within 40 days of the president's nomination and voted to confirm 70 days after the president's nomination.

there is no excuse for not holding a hearing and a vote. the plain language of the constitution, if that's what we're going to pay attention to in this chamber, if that's what we're going to argue for, the plain language is clear. and there's a reason why no senate has ever had the audacity to do what this senate is doing right now, because how clear that mission is. and there's no one else to do it. the constitution says the senate shall advise and consent. it doesn't say the house of representatives shall have a roll. it doesn't say let the people decide. it says this is the senate's job. and we should do our job, as every senate has between now and the founding of the country, including the senate was there when george washington was there. three of those 17 appointments were confirmed by a senate that actually contained people who had been at the constitutional

convention and consistent with their understanding of what the founders had agreed to, had a vote on the floor of the senate. i'm not saying how people should vote. they should vote their conscience. but we should have a vote. the american people expect us to do our job. finally, mr. president, let me say a word about the president's nominee, and i want to be clear that i believe there should be hearings and i think we should go through hearings to establish the qualifications of the nominee. i think that's really important. and the point that i'm making about having this vote does not have to do with whom the president nominated. it has to do with our institutional responsibility. it has to do with the rule of law, the image we want to project to our country and overseas. but let me say a word about the president's nominee. merrick garland is an honored and accomplished judge. to weeks ago i had the

opportunity to meet with muslim and learn about his -- meet with him and learn about his judicial record and philosophy. i have known chief judge garland for more than 20 years and actually worked for him at the justice department when we both worked for the deputy attorney general of the united states. i was fresh out of law school, but even they judge garland's humility, worth ethic and commitment to the rule of law inspired me. our meeting last week confirmed for me what i already know: judge garland is an intelligent and pragmatic judge who is extraordinarily well qualified to serve on the supreme court. and i've wondered, mr. president, whether it's for that reason that the majority is not holding hearings instead of simply holding the hearings and then voting against judge garland, which is their prerogative. why not hold hearings? maybe they know that the american people, given an opportunity to hear directly

from judge garland, would see that esprit sizely the type of -- he is precisely the type of judge who should serve on the court. a vacancy on the supreme court is a rare thing. it doesn't come around very often. and for those of us in this country, whether we're in the senate or whether we're in a classroom somewhere today, those vacancies and those hearings and those debates on the floor present an unparalleled opportunity, a remarkable opportunity for the american people to engage in a debate about the court, about the constitution, about all kinds of issues that the court will consider. that's what these hearings are about. that's what could be going on this summer in this presidential election year. we could be having a discussion about where we want to head as a

country. we're not having it. we're not having it because of this unprecedented action. and because of what the majority has done here, without saying we're not going to meet with the candidate, the nominee, we're not going to hold a hearing, they're denying him the opportunity to make his case to the american people. and in the meantime -- and this is really critical -- the court will continue to be impaired. impaired, that is the word that justice scalia himself used when he was asked to recuse himself from a case involving dick cheney, then the vice president of the united states. and he was asked in that case, he said we should have a presumption of recusal. and justice scalia's answer to that was maybe if i were on the court of appeals. be because if i were on the court t

of appeals, there would be something who would replace me. but that's not how it works on the supreme court. the supreme court, when you have a vacancy, there are eight justices. there's nobody to fill in. there's nobody to become the ninth justice. and the court, he said, would therefore be impaired. the action that's being taken right now threatens to impair the supreme court not for one session of the court but for two sessions of the court before there's another election. in fact, for the third time since justice scalia's death, the supreme court could not resolve a dispute because of a 4-4 split. and the longer this vacancy remains, the more uncertain -- the more uncertainty and confusion the american people will suffer. two terms of the court, as i said, will be jeopardized by petty politics. i know -- and believe me, mr. president, i know -- it has become fashionable for washington to tear down rather than work to improve the democratic institutions that generations of americans have

built, but to impair so cavalierly the judicial branch of our government is pathetic. it's time for the senate to do its job, as every senate before us has done. and again, i am not asking my colleagues to support judge garland's nomination. that's a matter of conscience for each of us, but we must fulfill our basic constitutional obligation of holding a hearing and a vote. this is literally, because it's in the constitution and no one else is granted this power, this is literally the least we can do to demonstrate that we are a legislative body that functions as the constitution requires. we certainly have plenty of time. and in view of that, if by contrast we leave for our scheduled seven weeks of summer vacation, something that is not enshrined in the constitution

but a schedule that's set by the senate, if we leave for our scheduled seven weeks of summer vacation without having fulfilled our responsibility, the american people should demand that we return to washington and do our job. it's past time for my colleagues to meet with judge garland, to hold hearings on his record and to give the american people an up-or-down vote on this judicial vacancy. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. cornyn: the distinguished majority whip. the presiding officer:

mr. cornyn: i fear in the senate we sometimes get bogged down in the minutia and the process, and we don't talk a lot about the why. we talk about the how, but we don't talk about the why. i want to speak for a couple of minutes about why it's so important that we pass the regular appropriation bills and to put what we are trying to do here in a larger context. our colleagues will remember that last year we were unable to pass the 12 regular appropriation bills because our democratic colleagues filibustered those pieces of legislation in order to force a negotiation to raise the spending caps on discretionary spending. now, i regret that. i wish it hadn't happen, but it did and there is not much we could do about it. but in the process, what happened is we ended up having to pass a year-end -- a fiscal year end omnibus appropriation

bill that lacked in any basic transparency and frankly there were -- it was about a trillion dollar-plus spending, and i think most people's reaction is why do you have to do business in such a terrible sort of way that lacks transparency, lets people know what's in the bill, lets all 100 senators contribute to the product, and the reason is because our democratic colleagues blocked those bills. this year i hope it's different because now those top-line numbers for discretionary spending are fixed in law. and so what we're trying to do, starting with the energy and water appropriation bill that senator alexander and senator feinstein are working through the legislative process is to begin that process of passing those regular appropriation bills, and i hope and trust we will conclude with this piece of legislation this week. then we'll move on to a -- to

the next legislative vehicle, probably in the transportation, housing and urban development, the so-called thud bill around here. we've actually demonstrated that by providing an open process that we can actually get some things done. we all recall last congress a year and a half ago, the fact of the matter is a decision had been made by the then-majority leader, senator reid, not to allow senators to participate in the amendment process on the floor. and as a consequence, it wasn't just those of us in the minority who were prohibited from offering legislation that would actually improve the product that was on the floor, it included members of his own political party. so they had to go home at election time and explain to their constituents back home, i may be in the majority but i couldn't get an amendment voted

on on the floor of the united states senate. senator mcconnell, and having learned from that experience, decided that the best thing to do is to have an open process by which members of the majority party and minority party, democrats and republicans alike, anybody who's got a good idea that can come forward and debate them and get a vote on that legislation. we had a couple of recent bipartisan successes, and, yes, i know in some corners, bipartisanship is a dirty word, but the fact of the matter is you can't get anything done around here unless it's bipartisan. and our constitution is written in a way to force consensus to be built. and absent consensus, nothing gets done. so we have had a couple of recent successes in addition to our work on appropriations bill, one including the energy policy

modernization act, one of the most important parts of that legislation, from my perspective back in texas, is we saw an expediteed process for the apapproval of liquefied natural gas export terminals, a very important thing to our economy and something that takes advantage of an incredible resource we have here in america, natural gas, which we'd like to sell to our allies and friends around the world when they don't have it. and that's something that builds jobs here in america. it helps grow our economy. it helps provide a lifeline to many of our allies around the world who simply are, for whom energy is being used as a weapon by people like vladimir putin. we also voted to reauthorize the federal aviation administration bill. this is important obviously for public safety, make sure our skies are safe, but also to provide the appropriate

regulatory regime for the airlines industry. individually, these bills may not seem like an end all or be all but they are part of a larger goal of getting this legislative body back to work again as it was meant to do, considering and passing legislation that will impact our country for the better. don't get me wrong, sometimes the right answer is to stop bad ideas. sometimes the idea is to stop bad ideas. but where there is an opportunity for consensus and where we can actually craft something that helps move our country forward, i believe all 100 senators came here with that sort of goal in mind. the bottom line is we are working again to advance the priorities of the american people. in the same way that we debate and discuss the energy and water appropriations bills, we have to keep the bigger picture in mind.

because it's not just about passing a single appropriations bill or to check items off of our to-do list. it's part of a larger process, and that is to fund the federal government in a fiscally responsible way, hopefully -- that's our goal -- but to make sure that we review the programs that are funded by federal appropriations and make sure that they still are, are the priorities that we believe they should be. if they aren't, then they shouldn't be funded. that's part of the process is to go back and look at what the programs are, whether they're still working, whether they're still necessary. and if they're not working or no longer necessary, then we simply no longer fund those as part of the appropriation process. we know that this sets our country's priorities by giving guidance on everything we support, from our veterans to how we provide for our infrastructure needs, to how we equip and train our troops.

funding the government is actually one of the most important and basic duties of the congress. as the senator from tennessee has pointed out, one of the biggest problems we have, one we're not going to solve here today or this week, unfortunately, is that so much of the money that gets spent by the federal government is on auto pilot, so-called mandatory spending. in other words, that's not even subject to the appropriation process here in the senate. so currently it's only about a third of the money that the federal government spends that actually goes through this sort of transparent and open process where everybody knows what's going on and can offer their input. the rest of the money is spent on auto pilot, and it's projected to rise, according to one recent projection i saw, at a rate of roughly 5.3% over the next 30 years. we know that's far beyond the

rate of inflation, and it's an unsustainable amount of spending. we know some of the most important programs our government funds, like medicare and social security, cannot be sustained at the current level of spending unless we do everything we can within our ability to shore them up and save them for the next generation. that's what we actually need to be doing in the larger picture. well, until that day, we can continue to do what we can to deal responsibly with discretionarily spending, and that's what we're here trying to do. because if we don't deal with these appropriations bill in a methodical and deliberate sort of way, all 12 of them, we're going to find ourselves at the end of september, at the end of the fiscal year back in the same situation we were last year with the need for an omnibus appropriations bill or a

continuing resolution, something that i know there's not a lot of appetite for. let me just say a word about the zika virus and the emergency funding request made by the president. now some of our colleagues, notably the democratic leader and the democratic whip, talked about this this morning and raised a question of whether we're going to responsibly deal with this threat of the zika virus. and i can tell you that we will. we are committed on a bipartisan basis to try to make sure that we respond responsibly both from a public safety point of view and from a fiscal point of view. the president's request of $1.9 billion -- and thankfully there's money that's already been identified that was left over from the ebola threat, some $500 million that can be used as a down payment to make sure that our world-class scientists like the ones i've met at the university of texas medical

branch in galveston and just this last week at texas medical center, that they are doing the research that's necessary in order to identify how do we stop this threat by controlling the mosquitoes that bring it into the country. we know that it's the mosquito that carries the zika virus is common in mortem -- more temperate parts of the country. that's why it's primarily a threat in brazil and places like haiti and puerto rico. we also know in places like texas, florida and louisiana that this mosquito is present. and there are established cases of zika primarily occurring, i believe, either from people who traveled to central america or south america and been bitten and brought it back with them. or in the case of apparently now

discovered that this virus can be sexually transmitted. so one of the things we need to make sure is particularly for every woman of child-bearing age, that they get the sort of protection they need so these horrific birth defects that we've seen in the news don't occur. we are all committed to doing that. but we also ought to make sure that we don't overshoot our goal and write a blank check for something when we don't even know what the plan of attack is. you know, in some ways this is like the president asking us to fund a war without telling us what his strategy is for fighting and winning that war. i think that's the sort of commonsense questions that our constituents want us to ask and which we should ask. and i realize not everything is knowable. hopefully within a couple of years we will, our scientific community will have developed a vaccine which can protect people

from this virus. but in the meantime, we need to continue to fund the basic research. we need to continue to fund at the local level the mosquito eradication. and we need to keep our eye on this emerging threat. we can do that and we will do that in a responsible sort of way. and we don't need our colleagues on the democratic side to say we have to do it right here right now without even having a plan from the administration on how we fight and win this war against the zika virus and hold up the regular appropriation process. i can tell from the sort of saber rattling going on from some of my colleagues across the aisle that they are looking for a reason to disrupt the regular appropriation process, and that would be a mistake. first of all, it won't accomplish anything that can't otherwise be accomplished in

terms of funding our research and fight against the zika virus. we're committed to doing that in a bipartisan sort of way. but in a responsible sort of way, it doesn't add to the national debt and pass the bill on to the next generation, but also is a proportional response to the threat. so just throwing money at it without a plan does not seem like a responsible thing to do. but i implore our colleagues across the aisle, don't try to use the zika crisis to hold hostage our ability to do our regular appropriation work. it's too important. it's too important to avoid the year end omnibus appropriations bill that nobody says they like, and it's important for us to demonstrate as we have tried to, and i believe succeeded in doing in large part, that we can continue to do our work day in and day out here on a

bipartisan, responsible basis. not that we're all going to agree on everything. that's just not the way people are built, nor do they want us to agree on everything. this is the place where we have the great debates on the issues that confront our country both now and in the future. and that's appropriate. nobody takes it personally, but we need to have those debates. we need to have those verbal confrontations so we can get to the truth and figure the best path forward for the country. so we're not here to kick the can down the road. we're here to do the nation's business. and we're here to deliver results to the american people. i hope we can continue to do that by carefully discussing and debating and then voting on all 12 appropriations bill. so in addition to talking about how, i hope to explain a little bit of the why it's so important that we do this now in order to avoid that year-end rush to an

omnibus appropriations bill later on. mr. president, i don't see any other senators seeking recognition, so i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio is recognized. mr. portman: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: there is a quorum call present. it will be vitiated. mr. portman: thank you. to the majority whip, thank you for your comments on the zika virus. you're absolutely right to raise awareness on this issue. it is a great concern and we happen to have in ohio military assets used in the past for aerial spraying. i know they're interested in being more involved in the eradication of some of the mosquitoes in the southern part of the country. it's a very serious matter and i'm glad to know the appropriations committee is

working on as well as the authorizing committees and you have apparently interest in this. i rise to talk about the energy and water appropriations bill. i want to thank the chairman of that committee, senator alexander, for working with me to include a couple of real important provisions for the state of ohio. one is the cleanup of what's called the portsmouth gaseous diffusion plants. this is a site that for half a century enriched uranium, this uranium was used by our nuclear navy for our military and other purposes, including our nuclear arsenals, but also has been used for our power plants. and so the people in ohio, have been for decades now helping keep america safe and also helping thousands of ohioans to keep the lights on and to stay warm at a reasonable cost. now we have to clean up this facility. we've moved on to other technology. it's an efficient technology but it's a heck of a cleanup of removing all this gaseous

diffusion material and properly disposing of it. it employs 2,000 ohioans, this cleanup effort. they're doing their job and doing it very well. we've got to support them. unfortunately over the years they have not gotten the support they deserve. the president in 2008 gave a campaign trip to ohio, gave a commitment that he would accelerate that cleanup. frankly, that hasn't happened in the president's budget and so every year we have to fight for more funding to be sure that we can continue the cleanup which is so important but also to ensure that we aren't losing jobs in a county in ohio, pike county, where we just had this tragic occurrence where we had four different homes where family members were present, there was a horrible shooting in pike county. this is one of the counties in ohio that has relatively high unemployment. it's a county that has a lot of economic issues. and these 2,000 jobs are good-paying jobs with good peufs, so -- good benefits so

it's important we keep the jobs there. as important it's the right thing to do for the taxpayer. because as the obama administration has pulled back funding for this cleanup, it ends up costing the taxpayers more. why do i say that? because as you delay these cleanups, you end up with huge additional costs. as you cut back on the funding there's less cleanup going on to the point that our analysis shows an accelerated cleanup could save the taxpayers $4 billion. getting this thing done, moving the site on to a commercial use. so it will save the taxpayers money by having adequate funding. second, cleaning up the radioactive waste there and other hazardous waste is incredibly important for the community. it makes that site cleaner, of course. it's better for the environment and it's really important for these people, again, who for many years have been providing us with enriched uranium for our military and for our p power plants to know they're not going to be left with this environmental problem. third, these are good-paying

jobs in a koeubt -- county that needs them. we owe it to clean up the county so they can redevelop it. it's a great location to do energy projects, maybe a nuclear power plant at some point. but they have to clean up what's there in order for the site to be used for that. the people of piketon helped fuel our economy and national defense, we owe it to them to clean up this site and i'm pleased that in this legislation we're considering that we have an increase of $20 million over this year's level of cleanup work at the site and an additional $20 million over this year's level for con constructing a on-site disposal cell. i'm hoping that the house will increase funding for the disposal cell. we're working in conference to get that number up further because that makes a lot of sense in order to move forward on this cleanup for the reasons i've stated. again, i want to thank senator alexander for his help on this.

one thing as the chairman knows well, part of the funding for this cleanup work comes from the department of energy pwer ter for uranium. i asked as we move forward if the price of uranium should change, should drop the chairman continue to work with us to ensure there are no job losses and ensure the cleanup work is not delayed as it has been in the past. second, i want to thank the chairman for including another provision that is incredibly important to ohio and to lake erie. for many years the army corps of engineers has been drudging the river, necessary to do that for commercial purposes. we have a steel plant right there which anybody who comes to the republican convention will see. it's really important for that plant and other commercial purposes to keep this waterway open for boat traffic, including bringing iron other in for the steel -- iron ore in. unfortunately the u.s. corps of engineers wants to take the dredge and dump it in lake erie.

others have said that is not good for the environment. specifically the dredge has p.c.b. material in it. the pollutant gets into the fish. the ohio e.p.a. says if they keep dumping it into the lake they were going to have issue a notice that the game fish is not to be eaten more than a certain number of times per month. this will kill the fishing industry. it is the wrong thing to do with our algae bloom problems in the lake. we're saying let's use an on site disposal facility. we have one on land that they can use. they are refusing to do that. the army corps of engineers going so far in the last appropriations bill to actually cut their own funding which is something i've never seen before to not be able to meet the requirement that we had put into law saying they have to provide for the disposal of this product, not into the lake but

on to a land facility. we've now worked with chairman alexander to include language in this legislation before us. senator sherrod brown and i were successful in getting that in last year. once again we're working with the chairman to get that language in this year. i want to thank chairman alexander for including it. it maintains this requirement to ensure the corps upholds the obligation. again, it concerns me that the corps seems to want to try to get around this. in fact, instead of putting money into the operations and maintenance account they're required to do so to comply with not just what congress says but frankly what the court has ordered them to do because the court has consistently said they have to dredge and dutch -- dump on land, they have actually put that into a risky position by saying that they don't need the funding. they've gone so far as to indicate that maybe other dredging projects on lake erie could be in jeopardy of not

receiving the full money they need if there is a need to dispose this on land. there is a better way. the corps should simply request use of unallocated funds provided by congress in order to tkeus -- dispose of the material at cleveland harbor. our permanent subcommittee investigations which i chair is investigating whether the corps intentionally requested this decrease in funding that i mentioned in last year's spending bill so that they would have no choice but to dump this dredge material into the harbor. i hope that's not true. i hope we find out that's not what happened, but there are some indications of that. again, doing so would threaten the health of the area, the city of cleveland, lake erie's ecosystem and specifically our fishing industry in lake erie, which is so critical to economic growth in that area. lake erie is the most productive of all of our great lakes in terms of fishing. it's a $6 billion fishing industry and our number one tourist attraction in ohio. so i urge the corps to revise

their work plan for this year to request the additional funds necessary to safely dispose of the dredge settlement at the cleveland harbor during this 2016 dredging system, if as i suspect the federal judge again rules that the court cannot place it in lake erie and i urge them to work with us to come up with a solution where we can have this dredge material go on land and actually recycle that material and use it for other purposes so that it has value. i saw even a couple weeks ago when i was out at the site how some of this material is being mixed with other fill and being used not just for landfill but also for gardens, for farm agriculture purposes, and this is a way to take this dredge and actually have it have value and be able to recycle it. so, mr. president, i thank you for allowing me to give this statement today, for your patience, and i really want to thank chairman alexander and others who have worked with us on this so we can indeed be sure that we are cleaning up this

site at piketon and second that we are able to get this dredge material coming out of the cuyahoga material onto a site on land to avoid the environmental damage that would otherwise occur. i yield back my time, mr. president. mr. schatz: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. mr. schatz: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent to speak as though in morning business for up to 17 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schatz: thank you, mr. president. i first want to talk about the zika public health emergency that is coming to the united states of america. we have to act now to fund the administration's request of $1.9 billion in supplemental funding. zika is a disease carried by the 80's egypti scoot, that has already caused a dengi fever in

my state of hawaii. the mosquito is in more places than we previously thought throughout the united states. zika is the first scoot-born illness to be associated with a congenital birth defect. we are continuing to learn more about this devastating disease every day including its association with guillon barre syndrome, a type of paralysis, eye abnormalities and more. there have not been any locally transmitted cases of zika in the continental united states. we do have hundreds of travel-related cases and up to 500 cases of active transmission in puerto rico, american samoa and the united states virgin islands. as i mentioned, hawaii is recovering from a denge epidemic. so we must provide emergency funding for mosquito-born illnesses and we must do it now. this is an emergency. the administration has clearly laid out its request to combat zika which include the following.

$830 million for the c.d.c. this money would include grants and technical assistance to puerto rico and the u.s. territories and help our domestic and international response activities. about $250 million for the centers for medicare and medicaid services or c.m.s. to increase the federal match rate to puerto rico. several hundred million dollars for the national institute of health to invest in vaccine research and development, and that is the long-term solution. there is a high degree of confidence that we will be able to get a vaccine but not without the funding. this is an absolute emergency. $10 million for the f.d.a. vaccine and diagnostic development and review, which is absolutely critical. we don't have the diagnostic tests that are quite as efficient and effective as we're eventually going to need, and $335 million for usaid efforts abroad and public health infrastructure. i was fortunate to visit the c.d.c. in atlanta a couple weeks

ago to learn more about their efforts to combat zika, denge and other vector-borne diseases. i saw firsthand how the c.d.c. has activated its level one emergency operations center to combat zika. i've heard during my questions at the labor-h.h.s. appropriations hearings how c.d.c. is strapped for funds and has already programmed its ebola funds. how these ebola funds are critically needed to prevent another ebola crisis. i have total confidence in the c.d.c., but they need this funding request, this emergency funding request to be granted. and we're about to go on a one-week recess. there is no reason that we can't at least get on the supplemental this week. this is an absolute emergency. there are a lot of things that we're doing that are important this week in terms of individual appropriations bills, but let's be clear. none of these appropriations bills are going to pass in the next week or even the next month. we still have the house that

needs to take action, and there is no doubt we're going to go to conference. so there is no urgency in terms of whatever other legislative vehicles are pending or about to be pending for us to move to those instead of what is happening right now in terms of a public health emergency with zika. this is an absolute emergency, and the only reason that this isn't absolutely smashing through every headline online, on television and in the newspapers and on the radio is that it's still cold outside in a lot of places and the mosquitoes haven't come out. this is about to be a very serious public health crisis. and for those of us who have differing views about the size and scope of government, i just want to say this -- we have arguments about the e.p.a.'s role, about the department of human services role, about the department of education's role and the size and the scope of government across the board, but can't we agree that government's basic job is to protect its citizens, and can't we agree that the c.d.c. is one of the

best agencies in the government across the board, and can't we agree that this is a real emergency and ought not to wait to may or june or july and ought to be taken up immediately? mr. president, this is an emergency, and we ought to fund the supplemental on a big bipartisan vote. mr. president, on a different topic, i wanted to talk about the trans-pacific partnership. many promises were made about the t.p.p., and before the final text was available, i received dozens of phone calls from advocates of the deal asking for my support. they said that this trade agreement was going to be different, that it would raise standards rather than lower them, that my concerns about labor, the environment, climate change, public health and consumer protection would be addressed, but since the text was released, i've read it, and unfortunately this deal does not turn out to be any different

than the previous deals. it looks like just another race to the bottom. proponents claim that the labor and environmental chapters would contain enforceable commitments, and i know a lot of people worked really hard to make that true, but when you look closely at the wording of these chapters, you see that the commitments are basically just strongly worded suggestions. there are very, very few requirements. instead, the countries have promised to -- quote -- promote, encourage, cooperate, strive and endeavor to do various things. i had no clue how you enforce an obligation to -- quote -- encourage something or discourage something. many of the provisions contain this weak language, carefully written by lawyers to be unenforceable. here are a few examples from the environmental chapter which are particularly weak. the chapter opens with a generally commitment that -- quote -- "each party shall strive to ensure that its environmental lawfuls provide for and encourage high levels of

environmental protection." that's right, they are to strive to ensure. on transitions to a low emissions economy, "parties shall cooperate to address matters of joint or common interests." there's nothing more on climate change whatsoever. on marine mammal conservation -- quote -- "each party this promote the long cons vairgs of sharks and various marine animals through such measures considered appropriate." i don't know what that means. what's clear is none of this is enforceable. so the problem is no accountability. there's no requirement that countries meet their obligations before congress has to vote on the agreement, and no independent verification of whether these obligations are ever met. we will vote to open our markets on day one to goods made under terrible labor and environmental conditions and hope that over time after we forfeit our leverage that these countries will implement and enforce the kind of labor laws that our

country has had for decades. so what this means is we're going them the deal and after we forfeit all of our leverage, we hope that they will see the light and do the right thing. take vietnam as an example. the economic benefits of vietnam are reduced or eliminated u.s. duties is enormous. importers from vietnam currently pay around $2 billion in annual tariffs. most of that comes from imports of apparel and footwear. industries that frequently utilize forced and child labor. although vietnam is supposed to comply on day one with a labor agreement signed with the u.s., there's no independent verification. the side agreement sets up a long process of consultation before punitive action can be taken. at that point vietnam will already be enjoying the benefits of the elimination of the tariffs. and the u.s. will have lost jobs that can't compete with forced child labor. no punitive action will bring back those jobs.

now let's talk about the enforcement side. our track record, unfortunately, is not good. in the limited instances in which will are enforcement mechanisms in our trade agreement, we rarely utilize them. recently the g.a.o. reported a systemic failure to enforce labor and environmental commitments across several strayed agreement, even -- trade agreements even in light of compelling violations. the reason for this is we don't really provide the resources for enforcement but more importantly there is a real lack of political will. for instance, the inclusion of malaysia in this trade zone gives us insight into the lack of political will. when we debate or fast track authority last year, congress agreed on an important negotiating objective: no trade deals with countries that earn the worst human trafficking ranking according to the united states state department. seems like something everybody ought to agree to. at the time this included malaysia which had the lowest

ranking, but just after fast-track became law, malaysia's ranking was upgraded to the surprise of human rights experts everywhere. the upgrade allowed the circumvention of congress' will and the continued inclusion of malaysia in tmpleghts t.p. -- t.t.p. this came just a few months after the discovery of human cages and 130 graves at a human trafficking detention camp on the malaysia-thailand border. against this backdrop, it is hard to have confidence that we will ever prioritize labor right, human rights, or environmental protection over commercial interests. i'm also deeply concerned about the inclusion of investor state dispute settlement provisions or isds for short. isds provides a special forum outside of our court system that is just available to foreign investors. these investors are given the right to sue governments over

laws and regulations that impact their businesses. a legal right that is not granted to a labor union, an individual, or anyone else. here's how it works. if a decision is made by a national government that is contradicted by a provision in a trade agreement, the trade agreement wins. if a law that we passed contradicts a provision in tmpleghts t.p. -- t.t.p., t.t.p. trumps our laws. incorporations are increasingly seeing this as a viable legal strategy to increase profits and undermine public health, environmental, and labor protections. the isds forum is not available to anyone other than foreign corporations. it's not open to domestic businesses, labor unions, civil societies, or individuals that allege a violation of a trade agreement obligations. the arbitrators in isds that preside over these cases are literally not accountable to anyone. their decisions cannot be

appealed. by profession the arbitrators usually make their living working as lawyers for multinational corporations. the arbitrators cannot force the government to change their laws, but they can order the government to pay the investor when they lose money as a result of a law that contradicts a trade agreement, which can have the same effect. it's one thing for the united states to decide to pay a penalty to keep a law in place but small countries can't afford to go up against these multinational corporations in the isds context and not only will they repeal their national laws, they sometimes will not enact national laws knowing that they will be subject to fines under this isds process. the government often agrees to change the law, a regulation that is being challenged in addition to paying compensation. the threat of a case can be enough to convince a government to back away from legitimate public health, safety, or environmental policies. practical implication is potentially sweeping. isds could prevent us from

addressing climate change, raising the minimum wage, protecting consumers from harmful products, or preventing another financial crisis. each time we pass a lawful of regulation to improve the lives of the american people, foreign investors will effectively have the final say. these risks are not theoretical. in fact, the u.s. -- for the u.s. the risk of isds has become very real. in january transcanada, the canadian company behind the keystone xl pipeline filed a claim against the u.s. government after nafta's isds provision after failing to approve the pipeline. in transcanada wins, united states taxpayers would be on the hook for $15 billion in the damages being demanded by foreign corporation. make no mistake, this is a new strategy for fossil fuel companies to challenge laws and regulations that are attempting to reduce carbon emissions and

combat climate change. there are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and with that on the line, you have to believe that law firms are spending hours syste systematicy scouring every trade and investment agreement to provisions that they can use to invalidate federal law. this is the legal strategy to bust up laws designed to protect public health, the environment, and consumers. corporate interests should not be the driving force for public policy decisions yet that is exactly what this trade agreement would allow. a lot of us had hopes that this trade agreement would be different, but in a lot of ways it's the same as the bad agreements that have come before it and in some ways it's actually worse. we are forfeiting valuable leverage across a huge area of the asia pacific that we could have used to lift labor and environmental conditions and level the playing field for our workers. this is not a question of whether you're for trade or whether you believe we should be engaged in the pacific region. it is a question of how.

this deal is unfortunately a lowest common denominator agreement and for these reasons, i must oppose the t.t.p. and i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wiem. a senator: thank you, -- from wyoming. a senator: thank you, mr. president. i head home just about every weekend to wyoming and lots of people from wyoming come here to washington to visit as well. when i'm home i get a chance to talk to people and here in walk i get to talk to -- talk to people. i talked to folks early in the morning and yesterday afternoon got off the plane and there were a number of students here from sheridan high school, we the people, one of our pages is here also from that high school. so you get to hear a lot from

people. mr. barrasso: some folks have been asking what is the republican congress actually accomplished. so i'd like to take a few minutes to talk about a little bit about what the senate has actually done this year and during this congress since the republicans have taken over the majority. you know, we're not even four months into this year, and we've already had a very productive year in the senate. it's true, we have been active. we have been effective. and it's only april. in february we passed legislation to add tough new sanctions against north korea. as the president knows, the president in the white house as opposed to the president of the senate who is rereluctant when we started proposing these sanctions, hesitant about the sanctions we proposed against nortnorth korea. let's face it north korea has aggressively been testing nuclear miss sills, weapons and needs to be stopped. when countries threaten their neighbors as north korea has done in their general geographic area, what happens is the united

states must stand up and stop them. now, president obama has done far too little and i'm very concerned about the aggressions and the ambitions of north korea, and that's why the senate had to act. so congress stood up, pushed against this action. we had more action against north korea and that's exactly what we did. the senate also acted by passing a defense trade secrets act to help protect confidential information. we passed the comprehensive addiction and recovery act, a bipartisan piece of legislation to help fight the misuse of prescription drugs in terms of prescription pain killers called opioids. it's been a huge problem in our country. communities all around the country and senator ayotte of new hampshire and senator portman of ohio were two of the main sponsors of this important legislation. i know senator portman was just on the floor recently talking about different legislation, but he has shown heroic leadership in an area that certainly needs

to be and needed to be addressed. the senate worked and reauthorized the older americans act, another bipartisan piece of legislation. it works to help provide senior citizens with things like meals, transportation, ways to help people live in their own homes for longer in terms of their quality of life which is very important for americans all across the country. we passed legislation to overhaul and reauthorize the federal aviation administration. this is a significant accomplishment. this legislation promotes u.s. aerospace jobs by cutting through some of the red tape that has been hurting airplane designers. and then just last week we passed a comprehensive overhaul of american energy. american energy policy, something we hadn't done in about eight years. so over the past few years, hard-working americans have made this country into an energy super power yet we hadn't passed any kind of major energy legislation for about eight years. because washington's regulations have simply not kept pace and

they've actually worked against the energy producers, people that are getting back to work, getting this country's economy returned. so the legislation that we passed is going to reign in some of the needless wasteful bureaucracy that the federal government has imposed on the people creating energy jobs, working to produce more energy because energy is called a master resource for a reason and we have it in great abundance. one of the very important parts that was languaged to expedite the shipments of america's natural gas to buyers around the world. look, it's good for our economy and it's good for our allies who will be able to decrease their independence on russian gas. senator lisa murkowski from alaska did an outstanding job of making sure this legislation had ideas from both sides of the aisle. it's a big part of why this piece of legislation first time in eight years, major energy legislation had passed 85-12.

85-12. that's another big accomplishment of the senate this year that doesn't get enough attention. but it's not just that we're passing important legislation that helps americans. we're doing it in a way, a bipartisan way that allows every senator, every senator, every member of this body to represent the people back home with their ideas and their suggestions. we voted on 129 amendments so far this year. 129 amendments voted on this year. when the democrats under harry reid were in control, a lot of people around here gotten used to the idea that people didn't actually get to vote on amendments. in 2014 the last year under democratic control under harry reid, the senate had only 15 up-or-down votes on amendments all year, full calendar year 2014. when republicans took the majority, we changed that.

the senate has been working this year just like we were working last year. now, we could do a lot more if a few democrats hadn't blocked progress on some very important pieces of legislation. the people in wyoming now know that there are some important things that they really care about and they were actually blocked by president obama. in january, the president vetoed legislation that we had passed to improve health care in this country by real estate peeling major parts of obamacare. now, remember, the president said to democrats that they should defend and forcefully -- this they should forcefully defend and be proud of that health care law. but 25% of americans say that they have personally been harmed by the president's health care law. so we put it on his desk to do a repeal. he vetoed that. now only about one in eight people who are in this country say that they've been helped by the health care law. so when you take a look at major

legislation that impacts the country, it is no surprise that this health care law continues to be very unpopular, especially when you see that for every one person that say they have been helped, there are almost two people who say that they have personally been hurt by the law. the president also vetoed legislation that we passed here to bring some sanity to something called the waters of the united states rule, again a rule put out -- a regulation by the president, a reinterpretation of the law -- the law is pretty clear to me, but the president had his own approach. we put a bill on his desk to overturn what he has tried to do. the supreme court -- the courts have actually stopped him in his tracks, but he once again retowed our efforts. -- vetoed our efforts. last year the president actually vetoed five different bills passed by congress. this kind of obstruction prosecute president obama, it doesn't help our country move forward. it is not helpful when the democratic leaders do everything that they can to convince people that nothing is being done in the senate, but we hear that day

after day from the minority leader harry reid. you know, it is interesting because when senator reid was the majority leader, he had a pretty firm strategy. the strategy seemed to be to do as little as possible. he is now the minority leader. i think he went from the majority to the minority for the a reason. and it seems to me that he's still hanging on, clinging onto that losing strategy. the plan didn't work then, and i think that one of the reasons that he continues to try to talk down and slow down some of our progress is because actually he's envious, envious of anyone who gets things done in the senate. you know, republicans in the senate are not interested in working at harry reid's pace, and neither are the democrats -- many of the democrats. most senators agree that we have a lot to work -- a lot of work to do and that it's good for america when we actually do the work. that's why we've been working our way through the

appropriations bills. this year we got the he recalliest start ever to appropriations bill -- this year we got the he recallest start ever -- the earliest start to the appropriations bills. that's why the senate is going to stand firm and strong to give americans a voice in who gets to fill the vacancy on the supreme court. now, president obama wants us to set aside everything else and let him appoint his justice to the court. it is not going to happen. we do our job every day, doing things that will make an immediate difference to the families all across the kufnlt things that republicans and democrats agree on and that everybody knows we should be doing. that's what you're seeing with this republican-run senate. that's what the people want us to do. that's what they expect us to do

and that's what we will continue to do. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to 20 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, today is the 135th time i've come to the give voice to the issue that i feel will most significantly define this generation of leadership in the united states and, frankly, around the globe. i know that there are many people in washington who would prefer to ignore what our carbon emissions are doing to our oceans and to our climate, but we disregard nature's warnings at our peril. the changes to our environment fueled by our carbon pollution are far-reaching, from the

coastlines to the prairies, from mountaintops to deep oceans, from pole to pole. as a tear restial species, we naturally pay more attention to what is happening on land, like increasing average global temperatures and upheavals in extreme weather. we don't so much see what is happening in our oceans. every year we emit into the earth's thin atmosphere tens of gigatons of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. nearly 36 gig di gigatons of can dioxide in 2013. not all that carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere. our oceans -- the earth's oceans absorb approximately one-third of all our carbon pollution.

that means they've absorbed roughly 600 gigatons in our industrial era, and for the record, mr. president, a gigaton is a billion tons. not 1,000 tons, not 1 million tons -- a billion tons. and 600 billion tons of carbon dioxide have gone into our oceans. we know what that does. all that carbon dioxide in the oceans changes the ocean's very chemistry and it makes ocean water more acidic. the chemical reaction -- imongdz reacting with water to form carbonic acid -- is simple. you can replicate it in a middle school science lab. but it's effects in the oceans are profound. according to research published in the journal "nature geoscience," the rate of change -- the rate of ching in ocean

acidity is already faster than at any time in the past 50 million years on earth. we are rapidly spiraling into unknown territory. by way of context, the human species has been around on earth for about 200,000 years. the human species started farming and herding, went from hunting/gathering to the basics of socialized human life less than 20,000 years ago. and we're doing stog our planet now -- and we're doing something to our planet now that has no precedent for 50 million years. this line shows the increasing co2 in the atmosphere in parts per million. this line shows the absorption of the co2 by the oceans. and this line shows the ph

change in the oceans as a result. and i would point out that ph is actually measured on the log rhythmic scale. so if you were to adjust this to the display type of information, you'd see this falling much more steeply. this is a very conservative way of showing what's happening to our oceans. the logarithmic scale is a multiple -- not just a steady line. and so as you move down the ph numbers, you're actually creating much more massive effects in the ocean. so people have measured this drop in ocean ph from climate change. this is not a theory. you go out and you measure it with equipment that's not very different from, again, a middle school with an aquarium would use to measure ph in the

aquarium. people measure something else in our oceans also. they measure that rise in temperature. for decades the oceans have absorbed over 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions. the heat that comes in that gets trapped in our thin atmosphere when the sun's warmth gets trapped by these greenhouse gree gases lands in a variety of different places. the antarctic ice sheet gets .02% of the heat. the greenland ice sheet gets .2% of the theet. the arctic sea ice gets .8%. the glaciers and ice caps take up .9% of the heat. all of our continents together, the land mass of the earth, take up 2.1% of the added heat from climate change, and the

atmosphere -- that thin membrane that allows us to live and breathe on this planet -- has taken up 2.3% of the heat. all the rest of it -- 93% -- has been taken up by the oceans. they are the refrigerant. they're our cooler, the air conditioner for the planet. but when you take up that much heat, things begin to change. and ocean heat is ramping up. a study published in the journal "nature climate change" found that in the last 20 years -- actually, less than 20, from 1997 to now, to be exact -- the oceans absorbed the same amount of heat energy just in that 20-year period as they had in the previous 130 years. that's a dramatic increase in heat uptake by the oceans, and it's you on huma -- and it's oun

activity that has made our ocean warmer overall and more acidic. one result of this is the calamity now taking place in the world's coral reefs. a healthy coral relief is one of the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the earth. an engine for the propagation of life. coral depends on a simple beotic relationship with tiny photo sixth thetic algae called zoo zanthaly, within a limited range of temperature and ph and salinity and water clarity, this symbiosis can thrive and gives us reefs all around the world. living coral has evolved for millions of years to maintain its symbiosis within that range. we are now measurably -- not

theoretically -- measuring the ocean in ways too fast for coral to adapt. push corals out of their comfort range for too long and the corals get stressed and they evict their algae. this process is what is known as coral bleaching. and because corals get most of their food out of that symbiotic relationship with these algae, if the algae can't be reabsorbed quickly, the corals die. coral bleaching sounds benign, but it's like cardiac arrest for a reef. there's a good chance it dies, and even if it doesn't, it is a long recovery. we are currently in the middle of a massive bleaching of the world's coral reefs. cardiac arrest at a global scale. dr. mark ekin of noaa's program

says "it very well may be the worst period of coral bleaching we've seen" and when he says "we've seen," he means we've ever seen in the human record. worldwide, coral has already declined by approximately 40%. closer to home, across the caribbean and florida keys, two key coral species have declined by 98% in the last four decades. in my lifetime, i have seen once-radiant underwater ecosystems teeming with life become baron fields reaching into an empty ocean. one of my climate trips took me down to monroe county, florida, where i met mayor sylvia murphy, a republican mayor, home to the famous florida keys, and i asked her how the reefs were down there off the keys.

beautiful, she said. unless you were here 15 years ago. australia's great barrier reef is the largest coral ecosystems on earth. it is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. severe bleaching is now hitting -- and i quote -- "between 60% and 100% of corals" on the great barrier reef. according to dr. terry hughes of james cook university in queensland, us a strail yavment -- australia. he tweeted out a map of the current deaf nation writing in the text, "i showed the results of aerial survey to my students, and then we wept." as with many other effects of climate change, it can be difficult to convey the magnitude of events when they aren't taking place in front of

our tear restial human faces. in his 2010 t.e.d. talks, dr. jeremy jackson tried to bring this coral bleaching calamity a little closer to home. he put it like this. "imagine you go karchling in july -- camping in july somewhere, in july somewhere, in europe or north america, and you wake up the next morning and you look around you and you see that 80% of the trees as far as you can see have dropped their leaves and are standing there naked and you come home and you discover that 80% of all the trees in north america and in europe have dropped their leaves." remember this is his example from july. and then you read in the paper a few weeks later oh by the way a quarter of those trees died.

well, that's what happened in the independent indiana -- indian ocean during the 1998 al mean know, an area vastly greater than the size of north america and europe when 80% of all the corals bleached and a quarter of them died." jeremy came to speak to our caucus recently. he told us that every ocean ecosystem he studied in his career is gone as he first found it, changed dramatically from his first visit. coral reefs are one of the first places that truly irreversible effects of climate change seem to be manifesting themselves. the proverbial canary dying in the coal mine of our carbon-ridden planet. to say that the ocean we knew in our childhoods is already gone

is not doom saying or pessimism. it is a grimly, realistic assessment of where we stand, sadly. in the senate there will likely be snickering about this. who gives a damn about coral reefs, some will say. if it can't be monetized by a corporation, to hell with it is too often our motto here. well, god made these glories. god made them on our planet. they've been growing in some cases for tens of thousands of years. we are wrecking them in a single generation, and if that doesn't mean something to us, a long look in the mirror might be in order.

but even those who can only see this tragedy through their monetizer goggles ought to know that a decline in healthy coral reefs is a huge blow to us all. according to an article last month in the atlantic, coral reefs are home to 25% of the world's fish biodiversity. reefs are incubators for ocean life, support systems for fisheries we depend on, tourist attractions for divers and snorkelers who fill local communities with their visiting and their spending, and their coastal protection for coastal infrastructure and homes against storm waves. it's not nice to full with mother nature -- fool with mother nature. as pope francis warned, god always forgets. mankind sometimes forgives.

nature never forgives. you slap her and she will slap you back. as he says, we are sinning with our actions against nature, and nature will not forget. we just don't have that right, mr. president flt we are making -- mr. president. we are making a mark on the earth in this generation that won't go away. if mankind lasts 10,000 years, well, 10,000 years from now they will see and know the mark of this generation on our planet, and they will justly inquire how could we have been such fools. how could we in this generation have been such greedy, reckless, self-infatuated fools? in 1954 the united states

detonated a hide jens bomb in the marshall islands. the explosion vaporized everything on three islands, raised water temperatures to as much as 55,000 degrees and left a crater over a mile wide and 2040 feet deep. -- 240 feet deep. 60 years have gone by and scientists observe the corals in this part of the pacific flourishing again. if you give it a chance, life finds a way. dr. zoe richard, one of the scientists involved in the study said, the healthy condition of the coral today is proof of their resilience and ability to bounce back from massive disturbances. that is if the reef is left undisturbed and there are nearby healthy reefs to source the recovery. so that's the caveat, mr. president, reefs can recover but

not if we continue to stack the deck ocean wide against them by pumping so much heat and carbon pollution into the oceans. senator schatz of hawaii, not coincidentally another ocean state, introduced with me the american opportunity carbon fee act last year. to address climate change with a market-base solution built on principles espoused by legal republican economists. we went to republicans, former cabinet officials, former members of congress, economists, think tanks, and we said, how should we do this? if you don't like the president's plan, if you don't like the regulatory way, what's

your way? virtually every single person on the republican side who has thought this problem through to a solution has come to the same place, a revenue neutral carbon fee with an appropriate border adjustment. so that's what we wrote. when you're ready, we're here. we did it your way. as a senator, john f. kennedy once said, let us not despair but act. let us not seek the republican answer or the democratic answer but the right answer. let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. let us accept our own responsibility for the future. this is particularly true, mr. president, for our oceans.

as one florida mayor put it, the ocean is not republican and it's not democratic. it's a nonpartisan ocean, and that nonpartisan ocean is screaming warnings at us that we ought to heed in nonpartisan fashion. we have a clear scientific understanding of the problem, and we have a moral obligation to act and time is not on our side. we need to pay attention to the evidence. we need to accept the reality of our predicament as it is communicated to us by the laws and signs of nature, god's signals to us on this earth. that's what healthy coral looks

like under the water. here it is bleached out and dying. it's our ocean. it's our responsibility, and i urge this body to wake up and lead. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i will note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. a senator: mr. president, i rise for a moment he owe. the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. a senator: i would unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. a senator: mr. president, i rise for a second on the floor of the united states senate to do something that i periodically try and do when a citizen in my state deserves recognition for the contribution they've made to my state and the citizens of my state. mr. isakson: today is such a day. have emily limbback is the superintendent of the marietta city public school system. recently she was inducted into the hall of fame for education and palm prints embedded in the walk around glover park square in marietta, georgia. i'm close to emily in more ways

than one. when i chaired the state board of education in 1996, she was an elementary school principal had doneleaf elementary in marietta, georgia cht she'd been at west side. she moved on to marietta middle school and later became superintendent of marietta public schools. 8900 students, 1200 employees, a challenge but a wonderful community. throughout her career she's gifted more to children in our community than any person i know of. in particular she taught those who didn't know how to read to read. she's made reading a passion in our community. she's made children's ability to read and comprehend and understand and move forward in life a reality and a place where at one time there was no reality at all. in fact, let me tell you, mr. president, when i was the chairman of the state board of education, we were working so hard to make reading first a movement in the country cht she came forward with this idea about adopting something called marietta reads, a simple program where you have leaders in the community like myself to come to elementary schools in marietta, georgia, sit indian style on the

floor with first graders and teach them to read and read with them. help them identify with the joy of reading and understanding of reading. kay to a greater appreciation of the challenge every teacher faces that teaches our children in the classrooms. she's been awarded almost every award you can possibly get from the chamber of commerce to the rotary club. she got the living the dream award from the naacp during king week a few years ago. she got the young award from the boy scouts of america for her leadership. time and again emily limback has been represented to be the great person she is, a leader of education, children, something our community is proud of. on this day in washington, d.c. on the floor of the united states senate, i want the name of emily limback to ring from one corner to the other for she's done to make our community a who are whole smp and -- wholesome and meaningful community and make the lives of children just a bit better. i yield back my time and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. a senator: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. a senator: mr. president, for years now patients on the indian es visions and great plains area have been receiving substandard medical care. the most recent example of the

indian health services failure occurred in december 2015 when i was notified that two federally operated independent indiana health service facilities in my state were at risk of losing their medicare provider agreements. mr. thune: in other words, these two facilities have been delivering such a poor level of care that the government isn't sure it is willing to continue paying these facilities the care for medicare patients. in february at the request of several senators, myself included, the senate committee on indian affairs held a hearing to address the state of patient care at the indian health service in the great plains area. thanks to the graciousness of our colleague from wyoming, senator barrasso, who chairs the indian affairs committee, i was able to participate in this hearing and to question several indian health service officials. mr. president, i'd like to report that this hearing reassured me that the indian health services is on track to solve the problems facing patients on the reservations.

but it just left me more concerned. the hearing underscored the government's massive failure on this issue, it's failure to deliver quality care, it's failure to ensure patient safety, and its failure to live up to responsibilities. i've read the report and some of the stories rea really are beyod comprehension. a report of dirty, unsanitized medical equipment left exposed in an emergency room isn't even the most shocking of those stories. one patient who had suffered a severe head injury was discharged from the hospital mere hours after checking in, only to be called back later the same day his test results arrived. the patient's condition was so serious that he was immediately flown to another facility for care. one health service facility was in such disaray that a pregnant

mother gave birth on a rath room floor -- a bathroom floor, a bathroom floor, without a single medical professional nearby. shockingly, it wasn't the first time this had happened at this facility. mr. president, i wish i were able to stand here today and report the conditions are getting better, but, unfortunately, i cannot. since february's hearing, we've been made aware of another tragic event that occurred at pine ridge hospital. reports from the center for medicare and medicaid services indicate that a 22-year-old patient complaining of nausea and cramping in his hands and lower extremities died from cardiac arrest two hours after he was discharged from the emergency department. an investigation conducted by c.m.s. verified that this man failed to receive an adequate screening evaluation before his discharge. even works the report indicated there was no documentation

showing nurse and doctor communication. mr. president, it hasn't helped that congress' attempts to address these problems have been hampered by less-than-honest reporting from the indian health service. time and again, we've found that conditions on the ground have not matched up to information reported to congress. in 2014, i requested a status update from the then-acting director of the indian health service. in her response, she stated -- and i quote -- "the great plains area has shown marked improvement in all categories" -- significant improvements in health care delivery and program accountability have also been demonstrated." end quote. significant improvements? mr. president, sending a man home with bleeding in his brain and having a mother give bairnlg prematurely on a bathroom floor are not signs of significant improvement. on december 4, 2015, officials from the indian health service stated that a majority of the

concerns at rosebud hospital had been addressed or abated. yet mere hours later, i was informed that the rosebud hospital emergency department was functioning so poorly that emergency patients would be diverted to other hospitals beginning the next day. mr. president, it's now been 143 days and the indian health service leadership has been unable to reopen the rosebud hospital's emergency department. the last 143 days, incoming emergency patients have had to travel between 44 and 55 miles to receive care. that's similar to requiring a resident of harper's ferry, west virginia, to travel to washington, d.c., to receive emergency services. and today the indian health services has been unable to tell

us when the rosebud emergency department will be able to resume. this emergency department has been on diverted status and six individuals have lost their lives in ambulances while being transported to a hospital further away. that's six families, mr. president, who are now left to wonder whether their loved ones could have been saved if the indian health service had been doing its job. this is unconscionable. the indian health service has one last chance in friday to reach an agreement with c.m.s. to set the rosebud hospital back on a path to compliance with basic safety and administrative requirements. if the indian health service fails to do so, rosebud will lose its status as a medicare provider. additionally, the indian health service has until friday to address emergency medical treatment and active labor act violations found at pine ridge hospital. the administration has drafted report after report promising to

correct these issues, yet time and again it has failed to follow through. during the recent indian affairs committee hearing, the former principal deputy director could not remember that he was in charge of implementing a 2011 report. mr. president, where is the accountability? who is in charge? we have got to do better. simply shifting staff between positions and offices, as the indian health service has done in response to these problems -- it's not enough. it's time for action. we must do everything within our power -- we will do everything within our power to hold the indian health service accountable and to make sure this never happens again. mr. president, i continuing to work with my colleagues in the senate on a path forward to demand accountability from an agency that by all accounts is disconnected and unresponsive to

the needs of our native americans. i will also continue to consult with the nine tribes in south dakota. our tribes are in the best position to help figure out the path forward for their own health care. i believe the indian health service must do a better job of consulting with our tribes when it comes to the care that they receive. mr. president, i'm going to do everything i can within my four get all of our tribal -- within my power to get all of our tribal citizens the quality care that they deserve. mr. president, i yield the floor. and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: madam president stph-p. the presiding. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina.

mr. burr: madam president, i ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. burr: madam president, i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. burr: madam president, today i have along with senator leahy, senator mccaskill and r senator blunt will introduce the reauthorization of the emmett till unsolved crimes act. a little bit of history for my colleagues on this. this really stems from 1955, and it was the summer of 1955 when a young 14-year-old left chicago, illinois, and traveled to mississippi to visit friends. and while on that trip, he made a grave mistake. he whistled at a white woman. and because of that, emmett till was killed.

and the investigation that led into his death culminated with a 67-minute deliberation by a jury that found both men and they acquitted him. both individuals confessed to the murder in 1956 and our criminal justice system says when you're found not guilty, you can't be retried. and it was an injustice that was done. in this particular case the injustice was done to emmett till, a 14-year-old. and without an understanding of how many people might have been affected by the same lack of justice applied equally, there was a self-taught individual that became an activist.

his name was alvin sykes. alvin sykes became a civil rights activist. he was a cold-case researcher. through the frustration of trying to get a bill through the united states senate that my good friend tom coburn held up, alvin sykes did what most people don't do in this town. rather than hold a press conference and talk about a civil rights bill, he called tom coburn and said i'd like to come see you. and he sat down with tom coburn, and tom said what is it you're trying to do? and the two bonded at that point, and they rhee -- rewrote that bill to reflect what tom thought was the right legislative approach to create in this kupbd -- -- country, and fund, an effort to look back at all civil rights indicates pre-1969. since the bill's passage, i

think in 2008, the department of justice along with the federal bureau of investigation, along with local law enforcement, has gone through almost 200 cases. and i might add that five are still open and one they found a reason to convict an individual. in the year 2000, from a case pre-1969. so let me say for my colleagues, we will reintroduce -- we will introduce a bill to reauthorize this act. why? it's very simple. because just last year the syracuse cold case justice initiative -- syracuse university -- has identified 196 potential cases that weren't caught when the justice

department and the f.b.i. looked at their cold case files. now when tom and alvin sykes put this legislation together, they funded the effort with a mere $10 million. and with that $10 million it created an effort within the justice department and the civil rights division and in the f.b.i. and what we found is that it's never too late to go back and fix mistakes that you make. so i'll ask my colleagues at some point in the not too distant future, probably unanimous consent to pass the emmett till unsolved civil rights crime reauthorization act of 2016. and what this does differently than what the original piece of legislation did that tom coburn and alvin sykes hammered out, it reauthorizes for the existing

offices within the f.b.i. and department of justice, more clearly delineates the responsibility of the deputy crime chief of d.o.j. civil rights division and provides for a joint task force for enhanced collaboration. it eliminates the pre-1970 date and says if the law was applied unequally, it doesn't matter when it was, we should look at it. it eliminates the sunset on the emmett till law. therefore, this is a permanent piece. it requires department of justice and f.b.i. to consult with civil rights organizations, universities and other entities where we can reach out and pull in potentially any other cases that should be reviewed. of course, the department of -- requires the department of justice to reopen certain cold cases that merit proof a second review is necessary and it maintains the current funding levels. a very worthy bill to support. and as much as i'd like to

really make my comments about emmett till, i could fill in a number of potentially different names. but the name i've come to the floor to talk about is alvin sykes. alvin sykes, self-taught civil rights advocate, a person that taught himself how to do these investigations in civil rights cases. a guy that is passionate about trying to bring justice to individuals that are no longer here. we're lobbied on capitol hill all the time by people that have an interest. it could be personal, it could be professional, in a particular issue. alvin sykes had nobody lobbying. they were dead. alvin sykes a potential injustice in our judicial system and spent a lifetime passionately pursuing how he is

is -- he as one individual could make this right. madam president, this is a tremendous success story about something that congress has done that's good. what we need to do is extend the good work of tom coburn and, more importantly, the passion of alvin sykes, to say not only was this needed then, it's needed now and into the future. so i come to you today just to give you a preview before this bill is dropped to thank my cosponsors, senator leahy, senator mccaskill, senator blunt, but more importantly, to thank alvin sykes. without alvin sykes' passion and commitment, this injustice wouldn't have been brought to the attention of tom coburn and tom coburn wouldn't have used his incredible passion to pass

this bill originally. it is my hope that we can make not only alvin sykes proud of the work of the united states senate, but in what small way it might send a message to those who are related to emmett till and to the hundreds of others that might have been served an injustice, that their relatives can understand that they did have value and that value is for others that they might not be exposed to injustice in the future. i thank the president for her patience. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: madam president, i rise today to speak on behalf of the one in three ohioans who knows somebody who is struggling with addiction to heroin or prescription drugs. i rise today on behalf of the over 5,000 americans who have lost their lives to a heroin or prescription drug overdose since the senate passed the comprehensive addiction recovery act back on march 10. i rise today to talk about an epidemic that's affecting my home state of ohio, that's affecting your state, whatever it is, that's affecting our country and must be dealt with. this is the fourth time i have come to the floor of the senate since we passed cara, which is

the comprehensive addiction recovery act, and i come to the floor to talk about our legislation and to ask the house of representatives to please pass that legislation which would then go to the president for his signature and could begin to help in communities all over this country. the legislation that i'm talking about is legislation that the senator from new hampshire, who is the chair right now, the presiding officer has been involved with in a very deep, deep way. in her home state of new hampshire and also here on the senate floor. i appreciate all the hard work she has put into this, and i know she agrees with me, that it's time for the house to act. we passed it again on march 10. that means it has been 47 days since the senate acted. now, about 120 americans die every day of a drug overdose. it's been 47 days. that means we have lost about 5,600 americans to drug overdoses since the senate

passed this bill. and by the way, it's not just about that tragic loss of life. it's about so many people who may not have overdosed but have this addiction and are not taking care of their families, are not able to be at work and be a productive citizen, who are not achieving their god-given potential. it's about those who have overdosed but who have been saved by this miracle drug that police and firefighters are the first responders and sometimes family members are administering called narcan or knoll -- naloxone. but it means this epidemic is getting worse, not better. that's based on all the information that i see back home. last week in lebanon, ohio, it's a small town north of cincinnati, ohio, where my family has roots going back to the 1920's. in lebanon, ohio, a 34-year-old

woman who was engaged to be married overdosed and died in front of her children, one aged 10 and one baby girl who was still learning to walk. by the way, that little girl's father has now been arrested within days of her mother's addiction, she has now lost both her mom and that baby's father. last week, from tuesday afternoon to wednesday morning, tuesday afternoon to wednesday morning, six people died of overdoses in one small town called aleria, ohio. it's not a big city, madam president. there are about 53,000 people in aleria. we lost six people in 24 hours. that doesn't include the 14 people who were saved by this miracle drug i talked about, naloxone, that reverses the effects of an overdose. that's what's happening. it's happening on our streets. it's happening in the case of my hometown in cincinnati in our parking lots at noontime on

sunday, in my hometown a man overdosed in the parking lot of the museum center in cincinnati, ohio. first responders moved quickly. they were able to save his life, but it's happening in broad daylight. unfortunately, more and more frequently. since 2007, drug overdoses have killed more people in ohio than car accidents, making it the number-one cause of accidental death. i'm told that nationally now it is the leading cause of accidental death in the country. it's not car accidents, which we might have assumed. it's -- it's overdoses. they have more than tripled in ohio from 1999 until 2010. we are told now that 200,000 ohioans are addicted to opioids. 200,000. that's a major city like akron, ohio. that's something that should concern us all. last week there was a poll that showed three in ten ohioans knows someone who has abused

drugs, one in eight knows someone who has overdosed. according to the national institute on drug abuse, the united states, even though we make up about 5% of the world's population, we consume 75% of the prescription drugs, including the vast majority of the world's prescription pain killers, the narcotic pain killers. they say four out of five of the people who are heroin addicts started on drugs. and we've heard more about this this week in the news about the fact that so many people get addicted to the opioid, which is a prescription drug, sometimes actually prescribed to them, sometimes they obtain it illegally, turn to heroin as a less expensive alternative, and then end up overdosing and the results are tragic. so if this isn't an epidemic, i don't know what is. and it's affecting every area. it knows no zip code. so when you think about drugs

and drug abuse and the effects of it, you might think inner city. that's not so. it is everywhere, in the suburbs, in the rural areas. it knows no zip code. i mention this legislation that we worked on here for a few years passed the senate. it was bicameral legislation, meaning it was the house and the senate working together for three years. we had five conferences here in washington. we brought in experts on the issues of prevention and education and treatment and recovery and how to deal with our veterans who are coming back, who have a high rate of addiction, how to deal with women and their babies. in my home state of ohio, we have had this huge increase in the rate of babies being born addicted and what do you do about that. we have put together this legislation in a comprehensive manner to -- to handle not just one part or one sector but to be something that would deal with the holistic approach so that we could actually get at this issue. in the house, by the way, the identical legislation was introduced, and they now have

over 120 cosponsors of that legislation in the house, and yet they have not been able to move on that legislation. instead, they are moving on other legislation to deal with the issue, and that's good. i'm sure there is a lot of other things that can and should be done, and some of what they are doing is consistent with cara, but we know cara works. we know the president would sign it. we know it could help immediately in our communities. so again i call on the house to move quickly. last week, a subcommittee in the house chaired by joe pitts marked up a dozen bills that have to do with how we fight this epidemic. joe pitts is a man who cares a lot about this issue. he has a passion for it. this week, my friend and full committee chairman fred upton is going to mark up those 12 bills. the house has a lot of good ideas, and that's fine, that's good. i joined congressman bill johnson of marietta, ohio, who has been a passionate advocate on this issue to introduce something called the preventing abuse of cough medicine act which would restrict the sale of certain cough medicines that are frequently abused.

that's good, it's a commonsense ohio idea, and i thank my friend and colleague for doing his part to help our constituents. that should be passed with cara along with other legislation. i certainly respect my colleagues over there very much, as i said. but let's just give cara a vote, and let's move on to this other legislation as well. it takes a while, as all of us are painfully aware, to get something through the process around here. this one went through with a 94- 1 vote. it's comprehensive. it was introduced in both the house and the senate. they have over 120 cosponsors. let's just move that, and then if there are other things to be dealt with like the one i talked about, we can work on those as well and find ways to work together to find common ground. i will support that. i can't speak for all of my colleagues, but i can speak for all of them with the exception of one who voted the other way to say we will help get cara to the president. in fact, it doesn't mean to come back to the senate if they pass the cara legislation.

more and more members in the house are focused on this issue, and that's good. tomorrow, the house judiciary committee is also marking up legislation in this area, so this is a separate committee, energy and commerce committee and now this is the judiciary committee. they're going to mark up five related bills including what they consider the alternative to cara. it has some of the cara provisions but not all of them. let me tell you what the experts are saying out there. there are over 120 groups who have sponsored -- endorsed our legislation, helped us to get our legislation through. yesterday, daniel raymond, the policy director of the harm reduction coalition, sent a letter to the judiciary committee saying that its alternative -- quote -- omits vital provisions in cara addressing recovery, collateral consequences, prevention and education. these emissions represent critical care priorities which truly relate to the comprehensiveness of cara's approach. cara was developed through a process of extensive

consultation with dozens of stakeholders and has secured the broad support of national state and local addiction recovery public health and criminal justice organizations. the version of cara passed by the senate represents a substantial consensus among both community stakeholders and bipartisan lawmakers -- end quote. the house judiciary's alternative to cara does contain some of cara's best proposals, and i appreciate that, but unfortunately it drops out a number of important ones as well. some of the most important ideas that are missing include provisions expanding drug takeback programs. again, we talked about this earlier. these prescription drugs are at the heart of this problem. and these takeback programs against these -- gets these prescription drugs off the bathroom shelf, allows us to pull these drugs away from our communities so that people are not using these drugs to get into more drugs, to get into heroin. that's not in there. there is also a heroin law enforcement task force that was

dropped out of a drug court for veterans called the veterans court. that's a very important issue for all of us. the veterans testimony that we got made it clear to us that these courts are working. i have toured some of these courts. i have had a chance to sit down at a roundtable discussion in ohio with one of our great veterans' courts and talk to veterans whose lives have been entirely turned around by these veterans' courts after years and years of bouncing around in the prison system or at the v.a., finally they get into these drug courts for veterans where they are surrounded by their veterans and they are able to pull their lives together, to get their families back together and in one case go back to school, one guy about to graduate from the ohio state university after years and years of not being able to find a way for him to move forward. here's another one. patty mccarthy of faces and voices of recovery wrote in a letter today that taking out the cara recovery provisions will -- quote -- prolong the crisis of

addiction by the no providing the critical support across our nation where it's most needed, recovery services provided by recovery community organizations, including recovery coaching in emergency rooms and drug courts and recovery education and awareness are desperately needed and highly effective in getting people with addiction on a long-term path to recovery -- end quote. what does she mean by all that? she means that these recovery coaches and the services that are supported by the cara bill help to get people who might go, as she said, to an emergency room because they have an overdose to be confronted by somebody who says look, we can get you better, you don't have to do this again, you don't have to overdose again, you don't have to go through this near-death experience. we can get you into a program where you can get treatment and recovery. someone has to provide the resources for those coaches. we want those coaches. all of us as citizens should want them. we don't want people to keep overdosing again and again and again. we want to break that cycle. that's what our legislation

would do. patty makes the critical point that our response has to be comprehensive, and i think she is right. she says, and i quote, prevention, treatment and enforcement cannot solve the opiate problem without recovery supports, national efforts on addiction and millions in recovery agree that a comprehensive approach is critical. that's what we do. cara is comprehensive. there are 71 recovery groups including the ohio state university collegiate recovery community that sent a letter to the house judiciary and the education and work force committee today expressing concern that two sections of cara were dropped out which expand recovery supports for students in high school and in college. these are amazing programs. i am so impressed with these brave young men and women who stand up and say i've got a problem. i have an addiction. for other students at this high school or at this college who, like me, have this addiction, have this disease, i want to help you. we should work together and come together as support groups. there didn't used to be any of

these, hardly, as far as i know. now there are a number, and ohio state university is one of the places that took the lead in this, and i'm so proud of those students who stood up and said despite the stigma around this, i'm going to stand up and say i have this problem and i know many of you do, too, and if you do, come and we can work together to work through this problem. again what they say, quote, we approach a comprehensive approach which must include providing recovery supports and allow individuals to enter and sustain their recovery -- end quote. cara is comprehensive. no other bill comes close. as this process moved forward -- moves forward, i hope we insist that any final agreement represent a comprehensive approach, because this epidemic has to be combated from all angles. the approach we took to writing cara was to say we're going to take the best ideas regardless of where they come from. we don't care who brings them. we just care what the idea means

to help address this problem. we had ideas from democrats. we had ideas from republicans. we had ideas from house members, from senators, from experts, from law enforcement, from patients in recovery. we didn't ask who had the idea. we asked if it was a good idea. that's how you come together good legislation that makes a difference in our communities. on friday i was in ohio chairing a hearing of the homeland security governmental affairs committee. it was at university hospital in cleveland, ohio. and we heard from law enforcement experts like attorney general mike dewine, carol wenjuan. she was great. law enforcement including the fraternal order of police has been strongly supporting of cara because they believe this comprehensive approach works. we also provide training for the add ministering of the that loxon, the far cane -- naloxone

and far cane and being sure -- narcan and being sure law enforcement has would they need. they want better tools, law enforcement does so they can save lives. and we owe them that. in ohio i'm told by the way that our first responders have used naturanaloxone more than 16,000s in the last year alone. 16,000 times. thank god for those first responders because they have saved thousands and thousands of lives. on friday we also heard from tracy pilack from the ohio department of mental health. we heard from dr. nancy young of the children and family futures, from dr. margaret cox who is the director of addiction recovery services at the university hospital in cleveland. she's one of the experts we've relied on. they talked about the recovery process. their point was that probably nine out of ten people who need treatment are not getting it. that's a clear sign the status quo is not working.

some of it is the stigma we talked about earlier, people not coming forward. some is not having treatment programs assessable. we heard about waiting lists sometimes three or four days, sometimes 14 days, sometimes a couple months. and people being at that point in their lives where they're willing to come forward and say i need to solve this problem and yet there's a waiting list. so last night i had a tele-town hall meeting. we had 25,000 ohioans on at any one time. it was a big group. people were talking about all kinds of issues from the terrorist threat we face to energy and environment issues to the jobs issues. one guy called in and said, what are you doing about treatment for people who have drug problems? so i told him about the cara legislation. and he seemed to have a quiver in his voice. and so i asked him. i said you seem to have a lot of interest in this and some information about it. can you tell us your background.

i thought maybe he was a doctor or a treatment specialist. and he said what you hear from unfortunately more and more parents which is i lost my child to addiction. she had an overdose. she died. and the reason i'm so focused on treatment, senator portman, is because we got her to the place in her life where she was willing to go finally to a treatment center and get the treatment and recovery services she needed to deal with this disease that had gripped her, and there was no room at the i inn. there was a waiting list. we couldn't get her in. and it was during that period when we couldn't get her into the treatment center that would have helped her that she overdosed. this is a caller last night on a

call who was willing to say this in front of 25,000 people and i told him i appreciated the fact that he had the courage to call in and the courage to talk about it and of course expressed my sympathy to him and his family but asked him to continue to talk about it, to channel that grief into something positive. i can just tell you until we get more people into treatment, this is going to continue to be a huge problem in every one of our communities. until we change the law, until we get legislation passed here in washington so that we can be better partners, we're not going to be doing our part. will washington solve this problem? no. this problem is going to be solved in our communities. it a he going to be solved in -- it's going to be solved in our families. it's going to be solved in our hearts. we've got to get people to pull away from this, to understand the dangers that are prevention and education. by the way, in our legislation we have a prevention program to

build awareness about the connection with prescription drugs and heroin. i will bet most people listening right now didn't know about that connection. a lot of people don't. why would you if you hadn't faced this issue? that awareness alone is going to make people make better decisions for themselves, for their children. we had a guy testify on friday in leave cld whose son -- cleveland whose son died of an overdose. you know why? because he had his molars, his wisdom teeth taken out. and when he had his wisdom teeth taken out, what happened? you know where i'm going. they gave his son, a kid, percocet, a narcotic painkiller. and the rest of the story you know which is he started taking more of those and more of those. and then he took them from a bathroom shelf of one of his relatives. he developed this addiction and

eventually turned to heroin and overdosed. now his father, god bless him, is out there talking to high schoolers, talking to middle schoolers, talking to young people about the dangers. we can address this issue. we know we can. there have been success with other awareness programs. think of smoking and teen smoking. we've made great progress there. we have to make progress on this one. this is about life and death. we heard testimony on friday from dr. michele walsh, the director of neonatology at university hospital. she talked about how she's increasingly seeing babies who are born with what's called neonatal act abstinence syndroma fancy way of saying these poor babies are born with an addiction. she said the symptoms are the same you'd see with an adult. it's the fidgeting.

it's the sweats. it's -- these are little babies, and i've gone to these neonatal units and some of my colleagues have, i know. you see these babies and they're so small, they can fit in the palm of your hand. and here they are addicted. and you have these doctors and nurses, incredible compassion like her, dr. michele walsh, who are taking care of them. we've had a 750% increase in the last 12 years in babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome in the state of ohio, every single unit in ohio is facing this. i've been to rainbow children's in cleveland which is at this hospital. i've seen what they do. i've been to st. rita's. i've been to children's hospital in my own home townl. they're doing -- hometown. they're doing great work but wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to deal with this issue because we had better prevention and education to let

mothers know what the danger is when they are pregnant and had better treatment and recovery to get those women out of this grip of addiction so that their babies could be born without these issues. the long-term effects we talked about at our hearing frankly talking to experts and doctors, i don't think people know what the long-term effects are, and that's scary, of course. they basically take these babies through withdrawal. have to provide babies with the medication at a lower level but that you would provide an adult to take them through the withdrawal process. cara, our legislation we were talking about, would help these women. it would help these babies by expanding treatment for expectant postpartum women as well as awarding grants to evidence-based treatment services and residential treatment programs for pregnant women who are struggling with addiction. it would create a pilot program to provide family-base services to women who are addicted to opioids in a nonresidential

outpatient setting. so it's stuff that we learned from experts how do you help address this problem that's in the legislation. again i know there are other ideas out there. and that's great. but stripping out some of cara's core provisions just doesn't make any sense to me. let's keep it comprehensive and let's be sure and get this legislation done and work on additional legislation. the house could simply put cara on the calendar and have a vote on it. you have to have a two-thirds vote but something like this with all the cosponsors and all the interest in this issue now, i think it would pass. that means we're one vote away of getting this to our communities to help. that's how close we are to a historic achievement to help begin to turn the tide, to make the federal government a better partner with our states, our local communities. our great nonprofits are out there in the trenches doing the work, our families. there's no reason why it couldn't happen today or

tomorrow or the next day before we go into another congressional recess. again after three years of work, it doesn't make sense to start from scratch and try to rewrite this. let's work together to come up with additional ideas. that's of course appropriate. nobody has a monopoly on good ideas around here. and believe me, i know some of these house members. they have the right intentions. they're trying to help. i appreciate that. but i also think that we all need to appreciate the fact that this is a crisis. we are losing more and more americans, 5,600 since cara was passed in the senate, roughly every 12 minutes we lose someone else. people's lives are on the line. communities are being impacted. families are being torn apart. it's time for us to act and act quickly.

madam president, i appreciate your giving me the time today. i yield back that time urging the house to move quickly on this legislation so we can begin to help our communities in need. a senator: madam president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. rubio: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator florida. mr. rubio: thank you, madam president.

i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rubio: madam president, i come to the floor today to discuss, first of all, the successful location of the alfaro data recorder by the ntsb. as you recall, that was a ship that had sailed from judiciary jacksonville. today the ntsb announced they found the data recorder, the u.s. coast guard and others were involved. that gives me hope that we will soon have more answers about this terrible disaster and how we can prevent a similar one from ever happening again. i want to thank the men and women of the investigative team who worked together to find this important piece of the el faro puzzle. today we're reminded as weller those who were lost -- of those who were lost on the e el faro d the loved ones they left behind and they remain in our thoughts and prayers. on a different topic, i wanted to come to the floor today and talk again about the zika virus.

once again there was an announcement that it had been -- additional cases identified in florida. just to recap where we stand right now, zika has now spread to over 43 countries. there are over 500 cases in u.s. territory, most of them on the island of puerto rico. in my home state of florida, there are now 93 cases. it is the most of any state. and the peak mosquito season is directly ahead. now, a lot has happened since that time. we've learned more and more about this disease. for example, we're now learning that it has a direct link to another fatal illness striking people infected with it. we're learning in the recent science that it's not just the first trimester of pregnancy but also in potentially in the second trimester where unborn children can be impacted by this and the impacts are devastating. we're learning that the two mosquitoes that spread the disease -- one of them has developed immunity to the --

resistance to the most commonly used pesticide that is used to remove them. so there's real concern here as we head into the summer months and mosquitoes begin to spread that soon we'll wake up to the news that there's now been a mosquito-borne transmission within the continental united states. here is the bottom line: we don't know everything about this disease. we know it's already bad. we don't know how bad it is. every day we find out more things. we in that, for example, these summer amongsts will be increasingly -- mofntses will be increasingly -- months will be increasingly warm where the two virus can be found in the 50 states. those mosquitoes tend to grow faster during warm seasons and when there is a lot of watt on the ground. one of the countries most imablghted by it, brazil, will soon host the summer olympic games. there will be a tremendous amount of travel to and from brazil and we know that the disease is not just spread through mosquitoes but is

actually sexually transmitted. the president has asked for $1.9 billion in funding and i am generally supportive of that q i believe we need to deal with these issues on the front end as quickly as possible. we don't want to wake up one morning to the realization that you're now in the middle of summer. this has been an epidemic or cat and we dint didn't do anything e front end. i also think you can be for zika funding at $1.9 billion and you can also ask questions about how is this money going to be spent? and if possible how are we going to pay for it because we are face ago debt situation in this country. and i believe we can find $1.9 billion to pay for it. i have suggested some of my own. but are what we don't wanted to is play -- want to do is play bill games with t you can't say i am against anything that comes that they're asking for unless we prove otherwise. i think it is important that weigh now admit that this is a

serious issue that needs to be confronted. but i also think it is not obstruction ist to ask, how is the money going to be spent? wha where is the prioritization going to be? i think it is not too much to ask to have a electrical of detail about the $1.9 billion. what i am concerned em is some of the reports now in the news that there's games be played with this. we've now heard news that the administration has dreected millions of dollars in emergency preparedness grants promised to states and local governments. and oftentimes this is a very typical maneuver. what you do is you cut money from an organization somewhere and you blame it on congressional inaction or in the states on legislative inaction you say the reason you're losing this money is because someone is not doing what we wafnlts you find the most painful, alarming cuts and use them as a lencht point to get pressure built on congress. i want to make sure that he is that that's not part of some game. i think it is important to

understand why in addition to the $1.9 billion they're also saying on top of that we also have to repay the $510 million in ebola funds. since the ebola situation is now under control. these are all legitimate issues and need to be confronted. in the end, we have to do something about this. i know that the senate and congress was not meant to move at warp speed, to say the least. place in which action takes time. but there are things that we don't have time for. this issue has to be dealt with on the front end. the summer is here. already if you have been in south florida, as i have, and tbhak my home state as i will be this friday and through the weekend, it is already hot. that heat combined with a wet season means mosquitoes -- this is mosquito season. you've got a disease that is creating this catastrophic impact in countries just neighboring us to the south. mosquito season is rapidly approaching. we have to get ahead of this.

none of us want to be in a nothings in june, july, august where this thing breaks out and we start to see cases in the continental united states, what you're already seeing in brazil and we have no answer for why we did nothing. so i don't know what all the impediments are, i know there are conversations go on at the committee level, but i hope we can bridge this rather quickly. this should not -- there are so many other you shalls we can argue about. there's so much other you shalls we can have debates about in a partisan season. but i don't think a disease with this level of risk is one that we should be playing games with. so my hope is that cooler ms will prevail and over the next few days we will find it within ourselves to find how to appropriate the necessary money so we can begin to deal with this on the front end. maybe there is a chunk of money ontd front end so we can begin to address it and then come back later and fund the rest of it. i think it is incumbent upon the administration and others to say this is what the money is going to be spent on so that we can judge whether the money and

funds are actually going to things that work. but this needs to happen. this problem can't wait. and it shouldn't be a partisan fight. combating zika isan appropriate use of public dollars sms i am for limited government. i am for liment a very limited federal government. one of the things the federal government is tasked with is keeping our people and our country safe, particularly from external threats and traditionally what that means is an invading army, some military threat from abroad or whatever. in this case, this is a threat that is emerging from abroad. but it is coming towards the united states. there's nothing that -- there is nothing that prevents the united states from becoming like some of these other countries now impacted by this. nothing. our people are not genetically immune to zika. this is just a matter of time. it is not a question of "if." it is question of "when." there is a mosquito-born transmission of the zika disease? the united states. when that happens, if the

posture of the congress is, we did nothing -- nothing has happened over there. we're still debating over $250 million -- people are not going to be satisfied with that answer. my hope is that this thing is dealt with with a level of urgency that it deserves. as i said, in my home state of florida, we already have 93 cases, two new ones over the weekend. those numbers are only going to grow. and it's just a matter of time before there is a mosquito-borne transmission somewhere in the continental united states -- because i would say this has already occurred in puerto rico -- and i hope we get ahead of it before it is too late. my hope is as i speak to the appropriators and those involved in this that we can find our way forward on this. there are so many other issues to argue about. this should not be one of thesm the money needs to be spent and appropriated and we should endover pay for as much of it and not all of it as we can. we need to move from this process and on to those programs so we can get ahead of it in may and june, before we get p into

the surges before we get into mosquito season and before we have an outbreak in the united states because then we're going to have to answer to people for why nothing happened. -- while we knew the risk was growing and the threat was emerging. with that, madam president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. flake: are we in a quorum call?

the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. flake: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be viscerated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. flake: mr. president, it's been nearly nine months since the united states had an ambassador to mexico, the president's nominee to that post roberta jacobson is eminently qualified for that post. it was noted in an editorial that -- quote -- "she's qualified, respected and needed to do an important job." they're right. for more than 20 years, ms. jacobson has been immersed in the regional, political and economic and security issues related to the western hemisphere. as part of her extensive background she served for a time as the director of the office of mexican affairs at the state department. she's obviously fluent in spanish and earned the respect of her colleagues. she served for three years as deputy assistant secretary for canada, mexico, and nafta issues within the bureau of western hemisphere. experience that would later serve the united states well given that mexico is america's

third-largest trading partner with bilateral trade totaling more than $500 billion. however, she's been waiting for the senate to confirm her nominations since the senate foreign relations committee reported it to the senate in november of last year by a vote of 12-7. it should be incomprehensible to anyone around the country to have a post of a top diplomat, one of our most important bilateral relations, open for this long. but for arizonans it's particularly baffling. arizona alone enjoyed a trade relationship with mexico of nearly $17 billion last year. on the export side, arizona exports about $9 billion in goods and services to mexico every year, which according to the arizona republic -- quote -- "accounts for 41% of the state's exports, four times more than our state exports to our next

biggest trading partner: canada." according to the arizona-mexico commission -- quote -- "with an economy that now surpasses $1.3 trillion, mexico ranks as one of the top 20 economies in the world. mexico's economy has been increasingly focused on manufacturing, particularly since the signing of nafta in 1994. more than $1 billion in goods are exchanged between the u.s. and mexico every day. but the u.s.-mexico relationship is about more than just our economies. transportation issues, security threats, and natural resource management are just some of the fronts on which we cooperate with mexico. the arizona department of transportation recently signed a memorandum of understanding with mexico's ministry of communications and transport to study ways to improve the trade corridor that spans the border. arizona alone shares six ports

of entry with mexico and phoenix and sky harbor airport facilitates 122 flights a week to and from mexico. all of this cooperation requires a close partnership between our two countries. the longer the u.s. goes without having an ambassador to mexico, the greater the partnership will suffer. to my knowledge, the hold on this process is not based on any concrete concerns with the qualifications of this specific nominee. she enjoys overwhelming support. there is no reason not to move forward with this nomination. if there is opposition, then members should have the opportunity to express it. as such, i'll be asking unanimous consent for a time agreement with a roll call vote on her confirmation. there's simply no reason that we should not have an ambassador to mexico when we have a candidate so qualified as roberta

jacobson. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the democratic leader, the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: calendar number 365, that there should be 30 minutes of debate only on the nomination equally divided in the usual form, that upon the use or yielding back of time the senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate, that if confirmed the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then resume legislative session without any intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. rubio: i believe the u.s.-mexico relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships and we have an

ambassador that has a track record of advancing u.s. interests. i have a question about the policies mrs. jacobson has pursued. i have had conversations with the administration and others like senator corker about those concerns, and i remain hopeful that we can find a way to resolve this issue in the very near future. but until then, mr. president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the senator from arizona. mr. flake: mr. president, i plan to return frequently, as long as it takes to shed a light on this nomination and to make sure it moves forward. so i expect to be here tomorrow to do the same. i yield back. mr. grassley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: the united states is one of the most dynamic and innovative countries in the world. our nation's success in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing, computer technology, and medicine can be

traced in large measure to our respect for and protection of intellectual property. every year on this day, april 26, we have the opportunity to recognize the important role of intellectual property rights in the fabric of our society when we celebrate world intellectual property day. nearly 230 years ago our founding fathers recognized the importance of intellectual property and made provisions for its promotion and protection in our constitution. article 1, section 8, clause 8, empowers congress to -- quote -- "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their

respective writings and discoveries." since that time and stemming from these values, intellectual property has played a vital role in our economy, supporting jobs and advancing creative and scientific industries. in our modern innovative economy, patents and trademarks, copy rights, trade secrets and other forms of intellectual property are more crucial than ever. as the global intellectual property center recently pointed out in their broad survey of intellectual property in america, i.p. intensive industries employ over 40 million americans accounting for 38% of the u.s. gross domestic product. workers in i.p. intensive

industries are paid better than the national average, earning an average salary of over $50,000 compared to those in non-i.p. intensive sectors where the average is roughly $39,000. in fact, intellectual property is so important to the american economy that the collective worth of all of the intellectual property in the united states is now above $5.8 trillion. in my state of iowa, we have seen how intellectual property has become an integral part of our economy, our system of strong intellectual property protection has led to $11.2 billion in annual i.p.-related exports from the state of iowa, a total of667,000 i.p.-related

jobs and higher wages for direct i.p. workers than for non-i.p. workers. just as iowans utilized strong i.p. skills, today iowans benefit as they start companies and create new tech success stories. the judiciary committee plays an important role in protecting intellectual property. the committee exercises jurisdiction over our nation's intellectual property laws, including those governing patents, trademarks, and copyrights. we considered legislation that helps to ensure that intellectual property rights continue to promote jobs and

innovations. the judiciary committee also exercises important oversight of the patent and trademark office, i-can, the office of intellectual property enforcement coordinator and various law enforcement entities charged with protecting intellectual property. some recent examples of important legislation that helps promote intellectual property rights are the patent act of 2015 and the defense secrets act of 2016. the patent act which was passed out of committee by a vote of 16-4 last year takes important steps to stop abusive patent litigation practices. as bad actors are exploiting the high costs of litigation and using deceptive tactics to prey on businesses, it is important that this legislation be considered by the entire united

states senate. just three weeks ago, the senate unanimously passed the defend trade secrets act of 2016 sponsored by senators hatch and coons. building upon the bipartisan consensus generated in our judiciary committee, the bill passed on the senate floor by a vote of 87-0. so it's estimated that the american economy loses 2.1 million jobs and over $300 billion in economic losses every year just because of trade secret theft. the defend trade secrets act paris much-needed uniformity to trade secret litigation. this will allow the creators and owners of trade secrets to more effectively address the growing problem of trade secret theft.

the house of representatives is expected to pass our bill this week, and i hope it will immediately be signed by the president. tomorrow, the judiciary committee will hold a hearing on counterfeits and their impact on consumer health and safety. we will hear from a panel of experts, including witnesses from the patent and trademark office, u.s. immigration and customs enforcement and from the industry, the industry that is being stolen from regularly. these businesses include companies that provide home health care products and equipment to our troops. they will discuss how counterfeits can harm consumers and what their impact is on the economy. we will hear how law enforcement is addressing this problem as well as how stakeholders are educating consumers to protect themselves from counterfeits.

the focus of this year's world intellectual property is digital creativity. as the world intellectual property organization knows, the current era of internet connectivity is transforming how consumerrable culture such as films, tv, music, books, arts and other cultural works are created and distributed. this has led to radical change in the way we access content and in how businesses operate. as challenges emerge as to how we protect the influential property rights in these new economic models, we must and will continue to search for effective solutions that promote creativeity and -- across a lot of different mediums. so this world intellectual

property day is so important to once again recognize the significance of our nation's robust system of intellectual property protection and enforcement. this system has helped create the united states' enduring role as a leader in the innovation and creativity. as chairman of the senate judiciary committee, i will continue to embrace my role as a promoter of intellectual property rights and american jobs. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. officer without objection. mr. mcconnell: i move to road to calendar number 138, h.r. 2577. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion.

the clerk: motion to proceed to the consideration of h.r. 2 h.r. 257, an act making aeption pros for the departments of transportation and housing and urban development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending september 30, 20 1-6bgs and for other pups. mr. mcconnell: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: cloture motion: we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 138, h.r. 2577, an act making appropriations for the departments of transportation and housing and urban development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2016, an for other purposes, sooned by 17 senators as follow -- mr. mcconnell: ask consent that the reading of the names be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived respect to the cloture vote. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask that the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten

minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 440 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 440, expressing the sense of the senate that -- about the importance of effective civic and government education programs in schools in the united states. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure. without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to immediate consideration of s. res. 441 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 441 expressing the sense of the senate that during public service recognition week public servants should be commended for their dedication and continued service to the united states. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i further ask the resolution be agreed to, the

preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i now ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it adjourn until 10:00 a.m., wednesday, april 27. following the paper, the morning hour deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day. further, that following leader remarks the senate then resume consideration of h.r. 2028 with the time until 11:00 a.m. equally divided between the two managers or their designees. finally, that the filing deadline for all second-degree amendments to both the substitute amendment number 3801 and the underlying bill h.r. 2028 be at 10:30 a.m., wednesday, april 27. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: if there is no further business to come before further business to come before

>> the parity of the fbi legitimate law enforcement and to evaluate. >> over 40 years ago the senate select committee was convened to investigate. thisthis weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the committee's final report. a look at portions of the 1979 hearings. saturday night at 10:00 o'clock eastern.

>> engaged with the united states army and did develop this particular weapon for possible use. >> and on the civil war at six. >> in 1860, at least then living 235 years. the decision he made that a believing and i think that devotion comes forth in 1861 his primary duty was to his family. his family have been virginians for centuries. >> historian james but robertson talks about general robert e lee. and then sunday night at 10:00 o'clock on road to the

white house rewind chronicling the 1968 presidential race. president johnson's surprise withdrawal and richard nixon's victory over hubert humphrey. at 8:00 o'clock on the presidency. >> ability and foreign-policy cohead of state, chief of the armed forces, very much to think responsibly about what one can achieve and to try and define one policies and geopolitics in that light. >> the origins of the cold war and focuses on dwight d eisenhower as military men and president. for the complete schedule go to c-span.org.a deep d >> pennsylvania is the biggest prize of the race

today. we are joined by harrisburg. if you have learned anything about this primary season,throu it is that each state has its own rules for who can vote and how that works.to take us through the rules governing pennsylvania agday. who can vote in today's primary? >> guest: you have to be legal, and for the most part we have not have very much controversy in the state about it. they have been much controversy about felons and once they pay their dues and get back into society whether they can vote. one of the things that ise fascinating is, we have had a substantial uptick in voter registration.th republicans are up 5.5 percent, and democrats

are up 2.5 percent, illustrating an interest we have seen throughout the primary and caucus process on the republican side of the aisle, so to speak, largely because of the competition. and, of course, the energy level of donald trump has brought to the campaign. so looking for a very substantial turnout today on the republican side, not just so sure about the democrats. do both trump on the republican side and clinton on the democratic side have double-digit leads. the drama is not so much about who wins but how close is the margins. on the republican side, the focus has been on delegatete rules that have been cited numerous times throughout the country in terms of how different they are from most other states. r

>> host: you talk about the turnouts between independents and republicans, independents can participate today, correct? >> guest: we have one ballot question that mattersdepd having to do with the philadelphia traffic court. independents can turnout and vote for that particular question on the ballot, but they cannot vote in the democratic or republicane and primaries to nominate candidates. there is another question on the ballot but won't count. ego and vote but it won't count because the ballot question has been ruled inadmissible by a judge, that has to do with whether we should raise the retirement mandatory age. the judge said, it is not nolid.

it is not going to matter. >> host: what will matter, of course, the count of the delegates that are being so closely watched. on the republican side as well, there is a magic number. take us through how the delegates will be allocated in pennsylvania. >> guest: the democrats are fairly easy. 210 delegates, 21 so-called superdelegates. every democratic member ofar congress. five of 18 members of the congressional delegation are democrats. and then there are a number of other party people. from what we can tell, they are mostly committed to secretary clinton, as we

found out nationally. a huge chunk, 516 of the 712 overall, 189 are on the ballot. so it would be a pledge for bernie sanders for hillaryic clinton. the fascinating side is how the republicans pick their delegates. there are 71 delegates, 17 go with the top-tier man. whoever wins the state does not have to have the majority. seventeen goes with the popular vote. the 54 other delegates that are unbound, pennsylvania has 18 congressional districts.

there are three delegates, three times 18 is 54.today, fifty-four total. and so when individuals go to vote today they will get to pick three names from a choice of names on the ballot, but no connection to a presidential candidate. no connection at all. now, there are a total of 162 delegates, delegate candidates who want to go to the republican convention. three out of each congressional district.their the campaigns have started and have reached out trying to get the delegate candidates known in their choice. t there will be displayed cards handed out. the trump people are a little behind.

vote for mary jones. a lecture and she will vote for donald trump, but here's the rub, no matter what they have said they will do, whatever candidate they are stated a preference for, they are unbound by theid rules and free to vote for anyone, any candidate. >> host: we like getting down into the weeds on this program. we are asking our callers to join in as well. a special line also for pennsylvania voters. we can discuss the delegate process and the polls including the franklin and marshall poll, one that has been around for over two decades. we already talked about donald trump having a big

lead, but just one month ago another was much closer. what has changed in the past month? >> basically what happened is ohio got one which gave that can do a big lift. since that time it has been tough. he has not won a single state since ohio. something over a thousand votes short of getting the magic 1737. so he is mathematically eliminated.'s basically he is around at the convention. he has lost a lot of momentum. every poll from the last two weeks showed from somewhere between 40 and 50 percent. so the polls are consistent

in that regard. essentially trump has picked up a good bit of the important demographics in the state, just as he did in donayork. pennsylvania has the 4th oldest population in the state. we when voters over.voters who wins male voters? trump, voters who when 35 to 50,000 or less? trump. .. the catholics. the you go through demographics of this and look at the regions of the state, donald reasonsetty well has and he competes with john kasich in the voter rich philadelphia suburbs, an area of the state where we would expect kasich to do well. voters are moderate, income is slightly higher, john kasich is leading in most polls, but trump

>> host: franklin and marshallbl college poll is available online at f and m.edu/politics. we can go through some of those numbers, go through pennsylvania politics, have a special line in this segment for pennsylvania voters if you want to call in, otherwise lines for republicans, democrat, independents as usual. so we'll start on that line for pennsylvania voters and franklin, pennsylvania, jim is calling, a republican. good morning, you're up first. >> caller: hello. thank you for c-span.. this deal about the delegates in pennsylvania, how so many of them are uncommitted, i found out by listening to c-span. i i could all the ones -- i called all the ones running in

the fifth district and tried to find out who they were supporting. most of them wouldn't tell me who they were supporting. they only said that they would vote for whoever the district voted for at least on the first ballot. some of them, however, came out later and put a letter the local paper that they were going to support cruz, three of them. and so when you go the polls today, it's like buying a pig in a poke.ing a you don't know who these people, if you vote for them, who they're going to end up voting more. >> host: terry madonna, what are potential delegates doing? are you seeing a lot of what jim was talking about in pennsylvania? >> guest: yeah, jim makes a great point. basically, in the surveys done by reporters, there are 162 delegates total, a lot of them have been interviewed. more than any other category

they said whichever presidential candidate carries my c congressional district, that's who i'll vote for. more recently we have learned that about 31 of the 162, probably more or less, it's hard to know for sure, say they will vote for trump. about 28 or so have said they will vote for cruz meaning out of that 128 scattered -- i'm sorry, 162 scattered throughout congressional districts it's really hard to know. jim is really right about it. it's a -- now, i suspect today when people go to vote if you really want to go to the convention and you think your district is going to go more trump or cruz or kasich, you're probably going to hand out what we call slate cards meaning, okay, i'm marry jones, i'm voting for -- i'm mary jones, i'm voting for donald trump. when you go in and vote today, put the x in the box for me. i think you're going to have a fair amount of that, and particularly the cruz campaign

have been much more energetic about -- i'll rephrase that, say they are going to vote for cruz, you know, get that information out. but i couldn't agree more with jim. i mean, most voters are going to go there and not know anything but a name. and that's created some confusion. sorry about that.nf >> host: no, that's okay. i thought you were done. we're talking with terry madonna, director for the center of politics and public affairs at franklin and marshall college, talking your calls for about the next half hour or so. janet is in wind star park up next for you -- sindh sor park up north for you, she's a democrat. >> caller: good morning. i am a retired registered nurse, and i live in florida, my sister lives in pennsylvania. we discuss the election frequently, and we both decided that we would be fine with hillary or bernie. so for the pennsylvania

election, my sister changed her registration to vote in the republican primary so she could vote against donald trump because we think he's a danger to this country. so so she plans to vote today for kasich. i tried to go online and help her with the delegates choice, but it's like you can't figure out who these people are for.e so, you know, it's a little disturbing that she went to all trouble to vote against trump -- believe me, neither one of us in the general election are going to vote for any republicans. she says she can't wait to go back to being a democrat. she feels dirty being a republican. but that, that's her plan today, to vote for kasich just to. counteract donald trump.

>> host: janet in windsor park, florida. terry madonna, how much of that is going on? people changing their party registration to vote against somebody as to opposed to for somebody? >> guest: yeah, that's another aspect of the campaign that received a good bit of attention. 92,000 people, 92,000 since the beginning of this calendar year went from democratic, the democratic party, third parties and independents to republican., 61,000 went from republican, third party registration, independent registration to w democrat. so think about that for a minute. a very large number. let's talk about why people might have switched to the republican party. most of them, most voters, i think, who did that and there have been interviews with, you know, voters who did. there's nothing quantitative, but my sense is that they switched to vote for trump. these would be trump supporters. if you look geographically where they're located, you find them

in areas of the state that trump is likely to do well in. but others did switch to vote because they wanted to support john kasich and some more cruz. and remember, early on marco rubio was in the race. so some switched for rubio. but the caller is on to something. there are -- we don't know how many, but there are certainly more than a handful who went from democratic, the democratico party to republican to do what we call strategy aric voting. strategic voting. that's a political science term. strategic voting. what does that mean? i'm going to vote for donald trump because i think he's the t easiest candidate for hillary clinton or bernie sanders to beat in the fall in the general election in the fall. and that's what you got for -- >> host: is there any penalty for strategic voting? >> guest: no, no. i call it sabotage voting. that's not a political science term, by the way. because, you know, you're trying to help one party out by getting

the nomination for someone you think would be easier to beat. no, and that was all the rage in our state for, you know, about a, about a two week period. lots of interviews. and that dominated the attention because of large number of people who overall switched their parties. but a lot of it, i think, on the republican side, look, there was 17 people at one point in the republican nomination battle. in january and february when people start, you know, switching in this year, people were switching primarily because of trump and because of the excitement that the democratic -- or the republican race generated. >> host: let's go to our line for republicans. john is in glen olden, pennsylvania. john, good morning. >> caller: good morning. first of all, i'd like to say i am a trump supporter. my wife is too. i'm a little afraid what might happen if he does become president, but at least i understand where he's comingng from.

he's exposed the dirty underpinnings of the, what's going on in the political system in this country, and if heys doesn't get the nomination, not sure who i'll vote for, but under no circumstances will i vote for any democrat for the rest of my life, and i wass raised a democrat. i think they're traitors to the country. and trump can beat hillary, i believe. >> host: terry madonna, as you're looking at the returns come in tonight, where will you expect the biggest trump support, and if there is an upset, where should viewers bebe looking? >> guest: yeah. yeah, well, i mean, i think trump will do very well out in the southwestern -- first of all, the polls show up in the northeast and the northwest in the two, you know, upper portions of our state. and if you look at the demographics as i indicated earlier, he does well with -- the individual who just called, in the old days we would have

referred to that individual as a reagan democrat. i'm to not necessarily saying he was -- i'm not necessarily saying he was, but we're talkinn about voters who got upset with the party. they believe the party left them, that it became too liberal. w these are voters who tend to be conservative on the great social questions who believe that there's not enough patriotism,m, who want strong national security, who don't like some of the policies that our government has towards immigration. these, it's the element of trump's support that we've seen, you know, in the primaries and caucuses and the exit polls today. the area of the state that i'm going to look at probably a little more closely would be down in the four suburban counties of philadelphia where the voters there, the republican voters tend to be more moderate, tend to be more upscale in terms of their own personal finances, probably have college educations or some college.

if trump does well done there given where we know he will do well in other parts of the state, that could help to to give him a larger-than-expected victory. my sense is that he wins by somewhere between 15 and 20 points. and that -- again, the only question is how many delegates does he get, does he get out of that. one final point. the caller is really on something that the polls have tracked.eke donald trump has caught, has caught the support of a lot of voters who think that government and politics doesn't represent them.li the country is on the wrong track.se you know, he does well when -- tells it like it is. when pollsters ask the question does he tell it like it is, yes. he sticks his proverbial finger in the eye of the establishmentt and regardless of what he says and how controversial it is -- and some of what he has said has

been beyond provocative -- he has that hard core one-third support, republican support that he's maintained almost from the beginning of his candidacy. >> host: on the republican side of the aisle today, 71 delegates up for grabs in pennsylvania. on the democratic side, 210. pennsylvania is the biggest prize of the day in the five states that are voting in the mid atlantic region today. we're talking pennsylvania politics with terry madonna be of franklin and marshall college for about the next 20 minutes or so. special line for pennsylvania voters if you want to call in. june is in jacksonville, florida, republican. june, good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, june. >> caller: good morning. >> host: june, go ahead with your comment. just turn down your tv and talk through the phone. >> caller: okay. i'm doing just that. i really am calling in to try and get our voters to think

about the issues, about theis presidency of the united states. we don't want this tom foolery of trump. it's ridiculous, it's idiotic. we need, we need serious people that want to talk the issues. how can we know what's going on if we get all that goofiness of his?of i am so sick of seeing him. i turn him off as fast as i see him on the tv. >> host: so, june, who are you supporting? who's a serious person in your mind? >> caller: cruz. cruz and secondary, kasich. either. but cruz from the very beginning i've had a lot of interest in what he has to say and his seriousness. but it's not particularly because of cruz, it's the issues that are upsetting me horribly and could give me a nervous

breakdown with this trump business. if i have to see him four years as my president, i don't know how loyal i can be. please -- >> host: that's june with her thoughts in jacksonville, florida. let's go to stanley in galveston, texas, a democrat. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, stanley. >> caller: how are you this morning? >> host: well. go ahead. >> caller: yes. there's a lot of scheme voting going on here. i mean, ex-voters, i mean, there's 63 people that's changing over to republican. the same thing, you know, trump is leading candidate for the president, it's not a very good aptness. the journal washington is just all over him, he's not covering his area very good. most people don't even know what to vote on at this time. they think that cruz can do the best as far as republican, but on the democrat side, you know, hillary ought to be the next thing to vote on. shesomes to be the candidate that is -- she seems to be the candidate that is doing the best

in the washington area, covering the presidency very good. she seems to be a journalist up there and doing very good at her own personal self, you know? and i should -- i think -- [inaudible] should be a good thing for a candidate that is running best in our country, you know, takinc care of -- >> host: okay. that's stanley in galveston, texas. when it comes to issues that the candidates are running on, what are the key issues that have impacted pennsylvania here in trade, which has become such a big issue in earlier primarieses, been a big issue in recent weeks in pennsylvania? >> guest: yeah, it certainly has particularly out in the southwest in the old mining and mill town areas, you know, that once dominated the pennsylvania economy. that's certainly true. i mean, broadly speaking they fall into three categories; the economy, of course, personal finances, the fact that many voters -- particularly those who support donald trump, by the way -- believe that they've not

recovered from the recession, r the wage gap, all of the aspects of creating jobs, good paying jobs that the candidates talk about. the other, of course, foreign policy, the fear and concern about -- on the war of terror, policies in the middle east. and the third and this actually polls a little, polls higher than the other two, it's sort of the disgruntlement of politics and government, the disenchantment that in general exists. and that is reaching a fever pitch in our state. and that has to do with national government. it also has to do with some internal situations in the state of pennsylvania. the candidates have largely tailored their message, as you would expect, to certain, you know, areas of the state. you know, trump's out in pittsburgh, he's talking about bringing jobs back to the region as you might expect. bernie sanders spends a good bit of time on college campuses. he's been at temple university,

penn state university, pitt, he's been to gettysburg collegee and millersville university, you know, focusing on the millennials which john's going to talk about soon. in addition, hillary goes to philadelphia, talks about her connections there, talks aboutut local issues. she has localized the election because of her personal roots more than any other candidate. she was, her or dad was born in scranton, her grandfather was born there, her dad played football for penn state. hillary has a lot of pennsylvania connections. but he goes to churches in philadelphia, for example, and talks about gun control and gangs.ad she more than any other candidate has localized the race, if you get my drift, meaning talking about issues that local voters would particularly pay attention to. >> host: let's head tolan caster, pennsylvania, and nancy on our line for republicans.

what are the local issues in lancaster, pennsylvania, for you? >> caller: probably bringing back jobs, abolishing the irs. i'm a ted cruz supporter, and i just wanted to make it know that i did find a way to find out who his delegates are. he made it clear to those of us who are his supporters. he came to hershey, and he had paperwork, and he identified all of the delegates that were going to be voting for him. so i wrote them down. i couldn't, i couldn't take a picture of them on line, so i wrote them down, and then i have been disseminating them for a week or more to -- whatever that was, i guess a week or less -- to all the people i know that want ted cruz. so i think this goes back to the ground game, to someone who's been very well organized right from the beginning. i know who i'm voting for today. i'm going to be going in a few minutes. good morning to both of you, by the way. >> host: good morning, nancy.

thanks for calling us before you go and vote. in terms of the organizational efforts in the state, terry madonna, can you speak to that? >> guest: yeah. i meant -- i talked about that a bit earlier, and she's right, the cruz people seem much better organized. she have slate cards they've been handing out, they're trying to reach out. but it's a mixed bag of things. i mean, if we have this huge turnout that we expect among republicans, there are still going to be a large number of voters who are going to go to the polls today and not really be able to identify the delegate choices. having said that, you're liable to walk into a polling place and have to go through a gamut with people handing you slate cards for all sorts of things which you can take with you into the voting booth. but there will be a certain amount of confusion, but there's no doubt the caller is right. the cruz people have done a better job of this than the trump people, although i have

seen some effort in this state by some trump supporters to get out the message about who his delegates are. but i think there's still going to be a fair amount of confusion today when folks go to the polls. >> host: i should note that in pennsylvania not only are the presidential primaries election happening, the congressional primaries are happening in pennsylvania as well. it's one of two states that's holding its congressional primaries today. maryland is the other state holding congressional primaries today. gary is in suitland, maryland, a democrat. gary, good morning. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen. my concern here with this bernie sanders situation, i just hope he doesn't become a danger because right now it looks like predominantly hillary's going to win the bid. and this thing that really bothers me is bernie's socialist pushing these viewpoints of his which will not work here in the united states. i have friends that live abroad.

i would not want the government taking 60, 65% out of my paycheck to give free this, free that, free education, free -- all the socialist pacts that bernie's putting forth. the other thick is if -- thingi is if he loses today, i think hs should commit hillary's got it. by the way, he's pushed her enough to the left. he's done a great job with that, but i just hope he doesn't backlash and become a danger by hanging this there too long and making our party look like the republican party. because they are totally confused with this thing with donald trump, take america -- make america great again. i would say don't let them take america back, the republicans. because what in the heck is make america great again? i don't get that. what does he want to go back to, slavery or something? this country is doing very well with president obama right now. he's been handed a bunch of crap from the republicans. he's made it look like america

is moving forward in a great way again because they really loaded him up with, what, 800,000 of the jobs lost each month? the list can go on. so forget about this crap make america great again. >> host: got your point. terry madonna, on the story hawaiian tomorrow if it is a -- storyline tomorrow if it is a hillary clinton sweep in all five states that are voting today. >> guest: yeah. she needs about 440 delegates to clinch the democratic nomination. she's, by one estimate, about 81% there. it's virtually, you know, as an analyst, i don't like to end elections, but how can you not say that she's the pew tative nominee given the fact that she's virtually there? he'll come out of -- she's expect -- she'll come out of, she's expected to win all fiveha states that are up for grabs today. given rhode island with thee possible exception, and, again, when you go back to the super

delegates, there are 712 of them. at this point she's got about 516 of them. in other words, she's likely to be the nominee. now, bernie sanders today in an interview i heard has said he's going to go right to the convention.. he actually talked about something that i suspect he's going to try to do, and that iso to influence the platform at the democratic convention in cleveland -- i'm sorry, in philadelphia. i think he's going to stay in. t he wants to give the speech at the convention, he wants to do the, you know, the platform, keep clinton on the road that she's on particularly as she's moved to the left over the last several months. but i don't -- it's just virtually impossible to believe that she doesn't win the nomination given the lead that she has and what's likely to happen today. >> host: back to the keystone state, york, pennsylvania, is next where alex is waiting, line for republicans.

alex, good morning. alex, you with us? go ahead. just go ahead with your comment, alex. >> caller: all right. so i'm a 20-something here in york, pennsylvania, terry, and k was kind of, you know, really feeling kasich a lot. i just kind of liked the way his campaign kind of was more positive and stuff like that. but within the last few days,n this whole cruz/kasich alliance kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and i just wanted to know from your point of view, terry, is there any real parallels that could really ultimately influence trump voters to, you know, sway over to cruz or kasich, or, you know, voters who weren't going to vote at all and now going to come out -- i just don't see what the ultimate theory was behind this alliance. it doesn't seem like it was

going to work out. >> host: terry madonna. >> guest: i think that's a great question, and i thought when they announced that sort of deal, arrangement, if you will, that it was not the best idea i've ever heard. by the way, kasich has sort of backed off of that. he has indicated that he wants his voters to still vote for him in indiana. an indiana event next week. the fact of the matter is i just think it plays to the trump narrative that this is the so-called republican establishment, the rulers of the party sort of trying to manipulate the process.. trump in a tweet called it an act of desperation. i couldn't agree more with you. i don't know where it gets them. there's this argument about whether if trump had been matched up with either one of them for the longer period of time and not -- and they hadn't divided up the anti-trump vote, that that would have helped one or the other gain momentum and perhaps pick up more tell gates.

both of -- delegates. both of them are mathematicallym excluded from winning the nomination on the first ballot now. i'm talking about cruz and kasich. so the fact of the matter is that this is basically just about denying trump the 1237. but i thought it was -- it just gives trump a great narrative to use throughout the course of the campaign, and i don't think i' gets them very much, i agree with the caller. >> host: jacksonville, florida, line for democrats. josie is with us. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i hear trump say all the time that he's going to be the best job creator ever, but his brand products are made in mexico, china, honduras -- those are thr only ones i can remember. [laughter] i just wonder when he's going to bring those jobs back to the usa. and have you heard any campaign ads about that?

>> host: terry madonna, i'm sure you've seen many campaign ads up your way. >> guest: yeah, i don't, i don't think i've seen one of them. if you're talking -- the caller's talking about inconsistencies in campaigns, that's the rule, not the exception. [laughter] in some cases where you get these inconsistencies. i mean, the point that i've tried to make throughout this campaign is people look at trump, and, you know, oh, he's not a conservative, is he a liberal. you know, everybody trying to decide that he's got positions that are both liberal and conservative. you know, he he angered both sides on the abortion question a few weeks ago, something i thought was virtually impossible to do.ng but the fact of the matter is he's not a conservative, don't think of him as a conservative or a liberal. he's a populist. and he's really getting in touch with the anger and the angst and the frustration that voters feel. he's the consummate showman who knows how to use that. but there's no doubt his campaign lacks specifics as a couple of the callers mentioned

earlier. there's no doubt that it's unclear how he would work with congress should he be elected. i mean, we're dealing in a campaign the likes of which we may not have seen throughout course of american history. >> host: a comment from john in north carolina as we've been talking about the delegate, the bound and unbound delegate system that's gotten so muchsy attention on the republican side in pennsylvania. he writes: so if i vote for candidate x and faceless elector y, then there's a good chance i may have cost candidate x two net delegates. good system. [laughter] michael in illinois, an independent. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i just have a comment. you know, i'm head of a militia group in illinois, 1200 members. we're all veterans. and what we find astounding is how every newscast -- we love nudes in our office -- news be in our offices. all these people like you talk about is how they're going to take election away from everybody who casts a vote and

make their own choice, and our votes don't count. and what you're doing is upsetting -- they don't understand the anger out herepe that we're not accounted for out here. everybody's worried about protecting their money, the election system and all these politicians and all you pundits are only worried about getting on tv and keeping the money train, this campaign financing, going. we're a little astounded that the basic right of every american is the right to vote, yet all of our votes are not going to count this election. and when this election is over, you're going to see riots in the streets because we've had enough. >> host: that's michael in illinois. on the concern about votes not counting and concern about the frustration it could cause, terry madonna. >> guest: yeah. well, as you know, when's the last time we were debating delegate selection in this country? we have gone through a couple of decades of elections in which basically by mid march we know the nominees of the party

because they've wrapped up the nominations in one form or another. either with a sizable lead or with the actual necessary majority. so we haven't had this debate. i mean, as we talk about political historians like myself, you go back to 1976 and ford was short of the majority at the republican convention, and what he had to do, his campaign had to do to get the majority on the first ballot which he succeeded in doing. there's lots of history about that. so what's going on now is we're seeing this disconnect between the voters who cast votes for delegates and the operational theory that's been in existence since literally the beginning of republican party, that it is the delegates that pick the nominee, not the voters. that once there over the course of history, they have, they have literally deferred that choice

to the delegates at the convention.de and because it's been basically wrapped up, there's been no need to get boo this business. -- into this business. 90% of the republican delegates on the first ballot are bound, are bound at least through the first ballot. and that's where you get boo -- into this argument about should the delegates pick the nominee, or should the party voters pick the nominee or whoever voted in the process depending on the state whether they have an open or closed primary. so this is the first time we've had this debate in -- i don't remember the debate taking place at all. the democrats had a big rules, series of rules changes after the chicago convention when hubert humphrey won democratic nomination without entering a single primary. you had the antiwar demonstrations in chicago, the party split apart. richard nixon got elected, and

the democratic party went through a series of rules changes which the republican party somewhat followed. so that's this big disconnect the caller was talking to, and it's very important right now. >> host: just have a minute or two left with terry madonna, franklin and marshall college. phoebe is waiting in pennsylvania, a democrat. can you make it quick? >> caller: oh, yes. thank you very much. if you voting for -- you're voting for donald trump, you're voting against climate change.g there he is in this big old airplane burning up all the gas. and when atlantic city declared bankruptcy, who do you think got hurt? all his, all his work e. and i'm voting for bernie sanders. thank you. >> host: terry madonna, i'll give you the last minute on the storyline tomorrow. you already talked about on the democratic side. what about the republican sidesome. >> guest: well, i guess, i mean, donald trump is going to win the state, you know, depending on the, you know, the turnout and which set of voters, you know, vote.

what we're going to look for is how close will it be, what do we know about the delegate selection. we expect trump to end the day with the five contests somewhere between picking up about 90-100 delegates in total. that's in the five states. the question will be how many delegates does he win, does hey have any momentum, have cruz and kasich been able to halt that momentum, and how many delegates -- it's not so much how many delegates they can pick up, a question of how much -- how many delegates can they deny donald trump. >> host: if you want to see center for politics and public affairs work at franklin and marshall college, it's f and m.edu/politics. we appreciate your time so much this morning. >> guest: my pleasure. thanks for having me. >> and we are live in knightstown, indiana. election night in five states, not including indiana tonight, but senator ted cruz with an eye further down the calendar

holding a rally there. we expect to have live coverage of the texas senator and republican candidate as soon as he gets started. our coverage of the election here on the east coast, pennsylvania, maryland, rhode island, etc., getting underway at 8:30 eastern time on c-span, so tune in. we'll have election results and candidate speeches. ♪ ♪ >> madam secretary, we proudly give 72 of our delegate votes to the next president of the united states -- [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪

[cheers and applause] >> and as we wait for that event in indiana with senator cruz to get under way, we'll take a look at a portion of this morning's "washington journal," a discussion about millennials' views of campaign 2016. >> host: john dell sol by joins us now, polling director at the harvard institute of politics and is with us a day after releasing a new survey of millennials and their views on this. john, this survey might have some republicans concerned not just when they look at this election in 2016, but perhaps looking off into the future. >> guest: i think so. and thanks so much for having me, i don't know, it's a pleasure to -- john, it's a pleasure to follow dr. madonna, we were just there last week conducting some follow-up research on this survey are. yeah.

this is the 29th survey we've conducted since 2000, and i think a year ago i might have been on this program talking about my position that this could be a very good year for republicans regarding the youth vote, that i felt that after two cycles of running against barack obama, somebody who really kind of understood not only how to connect, but how to communicate and empower young people, that i thought that the playing field may be a little bit more level f in 2016. and just a few months before the general election, we see that the net advantage that democrats have generally has gone from fr5 a year ago to +28 now. in fact, when we look at the most likely matchup for november, hillary clinton versus donald trump, we see secretaryrs clinton at this point with a 61-point share of the vote compared to only 25% for the likely republican nominee, donald trump. >> host: and what are you attributing the change to over the course of the past year?

is it the candidates themselves? is it one candidate in t particular? >> guest: you know, i think it's the campaign generally, you know? we conducted, we conduct these polls once a semester. it is a true collaboration between me as the polling director and 25 or 26 undergraduates, you know, from harvard. and a year ago, as i said, there was about a 15-point advantage for democrats. that was before the campaigngn actually kicked off. essentially, what we're seeing is as the campaign, especially the very divisive, i think, republican campaign where it pits one segment against america against another segment of america, we see the republican brand suffer in the eyes of young americans. across the board. for example, the republican brand has particularly suffered among young whites who had a net advantage, who preferred republicans to democrats a year ago. that's not the case anymore.

and also among i don't think ind independent-minded americans between 18-29 who were a toss-up a year ago and now solidly prefer a democrat to win the white house whether it's sanders or clinton. so i think as the campaign has gone on, we see a pretty divisive campaign on the republican side. the unfavorable number for donald trump is in the 70s, and i think that's the main reason why there's such a significant advantage for democrats. but there's a second reason as well. i think the sanders campaign deserves a lot of credit for inspiring a generation of young americans. just not democrats, but generation of americans to think about politics and issues in a different way than they might have even thought was possible. >> host: as we talk about this poll of so-called millennials,k we're splitting up our phoneli lines by age groups. the if you're 18-29, the phone number is 202-748-800. if you're 30-50, 202-748-8001.

over 50, 202-748-8002. you can start calling in now. but i want to pick up on your comments about bernie sanders. why has the oldest candidate in the race this year attracted the most support from the youngest voters?? >> guest: well, it's -- i felt forever that there's no relationship between a candidate's age and a candidate's positions. and young people, you know, pay attention to candidates' positions. they pay attention to kind of their world view and their perspective. so he's the only candidate among the five candidates currently vying for their nominations where a majority of young americans view him favorably. he's the only candidate right now. so it has far less to do about his age and far more to do about the positions he's holding asos well as kind of his overall kind of persona. people generally get excited by the fact that he's so passionate in terms of what he believes in and trying to create kind of a

movement. the idea, i think, of his campaign was less about potentially kind of winning the nomination a year ago and more about putting a variety of issues on the table. and that has really kind of galvanized a significant part of young america. i actually conducted some analysis of the exit poll data just over the course of, you know, the first several months of this campaign. i think he's won close to 70% or so of all votes within the democratic primary and caucus and over about 40% or so of all votes cast between 28-29-year-olds -- 18-29-year-olds across america. >> host: this isn't just top-line numbers, it goes into millennials' views of politics, their understanding of the political situation in this country which leads to the t question from twitter: do young people understand we have $19.2 trillion in debt? any new funding is footed by borrowing, and they will be sent the bill.

do young people get that? >> guest: they get that america is, essentially, kind of the politics of america is broken. in fact, we asked a question in terms of what direction is the nation headed. we've been asking this question all the way back to 2000 when the poll started, and we only have 15% of young americans believing that the country or the nation is headed in the right direction. 85% disagree with thatit statement. about half, 47%, say we're off on the wrong track. to young with people are incredibly concerned about the future of america, and debt is certainly kind of near the top of that list. >> host: let's go to rimes on our line for 30-50-year-olds waiting in phoenix, arizona. reince, good morning. >> caller: hi. a quick comment. i love c-span, and i just wanted to say i guess my generation's generation x, and myself and a lot of my friends, i think we're leaning towards trump because even at our young age, we can

see the system is kind of broken. it's corporate america. i'm kind of leaning towards trump for no other reason than to throw a cog in the machine and is set some different pathss for where we're going. but definitely think the country's heading in the wrong direction.us >> host: how does that compare with the my remember y'alls that -- millennials that you talk tosome. >> guest: in some regards it does compare in terms of heading the wrong direction, but in the other way, again, i don't think we have a lot of support among young americans right now for donald trump.ru so i think young people, millennials and members of gen-x agree kind of big picture things are heading off in the wrong direction, they disagree, i think, on the most likely solution. i mean, what we've really seen in the last year, frankly, is a fairly significant shift in how young people are thinking about

politics and issues. i would argue that when we look back at this campaign in the future, that this campaign specifically the sanders' campaign will be responsible for actually shifting a significant part of this generation to the left. we see movement across four or five very significant issues that we've been tracking for over ten years, we've seenen significant movement just in the last year, three, four, five points on issues like government's responsibility to aid people who are impoverished or to provide health care or to protect against climate change.g these are issues that i believe that the sanders campaign should feel good about, you know, putting into the nationalna dialogue especially with the millennials and moving them, you know, kind of choser aligned with his positions.ho >> host: but were we saying these same sort of things when ron paul was running and libertarian principles and the support that he was getting from young people? phil on twitter says: theyth change like the wind. four and eight years ago they

fawned over ron paul. >> guest: a very small, very, very small number of young americans fawned other ron paul, to be honest with you. he did very well, i think, in new hampshire. i when i remember the exit polls from new hampshire back when he ran, he probably received about half of the youth vote, but ron paul was not a factor in theam campaign at this stage in the campaign. and i really think going back even to 2008, the obama campaign really empowered young people and made them an integral part of that effort. but that was less about ideology and more about kind of hope and optimism in the future, having a voice or a seat at the table where today's campaign from the sanders movement is really abouy ideology, and it's -- i think it feels different to me than both the obama campaign, there were some elements of the paul campaign, libertarian streaks, perhaps. but i think that this is different. i think this is different. >> host: let's go to augusta,

maine, on that line for 18-29-year-olds. tyler is waiting, good morning. >> caller: yes. i just wanted to comment on this guy's, what he's saying young people shifting towards democrats. that may be true in the cities, but i'm kind of thinking that in the country that probably more are shifting towards libertarianism. or even the republican party. and basically, what we've seen is that a lot of people especially like in my community, a lot of the people that are going more toward bernie i find tend to actually have drug problems o, or they tend to bebe more dependent on state and/ord local government. and we see that there's not a growth in any of these small communities, especially here in new england. i mean, in massachusetts i know people down there, and they're pretty craze i about trump right now -- crazy about trump right now. and right here in maine it's kind of portland and the southern area, they're more left wing. but you're starting to see that a lot of people are getting a t little upset about the kind of

slow growth in some of these rural areas around here. >> host: john della volpe. >> guest: i think tyler raises some good points. i think he's absolutely right about the concern about small, about slow growth. i'll note that a survey that we released in the past, this past fall we asked the question inspired by a town meeting that we conducted on a campus at harvard about the american dream. we asked young americans do you believe for you personally the american dream is alive or dead? and about half of young americans believed for them the american dream was dead. so that's the element of the electorate, the significance. half of young americans -- the largest generation in the history of america -- half of those folks believe the american dream is dead. the folks who are more pessimistic about america are more actually going to align with donald trump on the right and bernie sanders on the left. so that's an incredibly

important thing to understand as we think about this election. i disagree, however, that there are large numbers of young people flocking to donald trump. we just don't see it in the numbers. again, he actually underperforms among, he underperforms among most traditional republican constituents. for example, when we look at the 18 to 29-year-olds in our survey who four years ago voted for mitt romney, only 60% of those folks indicate they'll vote for donald trump if he runs against hillary clinton. you actually have a minority, only 42% of kasich supporters say they would vote for trump. 69% of cruz voters say they'll vote for trump. so, you know, again, a year ago i thought that the future was fairly bright, that republicans would not win this constituency but could be more competitive. i'm much more pessimistic about that where i sit here today. >> host: for the next half hour or phone lines are split up

differently. if you're 18-29, 202-748-8000. if you are 30-50, 202-748-8001. if you're over 50, the phone number's 202-748-8002. we're talking with john della volpe about this poll that came out yesterday about millennials, their views on candidates, this election cycle and politics. nicklaus is waiting in fulton, maryland, 18 to 29-year-olds. good morning. >> caller: hi, good morning. i just wanted to call in to comment about the support for donald trump. the caller a couple of minutese ago said he wanted to vote for trump because it would be throwing a cog into the political machine. as a millennial, i can totally understand that idea, and i think it's the same reason that a lot of my peers are drawn to bernie sanders. however, i really think donald trump and the way he comports himself is disgraceful, and i would urge people against voting for him and to actually look at

his character and his politicsar when they're deciding whether or not to vote for him. >> host: john, on millennials looking at character. >> guest: i think that's the first, i think that's absolutely the first step. i think before -- [audio difficulty] in some respectses it's still early in terms of the number of people paying attention to, you know, the general election campaign. we're still, obviously, you know, trying to figure out the convention process, etc. but i have believed for a long time especially with youngg people that they need to seek kind of a connection with a candidate first before they can actually think about particular issues. and frankly, i think that's what's the current challenge with trump. young people seek a candidate when we ask associated with who they're interested in voting for president, they tell us integrity, they tell us willing to compromise, authenticity. trump has some of thosestics characteristics, but others, i think, are turning off young

people, especially the divisiveness around his comments about muslim, his comments about walls and those sorts of things. a majority of young people do not agree with those, and i think it's hurting him. again, the fact that his unfavorable rating is over 70, i think it's 71, 72%, would be a concern. and to me, i think that's about character and not necessarily about a particular, you know, policy initiative. in fact, he's actually, you know, a majority of republicans, a majority of young republicanss hold an unfavorable view of him now. so, you know, if you're thinking about republican, you need to actually kind of create a better relationship within the party first before we can think about expanding to independents and perhaps conservative democrats. >> host: george is on that line for those over 50 years old in mollton, alabama. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, sir. >> caller: well, i just want to

pass this little thought along. i've heard several conversations, and one of them that comes up is the delegates and the people.e well, the people elected the delegates, right? didn't we put them people in power, and then they turn around and say, well, this is what the people want. apparently, that's not what's been happening, and there's not much of a debate when you sit back and see that somebody that gets all of the people's votes doesn't get elected. p doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that the people are not putting our politicians in place of power. the politicians are doing that. and if you want something to change in this country, you havt to change the system. and i'm a democrat, but i'm not voting democrat this year because i just don't like the road that they're going down. >> host: that's george in alabama.no let's go, stay on that line for those over 50, rich is in davis, west virginia. rich, good morning. rich, you with us? >> caller: yes -- >> host: oh, sorry, rich. thought you weren't there.

kimberly is in houston, texas. good morning, you're on the "washington journal." >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, kimberly. >> caller: i just wanted to say i have tree children that are my eleven -- three children that are millennials, and all of them are backing trump along with myself. and i just feel like the last caller said it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the system is broken, that we are not actually doing anything, and i feel that more americans need to get out there and be a citizen and vote. a lot of my friends don't even want to vote because they don'tb think their vote counts. and it takes the citizens toak make a change in america. >> host: kimberly, thanks for the call from houston, texas. john della volpe, on voter participation why do young people consistently fall below other age groups in actually going to the polls on election day? >> guest: i think a couple

reasons, one of which the caller just mentioned in terms of they don't think that their vote matters. i remember when we started this project back in 2000 when we asked those questions, we continue to ask questions about voter participation to try to identify ways to encourage more participation. essentially, because the answer we get back when we ask it a variety of different ways is young people need to see, need to feel like there's a tangiblet difference, tangible difference between one candidate and another candidate. i think in this campaign we'll see that, i think there's an opportunity to encourage people to participate. but only if the candidates really kind of take a part to empower more people. just because young people may not participate as voters as much as members of other generations, i do want to note that they care deeply about their country, they care deeply about the community. they volunteer in very, very significant numbers. so young people are

participating every day in civic life to make their country and the community better, but i do think that -- and i do hope that the campaigns will also kind of begin to kind of encourage participation among young people at this stage. we asked a number, we asked all young americans in our survey -- again, 3100 interviews, we conducted them in english as well as in splish -- and i believe the numb was 50% of young people said they will definitely vote. the states in which obama, you know, targeted young people, we saw participation increase. but it's a combination, i think, of everybody's responsibility to encourage and empower more youth participation at the polls. it's an incredibly important year, 2016. >> host: red bluffs, california, is next on our line for 30 to 50-year-olds. it's ken, good morning. >> caller: morning. >> host: go ahead, ken. >> caller: i'd like to ask the guy from harvard do you think

the fact that young people are going towards the democrats has anything to do with the fact that over 50% of our college professors are either socialist or marxist? [laughter] >> guest: i'm not familiar with that statistic. i think it has far less to doo with, you know, professors on college campuses, frankly, and much more to do with the sanders campaign right now and with the principles of the democratic party during this campaign. you know, i spend a lot of time on college campuses, just not harvard, but the university of kansas, i was at franklin marshall, a lot of our sister colleges over the course of the last year, and young people are really excited to talk about politics in a new way and think about politics differently and have debates, etc. so it has, i think we're not giving young people credit if we think that they're being i somehow brainwashed by some socialist or marxist professor. i don't think that's the case. >> host: on the issue of

socialism, one finding from the poll, here's one of the charts from the poll that we can show our viewers, the majority of 18 to 29-year-olds reject both socialism and capitalism. 16% identify as socialists, just 19% identify as capitalists. to the question when it was asked which of the following do you support for 18 to 34-year-olds when you asked, socialism,33% said they support, 38% support capitalism. when it comes to those 65 and older, the finding was just 7% supported socialism, 60% said they support capitalism. >> guest: yeah. so let's talk about that nor -- for a second. again, this is a collaboration i have with to couple dozenen students at harvard, and one student, jeff from oregon -- i think maybe he's a sophomore or junior from harvard -- wased really interested in trying to measure whether or not young people kind of associate with, you know, call themselves a capitalist or a socialist. we added other labels as well,

like feminist. and what we found was a couple things. one is that young people really don't like any label, you know? so very few people, as you indicated, feel comfortable calling themselves a socialist or a captain -- capitalist. but a majority of young people today indicated they do not support capitalism. that's, frankly, one of the most significant findings in this survey for many, many years. in fact, i did two things once i saw that number. the fist thing we did was we expanded the poll for the first time ever, as you noted, and asked people over the age of 30 as well. we conducted a separate survey. we found that until you get over the age of 50, there's not a lot of support for capitalism. in fact, once you get over 50, a majority of people in america do, tell us they do not support capitalism.t so that's significant. i actually went back to a college campus, conducted a focus group of about a dozen or

so students last week in lancaster, franklin and marshall college, and what i learned was that it's a capitalism that's practiced today that's something that's untenable for young americans. they tell me that it provides opportunities not for even, but for a chosen few, that the chosen few know how to manipulate the system that leaves too many people behind and, essentially, those are the two or three main reasons that capitalism is not supported by members of the generation. again, largest engeneration in the history of america.hi >> host: about 20 minutes left with john della volpe of the harvard institute of politics. pauline is waiting on the line for those over 50, she's from vienna, virginia. good morning. >> caller: good morning. just on the last note that you were mentioning, federal christianity, you know, help th- neighbor as yourself if that's the way they want to look at it instead of -- [audio difficulty] back in the early 1900s.

but the reason i was calling with respect to the millennials and their predicament with, you know, feeling that the american dream is gone, so first we had automation in software, and a that's eradicated jobs. i read recently that i think it was 4,000 banking jobs will be eliminated due to robotics. so as they start incorporating robotics into the workplace and moving up the job chain into white collar jobs, higher up, not to mention the fact that certain white collar jobs are shifting overseas, what can politicians do anyway to thwart development, and where does that leave these young people looking for jobs that will allow them to start a life? >> host: john della vo to lpe. >> guest: yeah, it's not even the question of just jobs, it's the question of jobs plus debt.o i've spoken to a lot of young people. when we talk about the american dream, i think they have a fairly, you know, they don't have kind of grand plans in terms of their definition of the american dream. it's really the ability to kind

of do what they want, pursue kind of their version of the american dream. i spoke to somebody last week on a college campus, and their dream after attending college for four years was to actually serve the prick in some -- the public in some kind of public service. unfortunately, like a lot of other people, there are tens of millions of people who wouldot like to pursue that kind of career, but they feel like they can't because of the load of student debt that they have after college. so it's not just that, it's a combination of jobs shifting overseas and shifting out from one sector to another. if you take this in combination with the cost of college and the debt really has placed them in kind of a significant burden on young americans. >> host: let's go to sam on that line for those 30 to 50 years of age. wilmington, delaware. sam, good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you? >> host: good, sam. go ahead. >> caller: i mean, i really think the third line should be 45 and over.

[laughter] there are those who cling to this idealism of the american dream. that never really existed. and they're the same people who will now retire and keep those who are lower than 45 still waiting for their place in management and decision making. >> host: sam, could i ask you, how do you define the american dream, sam? ing. >> caller: i define the american dream as opportunity. you know, there are these people who think of back in the days and back in the days, i mean, this is america. it's about progression. the syrian refugee who is a doctor wants to come to america, you know, bring them. they add to the productivity -- i can't even speak anymore -- of america, you know? age group think those in my about the global world. we think differently than the people who are 45 years old who somehow hang to the past.

the jobs that have been lost the jobs being lost, being so-called lost, these are not jobs we want. we don't want to be stuck in factory working from 9:00 to 10:00. we want to shift from theav service sector. we have to adam to a new world. no use trying to bring back old jobs, why don't you teach younger people how to become programmers? how to become, you know, doctors, whatever? i don't depend on politician to change the economic sector because they can not. >> host: john dell volpe, couple issues there. >> guest: he is right on in terms of his definition of the american dream. we did a lot of research on what common theme ties everyone together in america. i think the caller was dead on when he talks about opportunity. i talk to people in dozens of

cities in america and we ask what makes america different, exceptional, from all other countries out there the idea of opportunity still exist. for some they feel like it is slipping away. that is the essence of the definition of the american dreah from the young people i've spoken with recently. kind of part one. >> host: comment from karen ontw twitter, who says, most younger people i talk to like sanders. they see him as more genuine than clinton. weaver talking about -- we're talking about the harvard institute of politics latest polls on millenials. check it out at harvard edu. john della volpe is heading that there. linda, good morning.no >> caller: good morning. >> host: to ahead, lynn. >> caller: i called in to not disagree more with della volpe.

harvard is very liberal institution and he is affiliated with harvard and i'm sure if you quizzed him, who he was going to vote for in the upcoming election it would be either for hillary or mr. sanders.. my comment is however though, to -- >> host: let's john tell about his methodology and harvardpo institute of polling polls. give him a chance to respond. gest thank you very much, yes. i don't know exactly where to start, other than than, wewe spt conducted this for 16 years. we spent yesterday in washington, d.c. with two students, one student republican, one student democrat. everything we do, we take incredibly seriously in terms of sharing information as we see it in a non-partisan way. you know, i think frankly kind of the best way to think aboutso that is, some cycles, republicans feel concern about our data. other cycles democrats do. but i've been saying for quite a

while frankly that this race among the youth vote was the republicans opportunity to take fuller advantage of. you know, that we tracked the youth vote back until 2000. back in 2004, actually, young people were pretty much kind of in the mix, 45% of them voted for george w. bush but republicans had taken a big step back two cycles after that. i've been saying for some time now, i thought this could be much more competitive year for republicans. has nothing to do with way innit which i vote but has everything to do which the way 18 to 29-year-olds answer 147 questions in the survey we in released yesterday. >> host: talk to another 18 to 29-year-old. anna in baltimore, maryland. good morning. >> caller: you talk about millenials reject labels. i think anecdotally agree with that. what about the debate of open

primaries? so -- >> host: you understand the question? anna was asking about the question about open primaries. anna, do you want to expand on your question? >> caller: a lot of peers in the millenial generation will not register democrat or republican. they often can not vote in primaries because of that rejection of labels. >> guest: that is key concern. there are more young people that want to participate that could actually participate in the cycle as you said. in several states you need toch change your registration not days or weeks but month inwe advance. that's right. we've seen a significant, you know, we did some analysis actually of all the exit polls. i indicated earlier that sanders has won 40% of all the votes cast among young people in america this cycle, as best as we can figure that out based on quality of the exit polls.

secretary clinton received abou 16%. so you have, you know 55% of ald votes cast are cast for democrae candidates. 45% for republicans. i think that number would actually increase in favor of democrats if we had more open primaries but that hasn't been the case. >> host: let's go to armando, connecticut, on line for 30 to 50-year-olds. did i get the name of the city right? >> caller: you got the name of the city right. >> host: go ahead. >> caller: thank you c-span for the great programing. thank you, dr. della volpe. i have a quick comment and question. the quick comment around i'm so refreshed to hear millenials are starting to reject label, right? we really as a country need to take more practical look at our problems. if you think about what unites us, we talk about searching for things that unite us, socialist, conservative, libertarian or progressive.

you're probably aligned with democratic principles, you're probably aligned with infrastructure investment. right? i'm a republican. when i look at the country i think that the things that distinguish us from developing nations is the investment that we had in our infrastructure. port, airports roads. when you look at germany denmark that is how they compete with southern europe. japan, taiwan, that is how they compete with southeast asian countries. i wonder whether, this is partle of the question, whether people are starting to see, right, our human resource, our people as part of that infrastructure investment and whether that's leading people from all different stripes towards whatnc bernie sanders in his message is? and you know, basically i'llpeoe stop right there. that is in effect my question. are people starting to recognize that is an important area of investment. treat it that way? >> host: john della volpe.

>> guest: thanks for the great question and i think that is the case. i will cite a couple reasons whp i think that is the case. one of which young people always tell us when we ask follow-up question in terms of what the top two or three issues are, regardless how we ask it, we see education clear, kind ofuc typically in the top tier of issues. education not only defined as you know, college education and trying to deal with student debt but we had focus on k-12 education. in fact when we asked the question in this survey, talked about education what deserves more priority, k-12 or higher ed, we had almost 2/3, 65% of young americans say investment in k-12 education. they understand frankly thehe quality of their education generally is very, very good and satisfactory. 70% plus of most demographic groups within the 18 to 29-year-old cohort believe they had satisfactory education through that point in life.

but we asked them how, what they, what their advice to further improve k-12. another caller called up, mentioned some, this a little bit earlier in terms of world technology, stem training, including more stem-based curriculum in grammar schools, middle schools, high schools. was the most significant thing young people would help improve education in the united states followed by lower class sizes increasing teacher pay. >> host: for those listening on the radio can see our screen, 52% said there should be more emphasis on stem through the k-12 level. smaller class sizes 50% said that increasings teacher pay, 46%. free pre k 35%. job performance, 34%.th increasing school choice, 33%. said would be most effective improving k-12 public education system, and 32 said

standardizing curriculum across states. go to butler, kentucky, next where richie is waiting on line over 50. richie, good morning. >> caller: yes, sir, i lived through the change we went through america, especially college people. they only can go through technology today where years ago they could get get out of colle, they could be managers of steel plants or managers of automobile factories where cars would being manufactured. what we've done, what we'vegr done, stick a whole group of people, now let's to to college. used to be work hard and get ahead. bo to college to get ahead. i tell you people, a man at 69 years old. i'm driving 44,000-dollar pickup truck. i got $22,000 ford car in my driveway. i have a float house. i have house on a acre of land and you know, i didn't even learn how to read and write, but today, i went down to my local school to get a job as school

bus monitor. they told me, richie, you have to go back to school to get high school diploma to learn how to put a child on to a school bus, i drove a tractor-trailer truck for 36 years across this highway. you people put a piece of paper in between a person with intelligence against a piece of paper. you know, that is what happened to our country. we shipped all these jobs overseas. you know, it is american people wanted cheap stuff, i know i used to tell people in the steel plant, that will not be my job. his job is gone. wound up being everybody's job. college kids either have to go into high-tech jobs or nothing. there is no other jobs left. there are no factories. >> host: thanks for sharing your story. john dell volpe, your thoughts on that and need for college education these days? >> guest: i appreciate richie's story in terms of the american dream.

that is the american dream. he used his talent to make himself, sound like a great life, right? which is the opportunity that should exist in this country. i will say that over, we spent a lot of time in this research ana other research trying to understand the pathway to b college and in one of the greatest barriers when we talk to young people who are in community colleges, we ask them, you know, why aren't you pursuing necessarily a four-year degree? 90% of the those folks say cost, right? there are millions of youngng people who want to pursue higher education, who want to pursue college but they simply can't afford it. therefore kind of locked out of the work place. so you know, i generally could agree with a lot of points that richie from kentucky made. >> host: carley in austin, texas. line for 30 to 50-year-olds. you're on the line with john della volpe with harvard institute of politics. >> caller: thank you very much

for the time. hi, john. my ultimate focus here on theig discussions and i see really nationally, is our biggest problem with our limited actual understanding of the world through, through just a narrow amount of information. of course we have this wonderful station here but i married into a family. third generation submariner. my grandfather built hydroelectric plant in buffalois for niagra falls.me we had families with harley shots and we're epitome of the american dream. before i left my environment and started traveling the world ful time, kids have a very narrow understanding, of course i was always into the political standing of standing up for what i believe in but how do youaving feel, john, about the young today not actually having the

chance to go out and experience the world? of course having such a political profound viewpoint on the world itself? i >> host: harley, thanks for the question. john della volpe. >> guest: i do think when we talk about the american dream, the idea of opportunity that comes up but flexibility. young people do want i think kind experience the world. and they are interested in learning about other cultures. frankly i think that is part of the reason we see the kind of overall level of support for capitalism so low is that they are kind of tuning into how they see kind of other cultures, other economy, other political structures around the world. now they aren't necessarily seeing perfect models out there but they do read and i thinknk they do travel, i think they do believe that i think, you know, their choice would be some sort of maybe hybrid system. so young people do want the opportunity, many of them do to

kind of experience the world but again it is difficult when you graduate from college or try to even attend college with debt and those sorts of things. so i do think young people today, many consider themselves to be kind of global citizens. i think that's good thing. i think more opportunity foror young people to explore those things would beter risk for everybody. >> host: one more millenial. glen is waiting for in phoenix,n arizona, 18 to 29-year-olds. glen, can you make it quick? >> caller: yes, sir. i wanted to point out the fact that just because a lot of millenials are going away from the republican party and the old conservative standards it doesn't necessarily mean thatt they're all flocking to the ar democratic party. and, a lot of the liberal ideals that are upholding there. because a lot of people like me, i consider myself something of a progressive independent because

i do understand that need to bee fiscally conservative and notnoy give everything away because i'm a 27-year-old roofer, non-union. i don't feel like the democratic party is necessarily the best one to help me. >> host: thanks for the call. john dell have volpe in thes last 30 seconds or so. >> guest: that is good point. typically plurality of young people call themself independents. we see the number he eclipsed by democrats, part one. reality two major candidates for office likely to be hillary clinton and donald trump. those are the two choices. when we asked young americans choice a or choice b, we see 61% supporting hillary clinton if she is on the ballot in november. 25% the republican. if there are other candidates, you know that could change.g i do think there is strong independent streak that still exists.s, i think that democrats

especially hillary clinton, if she is nominee, really, needs to work to convey principles of her campaign and her vision ofof the vo america to this electorate if she hopes to secure those votes. >> host: check out the new poll from harvard institute of politics. john della volpe is the director of polling there. thanks so much for your time this morning. >> thanks for having me, appreciate it.

>> today senator michael bennet of colorado spoke about the ongoing stalemate over president obama's supreme court nominee merrick garland. no hearings scheduled on the nomination with republican leaders saying they will leave the seat straight can't until the next president is sworn in in january. this is ten minutes. >> this is longer than it took the senate to confirm justice sandra day o'connor in 1981. in fact, 75% of all supreme

court justices have been confirmed within 31 days. but today, 40 days after the me nomination, many senators haven't even extended judgeser o garland the simple courtesy of a meeting and we don't seem any closer to holding a hearing. the majority's refusal to hold a vote is without precedent, and majority has cited none. instead the majority is trying to shift the blame, incredibly the chairman of the judiciarys, committee recently came to the floor to blame of all people, not other senators, not other politicians, but the chief death, america for politicizing the court. 10 days before justice scalia's death the chief justice said, quote, the process is not functioning very well. that turns out to be something

of an understatement, mr. president.han chief justice went on and said, the process is being used for something other than insuring hp the qualifications of the nominees. again he wasn't referring to what is going on now in the senate. this happened before justice scalia passed away. there was no way that the chief justice was going to know that there was going to be a vacancy. he continued, supreme court justices don't work as democrats or republicans. i think it is a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmmation process. his words struck me and c particularly given what's gone on since as candid expression for his concern for the court as an institution but this concern apparently upset the chairman of the judiciary committee. he took to the floor. b he came down here to say that the chief justice, quote, the

chief justice has it exactly backwards. the confirmation process doesn't make the justices appear political. he said, quote the confirmation process has gotten politicalnd precisely because the court has drifted from the constitutional text and rendered decisions based instead on policy preferences.pr it is absolutely breathtaking, mr. president. that the chief justice would be criticized for quote, drifting from the constitutional text when for the past 10 weeks the majority has drifted from article ii, section 2, clause 2, which sets out in very clear mas terms, sets out our constitutional responsibility to advise and consent. and worse, the majority's drift isn't even about policy. it is about politics. it is about rolling the dice on an election, instead of

following the plain text of the constitution. this is absolutely unprecedented in the history of the united states senate. throughout our history the senate has confirmed 17 nominees in presidential election years to serve on the supreme court. the last of these was justice kennedy in 1988. in the last 100 years -- i should say, when the president made this nomination, he had more than 340 days left in his term. we're talking about almost a quarter of the president's terma so that's a lot more time than most of these seventeen justices were before the senate. in the last 100 years, every nominee to the, to a supreme court vacancy that did not withdraw and a couple did, received a timely hearing and ad vote. on average, the senate has begue hearings within 40 days of the

president's nomination and voted to confirm 70 days after the president's nomination.ere there is no excuse for not holding a hearing and a vote. the plain language of the that' constitution, if that is what we're going to pay attention toe in this chamber, if that is what we're going to argue for, originalism, strict constructionism, the plain language is clear and there is a reason why no senate has ever had the audacity to do what this senate is doing right nowta because of that clear that mission is. there is no one else to do it. the constitution says the senate shall advice and consent. doesn't say the house of representatives will have a role.an doesn't say let the people decide. they say this is the senate's job and we should do our job as every senate has between now ang the founding of the country. cod including the senate was there when george washington was there. three of those 17 appointments

were confirmed by a senate that actually contained people who had been at constitutional agr convention. and consistent with their understanding of what theay founders had agreed to. vote. had a vote on the floor of the senate. i'm not saying how people should vote. they should vote their conscience. but we should have a vote. american people expect us to do our job. finally, mr. president, let me say a word about the president's nominee. i want to be clear that i believe there should be hearings.k i think we should go through hearings, to establish the qualifications of the nominee. i think that is really important and the point that i'm making about having this vote does not have to do with whom the president nominated. it has to do with our institutional responsibility. it has to do with the rule of law. the image we want to project to our country and overseas. let me say a word about the president's nominee.

merrick garland is honored and accomplished judge. two weeks ago i had therd and opportunity to meet with him and learn about his judicial record and his philosophy. i have known chief judge garland for 20 years. i actually worked for him at the justice department when we both worked for the deputy attorney general for the united states. i was fresh out of law school but even then judge garland's you humility and work ethic, commitment to the rule of law inspired me, continues to inspire me. our meeting last week confirmed for me what i already know. judge garland is an intelligent and pragmatic judge who is extraordinarily well-qualified to serve on the supreme court. and i've wondered,mply mr. president, whether it's for that reason that the majority is not holding hearings, instead of simply holding the hearings and then voting against judge garland which is their prerogative. why not hold hearings?

maybe they know that the american people, given an opportunity to hear directly from judge garland, would see that he is precisely the type of judge who should serve on the court. come a judicial, a vacancy on the supreme court is a rare thing. it doesn't come around veryhere often. and, for those of us in this country, whether we're in the senate and whether we're in a classroom somewhere today, thosr vacancies and those hearings and those debates on the floor present an unparalleled opportunity, a remarkable opportune for the american people to engage in a debate about the court, about the constitution, about all kinds of issues that the court will consider. that is what these hearings are about. that is what could be going onss this summer.

in this presidential election year. we could have a discussion about where we want to head as a country. we're not having it. we're not having it because of this unprecedented action. and because of what the majority has done here, without saying we're not going to meet with the candidate, nominee, we're not going to hold a hearing. they're denying him the opportunity to make his case, to the american people. and in the meantime, this is really critical, the court willd continue to be impaired, a impaired. that is the word that justice scalia himself used when he was asked to recuse himself from a case involving dick cheney, the then president of the united states. he was asked in that case, we should have a presumption of w recusal. and justice scalia's answer to that was, maybe, maybe if i were on the court of appeals.

because if i were on the court of appeals there would be somebody to replace me. but that is not how it works on the supreme court. the supreme court, when you have a vacancy, there are eight justices. there is nobody to fill in. there is nobody to become the ninth justice. and the court he side would therefore be impaired. action being taken right now threatens to impair the supreme court not for one session of ths court but for two sessions of the court, before there is another election. in fact for the third time, since justice scalia's death the supreme court could not resolve a dispute because of a 4-4 split. longer vacancy remains, more uncertainty and confusion the american people will suffer. two terms of the court. as i said will be jeopardized by petty politics. i know and believe, me, there president, i know, it has become fashionable for washington to tear down rather than to work to

improve the democratic institutions that generations of americans have built. but to impair so calf -- cavalierly the judicial branch government. time for the senate to do its job as every senate before has done. w i'm not asking my colleagues toc support judge garland's nomination.ti that is a matter of conscience for each of us. but we must fulfill our basic constitutional obligation of o holding a hearing and a vote. this is literally, because it is in the cons stewing, no one else granted this power, this is body literally the least we can do, to demonstrate that we are a legislative body that functions as the constitution requires. we certainly have plenty of time and in view of that if by contrast we leave for our

scheduled seven weeks of summer vacation, something that is not enshrined in the constitution, but schedule set by the senate, if we leave for our scheduled seven weeks of summer vacation, without having fulfilled our responsibility, the american people should demand that wet return to washington and do our job. it is pastime for my colleagues to meet with judge garland. to hold hearings on his record and to give the american people an up-or-down vote on this judicial vacancy. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. >> tonight on c-span2 senators patrick leahy and orrin hatch on the senate's role in supreme court nominations. then debate between u.s. senate candidates from florida. senate armed services committee holds hearings on software glitches that delayed development of the f-35 joint strike fighter.