the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. a senator: i 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 oregon. mr. merkley: i ask that my intern sierra brumett be acodded floor privileges for the balance of the day. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: thank you. i ask unanimous consent that i am able to use a visual aid in the speech. the presidin the presiding officer: without objection. america thank you so much. the most. mr. merkley: thank you so much. the most important words in our constitution are the first three words, "we the people." our founders when they were crafting the constitution put those words in oversized print so that hundreds of years later citizens across this nation could remember that this is what our constitution is all about, "we the people." it is not "we the powerful." it is not "we the privileged."

it is "we the people." and it is president jefferson who said that we can only claim to be a republic to the degree that the decisions of our government reflect the will of the people. and he went on to say that the only way that our government will make decisions that reflect the will of the people is if the people have an equal voice. and by that he meant the example of the town square, where each individual can stand up and make their position known before a vote is held on who you're going to elect and so on and so forth. but today we have a challenge, and the challenge is that the town commons is now television and radio and the web and, unfortunately, those are not free the way the town center was, the town square was in jefferson's age. and that means that the roll of money can change everything. unfortunately, we've had a couple of supreme court

decisions that do not do due accord to the very heart of our constitution, because they have said essentially, even though the commons is for sale, we are going to allow a few people with billions of dollars, corporations with billions of dollars, to buy up the town square and use the equivalent of a megaphone sound system to drown out the voice of the people. that's the opposite of what "we the people" is all about. that's the opposite of what our constitution was all about. and so periodically i am going to be coming to this floor and talking about a variety of issues that really are relevant to the jefferson vision that we can only be a republic to the degree that our decisions reflect the will of the people. because the issue i'm going to talk to today is an issue that democrats and republicans and independents overwhelmingly

support, and that is that on their food they get accurate information about whether or not that food has been genetically modified. this is an issue i'm raising today because in a few months, july 1, vermont has a how that is going to require -- has a law that is going to require the labeling on packages of genetically modified ingredients. and that has led to a conversation here in this chamber about whether we at the federal level should allow that to happen. should we allow vermont to make this requirement? because there are a lot of food producers that say, you know, we really don't want the people to know about the details of their food. well, i think that americans across this country disagree. as i mentioned, the overwhelming majority support the right to know.

now, the argument is made, well, but we can't allow state after state or county off county to have conflicting standards about what we put onto foods. that would be impossible for interstate commerce. and that is a fair point. how can a food manufacturer accommodate multitudinous requirements that vary from county to doints or state to state in and so that's a fair case, if there was risk of being multiple standards. at this point there isn't. only one state -- only one state has passed a standard that's going into effect. but just as we've seen with other policies across this nation, something that one state tries, another might say yes, let's do that but do a slightly different version. so there is a legitimate concern about conflicting -- not an immediate concern, not something that would cause this chamber to act today. but indeed if other

jurisdictions say they would like to have the same type of information available to their citizens who also overwhelmingly want that information, then you have the potential, and that is a legitimate cause for us to discuss here. but here is the thing: if you're going to take away the ability of cities and counties and states to respond to the citizens' desire to know about whether there are g.m.o. -- genetically modified -- ingredients in their food, if you are to going to away, then you have to replace it with a national standard that answer that question. if you fail to do so, you're simply denying the right to know to citizens across that country, and that is really just wrong. there's name for the bill of denying americans the right to know, and it is called the dark act -- the acronym, "deny americans the right to know."

and it is aappropriate it be called the dark act because it is all about keeping consumers in the dark on something they would like to know. now, there are many people here who say, well, we know better than the consumers. they want to know, but we don't want them to know because -- and thrtion there's no reason they d know because why would they have any concern if they knew all the facts? is that really our decision to make is this i -- is that our decision tpo make? we've decided to label food and let them decide whether they want salt in their food. we decided to put calories on the package. some people want more calories or less calories but they have the right to know. so on and so forth, it's simply consumer right to know and make choices accordingly. now, this conversation is not about whether g.m.o. food is safe to eat. person after person has come to this floor and said it's safe to

eat. there's no proven impact on citizens. therefore, it's legitimate to strip citizens of the right to know. there's lots of ingredients we put on to packages that have no known carcinogenic effect but citizens want the full list and that's what we provided them. some want to know individual pieces of that story. but let's turn back to this question really about the fact that g.m.o.'s themselves, genetically modified plants, are not substantially in one camp or another, wonderful or terrible. there's a whole mixture. there's all kinds of genetic modifications that have taken place. for example, this chart shows golden rice. golden rice has been modified to have vitamin a, and in parts of the world where there's a vitamin a deficiency, this has been very beneficial.

or let's turn to carrot cells. carrots, some carrot cells have been modified to provide treatment for gao kher's disease, a metbolic disease where it helps rid the body of fatty substances. people are very much happy that we have a way to address that. or sweet potatoes. researchers have been developing sweet potatoes that withstand multiple viral infections commonly encountered in southern africa, and that enables sweet potatoes to be grown and be part of the subsistence, not quite the word, but a substantial source of food in that region. but there's also genetic modifications that cause concerns. most genetically modified crops born in the u.s. have been

offered to refer resistence to a chemical known as glyphosate. it has gone up dramatically from 1994 through the current time where you can see the huge increase in the application of this wheat killer. we've had a corresponding general depletion of the monarch butterfly in regions where glyphosate is used. that is a concern. monarchs have been crashing and that's a concern to folks. or look and think about the runoff. if you put billions of gallons of weed killer on crops, billions of gallons running into the waterways, it has an impact on the waterways. it changes the makeup of the waterways because of the weed killer killing various organisms

within the streams. our waterways with herbicides can have a negative impact on fish and microorganisms. there is also a challenge in which plants evolve, and they evolve in response to the application of glyphosate, so you can end up with what are called super weed, weeds that have been in the presence of these herbicides so often the natural mutations cause the weeds involved to become super weeds. we've had the same problem with these little bugs here, corn-destroying rootworms. they have been evolving to be resistent to the pesticide that is placed into the plant cell by genetic modification. so in short, this competing considerations to balance. some benefits and some concerns, and some people reached the conclusion that they are very

comfortable consuming genetically modified foods and other individuals can reach a different equally justifiable conclusion that they have concerns and want to know more about the specific types of modifications. and the way they find out is because they get an alert on the package that there are g.m.o. ingredients and then they can look up the details on the web site of the company involved. that's why labeling matters. it's an alert to the citizen so they can gain more information and decide if they are comfortable or uncomfortable. well, what we have seen are companies that are starting to say because we value the relationship with our customers, because our company believes in having high integrity in that relationship, we do not want to be part of the dark movement, the deny americans' right to know movement. we want to be part of the movement that says if our consumers want to know, we're going to give them that

information. now, there are a variety of companies that have announced they're going to provide that information on their foods. one of them is the mars company. here i have a package of m&m's. and right on the package, they are now disclosing, they have a phrase on here. and i know it would be impossible to read this so we have enlarged this a bit, partially produced with genetic engineering. so they give a heads up on every package of m&m's across the country. they're giving a heads up to consumers, and if they want to know more about the details, they can contact mars to find out about the details. that's integrity. that's honoring citizens who have a desire to know what's in their food. campbell's soups, we've all grown up seeing the wonderful pictures of campbell's so*ups in

advertisements and the warm, hearty meal. the taupe may -- the tomato super, when i was sick as a child i looked forward to that campbell's tomato soup. they said we are not going to be part of the deny americans' right to know movement. we are not going to be on the side of the dark. we're going to be on the side of information that our citizens desire to have. so they are putting labels on their products. and a number of companies are following suit in honor of protecting the consumers' right to know. that is certainly commendable, and i commend the companies who do not feel like they're trying to mislead or hide from their consumers. but in fact support the integrity of the relationship with those who buy their products. some of the companies that have done this are conagra, general

mills, kellogg. i mentioned mars. they have already begun to label their products in anticipation of vermont's july 1 requirement. now, vermont has a six-month grace period. again, it's not just around the corner, but the beginning period that companies have been asked to meet is july 1. and because companies are tphoul putting it on -- now putting it on their packages they're discovering there is nothing scary to consumers about it. just like anything else on the ingredients package is information that different consumers can evaluate when it matters to their life. now, there is a group of senators who have said they do want to be part of the dark act, deny americans' right to know. they said we'll have a voluntary labeling plan nationally. we will take away states rights to put information on the package and replace it with a

voluntary request for companies to disclose. that is no justification for taking away the ability of states to require what consumers want, which is not a voluntary disclosure. it would be a required disclosure. if a state wants to do that, they should be honored. if we're going to take away that right, we need to do a replacement they national level. well, now, part of this movement, this deny americans the right to know movement, this dark act, they said, well, you know what, we're willing to suggest that companies put a barcode on their product, and consumers can scan that code or they can put a quick response computer code. it's the square code with all the little squares on it, something like what you have on an airline ticket. we can put this quick response code on. and if somebody wants to know what's in our product, they can scan it with their smartphone and look it up on our web site. that is not a consumer-friendly

label. that is a scam. consumers don't all have a smartphone. consumers don't all have a digital plan that allows them to scan something in that fashion. they don't all have a camera -- a phone with a camera on it. and we're asking them to have to spend money out of their phone plan in order to look up information that should have just been on the package in the first place? that's a tax, that's the dark act tax on american consumers. and some of my colleagues who talk about not putting taxes on individuals voted for that dark tax just a few weeksing a. and i hope they reconsider that type of imposition on the moms and dads and brothers and sisters across america. no one going down the aisle to shop is going to sit there and compare four different soups by taking pictures of four different soups, going to four

different web sites to look up that information. and plus, they're disclosing information about themselves when they go to those web sites. that's invasion of privacy on top of the dark tax that my colleagues want to impose on american consumers. and it is wrong, as we see wrong on multiple levels. now some of phao*eu colleagues said -- some of my colleagues said let's put an 800 number on with no explanation of why it's there. you can take most products in america and you can probably find an 800 number somewhere on that package, some corporate information line. but you put an 800 number on with no explanation of why it's there, that's not consumer information. that would be like taking the whole ingredients list on a package and replacing it with an 800 number. call this to find out and we'll read you a list of ingredients over the phone. it's absurd, it's ridiculous and it's offensive to try to pretend that that type of scam is a

replacement for consumer-friendly information right on the package. you want to know how to operate, whether you're being true to the desire of consumers to have a consumer-friendly label? well, i'll tell you, it's called the one-second test. you have a product, it's on the shelf. you pick it up, turn it over. you look up wupbl second, i -- one second i see the answer, there is or there is not genetically modified ingredients in this package. that is the one-second test. that is a fair replacement for state standards. it can be done in a variety of ways. you can put a symbol on. i suggested that the f.d.a. or the usda could choose a symbol. brazil chooses to have a t for transgenic triangle. we can do that. we can put on a b for biotechnology. a g or gm for genetically

modified. or we can put in a phrase like mars has done on their candy. or we can put an asterisk on the ingredient that has been modified with a phrase below to explain the asterisk. all those are possible. but an unlabeled phone number, an unlabeled barcode or quick response code, because it's a deliberate effort to pretend you're solving something when you're not, that is a shameful scam and it should never pass scrutiny here on the floor of the senate. now i said earlier that citizens across this country want a consumer-friendly label. we can look to a survey that was done,ths a 2016 likely election voters. the survey was done in november of 2015. 89% of americans said they would like to have the information on

the label. they said they favor mandatory labels on foods that have been genetically engineered or contain genetically engineered ingredients. so basically nine out of ten. and a 77% supermajority not only favored mandatory labeling, but strong lip favored such labeling. let me put it more simply, nine out of ten americans want the information on a label. and if you -p round off, eight out of ten feel very strongly about this. here's something that's interesting. we are often divided by party here. republicans are sitting on the right side, the democrats on the left side. there's a lot of partisan division. maybe independents have a view in the middle. but on this issue, democrats believe nine out of ten rounding off, nine out of ten that we should have these labels. republicans believe nine out of ten that we should have these

labels. so wouldn't it be ironic if the one thing americans can agree on, whether they're east coast or west coast or north or south or democrat or republican or independent, the one thing they all agree on, this body decides to do the opposite and take away that ability. that would certainly counter the fundamental principle that jefferson put forward of a we the people democracy.t that we can all claim to be republics. what we do reflects the will of the people. so we should think about that a lot because there's a lot of conversation about folks who want to spring a surprise on the american people. they want to come down here to the floor on some bill in the near future with some amendment or some motion or some reconsideration, spring a surprise and drive the dark act through with hill public notice. and why is that? because they are afraid of the opinions of the american people.

they want to hide their decision in a short period of time with no ability for the american people to be filled in on the fact that they are attempting to pass legislation that overturns what 90% or nine out of ten americans want. so we need to be aware of this. and i encourage my colleagues, do not be part of this deny americans right to know movement. this movement that is opposed by nine out of ten americans in the democratic camp, in the republican camp, in the independent camp, in every geography of america. don't be part of going so profoundly, so fundamentally, so overwhelmingly against the will of the american people. we put a lot of things onto packages because the american people ask for that information. if you buy in a grocery store of any size, they're required to

put whether or not fish is farm-raised or wild. why do we that -- why do we require that? i.t. not because being farm-fished is going to kill people. it is because citizens have a rite desire know and to vote with their food dollar for something they imleeive to be important. it may have to do with the taste t may have to do with the difference in antibiotics that are used in farmed versus wild. it may have tube to deal with their desire -- but the point is it's their right to know. it's nothing -- nothing much is as important to us as what we put in our bodies. people fundamentally feel they should be able to have full information. we indeed provide the information on whether juice

reconstituted from concentrate or it's fresh, not because it will cause to you get sick, not because it is unhealthy-to-consume, but because consumers desire no know and they want to exercise their food dollars aappropriately. some people just say, i really would like to have the stuff the way it was squeezed out of the fruit rather than frozen and condensed and reconstituted. so we provide that information because of that citizen desire. shouldn't we honor our citizens in this issue as well? and isn't it wrong for a group of senators to plot to come to this floor to put forward an amendment or put forward a reconsideration or put forward a bill on short notice so that the american people have little chance to weigh in? personally, i think it's very wrong, and that's why i'm speaking today. now, it isn't as if this question of putting labels on food is something new or different. it is being done all around the

world. 64 other countries, including 28 members of the european union and japan and australia, they already require mandatory g.m.o. labeling. and we can toad that list brazil and we can add to that list china -- it china, which has no democratic forum in which to respond to the will of the people. the decisions are top down. and yet the leadership of china has said that our consumers care enough about this that we're going to disclose that information. isn't it profoundly ironic that here in the united states of america, where citizens have a voice, a group of senators are trying to suppress that voice, are trying to implement and deny americans the right to know when china, leaders of china have decided that this is information that consumers deserve? let me return to where i

started, the vision of a "we the people" democracy. we've gone far afield from that. the role of money in politics has put us in a very different position. because that money weighs in, it cuptz the fundamental -- it corrupts the fundamental nature of our legislative process. that's why we're having this debate over denying americans the right to know when nine oust ten want that information. because of the corrupting power of massive concentrations of campaign cash in our system. so let's do something that we should do all the time: set aside the campaign -- set aside the desire to raise money. set aside those issues and ask yourself, aren't we here to help pursue the will of the people? and in this case, in our "we the people" democracy, shouldn't we

give our citizens the same right to know, a right they overwhelmingly expect and demand, as 64 other countries in the world? thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. lankford: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: mr. president, i'd like for -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. lankford: i would like it ask the quorum call be eviscerated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lankford: mr. president, i'd like to ask this body for just a moment to remember something that there are probably many people have never heard of the first time, because for whatever reason a bit of america's past seems to just disappear from memory as soon as it occurred. so let me take us back almost 100 years for a moment. in the summer of 1919, that summer was commonly referred to

after the fact, "the red summer." the red summer included race riots all over america. white-on-black riots, specifically. there were white individuals moving into black neighborhoods and devastating those communities. it happened in charleston, south carolina, longview, texas, bisbee, arizona, norfolk, virginia, chicago, in washington, d.c., happened in elaine, arkansas, knoxville, tennessee, omaha, nebraska, and many others. scattered around the country, one after another, month after month these race riots moved. as world war i veterans at that time called the great war, as those veterans returned home, many looking for jobs, and the anxiety that rose up from that, as many black americans that had bravely fought in world war i

pursued jobs and were unable to get them or were hated by whites because some of these black individuals came home and took some of the jobs that "quote, unquote -- "they were entitled to" -- rights broke op out. oklahoma was spared from most of that. may of 1921, a young man named dick roland who worked downtown, an african-american gentleman, actually shining shoes in downtown, tulsa. if you have ever bhn to tulsa -- if you've never been there you need to go. it is an absolutely beautiful town. and if you can ever see the pictures of what tulsa looked like in the 1920's, you would be astounded. it was an oil boom town. oil was discovered all around

tulsa, and people came from all over the country. most of those as individuals around tulsa that put in oil wells and suddenly became rich. the and cul at that became a wealth -- and tulsa became a wealthy community rapidly and the arc tech toured and history family farm is -- and the architecture and history of it is beautiful . it was also segregated by law. the northern district ever tulsa was called the greenwood district just north of downtown, an incredibly prosperous community. african-americans from around the country moved to tulsa because there were doctors and lawyers and businesses, grocery stores, department stores. it became a very wealthy community because some individuals lived in greenwood and worked in tull sarks which was a fast-growing, wealthy city. and then also there was great freedom within the greenwood district. and oddly enough, the segregation that was required in

oklahoma at the time also caused greenwood to grow, because many african-americans could not buy groceries or couldn't go to certain restaurants or go into certain businesses or department stores into tulsa. the so when those businesses opened up in greenwood and the population continued to grow, it became a fast-growing city as well. in fact, it was nicknamed "black wall street of america." that community of extremely well-educated, many world war i veterans that had come home, many business and entrepreneurs, became known as a place where blacks could come from around the country, start businesses, grow businesses, and grow into prosperity. i'd love to be able to shoi all the homes and the graces of what that looked like in the 1920's. it was beautiful district. getting back to my story on dick roland. working downtown in tulsa, most

building in tulsa young town wouldn't allow a black person to go to the restroom. he would get on the elevator because the restroom he was athrowed use was up in an upper floor. that particular day on may 30, 1921 he got into the he will vitter and the elevator ormter was a 17-year-old young white lady named sarah paifnlgt the elevator door closed. as they got to the upper floor they got off and at that point sarah paige screamed. to this day we don't know why. we don't know if there was an altercation. we don't know if dick roland bumped her and she screamed. we don't know if she was scared. we don't know why. but a friend heard her scream and came running and saw dick roland stepping out of the elevator and accusations started immediately. and within 24 hours, the police

arrested dick roland and took him into the courthouse and to the jail in downtown tulsa. by the time the afternoon paper had been released on the 31st of may, 1921, the word was out that a young african-american male had raped a white female in the elevator at the drexel building. and a mob began to form outside of the courthouse. that mob gathered around. it started out with around 100 they say and quickly grew to 200. the sheriff there in tulsa understanding the threat of this mob gathering around the building calling for dick roland to be delivered to the mob, immediately turned off the elevator in the courthouse building and put up armed guards in every staircase around that building to keep out any people from the mob to get into the building and to try to get up stairs and to be able to get dick roland out. but the mob continued to grow outside that building.

now approaching over 1,000, i understand, by the end of that day. the men that lived in the greenwood district not far away from there at all, heard the mob was gathered. many of them, as i mentioned before, were world war 1 veterans. they loaded up with their weapons, they went down to the courthouse to offer their assistance to the sheriff to be an additional armed guard there. the sheriff denied it and said they had the situation well in hand. turned the men away. as the mob continued to grow and continued to press the sheriff, the men returned back and said you need our help here. we do not want a lynch mob in our city. we've all heard what had happened in other cities just a year ago. we don't want that happening here. the sheriff again turned them away and said you're not needed here. we have the situation at hand. but as the men left that second time, some white men in the crowd confronted some of the african-american men as they left, and there was a struggle

as one of the white men tried to take away the guns from the african-american men and a shot was fired. and the rest of it was chaos. many of the african-american men headed back to the greenwood district as quick as they could, as that mob turned into a riot. they pursued them back to the greenwood district to tulsa, not far away, literally just on the other side of the tracks from downtown tulsa. pursued them back into the greenwood district and started a massive riot the evening of the 31st of may. the police tried to quell this massive riot that broke out, immediately deputized many white men that were gathered around downtown tulsa, gave them weapons and told them to go arrest as many black people as they could to stop the riot. and they ran into the greenwood district and shootings began all over the greenwood area.

many, the numbers are up over the thousands, of african-american men were arrested, dragged back into tulsa and were put in temporary detention facilities there and held which left the greenwood district completely unprotected. looters and rioters moved through that part of tulsa all throughout the night and into the next morning, literally looting every home, looting every business, doctors office, grocery store, department store, looting each one of them and then burning them to the ground. by the time the national guard arrived the next day to stop the riot, almost every building, home, business, everything in a one-mile square that was the greenwood district before was completely destroyed. it makes you wonder what happened then.

over 300 people, it is estimated, died that night in tulsa. no one was ever charged with a crime. dick roland that i mentioned before was released from jail because no charges were ever pressed on him. sarah paige never pressed charges against him. insurance companies refused to pay the african-american businesses that were burned to the ground. they walked away. what happened next is even more surprising to me. i'm not surprised that many african-american individuals that lived in the greenwood district left. i don't blame them. but most everyone stayed. they literally rebuilt their homes by living in tents for a year. the american red cross moved in and helped build wood platforms where there used to be homes so

that tents could be built in that spot and people could live there while they rebuilt their own home and rebuilt their own businesses. and one by one they rebuilt. mount zion baptist church that had just been finished a few months before that had a $50,000 mortgage on it, no one walked away from that church. they rebuilt that church and theyrepaid the $50,000 mortgage that was owed from before. block by block individuals started rebuilding greenwood. by the 1940's and all the struggles that had happened, it never fully recovered to what it ever was before. and what's also fascinating about it is the state of oklahoma quietly ignored what happened that day. most folks growing up in oklahoma never heard of the tulsa race riot. the tulsa race riot in many ways is kind of like that uncle in

your family that ended up in jail that at christmas no one talks about. everyone knows they're out there but you never discuss, that's the tulsa race riot for oklahomans for a long time until a couple of decades ago the conversation quietly started again about a very difficult part of our history. 95 years ago this week the worst race riot in american history broke out in tulsa, oklahoma. and in five years the entire country will pause and will look at oklahoma and will ask a very good question: what's changed in 100 years? what have we learned in 100 years? i would say a few things. i would say we can remember there's great honor to be able to say to people we have not forgotten about what happened. we have not ignored it. we have not swept it under the

rug and pretend that it never happened. we remember. i think there's great honor in that. we can recognize that there is more to be done, that we can't just say you know what, that was then, this is now. there is more to be done. our own racial challenges, what happened in many parts of the country just over the past few years reminds us again, we don't have legal segregation anymore, but we still have our own challenges as a nation. we still need to have a place in a nation where every person of every background has every opportunity. it's right for us. we can respect the men and women who lived, worked, died and rebuilt. and pour respect on those individuals that are still working to rebuild. people like donna jackson leading a group she calls the tulsa 100 to say by the time we

get to the 100-year anniversary just five years from now there will be 100 new businesses in the greenwood area. the jewel of black wall street was the number of businesses and entrepreneurs and family businesses that were there, and donna jackson and a group that surround her of business leaders, khurpbl leaders, of individuals from the area, family members and some of them even connected to survivors of the riot itself, all are committed to what can we do to reestablish the business community again in greenwood and in north tulsa. not looking just for black businesses. business, period. to reengage a community that is still scarred years later. to be able to have some respect for those folks that run the greenwood cultural center, reconciliation park, and the individuals that are willing to be able to talk about it in a way that's open and honest and not accusatory. but my fourth, r, have to

remember, recognize and respect and that's reconciliation. what are we going to do as a nation to make sure that we're reconciled? this simple speech on this floor is not going to reconcile our nation, and we have for years said this is something we need to talk about. well, quite frankly, we do need to talk about it but we also need to do something about it. what can we do to make sure that our children do not grow up in  nation that forgets their past but also makes sure it's not repeated again, to make sure all individuals are recognized and respected and that every person has the same opportunity. there's no simple answer to all this but i bring to this body a story that i think is important for us to talk about. the worst race riot in american history in my state and in all of our states. and i bring to us a question: five years from now we as a

nation will talk about this even more when it's the 100-year anniversary. who are we as a nation? how far have we come? and what do we have left to go to make sure that we really are one nation under god, indivisible. with that, mr. president, i yield back. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: mr. president, i thank our colleague, the senator from oklahoma, for telling that marvelous story and offering some hope not just talking about it, but doing something about it as well. it of course reminds me a little

bit of our recent trip, mr. president, to charleston and the amazing thing that happened there after a terrible tragedy when a young man opened a gun in a church and killed a number of innocent people who were there worshipping, who had taken him in. and i think just as the story told by the senator from oklahoma, one of the things we found when we visited charleston later on, as the presiding officer will recall, is the power of forgiveness. it's changed the entire conversation, when people in great pain suffering an unspeakable tragedy had the faith and the fortitude to stand up and say you hurt me, but i forgive you. it was really, really remarkable. it reminded me of the, of that

experience, what senator lankford was telling us about in tulsa, the tulsa race riot. it reminded me of a similar lesson and example. there is perhaps nothing more powerful than a good example, and we saw that arising out of great, great hurt and great hate. but i thank the senator for telling the story and reminding me of that experience here recently in charleston. sometimes when i go back home to texas, my constituents will tell me, i don't know how you stand it. i don't know how you stand the frustration of working in washington and dealing with some of the politics, the unnecessary obstacles, the procedures, just the delay, the do-nothing aspects of this job. and i was reminded of that again

because, unfortunately, we are here ostensibly working on a national defense authorization bill, burning daylight, wasting time when we could actually be dealing with the needs of our men and women in uniform, making sure they have the equipment and the training and the tools necessary to fight our nation's wars and keep us safe. but we're just burning hours on the clock because the democratic leader, in his, i was going to say in his wisdom -- i don't think it's in his wisdom. i think it's just an effort to delay our ability to progress with this important legislation on a bipartisan basis. this is legislation, after all, that was supported by every democrat on the senate armed services committee. they know what's in the bill. it's been posted for a long time now. anybody who's really cared enough to find out could have found out what's in this bill.

and we could be having a debate and a discussion about how we can improve it, how we can reconcile the house and senate version, get it to president obama for his signature so our troops don't have to wonder, they don't have to wait, they don't have to worry whether we care enough to get our work done to support them. well, despite all the foot dragging we've seen and the frustrations which are just inherent in this job, because things never happen as quickly as any of us would like, and certainly i think that adds to the public's frustration, we actually have been getting some things done around here. it's just that we have had to grind them out and take a long time to do it. but i know the majority leader, senator mcconnell, from kentucky, is determined to complete this legislation, and we will. senator mccain, the chairman of the armed services committee, we couldn't have a more forceful

advocate for the men and women in uniform and the veterans. of course, he was a great example of that, a true american hero, a former prisoner of war himself. he feels -- you can tell how passionately he feels about doing our duty by our troops. i did want to mention a few things that i will be offering by way of amendment that i do think will help make america safer and take some small steps to protect some of the foreign policy mistakes we've seen from this administration over the last few years. the first two amendments i intend to offer focus on countering the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism. that's the nation of iran. the first amendment i have specifically targets an airline called mahan airline, that

country's largest commercial airline. the largest commercial airline in the number-one state sponsor of terrorism. this airline has repeatedly played a role in exporting iran's terrorism. it supports the efforts of a quds force and elite fighting unit of iran's revolutionary guard and supports hezbollah as well. you might as well call mahan airline terrorist airline or airways, that mights be a more appropriate name. but because of its role infer iarying weapons throughout the middle east, it plays a big hand in undercutting the interests of the united states and our ally israel. and of course everywhere you turn, iran is up to some sort of mischief. in syria, obviously, their efforts to shore up the corrupt and brutal regime of bashar al-assad, its support for hezbollah, hamas, other

terrorist organizations. it just seems like everywhere you turn, they're up to no good. and of course there is the nuclear agreement which i think is enormously misguided, which may have thumbed their nose at the very basic elements of that agreement, demonstrating they have really no interest in complying with it, and we in turn in the united states, well, actually the administration because it's not a treaty, it doesn't bind future presidents but we essentially in the words of prime minister netanyahu of israel, we have not contained or prevented iran from gaining nuclear weapons. we have essentially paved the pathway. but today mahan airlines is working to add more international airports to its flights, including several in europe, and given the links to terrorist activity, we've got to consider the potential security risk to americans and others who fly in and out of airports where mahan aircraft may land.

this amendment would require the department of homeland security security to compile and make public a list of airports where mahan airline flies, and it would require the department of homeland security to assess what added security measures should be imposed on flights to the united states that may be coming from an airport used by mahan air. i recently had the chance, i have spoken about this, but to go to cairo with the homeland security chairman, my friend, michael mccall, of texas. one of the things we looked at was airport security, because there are flights that currently exist between cairo and j.f.k. airport. my understanding -- in new york. my understanding is there are also flights planned from cairo to reagan national here in the district of columbia. and following the explosion on a russian plane out of sharm

el-sheikh in southern sinai, it's pretty clear that egypt has a lot of work to do to improve its homeland security measures in both its screening of baggage and screening of personnel who work at airports. so you can see why people would necessarily be concerned about the action of mahan airline and what risk that might expose innocent passengers to, and i hope my colleagues will review the proposal and support it. the second amendment i have related to iran would require president obama to determine if iran violated international law several months ago and detained a number of u.s. sailors. under bedrock rules of international law, all ships, including u.s. navy ships, have the right to innocent passage through another nation's territorial waters. in other words, when one of our navy's boats is innocently transiting across iranian waters

and is not engaged in military activity or taking any other action that would prejudice the peace and security of iran, it's against the law, it's against the law for iran to stop, board and seize that vessel. iran can't just remove our sailors from their boats and detain them in iran because they feel like it or steal the g.p.s. units from those boats. in addition, the geneva convention makes clear that iran can't detain for no reason and exploit another nation's military service members, especially not for propaganda purposes, which is clearly what they did. iran can't force our sailors to apologize when they have done nothing wrong. iran's revolutionary guards and their state-controlled media had a heyday with the videos and images of our sailors they captured and purposefully humiliated. it seems very likely based on available evidence that they violated our sailors' rights of

innocent passage and very likely the geneva convention itself, and i think we need the commander in chief to call iran into account here, this type of destabilizing and dangerous behavior by iran cannot occur without some consequences. so my amendment would require the president to determine if the rules of international law were broken, and if so require the imposition of mandatory sanctions on iranian personnel who were involved. the third amendment that i have introduced would grant tax-free income status to u.s. troops deployed to the sinai peninsula. as i have mentioned before, after our trip to cairo, we flew out to north camp, a peacekeeping mission in the northern part of the sinai. the area right there between the gaza strip and egypt where as part of the peace agreement negotiated by prime minister

begin and sadat and president carter, this peacekeeping operation was established. it's called the multinational force and observers, and it's largely made up of the u.s. military, although it's led by a two-star canadian general and a number of colombian soldiers and others. but our troops play a strategic role in maintaining peace between egypt and israel right there in the northern sinai and their work is incredibly dangerous. unfortunately, some bedouin insurgents have affiliated now with isis. they have claimed allegiance to the islamic state and are regularly putting out improvised explosive devices which kill egyptian peacekeepers. but by granting our troops the tax-free status for their pay, we can put them on equal footing with other american troops who are deployed in other dangerous places like afghanistan and iraq and other similarly dangerous

hot spots around the globe. finally, mr. president, i mentioned earlier this week that i will be introducing an amendment to support the human rights of the vietnamese people. the president has been in hanoi for the last couple of days, but frankly the conduct of the communist regime is marked by the regular silencing of dissidents in the press and antidemocratic heavy-handed tactics to stay in power at any cost, not to mention the denial of religious freedom. by one estimate, though, vietnam is currently detaining about 100 political parissers in. clearly, this country does not come anywhere close to sharing the values that we have here in the united states, democratic values. rather than steadily improving, i'm afraid there is no sign that the vietnamese government is working to advance more freedoms for its people. just this last week, president obama, during his visit, it was

reported that several activists that planned on meeting with the president were detained by the communist party and prevented from doing so. similarly, a bbc correspondent said the vietnamese government ordered him to stop his reporting, simply silencing this reporter from the bbc. and earlier this month, the wife of a vietnamese activist testified before a subcommittee on the house foreign affairs committee about her husband, a human rights lawyer who was beaten by plain clothes officers and imprisoned. what was his crime? well, according to the government, he was charged with -- quote -- conducting propaganda against the state, close quote. his wife hasn't seen or heard from him in months. while i support increased economic and security ties with vietnam, i don't believe we should sacrifice our commitment to human rights in the process.

tolerate -- we should not be seen as tolerating this sort of -- sort of antidemocratic behavior. at the very least, we shouldn't be rewarding it with new access to arms deals by completely lifting the long-time arms embargo against vietnam. what did we get in exchange? well, i think it approaches zero or nothing. so my amendment would help ensure we don't reward vietnam for bad behavior like human rights abuses, and we confer upon them benefits like lifting the arms embargo that they show some respect for democratic values, religious liberty and human rights. we have to keep in mind the vietnamese people, the vietnamese people in that country have no real voice because they are subjects of a communist dictatorship, and we must do more to put pressure on the regime in hanoi to empower

their own people. separately, mr. president, i see my colleague from wyoming wants to speak, so let me just conclude on this. earlier today, the homeland security and governmental affairs committee passed legislation i have introduced called the crossborder trade enhancement act, a bill that would help our ports of entry by strengthening public-private partnerships at air, land and seaports. in texas, because we share a 1,200-mile common border with mexico, we have seen up front and close both the security challenges, which we need to do much more to address, but also the benefits of bilateral trade. as a matter of fact, trade between the united states and mexico supports about six million american jobs. we have seen time and time again how important these public-private partnerships are in helping reduce wait times for the flow of commerce across the border and to move people and goods across safely and efficiently.

this isn't just about convenience. this is about security and compliance with our laws, interdicting illegal drugs and other activities. this legislation would also improve staffing and modernize -- in addition to modernizing the infrastructure to help better protect legitimate trade and travel and keep our economy running smoothly. i want to thank the chairman, senator ron johnson, for his commitment to this issue and commend him for his diligent effort leading the committee, and i'm glad the committee understands the priority here is to strengthen our ports of entry at the border and across the country. i'm grateful not only for the committee's support but also the bipartisan support of other cosponsors, including senator klobuchar, the senior senator from minnesota, and senator heller, the junior senator from nevada. and as always, i appreciate my colleague on the house side for working with me on a bipartisan basis and introducing companion legislation in the house.

i hope now that the homeland security has acted that this chamber will take up the bill soon so we can build on the success of similar programs in texas and across the country. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. barrasso: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come to the floor today to talk once again about the health care law, and this past weekend i was home again in wyoming, as i am just about every weekend. it was a community called lovell, wyoming. in lovell, we had a health and fitness fair. it was focused on kids and adults in terms of prevention of problems, early detection of problems. people could get their blood tests done there. and talking to hundreds of people there at the hospital, what i heard again and again, as i do each weekend, is that this health care law is having a negative impact, a hurtful impact on the people of my home state of wyoming. i want to just spend a little time today talking about what's happening there. on monday night, senator enzi

and i had a chance to have a festival town hall meeting, talked to -- to have a telephone town hall meeting, talked to a lot of people around the state. this continues to come up. the high increases and costs in spite of what the president promised. he promised insurance rates would go down by $2,500 per family in his health care law was passed and signed, and in fact the exact opposite has occurred. today i had lurch with a number of students in freemont county. this again came up as a topic of discussion. what we see is the insurance companies at this time of year are turning in their rate requests. the requests that they have to increase their rates for next year. and those rates are becoming public. for instance, some families in iowa, and i'm going to talk about places all around the country now because it's not just wyoming who is suffering under the president's health care law, but it's all around the country. families in iowa now know that their insurance company wants to raise premiums but as much as

43% for some plans. some families in new york have learned that their rates may be going up as much as 46%. let's turn to new hampshire. there are families in new hampshire who have gotten the news that they could be paying 45% more. so you kind of look state by state by state, and what we're seeing across the country rates going up dramatically impacting the ability of people to even afford their insurance. there's a health care group that looked at nine states where information has been released. they found that -- they call what they call a standard shopper for insurance, that the average cost of a silver plan, which is the most commonly sold plan would go up about 16% next year. now, that's for a typical, say, 50-year-old person who doesn't smoke. it adds to an average cost of about $6300 per year for that person trying to buy insurance. so today what we're seeing is

more and more people are getting sticker shock under obamacare. the health care law has created so many problems for the american public, for taxpayers because taxes have gone up as a result of this. for providers of health care and certainly for patients. the health care law has caused mandates, has put restrictions in place. it's been made so expensive that most people think it's not a good deal for them personally, which is why in terms of the number of people that were uninsured when the law was passed, fewer than one in three of them has actually signed up for obamacare. that's because all these mandates, all these restrictions have made insurance much more expensive when it comes down to actually trying to get care. let me point out the president is very specific when he talks. he doesn't talk about people getting care. he talks about coverage. well, the headlines in "the new york times" have been that there

are lots of people with coverage who can't get care. the story last week about so many people in new york city who feel that obamacare is a second class program and that they have that insurance card but it doesn't help them get to see a doctor and certainly not one that they want or need for the problems that they're having. now, some insurance companies have lost so much money by selling insurance when the obamacare -- on the obamacare exchange that they decided to drop out of the exchanges entirely. they said we're done with it. we cannot afford to sell it this way. we know the insurance company human that is dropping out of several states. we know united health care is leaving all but a handful of states. in colorado 20,000 people have gotten letters saying that they're losing their insurance plan next year because companies cannot afford to sell it. and it's only going to get worse. according to a recent survey by

mckenzie and company, turns out that only one out of every four health insurance companies made a profit last year. those are the ones i'm talking about specifically selling insurance on the obamacare exchange. so one out of four made a profit. three out of four lost money. and you say how is it that they were able to make a profit? well, this is what they did. the ones that were able to make a profit tended to be the companies that have a lot of experience offering medicaid insurance which basically they took their medicaid plans and sold them to people on the obamacare exchange. now these are plans with very narrow networks of doctors. you can't just go to any doctor you like. very narrow numbers of hospitals so you can't go to any hospital you like. and for these specific companies, a lot of these plans are ones that have very high deductibles. so somebody may have an insurance car but the deductible is so high, the dollar per dollar out of their pocket expense that they say they can't

afford to see a doctor and they have obamacare which they're finding is essentially useless for them. you know, there were different levels of insurance plans that the obamacare plan came out with, bronze and silver, gold, platinum. and most of the people have been choosing the silver plans because that was thought to be sort of the mid range plan. well now those silver plans are coming with very high costs. and this means that people may be paying again for coverage but they're not getting care. there's a company in virginia and what they've decided to do, interestingly, is they're getting rid of the bronze plan entirely. they say no, we're not going to sell the bronze plan anymore and they're pushing all of their customers up into the silver plan. they're doing this but if you're one of those people that has had the bronze plan that they're not going to sell anymore, you can see your rates going up 70% from what you're paying this year.

so increases 70%. and some of these silver plans have gotten so inadequate that they're now what the bronze plans used to be. so this is all as a result of what the obama administration forced down the throats of the american public and every democrat voted for and every republican voted against. one insurance company is actually offering a silver plan next year that comes with a deductible of more than $7,000. now that's how much someone would need to pay out of their pocket before insurance actually kicked in. blue cross of idaho is talking about a deductible for their silver plan, $6,850. that's for the silver plan, the one that the democrats said was supposed to be the benchmark plan, the one that the subsidies are linked to. well, let's think about what a

$6,850 deductible means for most people. according to a new poll out by the associated press, two-thirds of all americans say they would have a hard time actually coming up with a-- with $1,000 an emergency. how are they supposed to come up with $6800 in case of a situation that they may find confronting them? well, these kind of plans where people pay a lot and don't get much in return, they're what president obama and the administration used to call junk insurance. and i remember the president talking about that, junk insurance is what he said. he said that the when health care law would stop that. that would never happen under the obama administration and obama plan. well, instead, this president under obamacare is pushing more and more people into these kinds of plans. and this administration is even subsidizing it. so the premiums are going up through the roof. the deductibles are going up so

high that people have insurance, which is mandated by law that they have, but it turns out that for many of theme, it's useless. well, people may have to find a new primary care doctor or a new pediatrician every year, because they're getting switched from plan to plan to plan because they can't afford the plan that they have and the rates continue to go up. and the president who had once said that if you like your plan, you can keep it, now he says oh, no, no, you better shop around. you like what you have, you can keep it. he completely flipped and now you better shop around. people continue to lose plans because insurance companies are going out of business or they just quit selling insurance entirely. to me this is just one more sign that this health care law is a sinking ship. it's falling apart. and insurance companies have found that one reason they're losing so much money is because their customers are sicker than the president thought they would be and that the insurance

companies thought they would be. the people who are healthy basically aren't interested in buying this very expensive insurance. they feel it's wasting of their money and rather they just pay the fine to the i.r.s. on monday the heads of the state obamacare coop in mexico was on cnbc, the television network, talking about this problem. his name is dr. martin hickey. he's the c.e.o. of the mexican health connecks. his company -- connection. his company is asking to raise premiums for some of its plans by 34% next year. still, he said, with these heavy rate increases and these are heavy rate increases, he said the problem is that the people who are going to say, well, for a $695 penalty, the heck with it. so the people the president are mandating to buy insurance, many of them are just saying the heck with it. that's what we hear from this c.e.o. look, this is just what republicans have been predicting ever since democrats first brought this health care law to

the floor and they passed this extraordinarily expensive law and mandates on the american public. dr. hickey from the c.e.o. of the new mexico health connections, he said the healthier are abandoning insurance. and what you're left with, he said, is the sick and you can never raise your rates high enough. that's not what the democrats on this floor promised. that's not what they stood up here on the floor and talked about. they promised and so did president obama that the health care rates would go down. they promised insurance coverage would get better. it's not. it's gotten much worse. they promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. in many cases you can't. they promised if you like your insurance, you could keep your insurance. in many cases you cannot. people all across this country are getting a reminder of obamacare's broken promises as the health care requests for increases come out. democrats want to double down on this failed health care law and

add more mandates and more restrictions. they want more government control over people's health care. it does seem that everything the democrats propose just makes prices go up faster. that isn't what the american people wanted and it's certainly not what we need in this country from health care reform. this law was passed six years ago and i'll tell you it is just getting worse every day. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i suggest 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 wyoming. a senator: i'd ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. enzi: mr. president, i want you and my colleagues and the people of america to know what's keeping me awake nights. it's actually thoughts of my

grandkids and their future that keeps me awake nights. i see a bleak future for them because of our overspending and i hear their small voices saying, you were there. why didn't you fix it? why didn't you give us the chance you had? we didn't want anything for free. we just wanted an opportunity to earn our own way to what was the american dream. how are you going to answer that question? i'm not just asking the members of congress. i'm asking everyone in america because everyone has and is getting benefits from this great country at the expense of the future. let's look at the problem together. here's where we are right now and where we're headed. our national debt isn't sustainable because of the interest alone. interest on the debt could mean we would have to make cuts to

programs we never dreamed of cutting. we already owe $1900 billion. sometime that's called $19 trillion. i prefer to call it 1900 billion. that sounds more. that's soon headed to 2,000 billion or $20 trillion at -- at 1% interest, we've already exceeded it, and that's the interest alone, would amount to $200 billion a year. we need to worry about when that interest rate gets to the norm of 5%. and that could happen as early as in the next three years. imagine if interest went to 5%. 5% is the historic average for federal borrowing. excluding mandatory spending, we only get to make current decisions on 1,070 billion dollars a year. so do the math.

five times $200 billion is 1,000 billion dollars. remember, we only get to make decisions on 1,070 billion dollars a year. what would that $70 billion a year fund? when that happens, could we forget about funding defense, education or agriculture or any of the other things we're expected to fund? what we're doing is not sustainable. what we would be forced to cut just to pay the interest. how many people do you think would be willing to invest in america just in order to get their own interest paid? the answer is no one. incidentally, we may already be borrowing to pay interest, but so far no one knows it yet. now, from a bloomberg business article, -- quote -- "there is an acknowledgment even in the investor community that monetary policy is kind of running out of am owe." that was -- ammo."

that was said by the economist at standard charter bank in new york city. a lack of monetary ammo will drive our interest rates dramatically. because with the largest economy in the world, there isn't anyone that could bail us out. there are lots of causes to this problem. let me cover some of them. we don't ever look back at what we've done. we keep looking forward to new things we'd like to do to help everyone out. every elected official has great ideas for something that might make a difference, but we don't look to see if it's already -- if it already has a similar program or if what we already do in that area is working. in fact, the bills we passed don't have enough specificity to know if we're achieving what we hoped we would get done. without measurable goals, we can't measure progress. we don't include specificity for how we're to achieve the goals, which allows or forces agencies

to go where they want to go. we never know if we actually solved the problem we started out to solve. for some federal employees, it's important never to get the problem solved as their jobs might be eliminated. have you ever had an agency come to you and suggest that their mission no longer exists, that we should end their funding? not that i know of. i did once have a young man come to me and he said this will probably cost me my job, but what i am doing doesn't have to be done at all. by telling you this, i will probably lose my job, but i feel strongly about it. i told him he ought to be promoted and work to have that happen. i want to congratulate senator grassley for his efforts on whistle-blower protection so employees can point out problems without retaliation. we have regulations that cost jobs, and the economy, and for very little value. we have a rule that there has to

be a cost-benefit analysis for any project over $100 million of impact, but that's seldom done and there are few standards for doing it anyway or requirements to actually force it done. now, the benefits might be costed over decades while the costs are immediate and continuing. if we could improve the private economy by 1%, we would increase revenue to the federal government by $400 billion. without raising taxes. instead, we have gone from g.d.p., that's private sector productivity from 2.7% down to half a percent. that's a huge loss of tax revenue. we have regulations that have been on the books for years that haven't been reviewed to see if technology has outdated them. regulations cost jobs, but only in the private sector.

when is the last time you remember a federal employee being laid off because of budget cuts or ending a program? i know we passed a major education bill here recently, and we eliminated the national school board and a lot of the national requirements. so when we had the new nominee for secretary of education, i asked him how many jobs that was going to save in the department of education. he said well, none. we're just going to move them around and use them other places. wrong answer. according to the congressional budget office, we saved 237 jobs that won't have anything to do. there are 96,000 federal employees in the district alone. what are they all doing? an example is a principal that came to see me my first year here. he had been filling out federal reports for a long time, and he wondered where they went. so i sent him down to the

department of education. he spent a semester down there. he followed all his reports around. and then he came and reported to me. he said, you know, they really look at those carefully. they make sure that every single blank is filled in. they make sure that every single blank has a logical answer. if it doesn't, they send it back. and they get it back and they check it over again. and then they file it and nobody ever looks at it. i'm trying to get rid of some of those forms since that time. so how about expired federal programs? last year, i spoke often about the 260 programs that we have that we're still doing that have expired but we're still spending money on them to the tune of $293.5 billion a year. 260 programs expired, $293.5 billion paid out to them each year.

one of them expired in 1983. another one in 1987. most of them before 2006. we're still giving them money. now, after a year of harping on it, i find that we have reduced the number of expired programs from 260 to 256. but we have increased the spending on expired programs from $293 billion to $310 billion. that's not progress. here's another part of the problem. i have this little housing chart. there ought to be savings from better organizations. we have 20 federal agencies here. somebody once said that if you took the 26 letters of the alphabet and you picked any three or any four and you put them in any order you want to, there would be a federal agency by that name. well, we have got 22 of those -- 20 of those right here, and that isn't the whole chart.

it would take me a whole lot bigger chart because these 20 federal agencies oversee 160 housing programs. how many housing programs does it take? what are they doing? could they be combined? you don't look at that. wouldn't consolidation of these result in some kind of savings? maybe consolidation would result in some efficiency. shouldn't all of this be controlled by one entity? we are we trying to achieve in housing? do we have 160 different plans and goals? shouldn't we consider that a major economic sector and have that a separate part of our budget?

can't some of the programs be combined? when i came to the senate, there were 119 preschool programs for children. now, we all know and acknowledge the value of preschool and how it increases their earnings later on and cuts down on the amount of crime, helps the economy. we all know and acknowledge that value. but senator kennedy and i found that many of them had been evolved into expensive child care services rather than education, and they weren't meeting their goals. we were able to get those programs down from 119-65. that's all under our jurisdiction for health and education. later we were able to get some of those others down to 45. two years ago, i got an amendment passed that the programs had to be reduced to five and all of them be put under the department of education.

even though it's the law, that hasn't happened yet. so does the federal government ever take a cut in dollars? we get instant complaints that the requested increase is less than what was asked for. not less than what they had the year before. less than what was asked for. only in government is that considered a cut. our budgets and spending are set up to allow everyone to get what they got last year plus the amount of inflation. we call it baseline budgeting. many governments have gone to economic sector budgeting under a cap of expected revenues. you don't look at what the expected revenues are. some governments only borrow for long-term infrastructure investments. we borrow for day-to-day expenses. as i mentioned earlier, we could be borrowing to pay our interest on our debt. i'm not even going to cover the

tax code that's evolved from a basic way of running the government or to special benefits for individuals and businesses. our tax code's costing us jobs. so what are some of the other causes of our debt problem? we're really good at new and super ideas. every idea is designed to help out the folks back home. all lend themselves to the greater good. but if they aren't paid for, they steal from the future. and we found lots of ways to steal from the future. we're spending money that won't be there for our kids or our grandkids to spend. as my grandpa would say, it's like milking a cow in a lightning storm, they will just be left holding the bag. we fudge these new ideas into existence. the easiest way is to do is demonstration program. demonstration programs let you ease into the spending a little at a time, boil the frog slowly.

you just start in a few cities or states to show what a difference that idea would make. demonstration programs are always sold on the basis that a successful program will show the local benefit and will be taken up locally because they have seen the advantage. i'm not aware of a single program that hasn't been spectacular. every program works out as planned except for the part of being valuable enough to be adopted and paid for locally. so the need for the money to continue to be spent continues and continues. not only that, if it worked so well for the few, it needs to be expanded nationally so everyone can benefit. unfortunately, while there may have been offsets for the original program, there never was a source of ongoing funds for the continuance of the

program, let alone for its expansion. so the next way to trick hardworking, tax-paying americans is just to make it a mandatory program. here's a mandatory versus discretionary chart. this is where we're going. these are the 1,070 billion dollars that i talked about that we get to make decisions on. these are the mandatory programs that we have, and they're growing faster and faster. as the baby boomers kick in, you'll see such a rapid escalation here that i don't know how we'll ever meet it. 40 years ago, 30% of the programs were mandatory. we got to make annual decisions on 70% of the money, but because of the expansion of the mandatory programs, 70% of the programs are on auto pilot, funded every year without a

vote, and we only get to make decisions on 30% of the moneys. some of the mandatory programs used to have their own revenue stream sufficient to cover the amounts paid out. social security is a prime example. of course when it was set up, you couldn't retire until you were 65 and life expectancy was 59. money raiser. there used to be more people working at paying into social security than the amount paid out to recipients. when that happened, the excess money was spent -- yes, spent -- and bonds were put in a social security drawer backed by the full faith and credit of the united states. if interest rates go to 5%, how well do you think that will work out? pension funds for bankrupt companies, coal miners and the central states multiemployer pension fund are going broke

now, not 20 years, not 30 years, not 40 years in the future. they're going broke now, but they're a symptom of what we are about to face. people are talking about puerto rico and how they need a bailout. who would bail out the united states? who would have enough money to do that. if we go to mandatory programs, we don't have to figure out how to pay for programs and it continues on further votes and review. everyone wants their favorite program to have dedicated funds except we don't dedicate funds to it and we ran out of real money. mandatory spending used to mean that there was a dedicated stream of money sufficient to cover the costs of the program without dipping into the general fund. now here's a chart on how we're doing on that score.

dedicated income as a percent of spending. 2015 actual, 51% of the money we needed to fund that. 2016, we'll only have 49%. 2017, it might bump back up to 50%. where does the over 50% come from? it either has to be stolen from the future or taken from the present, meaning less that can be done under the regular budget. now, another funding trick that we use is to allocate funds from the future to spend in the present. we take funds from up to ten years out. we imagine that they already came in and we spend them sometimes in one year. that is borrowing from the future. that is borrowing money our kids will need for the dreams they have for their kids and for america. and that brings me to emergency spending.

any event that can be considered a crisis can be considered for emergency spending. hurricanes, flood, tornado, earthquakes, even failures by federal agencies can be considered emergencies. in earlier years when i looked at emergencies, it looked to me like we spend about $6 billion a year on emergencies. recently i decided i needed to have that figure checked. to my surprise, i found out that we have $26 billion a year in emergencies. that's unpaid for. that's either borrowing from the future or borrowing on the debt. this little chart that points out how that's an average of $26 billion a year that we're doing for emergencies. any time you know that you're going to have some expense every year, maybe that ought to be a part of the budget. maybe we ought to plan on it. maybe we ought to figure out how we're going to pay for it.

so what are you going to tell your grandkids you did to give them opportunities? do you want to be here to answer for when social security is cut by 20% to fund defense, because interest payments have to be used up all the money that we get to make decisions on? can we consolidate programs? can we be sure they have measurable goals and hold them to achievement? can we watch regulation to see that it achieves its goal with a minimum of jobs last? can we review old programs for elimination or consolidation when we look at new ideas? can we find ways to fund our ideas without stealing from the future? how will you answer to your grandkids for what you've done? i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. a senator: thank you, mr. president. mr. murphy: about a week ago, josh cortez was found shot and laying on the pavement in hartford's south end. his girlfriend who is 23 years old, josh was 22, was found in a parked car nearby with a gunshot wound. she was rushed to hartford hospital where she died about a half an hour later. they were the six t and -- six can't and seventh homicide victims in hartford this year. they'd been dating for about two years. they had a 2-year-old daughter. he just celebrated his 22nd birthday and his cousin said in remembrance, josh was a great kid. he talked about how he had gone through some real tough times but he had turned around his

life for the better. he had a rough start, his cousin said, but he was doing a complete 360 for his baby girl. he was just wrapping up a jail diversionary program at the time of his death. he was committed to the program making every appointment and following every regulation. two days later, across the country in iowa, sanquez jackson was 15 years old when his 13-year-old friend accidentally fired a small 38 caliber semiautomatic pistol. his friend thought that the gun was unloaded when he pulled the ammo clip from the handle. he killed his friend, sanquez who was 15 years old. now the 13-year-old boy has been charged with involuntary manslaughter. in addition they layered on charges of obstructing prosecution and carrying a weapon. sanquez is remembered by his friends and family as being a

great athlete, loved basketball, dreamed of playing in the nba. he always told his auntie that he was going to be just like lebron james. one speaker at his funeral said that they had never met another child with more gratitude than sanquez. he had deep gratitude for the things that he had been given. died from an accidental gunshot wounds on march 18. earlier in the year ramwel jones was standing outside an complaint complex in illinois with a group of kids his age. he was 11. they were just waiting to go to basketball practice. they were waiting to get picked up to go to basketball practice. and while they're waiting outside, a red car pulled up and someone inside fired multiple shots into this group of kids and ramwel was killed.

his friends remember him frankly like sanquez as always having a basketball in his hands. the middle school coach bobby everrage who was planning on coaching this incredibly talented kid said this young man's life was cut short and he had so much potential. i no he was -- i know he was such a good kid and has lots of friends. when life ends that way, it's so sad. his fifth grade teacher said he was well liked by all of his teachers, all of when its classmates. quote -- he was always happy, sensitive student as a fifth grader. he was a mentor. as a fifth grader he mentored younger students at our school. 11 years old, was killed waiting to go to basketball practice. then at the end of last year, this is a story i pulled out of the dozens that were killed in connecticut cities, antawn heath was 29 years old when he was shot in the chest while sitting it a parked car in the outskirts of edgewood park in new haven.

his wife of four years and the mother of his two children who are 4 and 3 said her husband was a family man. he was loving. he was hard-working. his nickname was champ. antawn's nickname was champ in large part because he was such a champion of causes in and around his community. a childhood friend said he tried to get me to see things clear. he made sure everybody was all right. he just wanted family to be together. he had big plans the weekend that was just following after his death. he was going to be baptized. he was ready to give his life over to god, said his sister. he made the decision on his own. that was something he wanted to surprise his family with. mr. president, those are just four stories, four voices of victims of gun violence. as you know and many of my colleagues know, i try to come down to the floor every week or

every couple of weeks to tell a handful of the stories of the 31,000 a year, 2600 a month, 86 a day that are killed by guns. all for a variety of reasons. most of these are suicides, many of them are accidental. they happen in large numbers and small. last year we had -- last year we had 372 mass shootings which i would categorize as four more people being shot at any one given time. many of these are domestic violence incidents, gang involved incidences. there's a the low of different stories as to why these happen. but, mr. president, i wanted to come down to the floor and talk for a moment today on a specific aspect of our path forward i'm addressing gun violence. tomorrow senator cassidy and i are going to host a summit here in washington on mental health reform, senator cassidy and i with the help of 16 of our colleagues, 8 democrats and 8 republicans have introduced a bipartisan comprehensive mental

health reform act that we think if it's passed is going to really dramatically improve the experience of individuals who are trying to seek help for their mental hilness. -- illness. given the fact we're going to have hundreds of people at this summit tomorrow and that many of us who are living with the daily ramifications of unchecked gun violence are continuing to press for legislation on this floor, as i know you are, mr. presiding officer. i want to talk about i think the mistakes we make in how we talk about the intersection between mental health and the epidemic of gun violence. and i'll talk about it for a second through the lens of sandy hook. on the same day that adam lanza walked into sandy hook elementary school and murdered 26 children and educators, another mentally ill man in china walked into a school and attacked 22 students almost the

same number. now, in sandy hook, every single child who adam lanza fired a bullet at and hit died. in china every single student survived. both assailants were unquestionably deeply mentally ill, but only one incident resulted in a worldwide tragedy, and the difference is that adam lanza walked into that school with a semiautomatic rifle and the attacker in china walked into that school with a knife. now, our nation has seen the horror that unfolds when mental illness and gun violence intersect in devastating ways. and this cycle of shock and grief that accompany mass shootings, they are still uniquely american routine. we can't fathom what could drive someone to commit such horrifying acts. and it's easy for society to

blame that shooting in newtown or in aurora or wherever the next one may be on the mental illness. but if we truly want to stop these mass shootings, we want to do something about the 86 people who were murder -- who are murdered every day. we have to stop ourselves for a second and ask why this epidemic of gun violence doesn't happen in any other industrialized country in the way that it happens here. and we have to ask ourselves, is it because more americans suffer from mental illness? no. the statistics don't tell us that. is it because the mentally ill in america are more violent this afternoon the mentally ill in a place -- than the mentally ill in a place like europe? no, the data doesn't tell us that. do other countries spend more money on treating mental iness than the united states does? is it their systems are more adequate than ours?

no, the data doesn't tell you that either. so what's the difference between the united states and every other developed nation? why is our gun homicide rate 20 times higher than that of the average oecd nation. why do other countries that spend the same amount of money treating it, why don't they have a comparable number of shootings, mass shootings and individual shootings? well, one of the differences is guns. the difference is that in america, we are awash in illegal guns, military assault firearms that are designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. the reality is that for whoever shot that couple in hartford, that father in new haven, they didn't have to try very hard to go find a weapon. it was either in their house or around the corner or at a friend's apartment. and there are a lot of people who would like to just very

easily confleet the conversation about gun violence with a conversation about fixing our mental health system. let's think about two states, wisconsin and wyoming. these are states that have very similar mental health systems. they spend the same amount of money and yet one state, wyoming, has a gun homicide rate that's twice that of wisconsin. there's no data that suggests that mental illness explains the difference between those two states, just like there's no evidence that mental illness explains the difference between two countries. and so this argument about an inadequate mental health system being the reason for epidemic rates of gun violence, it's become a very convenient political faint that's perpetrated by people who don't want to get to the question of whether or not our gun laws have something to do with these epidemic murder rates. there's no doubt that the mental

health system in this country is broken. it's dramatically underresourced. people have to wait for months to get an outpatient appointment. we've closed down 4,000 mental health inpatient beds in this country just in the last five years alone. it's ridiculously uncoordinated. we built up this system in which your body from the neck down is treated in one system and then you have to drive two towns over if you want to get treatment for your body from the neck up. people with mental illness die 20 years earlier than people without mental illness because the two systems aren't coordinated. the stigma is still crippling around mental illness. though we passed a law that requires insurance companies to say on your statement of benefits that you have coverage for mental illness, everybody knows that when you actually try to access those benefits, the insurance companies put up bureaucratic hurdles in front of you actually getting reimbursed for mental health care that they never would if you were trying