for his wonderful set of remarks that he has just given. he has outlined it as well as it can be done. tennessee has always been very well represented, but lamar alexander is one of the great senators here. i'm just grateful that he -- that he is standing side by side with me on this, because the songwriters of america have been mistreated for years and years and years, and it's time to change it. it's time to get some equity and some fairness into this system. i think lamar has outlined that about as well as it can be outlined. i just want to personally express my appreciation to you for what you have said here today. with that, mr. president, i would like to ask unanimous consent that anna binelli, a detailee of the senate committee on finance be granted floor privileges for the duration of the congress. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hatch: thank you. mr. president, earlier this week, the se voted to pass a continuing resolution to reopen

the government. this came after weeks of acrimony and no shortage of hostility here on the senate floor and elsewhere. and while most of the recent debate has been focused on the future of immigration policy, another vitally important priority and a bipartisan priority, no less, was also addressed this week. i'm talking of course about the six-year extension of the children's health insurance program which was included in the funding bill. it's a shame really that this bipartisan accomplishment has in some respects been overlooked while more attention has been given to partisan squabbling over more divisive issues. since its interception, chip has been a bipartisan program. in 1997, senator kennedy and i came together to create chip in order to provide health insurance to vulnerable children. it was a republican-controlled

congress working with a democratic president that brought this program into existence. the year before that same republican congress and democratic president worked together to produce another landmark welfare reform bill that sought to replace a culture of dependency with an emphasis on work. schip became a necessity for those milies making the transition. prior tohe introduction of the original chip bill, i came across a number of families with parents who work but still could not afford private coverage for their children, yet they made too much to qualify for medicaid. senator kennedy and i designed our bill to fill this gap and meet those needs. today the chip program provides health insurance for about nine million children, needy

children, every year. while the program isn't perfectly designed, though few programs are, it is widely considered to be one of the most efficient and cost-effective health care programs. for that reason, members from both parties have been supportive of the program since the day it was signed into law. last year with an extension deadline approaching, senator wyden, the ranking member of the finance committee, and i went to work on drafting another bipartisan chip bill, one that would make needed improvements to the program and extend it for an additional five years. we were successful. we introduced our bill in september and shortly thereafter the finance committee marked it up, and it reported it by a voice vote. we've been working to pass our bill since last september, and thankfully that time came earlier this week. when we worked -- when we voted

to pass the c.r., we also voted to successfully extend chip for six years. six years. that is the longest chip extension in the history of this program. other than that extra year of funding, the bill we passed was identical to the one senator wyden and i introduced last year. i know we have colleagues already talking about adding additional years, and i know a number of stakeholders would like to see that as well. i'm definitely open to having a conversation with my colleagues on how we might move forward to support an additional four years of funding for chip. in my view, if we can work together to pass a bill adding four years to the sixlready in place, that would b simply fantastic. but for this moment let us not overlook the success we've achieved this week. a six-year chip extension gives security and certainty to

millions of american families and allows states to plan their budgets for several years into the future. that's a big deal, madam president. let us keep that in mind as we look for ways to do more. i'd like to thank senator wyden, my partner on the finance committee, for his efforts on developing this legislation. i'd like to thank other members of the senate finance committee who supported us all the way. thank you to our distinguished majority leader and his team as well as the leaders in the house who worked alongside us. i also want to thank the stakeholders across the country -- the governors, care providers and of course the families who depend on chip -- for making their voices heard throughout this endeavor. i look forward to working with all of you going forward so we can make sure we do right by the children who benefit from chip. now, madam president, i'd like

to turn to a related issue in the health care space. the senate will soon vote on president trump's nominee for secretary of health and human services. i can think of very few others -- and i've only been here 42 years, but i can think of very few others qualified to take the helm of this ship than mr. alex azar. as secretary of of h.h.s., mr. azar would be responsible for trillions of dollars in spending, of liabilities and contracts that make up the backbone of our health care system. what's more, madam president, h.h.s. is still in the process of off ramping many of the poor decisions made throughout the eight years of the obama administration. unfortunately, many of those policies, regulations, procedures and practices still remain in place, continuing to undermine the sustainability of programs like medicare and

medicaid and artificially propping up the so-called affordable care act. but the good news is that mr. azar brings with him nearly two decades of experience in the health care system working in both the private and public sectors. mr. azar spent several years as a senior official at h.h.s., holding key positions overseeing medicare part d and medicare advantage. he also led h.h.s.'s responses to the anthrax attacks shortly after 9/11, the sars andkey pox crisis, hurricane katrina and many others. clearly mr. azar has seen both the good and the bad at h.h.s. and knows how to manage them. i don't think there's anyone here, even on the other side of the aisle, who would contest that. in fact, in the past, mr. azar has actually been confirmed twice with experience both on the company side and the

government side of health care. he is now only more experienced and knowledgeable. i think the broad exercise will serve him well particularly at this critical time when the h.h.s. secretary will need to be and focused on the opioid epidemic and other major problems facing our country. no doubt, all of these reasons why we reported mr. azar out of the finance committee with a bipartisan vote. if we set aside the partisan and the preconceived notions some have about certain industries, mr. azar would likely get a near unanimous vote. so i hope at least some of our democratic colleagues will vote to confirm him. i urge all of my colleagues to join me in doing so. and with that, madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i ask that the calling of the quorum be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: i come to the floor today to talk about the judiciary committee, which i chair, about our important oversight work, and the investigation work and kind of concentrate on the past year. there are a lot of issues that need more sunlight and more scrutiny. one of my key concerns is the loss of faith in the ability of the justice department and the f.b.i. to do their job free of partisan political bias. the american people are rightly

skeptical because of how the department and the f.b.i. have handled the following subjects. on the one hand, hillary clinton, and on the secondhand, donald trump and his associates. hiding from tough questions about these controversial cases is no way to reassure the public. if the department is afraid of independent oversight, that just reinforces people's suspicion and skepticism. the only real way to reassure people is to let the sun shine in and let the chips fall where they may. in each of these cases, the government should obviously find out what happened and hold people accountable if there was any wrongdoing. but it also has to play by the rules and be held accountable

for its aions as well. we need to shine the light of day on all of it. as part of our investigation, we have requested documents and other information from the department of justice and the f.b.i. much of that information is classified. the department has provided very limited access to those classified materials. it has limited the judiciary committee review to the chair, this senator, the ranking member of the full committee -- that war senator feinstein -- and the subcommittee on crime and terrorism. that would be senator graham and senator whitehouse. the government has also tried to severely limit the number of appropriately cleared staff who can review documents and even

take notes. we have reviewed some information related to whether the fib used the so-called trump dossier and the extend of its relationships with its author christopher steele. as we know now, mr. steele was hired by fusion g.p.s. to research mr. trump's alleged ties to russia. his work was funded by the democratic national committee and the clinton campaign. now, remember, it took a subpoena and a court battle with the house intelligence committee to force that fact out into the open. lawyers for the democratic national committee and the bill clinton campaign officials denied it to the press for months. in other words, they lied.

the founder of fusion g.p.s. denied that his firm was, quote-unquote, democratically linked. that, too, was untrue. when the news finally broke, "new york times" reporters actually complained that people who knew better had flat-out lied to them about who funded mr. steele's dossier. but back before the 2016 election, it is unclear who knew that steele was gathering dirt on trump for the democratic national committee and for the clinton campaign. many of his sources for claims about the trump campaign are russian government officials, so steele, who was working for fusion g.p.s., who in turn was working for the democratic national committee and the clinton campaign, was also working with the russians.

so who was actually colluding with russians is coming more clear. mr. steele chaired his at least partially russian-based allegations far and wide. he shared them with the f.b.i. he shared them with the media. and according to public reports, he shared them with high-ranking officials in the justice department and the state department. well, in the course of our review, senator graham of south carolina and i came across some information that does not add up. we saw mr. steele swearing one thing in a public liable suit against him in london, england.

then we saw contradictory things in documents that i'm not going to talk about in an open meeting, open setting here. i know everybody understands that. and from everything that we have learned so far, senator graham and i believe these discrepancies are significant. so we send a referral of twister steele to the justice department and the f.b.i. for potential violation of 18 u.s.c. 1001. now, i guess people are going to say whatever they want to say about this whole matter, no matter what the facts are, but it doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the public debate to ignore those facts or to speculate wrongly about senator graham's motivations or mind.

first, despite all the hubbub, this is not all that unusual. anyone can ask for a criminal investigation. i have done it in the past when i come across potential crimes in the course of my oversight work, and i have done so publicly. this situation is no different. second, as the special counsel has reminded us all recently, lying to federal officials is a crime. it dsn't matter who is doing the lying. politics should have nothing to do with it. we have -- i have said repeat repeatedly that i support mr. mueller's work and that i respect his role. i still do. nothing has changed. i think it ought to be said

again in case anyone missed it. the special counsel should be free to complete his work and to follow the facts wherever they lead. but that doesn't mean that i can ignore what looks like false statements. ifage individual sees what might be evidence of a crime, he or the clerk should call the roll report that to law enforcement so it can be fully investigated. that is exactly what senator graham and i did. that does not mean that we have made up our minds about what happened. it is possible mr. steele told the truth and the other contradictory statements that we saw were wrong. but just like any court would do, we start by assuming that government documents are true until we see evidence to the contrary. if those documents are not true

and there are serious discrepancies that are no fault of mr. steele, then we have another problem, and arguably a more serious problem. of course, even aside from these inconsistencies, the public reports about the way the f.b.i. may have used the dossier should give everyone in this chamber pause. director comey testified in 2017 that that dossier was, quote-unquote, salacious and unverified. if it was unverified in 2017, then it had to be unverified in 2016 as well. so it was a collection of unverified opposition research funded by a political opponent in an election year.

ul it be proper for the obama administration -- or, for ma --, for that matter, any administration -- to authorize something like that t for an investigation that intrudes on people associated with political opponents? that should bother civil libertarians of any political stripe. now, i wish i could talk more openly about the basis of our referral and other concerns, but right now that information is largely classified. that information is controlled by the justice department. as i said, the department has permitted only the chair and ranking member of the full judiciary committee and the chair and ranking member of the subcommittee on crime and terrorism of judiciary and a limited number of their cleared staff to see the underlying

documents. i have been pushing for the department to provide the same access to other judiciary committee members and their appropriately cleared staffs. but the department refuses to provide that access or even to brief the other members on the underlying information. fortunately, the department has agreed that it has no business objecting to our members reviewing our own work. so i have encouraged our committee members and their appropriately cleared staff to do just that, review that work. look at the memo that senator graham and i sent to deputy attorney general and the f.b.i. director. members can then make up their own minds about what senator graham and i have concluded. i have also encouraged them to

review the committee's transcripts and other unclassified materials that have been available to them and their staffs for now a long period of time, many months. finally, i have encouraged them to let me know if they believe that any of that information should be made public. i believe in transparency. we may agree that certain information should be released at the appropriate time with care to preserve classified information and the integrity of any investigation. i have already been pushing the department to review the classified referral memorandum to confirm the memo's classification markings so we can release the unclassified portions as soon as possible. now the department has deferred to the f.b.i., and the f.b.i. is falsely claiming that three of our unclaified paragraphs each

ntain the same or single classified fact. now, that really surprised me because these particular paragraphs are based on nongovernment sources and do not claim to repeat or confirm any information for any government document. even if these portions of our referral did reference the allegedly classified fact at issue, it is hard to understand why that fact should be classified. first, the deputy attorney general has discussed the fact at issue with me more than once in an unsecured space and on an unsecured phone line. that ought to tell you something. second, the f.b.i. is not acting as if this information would harm national security if released. the f.b.i. never notified the

entities copied on the memo's transmittal, for example, including the inspector general and the intelligence committees to ensure that fact was protected as classified. now, if the f.b.i. really believed this fact was classified, then the f.b.i. and the department should take better care to act consistent with that belief. unfortunately, i spent something -- i suspect something else is really going on. it sure looks like a bureaucratic game of hide the ball rather than a genuine concern about national security. i'm pressing this issue with director wray, and i hope that we can provide this information to the public as soon as possible. in fact, just this morning i took a long period of time to handwrite a letter to christopher wray, the director of the f.b.i., to let him know these very concerns.

it's been scanned to him, and i hope people make sure he gets it, because i'm not sure he always gets my letters, handwritten or typed. i also believe that the department should carefully review the entire memorandum and begin an orderly process to declassify as much of that information as possible. the intelligence committee in the house of representatives recently voted to allow all house members to review a short memo summarizing what it has learned. senators are now allowed to see what the -- senators are not allowed to see what the house members know. however, house members who have seen it have been calling for a vote to release that memo. here in the senate, the senate judiciary committee has steeks the same information -- has access to the same information that the house intelligence committee saw before drafting its summary memo. our committee does not have the same authority to release classified information that the

house authority -- that the house committee has. we have to rely on the agency to review and potentially declassify our memo. based on what i know, i agree that as much of this information should be made public as soon as possible through the appropriate process, and i don't just mean the summary memos. the government should release the underlying documents referenced in those memos after deleting any national security information that needs to be protected. but most of this story can be told, and the part that can be told should be told. the american people deserve the truth. stale, recycled media spins from journalists and pundits who do not have all the facts is not enough. the country is filled with

frenzy and speculation, but the people are very hungry for facts. however, i cannot release this information on my own and near the should anyone else. --nd neither s else. classified information is controlled by the executive branch. we should work together to achieve the greater transparency while still protecting legitimately sensitive national security information. i yield the floor. before i yield the floor, madam president, for the leader, i have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders, so i appropriately ask unanimous consent. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. nelson: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: i ask consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, i want to talk about alex azar's nomination as secretary of health and human services. and i want to explain how i am going to vote no by virtue of what i ask him in his hearing in front of the finance committee. needless to say, programs such as medicaid, medicare, the

federal marketplace had for health insurance under the affordable care act, the children's health insurance program -- all of these health care programs are absolutely essential not only to my state of florida but to all states. but since we have a higher percentage of the population that is the senior citizen population, it obviously -- medicare -- is an extraordinary popular one for that segment of our population that depends on medicare for their health care. when you look at the affordable care act which brought health care through health insurance to millions and millions of americans that had not had it before, indeed my state of florida signed up more people

than any other state -- 1.7 million floridians signed up for coverage through healthcare.gov. and that was despite the trump administrati's efforts this past year t undermine the health law by doing such things as not allowing people to get out and give the counseling on a much lower scale than what had been done before. now, my worry is looking out for the people of florida, is that mr. azar will continue to support the administration's efforts to destroy the law and all of the good things that it's done, where it has now provided health insurance for so many people.

so many peel that never had -- so many people that never had health insurance before. and the ^1.7 million floridians that signed up again for health insurance through healthcare.gov, that's a good example. one of the statements that mr. acalendar has made is that -- azar has made is that when people have in the trump administration been trying to undermine the a.c.a., he said, in effect, there was no way to fix the law. all right, let's turn to medicaid and chip, the children's health insurance program. mr. azar, i am told, supports changing the structure of the medicaid program into a block grant.

the medicaid law, ever since it was passed, sets up, according to whether or not a state has a poor citizenry, set sets up a formula that shares money from the federal government and the state matches a certain percentage. in florida, that's anywhere from 55% to 60% federal to approximately 45% to 40% from the state of florida. other states like mississippi, a poor rural population and need health care, can't afford health care, their medicaid formula is much more paid for by the federal government with a lower match from the state.

well, if you put medicaid into a block grant, that means that the state is only going to get so much money, and regardless if the population swells. if the needs are greater, that money is it. it's not flexible with the eligibility of people because of their income status. i simply don't think that's right. and it's these kind of things that concern me greatly about mr. azar. so look at medicare. as i mentioned, we have a higher percentage of the population that are senior citizens.

well, in florida, that translates to 4 million florida seniors depend on medicare. they're over 65 years of i am an. they're eligible for medicare, and that's the way they access their health. so when i ask m azar about his perspective on chang to the dicare program, his answer was deficient. this is what i asked. do you support raising the medicare eligibility age? in other words, that a senior would not be eligible for medicare, health care at age 65, that it would -- the age requirement would be increased. he did not give me an answer. i asked, do you support turning

medicare into a voucher program. according to c.b.o. estimates, privatizing medicare would increase premiums by 30%. so i wanted to find out. if he wants to be the secretary of h.h.s., does he want to turn medicare into a voucher program. and he dodged that question. so i tried a third time with another question to give him a chance to give a straight answer on the record in the finance committee. i asked him whether he supports allowing medicare providers to enter io private contracts with patients instead of the set benefit that a senior knows that they are eligible for under the

law to get those medicare benefits. the practice of privately entering into private contracts between doctors and other medicare providers, it is prohibited in medicare because it would place seniors on the hook for the difference what an insurer pays, an insurance company, and what the doctor or other provider charges. so that results in a higher out-of-pocket cost for the senior citizen. so listen to what his answer is. remember the question is, do you support allowing medicare providers to enter into private contracts with patients.

and this is what he said. quote, the mission of h.h.s. is to enhance and to protect the health and well-being of all americans through programs that touch everyippin singl americann some way every single day. my job would be to lead h.h.s. in its work toward its mission. that's not what i asked. i asked specifically whether he wanted to privatize the medicare benefits and the mechanism by which those benefits are delivered. now, that does not give me assurance on behalf of our senior citizens in florida. to the contrary. if you go and talk to a group of our senior citizens that you want changes to medicare, i can

tell you what that does. that puts a ripple of chills running down the spines of senior citizens when they think that their medicare is going to be taken away from them. and, thus, a gentleman who is delightful, he obviously is skilled in the pharmaceutical drug industry, but when we got right down to how are you going to run h.h.s. as the secretary, and if i'm not assured that our seniors are going to be protected for their health care or poor people are not going to be protected for their medicaid or that the 20 some million people, including almost two million in florida that now have health care on the private

insurance exchange offered through the affordable care act, that he's going to try to undermine that. there is just no way that i think that this is the appropriate person as secretary of health and human services. and, therefore, mr. president, i will vote no.

the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come to the floor today to express my opposition to the nomination of alex azar to be the next secretary of the department of health and human services. but let me admit to the chamber that this for me was certainly not as easy a call as was the first vote on the nomination for this position when congressman price was up for the job. i want to talk about the reasons for my vote in opposition. but i first want to begin by giving the nominee some credit

for i think a very important series of exchanges that he had before the committee. one of the biggest potential disasters that would have been visited upon this country by four years of secretary price would have been the reversal of eight years of transformation in the way that we pay for health care through medicare primarily. in 2011, medicare madelmost no payments to providers through what we would call al alternatie payment momedzs. i -- models. i know this sounds a little weedy but this is the way we drive down health care costs in this country. that's something republicans and democrats should be focused on together. alternative payment models generally refer to a switch in the way we pay for health care, moving away from reimbursing providers based on how much

medicine they practice to a reimbursement system that rewards providers for the outcomes that they achieve. in fact, rewarding hospitals and doctors and clinicians when they keep their patients out of the doctor's office or out of the emergency room or out of the hospital, which is the exact opposite of what the existing system does which rewards hospital systems and doctors the more their patients show up in the emergency room, in the doctor's office, and in the hospital. tom price was in the house of representatives the leader of the opposition to what we call value-based payment. he was the chief defender of fee-for-service payment. while the obama administration had made remarkable progress, they had set a goal of moving 30% of all medicare payments over to outcomes-based payments which they achieved by the end

of 2016. secretary price was in process of moving all of that backwards. so the reason that i say that my vote here again mr. azar was not a slam-dunk a is not a slam-dunk is because i give him credit for his testimony on this question of alternative payments. he said in answer to a question posed by senator whitehouse that one of the greatest legacies of secretary burwell's tenure was launching so many of the alternative payment models that we have out there. and i would like to keep driving that forward for all of those -- all of us who care so deeply about reducing costs in our health care system, integration and coordination and just thinking of ways to deliver better for our patients and beneficiaries. there are so many opportunities for bipartisanship here because we share so much of the same goals on this. i want to applaud mr. azar for his seriousness about working with democrats and republicans to try to shift our payment system over to something that makes more sense.

and his openness about how important the obama era reforms were and his decision, if he gets this job, to reverse some of the sabotage to those alternative payment models that secretary price began. unfortunately, my enthusiasm for mr. azar's statements on alternative payments through medicare are outweighed by his inability to convince the help committee or the finance committee that he is going to be a responsible steward of the affordable care act. this is where much of my worry comes in part because connecticut is a state that has firthly -- efficiently, ably and responsely implemented the affordable care act. we have hundreds of thousands of people in our state who now have insurance because of the expansion of medicaid and the successful offering of plans to

the uninsured through connecticut's exchange. and so it was perplexing to those of us on the health commtee that mr. azareemed to defend the administration's decisions to sabotage and undermine the affordable care act and even went so far as to try to spin those changes at strengthening the law which simply does not pass the straight face test. i get it. it's very hard for a nominee to serve in the cabinet to be critical in his confirmation hearings of the commander in chief, the person who chose him for the job. but this is obvious for everybody to see what is happening. by canceling the payments to insurance companies that helped compensate them for the most expensive patients, by eliminating all the funding for

marketing and advertising of the exchanges, by shortening the enrollment period in half, by constantly going on social media and telling all perspective enrollees in obamacare that the a.c.a. is dead, even though it's not dead, even though as we find out just as many people signed up this year despite the campaign to undermine it has signed up last year. we all know that that is an obvious campaign of sabotage, that president trump is trying to kill the affordable care act administtively bause he can't convince the amecan public to press congress to do away with it. the affordable care act has the support of the american public today, and that is the reason why congress could not repeal it. it was very troubling to me that mr. azar didn't acknowledge this campaign of sabotage, which leads me to believe that he is going to fulfill instructions from the administration, from

the white house, to continue it. he went so far in questioning with me to suggest that shortening the enrollment period actually would help consumers with something that the insurance companies were asking for. that's not true. the insurance companies were not asking for that in connecticut. that does not help consumers. certainly when you are also withdrawing all of the money from marketing and advertising, which would have been used to tell people that the enrollment period was being shortened. at the same time that i am going to vote no on this nomination because i am deeply worried that as secretary, mr. azar is going to continue this campaign of a.c.a. sabotage. i do look forward to working with him if he will allow it, those of us who vote against his nomination, in a bipartisan way on payment reform because as much time as we spend talking about coverage in the senate,

frankly, the more important long-term reform is changing how we pay for health care. because if we fundamentally change the way we pay for health care and start rewarding good outcomes rather than just rewarding more medicine being practiced, then we will save enough money to insure everybody in this country through a means that both republicans and democrats can support. and so i am going to vote no. i encourage my colleagues who care about the affect of the administration of the affordable care act to vote no. remember, this is a remarkable success story. 20 million people have insurance. people know the strength of the affordable care act. that's why they pressed congress not to repeal it. even despite the uerni campaignst as many people signed up this year than last year which is, frankly, extraordinary. and i would hope that those people here who believe in the

affordable care act as the american people do will oppose this nomination at the same time. i hope that there are ways, significant ways if he is nominated and confirmed that we can work together with secretary azar. i yield the floor. mr. merkley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. on august 25, a minority group of rowinga militants attacked a number of outposts and they inflicted injuries and killed about 12 members of the

country's security forces in the process. these attacks certainly must be condemned, but they have triggered a response by the burmese government and military that is beyond horrific, attacks by the burmese government military that have inflicted a massive humanitarian crisis in that nation. the burmese military, aided by mobs of local vigilantes, carried out violence against the rowinga people in a systematic way. now, these are people who have been in burma for generations, but they have been stripped of their citizenship under burmese law. and in the attacks that

followed, the doctors without borders estimates that 6,000 men, women, and children were murdered in just the first month of this ongoing assault. that included hundreds of children, an estimated 700 children aged five and under. the survivors have shared countless stories of women being raped, men murdered, children murdered in the most inhuman ways imaginable. human rights watch has reported that the burmese military and the associated vigilantes have burned 354 villages to the ground. the response of the rohingya to be to flee the country, desperately flee as fast as they

could the systematic violence inflicted upon them, systematic rape, systematic shooting, the murder of children, and the result is 650,000 people have fled to the adjoining country of bangladesh where they are now establishing refugee camps. now, these camps are a big improvement from being attacked, shot, murdered, and raped inside burma, but the camps themselves are just a jumble of split bamboo flames with plastic over the top of them. you can see here how the ground has been cleared away and people have shoveled out relatively flat sections on the hillside and just split bamboos into little pieces and tied them together with threads and draped plastic over the top of them.

i wonder what will happen when the monsoons come or a severe windstorm comesless. i don't think these -- comes. i don't think these shelters are going to hold up. the overcrowded conditions and poor sanitation places them at risk for diseases like diphtheria and cholera. and these camps full of displaced, disenfranchised, angry young men are also a recruiting ground for violent extremist groups like isis. this is, in the words of the united nations, the fastest-growing refugee emergency in the world. it's unacceptable, and america needs to pay attention, and america needs to respond. the flow of refugees has continued even up till now. the numbers have dropped.

there aren't that many roningya left inside of burma and the governments of burma and bangladesh are discuss ago repatriation strategy on how these individuals might be able to return to burma. they have a framework for a plan. burma says they'll welcome them and let them go home. they've even said they can return to where their villages were burned and have assistance in rebuilding their homes and their community structures. but at the first step they say they'll house them in reception camps. and they also say they may put them into model villages, and these words -- reception camps and model villages -- are word for encampments that are based on what is already in much of the central rakhine state, which are long-term camps that are

essentially prison camps, prison camps for the rohingya. if this is not going to unfold this manner, the world has to be engaged. and right now, of course, the rohingya, who have fled this horrific violence, they're not anxious to return immediately because they don't believe the government will protect them. if you've been subject to horrific rampage of slaughter and violence, why would you immediately go back into that unless the circumstances were dramatically modified? can they depend upon the burmese government to protect them when they didn't protect them since august? can they depend upon the burmese military to protect them or the military -- for the burmese military perm tax rated these crimes -- perpetrated these crimes. so it is important, repatriation is important, the ability to go

back to their villages and rebuild them is important but time is of the essence. for it to work, the international community is going to have to be involved. let us understand that this assault that went from august even up till now is not a one-time thing. it is the latest in a long line of atrocious assaults on the rohingya people. in 178 burma's military launched operation team drag obviously, causing more than 200,000 rohingya to flee to bgladesh. there were similar campaigns of assault. in 1992 and in 2012 and in 2015 and in 2016. none as horrific as what was witnessed just a few months ago, august 2017, but terrible assaults nonetheless. time and time again the rohingya

people to be subjected to persecution and violence and recognize this isn't just a tactic that the burmese government and burmese military have used against rohingya. they've used it against other minorities, this systematic strategy of burning a village, shooting people as they flee, and raping the mothers and the daughters. we've seen this with assaults on ethnic minorities in the kachin and shawn states. in fact, in those states, over 100,000 people have been displaced by the military since 2011. so the u.s. and the world must not only stand up and say, this ethnic cleansing against the rohingya is wrong but say this strategy being usinged by the burmese military against

minority and another minority and another minority is absolutely unacceptable -- under any code of moral conduct, under any religious vision, under any civilized understanding of the treatment of citizens. now, much of what took place over the last few decades was out of sight of the world because burma was closed off to the world. but then burma went through a diplomatic awakening, the budding of democratic institutions, and they've been more open to the world. and so now we can see very vividly what is going on. so they are not hidden, and there is no excuse for the world to turn away and not engage. now, burma, the government nor the military, is ready for

inteational corporation. l -- internatial cooperation. they've left the international community out process of trying to address these issues. they have rejected input from the united nations high commissioner on refugees. no international monitoring allowed. and freedom of the press curtailed. the rohingya people are right to be wary of how they will be repatriated without significant, significant international involvement, without strongly developed measures for their safety, without a changed attitude by the government. that's why yesterday here in the senate i introduced a resolution calling for international pressure and oversight to be brought to bear on the repatriation process. it calls upon the united nations high commissioner for refugees to play a central role in ensuring that any repatriation of the rohingya people is safe,

is voluntary, is dignified. the concern for the treatment of the rohingya is bipartisan. i appreciate that 14 senators who have already cosponsored my resolution. particular thanks to senator john mccain and to senator todd young for not only supporting this resolution but for being advocates for the rohingya people and for global huma rights. i was profoundly shocked when the burmese military started these massive assaults back in august. i knew it was important for our government to pay attention, for the people of the united states to pay attention, and for members of this senate to pay attention, and for us to weigh in and try to create pressure to

end the persecution and create a different path for the future. in the month that followed, there was a lot of international outcry about how wrong this was, and first state counselor aung san suu kyi responded to the world with a speech to the united nations. she invited the world to go with us to the troubled areas, to see for yourself what is happening, think for yourself what we can do to remove these problems. i applaud that invitation and that attitude, that invitation to the world to be engaged and be involved and see what was happening. and senator durbin and i, along with three members of the house, congresswoman betty mccallum,

david dis lee knee from rhode island, came together and we accepted her invitation, we accepted her offer, and we plan add trip for november to go see the troubled areas in burma, just as aung san suu kyi had suggested. we intended to go to the afflicted areas. we intended to see for ourselves what was happening. we intended to talk to those left behind and get as full a story as possible, and we intended as she indicated to think about what we could don't to reverse the situation. the burmese government worked with us to plan this trip. it involved a trendous amount of logistics on how we would get the northern rakhine state. but at the very last moment, just as we were getting ready to leave washington, d.c., the government reversed course. the government of burma said we invited you, but now we will

block you from visiting these afflicted areas. clearly the burmese government and military had a lot to hide. their invitation to the world from the nobel laureate aung san suu kyi turned out not to be sincere. she did not stand behind her invitation. she did not ensure that the world could come and see what was going on. we were not allowed to visit the villages that had been burned. we were not allowed to visit camps from the previous repatriation of individuals, called internally displaced camps, or i.d.p. camps, internally displaced person persons/camps. but we were able to into the capital sitwe, and

there was something there that i didn't expect at all. and that is, in the capital there is a section of the city that is referred to as the muslim corridor, the muslim a anybodihood. it's called aug mingalar. we were told we could go visit the muslim corridor, and so we did. this is a street in aun mingalar. they end of the street, you have a police station and you have a fence. in fact, every route out of this neighborhood is blocked by police. the people who live there they're not currently trapped in like by high walls and extensive barbed wire. but it is illegal for them to leave this neighborhood. think of the early stages of the warsaw ghetto in poland. i had no idea that this existed.

and it's an indication of the situation that the rohingya live in not just in this quarter but 120,000 of them in camps that have been set up where they're not allowed to operate as a normal individual in a normal economy, in a normal village. this is functionally sealed off, this neighborhood, from the rest of the city. they cannot leave and go a short distance away to open their shops. so they have no means to support themselves. they're trapped. in a neighborhood cage with the barriers and police stations and consequences if they leave without permission. and if they have a medical emergency, then what they have to do is get permission to leave to travel to an i.d.p. camp, internally displaced person's camp, see a doctor at the i.d.p.

camp, get a referral to the hospital, return back to their neighborhood and then go to the hospital that's just five minutes away. so it's a trip of many hours in order to go to the health care facility that's just minutes away. can you imagine what that's like in an emergency, a health emergency? and why? it's just a direct affliction on these muslim residents in this buddhist nation. they are dependent to survive on relatives who have found a path to other countries, who can send money back to them so that they can purchase goods, and they're also dependent upon the government. the government provides teachers for the higher high school level classrooms. and those teachers disappeared after the august assaults and haven't returned. the children of this

neighborhood are not allowed to go to the universities. so this may not look horrific unless you know the facts that it is a zone that is essentially a prison inside the capital city for the muslim residents. in order to learn more, our delegation traveled to bangladesh to the refugee camps. we went to a camp called bolokali, and that visit brought home the breadth and horr, the human rights crisis that these men, women, and children have endured. speak to any member of the delegation, and they will tell you that articles and reports written about what has happened are not the same as hearing firsthand, hearing face to face

the stories of the atrocities that the rohingya refugees have suffered. senator dusenator durbin and i a temporary classroom, tarp over the top, where women gathered to learn about sanitation and disease prevention. i asked the interpreter who was with us, would you ask these women if they have stories that they would like to share? and i wasn't sure that the women, these muslim women covered in traditional muslim clothing would be willing to share a story with an outsider. but they immediately responded. one woman jumped up and she pulled the cloth off her arm to show these stars from the -- scars from the burns that she had as her village hut came down around here as she tried to escape. and then other women jumped up

to tell other stories of a child being killed in front of her, of a husband being slaughtered, of the trials and tribulations of trying to escape the assault from the military. every person in that room had tragic and horrifying stories to share. entire villages burned to the ground. entire villages fleeing for the border, being shot at by soldiers as they tried to cross the border into bangladesh. themselves, they did not share stories about the rape, but they shared those stories with the doctors and others who shared the stories with us. as you walk around the camp, you see a lot of young kids, a lot of children. some are helping out with their

families. some are orphans. some are kicking balls around. i watched one young man run with a little sheet of plastic that he had put split bamboo on to create a little tiny kite. he could get that thing about 10 feet in the air you could also almost envision that these we regular children growing up like others around the world. but then i went and visited with a group of children who were doing drawings. and when you saw their drawings, you realized what they had been through. here i'm talking to a young boy who's showing me his drawing of a helicopter and a military vehicle coming into the village. here is one of the drawings that was held up. you see the helicopter shooting at the village and the drawing

of the machine guns, the village house under assault. here's another child's drawing. again, helicopters. you see the houses built on stilts. there's a military man on the ground shooting at them as they're fleeing. these children have been through horrific, horrific trauma. their families have been fracture oured. they may not -- fractured. they may not have a mother or father. and somehow they're going forward in life. i would like to say that the situation has improved since our troop, but the situation is still extremely bad. take a look at this map from human rights watch. these red dots are villages that have been burned, all of these,

these two lines of villages. at last count, 354 villages burned. it wasn't just in august and september. the burning continued. human rights watch said in october and november, another 40 villages were burned. in fact, one was burning on november 25, right after our delegation returned here to the united states of america. is it any wonder the burmese government didn't want us going in to see any of these sites firsthand? and we weren't the only ones denied access. all of the u.n. organizations, including a fact-finding mission and an investigator named yong gi lee were stopped from visiting these areas. international aid groups like the red cross was denied access. mass grave containing the body of a group of muslims was uncovered in rakhine state's indiana village just north of

the capital where we were. in a rather shocking first, the burmese military actually accepted responsibility for the deaths clailing -- claiming soldiers react from provocation from terrorists and that those that were involved would be punished. but you think they're really going to be punished? i'll tell you who gets punished? it's the reporters. these are the two reporters that reported it. where are they? they are in prison. they are in prison. two reporters for the reuters. shouldn't the united states and international community demand that they be set free and demand those who perpetrated these crimes against humanity be the ones in prison? these two young men have been charged with violating the country's official secrets act facing 14 years in prison for, quote, illegally acquiring information and sharing it with

foreign media. it sounds to me like these two reporters were doing exactly what aung san suu kyi, the nobel laureate said, come and see. there is a continuing cycle of violence and radicalization. burma justifies their actions as a response to attacks by arsa. but let's recognize a very small group of attacks occurred and then the response was hundreds of thousands of people had their villages just burned to the ground and were driven out of the country. well, there is going to be perpetuation of a cycle of violence unless the mindset of the government of burma changes dramatically. and right now we need to be engaged in the possibility of repatriation because it's urgent that these refugees get a chance to return to their villages and rebuild them, but it won't happen unless we insist deep involvement by the united nations.

reflecting on the rwanda genocide four years after president clinton said, we owe to those who died and to those who survived who loved them our every effort to increase our vigilance and strengthen our stand against those who would commit such atrocities in the future here or elsewhere. he continued, indeed we owe it to all of the world of the -- people of the world who are at least because each bloodletting hastens the next as human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated. the unimaginable, he concluded, becomes conceivable. for the thousands of the rohingya slaughtered and the hundreds of thousands who fled, the unimaginable has become all too conceivable. five months after these atrocities began, five months tomorrow in fact, the world has not heard from our president about this horrific ethnic cleansing. i want to encourage president trump to weigh in on this, to speak with moral clarity, to

condemn the burmese government for executing this horrific case of ethnic cleansing, to praise and support bangladesh for opening its doors, to call on the world to provide bangladesh with international resources to help address the plight of the refugees, to demand the safe and internationally monitored opportunity for the rohingya refugees to return to their villages, rebuild their homes and rebuild their lives. we here in the senate must not be silent and thank you again to my 14 colleagues who have already signed on to this resolution. our repatriation resolution calls on nobel laureate and head of state aung san suu kyi and burma's other civilian leaders and military leaders to recognize that long-standing prejudices haunt burma and commit to implementing allhe recommdations of company if i annadvisory commison on the rakhine state which seeks to end the discrimination against the rohingya and reduce the tension with other my minorities

-- other minorities. the burmese government could begin so immediately by restricting -- lifting restricts on i.d.p. camps while planning to shut down the i.d.p. camps entirely and restoring the opportunity for full participation in society. and we call upon burma to work with bangladesh and high commissioner to ensure the voluntary and safe repatriation of refugees, safety must be assured for these refugees. there must be no forcible repatriation. it must be voluntary and it must be safe and it must be monitored by an international organization. and we can make sure that they get assistance in returning to rebuild their homes and their lives. we must call on burma and aung san suu kyi to embrace transparency, to grant humanitarian aid groups access to release the two journalists in prison for doing their jobs. finally, we must call the

international community to invest in the future of the rohingya people. everyone has a part to play in the economic development of the rakhine state, the poor estate of burma for the benefit of all. in closing, anyone who looks at the events that have occurred since last august can plainly see the massive scale of human catastrophe. let it not continue. the world that cried out never again so passionately decades ago, that rallied against the war crimes of kosovo, that condemned the rwanda genocide has an obligation to stand up once again this time in burma for the universal right of every human to live in peace, free from fear, and free from persecution. thank you. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. a senator: thank you. i rise in support of the nomination of r.d. james to serve as the assistant secretary of the army for civil works. mr. barrasso: the assistant secretary establishes policy