vote: vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: is there anyone wishing to vote or change their vote? if not, on this vote, the ayes are 50, the nays are 48. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider sr considered made -- is considered made and laid upon the table and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's actions. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22, do hereby bring to a close debate on the nomination of patrick by zella to be secretary of glaib signed by -- of labor. signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of patrick

pizzella of virginia shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any other senators wishing to vote or change their vote? if not the yeas are 50, the nays are 48. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: department of labor, patrick pizzella of virginia to be deputy secretary. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming.

mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come to the floor today as we as americans continue to see the reminders, the regular reminders that the world is a very dangerous place. the horrendous reports out of syria over the weekend show us that there are leaders in the world who will test the rules that define civilized nations. they will exploit any crack that they see in our resolve. well, president trump has consistently responded to these kinds of challenges by showing that he is resolute and he is unshakeable. he has a foreign policy that always puts america first. to continue to do this, the president needs to have a full national security team on the job and working for america. the secretary of state, mr. president, is a very important part of that team. tomorrow the foreign relations

committee is scheduled to meet to have a hearing on mike pompeo's nomination to do this very important job. mike pompeo understands that if we want safety and security at home, we need a world that is peaceful and stable. i expect he's going to talk about all of these things that -- at the confirmation hearing, and i look forward to his testimony. we all heard about mike pompeo's impressive qualifications for the job. first in his class at west point, harvard law school, director of the central central intelligence agency. mr. president, he's got the intelligence, he's got the integrity, and he's got the experience to serve as america's secretary of state. as a former member of congress, he certainly understands how policy decisions get made and the key importance of congressional oversight. as head of the c.i.a. he clearly

understands the crucial role that the intelligence community plays in preserving america's national security. as a soldier, as a soldier he understands the consequences of decisions that get made in washington, d.c. now, i've traveled with mike pompeo to meet with world leaders, national security conferences. he knows the issue, he knows the people, and he is the right person for this job. i met with him just last month after he was nominated. we talked about some of the specific issues, the issues going on around the world and how they affect our nation's national security. we had a very good conversation. i'm extremely confident that is he is the right person for this job. i expect a lot more people will come away from these hearings tomorrow with great confidence in mike pompeo. he'll be an excellent

representative for our nation and he'll be a strong hand to implement president trump's foreign policy. i look forward to voting on this nomination as soon as possible after the hearings. mr. president, it was just a little over a year ago that he was confirmed by a very large bipartisan majority for his current job as c.i.a. director. it was right here on this senate floor where that qimpletion oh-- confirmation occurred. 15 senators on the other side of the aisle agreed that mike pompeo was the right person for that position. he drew bipartisan praise for his qualifications. two democratic senators actually came to the floor and spoke in favor of his nomination, senators feinstein and warner. mr. president, they are the current vice chair of the intelligence committee and former chair of the intelligence committee. since that time, mike pompeo has done an excellent job at the

c.i.a. even hillary clinton has come out and praised his time heading that agency. i expect this will be a short process to confirm him in the new job for which he has been nominated as secretary of state. there's certainly no good reason for democrats to slow things down or attempt to slow things down. we need to restore america to a position we once held as the most powerful and respected nation on the face of the earth. for eight years the previous administration had us going in the wrong direction. the obama administration followed a policy that they called strategic patience. that meant watching while the assad regime in syria crossed one red line after another and the red line became a green light. the result was that syria continues to use chemical weapons today in attacking its own people. strategic patience did not work.

the obama administration's policy also meant that north korea was allowed to get away with too much for far too long. north korea continued to test nuclear weapons, test missiles, using hostages as a way to get what it wanted from other countries. strategic patience did not work in north korea. the trump administration has said very clearly, the era of strategic patience is over. the leaders of these countries need to understand that their belligerance will not succeed. they need to get a clear message that america has a new foreign policy. it's ales policy -- it's a policy to secure america's interest and leadership around the world. parts of this leadership is standing up to showing there is a limit to the patience of civilized countries of the world. the previous administration too often plays international

opinion ahead of what was actually best for america. that only made the world a more dangerous place. the truption has -- trump administration has begun to get us back on the right track and mike pompeo will ensure that we stay on the right track. now, when it comes to issues like the upcoming discussions with north korea, mike pompeo understands the risks of dealing with these kinds of aggressive adversaries. he also understands the opportunities that we now have because of president trump's forceful stand for american interests. democratic should commit -- they should commit to allowing this nomination to move as quickly as possible. so tomorrow we'll have a hearing. we need a thorough discussion about what's happening around the world and then we need to vote. let's not have anymore of the deliberate delays we have seen by the democrats in this body.

no more pointless and partisan obstruction. america's adversaries around the world are watching closely. in russia, in syria, in north korea, in iran, and in other places. it is time for us to show that we are serious about maintaining a strong foreign policy that puts america first. president trump is doing his part. mike pompeo is ready to do his part and his job. and it's now time for the senate to do our job. 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:

quorum call:

quorum call: mr. brown: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio.

mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. 50 years ago today congress enacted the fair housing act exactly one week after the assassination of martin luther king, as he sought, as he sought justice for sanitation workers in memphis. it came just weeks after the kerner commission issued its report on the origins of urban unrest in the 19 # os. this report contained the now famous warning that, quote, our nation is moving toward two societies. one black, one white, separate and unequal. in the wake of these events the fair housing act made discrimination in the sale, the rent, the financing of housing illegal for the first time. for generations redlining, restrictive covenants, outright discrimination kept families of color locked out of entire

neighborhoods. often far, far from where jobs were. and they created segregated communities that linger to this day. they denied these families the opportunity to build wealth through homeownership. many of these exclusionary practices were carried out by private entities and local governments. but as richard ross stein reminds us in his book "the color of law" and i recommend everybody listening that they read that book, as richard rossstein reminds us in his book "the color of law" federal policies also played a role, a significant role in reinforcing segregation. from 1934 through 1962, three years, three decades, 98% of all f.h.a. mortgages went to white homeowners. 98% in a country that in those days was about 10% african american. 98% of mortgage went to homeowners.

the fair housing act made this despicable discrimination illegal. it required that federal housing and urban development grants be administered in a way that, quote, would administer, it would affirmatively further fair housing. not in a reactive way but would affirmatively further fair housing. state and local governments, public housing authorities were required to use their federal funds in ways that would reverse rather than accelerate or reinforce segregation in their communities. april 11, 1968, however, was not the end of our work to ensure fair housing and equal opportunities. 50 years later we have not had the progress we should have had. so much more needs to be done. a new report this year from the center for investigative reporting analyzed tens of millions of mortgage records and found that all across the country people of color are far more likely, even holding constant for economic

situations, people of color are far more likely to be turned down for a loan, taking in account factors liar their income and -- like their income and size of the loan. the 2008 housing crisis hit communities of color particularly hard. in a run up to the crisis family mortgages were targeted to people of color. even those who qualified for no-frills, no sacrifices prime mortgages were often instead steered into a subprime much riskier loan. even african american and hispanic borrowers with higher incomes than other borrowers found themselves in risky subprime, designed to fail products. these practices of discrimination stripped a generation worth of equity from communities that had fought hard for equal access to homeownership. i know in my community, in cleveland, the southeast side of cleveland, in the broadway harvard area of that community,

where so much wealth has been lost, and as people finally began to gain in homeownership and wealth accumulation, what happened in 2006 and 2007 and 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and 2011 devastated these communities. as a number of my colleagues heard me say, in my zip code 44105, cleveland, ohio, in 2007, the first half of that year there were mo foreclosures than in the united states of america. the wealth still hasn't recovered. my neighborhood hasn't. my community hasn't. my state hasn't. middle-class black and hispanic families lost half their wealth from 2007 to 2013. half their wealth. middle-income black household wealth was $63,000 in 2007. a decade later, $38,000. the numbers are similar for hispanic households. $85,000 down to $46,000.

borrowers with these higher cost loans were foreclosed on at about triple the rate of borrowers with standard 30-year fixed rate mortgages. over a recent eight year period 9.3 million homeowners lost their homes through foreclosure, distress sales surrendering their home to the lender. after the crisis, we took steps to fight this discrimination. we created the consumer financial protection bureau to look after bank customers, to help root out discrimination, required lenders to report more detailed data so we could more easily spot modern day redlining. 2015 h.u.d. issued the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule. this rule would have given clearer guidelines to communities to help them assess their own fair housing needs and provided them with the data they need to inform their decisions. it would have allowed them to set their own goals and time lines. some of the questions communities would ask during these assessments would demand they think in new ways about how

to create housing and economic opportunities for all of their residents no matter color, no matter family size, no matter their disability, if they have one. these are the types of questions this body told the country to ask when it enacted the fair housing bill tpaoeufl -- five decades ago. instead of recommitting ourselves to the promise we made 50 years ago, too many washington politicians are trying to take us backward. earlier this year h.u.d. suspended implementing the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule. that won't reverse the requirements of the fair housing act. instead it hurts communities which will once again be left to comply with the law without the technical assistance they need. remember that new data that banks were going to report to make it easier to spot lenders that discriminate? the bill the senate passed lastly month right here would exempt 85% of banks from reporting the data they're collecting and reporting today.

mr. president, we're not even going to know what happened. we're not even going to know -- this body has scaled back the amount of data we're trying to gather to stop discrimination. without it, we can't monitor trends in mortgage lending. it will be harder to see who has access to affordable mortgage credit. and importantly, who does not have access. h.u.d. is even thinking about changing its mission statement in ways that diminish the importance of combatting housing discrimination. the administration's actions over the past year make it clear they're already wavering in that commitment. for example, 2017 h.u.d. withdrew guidance requiring equal access for transgender people in homeless shelters. let's pick on them even more. according to a report in "the new york times," dr. carson'sed h.u.d. suspended several antidiscrimination investigations including an investigation into

discriminatory housing advertisements on facebook. the administration proposed a 14% cut to the h.u.d. budget, including a affordable housing in kphaoupblt development programs -- community development programs aimed at creating housing for low income communities. we know, mr. president, that one-fourth of renters in this country spend at least 50% of their income on housing. one thing goes wrong in their lives, they're a victim and they lose their homes. one thing goes wrong. one-fourth of people in this country who rent are paying at least half their income in housing costs. in cuyahoga county, cleveland, the most populous county in ohio, one-fourth of all family units, one--lg fourth -- one forth of all homeowners or renters spend half their income on housing. so it's not just renters. it's often homeowners too. so we are deciding in this body,

because the president wants to, and the far right in this body wants to cut spending on housing even more. we have enough money, mr. president, to do a huge tax cut for the richest people in the country, richest 1% will get 81% of that tax cut. it will mean millions. i was talking to an accountant the other day in oleary, ohio. it's tax season of course and he's busy. he said when people come and see me, they ask inevitably when i'm doing their taxes, they ask how does this tax bill affect me? and he says are you a billionaire? and they laugh and say of course not. he says only if you're a billionaire will it affect you. then you'll save millions of dollars in your taxes. that's a bit of an exaggeration but that's what that tax bill is all about. if you're a billionaire, a decabillionaire, you're going to save a lot in taxes this year. but if you're living in

working-class housing, if you can't afford much more than the basic, very basic kind of housing or even worse than that you're going to see budgets cut, you're going to see fewer vouchers, you're going to see less funding for housing. what kind of government is this? this mean spiritedness, more tax cuts for the richest people in the country. let's stick it to people that are barely making it. let's -- people making -- these are people making $10 and $12 an hour. we're going to cut their medicaid. they're making $10, $12 an hour we're going to scale back their snap benefits. making $10, $12 an hour we're going to undermine their housing subsidies. i mean what is all of that about, mr. president in this new government that we're living in now? the last thing we ought to do when a a quarter of all renter

houses are -- my state of almost 12 million, 400,000 families pay a quarter of their income in housing costs -- i'm sorry, a quarter of them pay half of their income in housing costs. again one thing goes wrong -- their car breaks down going to work, can they come up with $500 to fix their car? probably not. then what happens? then they're evicted and then everything goes upside down because they can't pay their rent so they get evicted. the kids got to go to a new school district. they lose most of the things they have. they've got to find a place to live. they probably don't have the money for the down payment to live in their, that a landlord charges. a few years ago i hosted a discussion with some of my colleagues, invited matthew desmond, the author of the book evicted. in the front of the book he scribbled the phrase home equals life. if you don't have decent housing, it's pretty hard to put

a stable life together for you and your family. one of the things he said in that book is when you get your paycheck every two weeks or once a month, he said the rent eats first. you've got to pay your rent. if you can't afford to pay your rent, you can barely afford to pay your rent, you can't do much else. that simple statement captures so much. a safe, stable home is the foundation for opportunity. so this government is going to of give tax cuts to the richest people in the country and we're pulling the rug out from under people that are working every bit as hard as we do in this body, mr. president. many of them work harder than we do just trying to get along in $8 or $10 or $12 an hour. we're denying people the opportunity of living in a stable home. that's why we must take real practical steps. my colleagues and i have legislation, the fair and equal housing act, it would add gender identity and protect those under discrimination from the fair

housing act. rather than take us backward, mr. president, we must take these sorts of actions to give more americans the opportunity to have a of safe, stable home, to build wealth through homeownership. we must constantly work towards dr. king's vision killed 50 years ago this month, dr. king's vision of equality and equal opportunity for all. mr. president, i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia.

mrs. capito: thank you, mr. president. i appreciate the opportunity to speak today about the nomination of andrew wheeler to be the deputy administrator of the e.p.a., an extremely important position. mr. wheeler's experience make him extremely qualified. i appleby yas because he -- i am bias because he is from west virginia. his wealth of knowledge of working on environmental policy in the public and private sector are just incredible, i think. the knowledge and experience will be a tremendous asset to the agency and to the american people. he understands as a -- watching policy being made and helping policy being made, and then transitioning to the private sector and how that policy influences the private sector as well.

he's had an active hand in environmental energy and infrastructure policy on both the achievements, the debates, probably some of the failures that we've had as well as the nominations of numerous presidential nominees. andrew will start with a head start here. he'll hit the ground running and that's what we need at the e.p.a. he is also tasked with coordinating and are working with various agencies within the jurisdiction. he has worked with other agencies while he was a staffer. beginning in 2009, mr. wheeler went into the private sector, continuing his work in environmental and energy policy, as i stated. but throughout his career he has worked with individuals and stakeholders who run the political gamut. during his confirmation hearing in our e.p.w. committee, he was

very forthright in his answers, very willing to look deeper into certain areas, very willing to not express an opinion if he didn't really know and was unsure of some of the details. and actually exhibited a real curiosity as to how he can make, not just the e.p.a. run smoother and better and more reflective of what -- what the president and also what we here in the senate and across this country see as a vision for the e.p.a. so he -- i've been impressed also by the number of individuals who know mr. wheeler, who have come forward and spoken about his expertise and his willingness to collaborate on issues all across the country. he's had an active role in my state of west virginia being a high energy producing state. i ask my colleagues to vote to confirm mr. wheeler. you will have no regret. i look forward to working with

him at the e.p.a. on issues that are important not only to my state of west virginia but across the country. with that, mr. president, i yield back. a senator: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: over the last couple of weeks many of us had an opportunity to spend more time at home than we are just going back and forth just a few days a week. while i was there, i had the opportunity to talk to small business owners, employees, people seeing their paycheck for the first time that reflected what we had done with the tax bill, but also i heard in both in my hometown of springfield,

missouri, but around my state, a level of optimism that was really encouraging. one of the people i talked to was on the national board of manufacturers, and in a recent poll of the manufacturers that look -- their competence level is the highest than it has been since they have been polling about what they saw about the future. where you and i live, mr. president, in an economy that makes things and grows things, we always do better. we are a productive part of the country. we don't do as well in an advice-giving economy, we have people who give advice, but, frankly, if you put that on top of truly productive capacity and a marketplace that meets that capacity, we always do really well. as i talk to people schint,

two -- consistently, two reasons people feel like their optimism is justified and expect it to be growing, one is the tax cuts and jobs act. no matter what was said about the tax cuts and jobs act, they -- no matter what they were told, it is helping them. and those told about the investment opportunities to grow their small businesses wouldn't be there for them are finding out they are them for them and they see those things coming. the economy generally sees money staying where we live that otherwise would have gone to washington, d.c. 43 different entities have come forward with -- in our office with ideas about what they are doing. of the 53,000 state employees in our state, the payroll deduction

would indicate that this year 32.5 million -- $32.5 million that would have gone to washington stays in missouri this year. one of our counties reported that their county payroll where the average county employee would take home $1,800 more this year beyond what they would have taken home last year. and all of those counties put together in boone county means that $946,000 will stay in boone county that would have gone to washington. that makes a difference because there are a lot of other people beyond those 485 employees that see that same kind of thing happening to them, but it really

makes a difference for families. the take-home pay that people here in the senate and other people in this building would suggest that it wouldn't matter to families, it turns out it matters a lot. easy to say if you have have all kinds of money, $200,000 a month, what difference does that make? it does make a difference. lots of individuals and families are seeing things they can do with their own money. the other thing i consistently heard was just the difference in the atmosphere of regulation. earlier this week a dozen federal agencies came together in an effort to improve the environmental review process to allow infrastructure projects to go on more quickly, to not only diminish the time it takes to get a project started, but also to be able to be more certainty

go out and get the process of bidding, acquiring and the things you need to do to make that happen happen. so a dozen federal agencies working together with a common purpose of what can we do to make this system work better. we've had up to 29 statutes and five executive orders that really have resulted in a number of different decisions from federal law that allow that project -- those projects to move forward more quickly. we had a discussion in the commerce committee this morning with one of the nominees for the surface transportation board who had been instrumental in helping to put together a more streamlined way to get things done. if for instance if you were putting something back to where it begins. if you build a bridge back where you had a bridge, it should take less of an environmental study

than if you're building a bridge that has never been built before. before now, those two things were not treated in a significantly different way, they were treated the same way. but now because of legislation that we passed and the president signed, they'll be treated in a different way as they should have been. location is a great advantage to our whole country and the milled of the country, again -- middle of the country, where, again, i live, it could be the greatest advantage, to access not only the national marketplace but to the world marketplace. but we have the same thing in america generally. things that allow us to put infrastructure in place more readily to make it more affordable to get it done in a quicker way are all good things. and one of the nominees this week that we'll be voting on, mr. president, is the deputy administrator for the environmental protection agency. now, in the last decade, the

environmental protection agency imposed somewhere, based on their own estimate, between $43 and $51 billion in regulatory cost annually. you have to be an incredibly strong economy to absorb another $50 billion in regulatory costs from one agency. and, mr. president, that's the estimate they made. you can get other estimates and say, oh, no, it's going to be a lot more costly than that. this is the cost that they were willing to admit to. the current administration has turned the page. i hope that the new deputy administrator becomes an active part of that. the e.p.a. has, i think, been in the forefront of really looking at the kinds of things that were holding the economy back and trying to do things that make sense. now, the e.p.a. administrator, administrator pruitt, quickly

got on the job of dismantling two of the most costly and burdensome regulations that may have ever been proposed by any federal agency, one, the waters of the united states where the e.p.a. decided that virtually all the water in the country was somehow related to navigable water, and it might eventually -- some of it might eventually run into navigable water, but it says, the pea has -- the e.p.a. has the right to regulate it but it says that any wer that could ever run into any water that could run into water, which means that 98% of the state would be under the e.p.a. authority if they exercised it that would have made it harder to resurface your driveway or dig a utility pole

hole, put fertilizer on your field, get a building permit. it was a ridiculous proposal. administrator pruitt and the e.p.a. understand it was ridiculous just like the courts did. the reason it did not go into effect because the courts basically said to the e.p.a. in many instances, you don't have the authority to do that. this change was made because the e.p.a. realized that if they -- they didn't have the authority, and, frankly, if they did have the authority, it would have been a bad idea. there was a power plan that would have been so excessive, that, again, in the state where i live, the utility bill would have doubled in 10 or 12 years. fortunately, the power plan that would have added up to $39 billion in compliance cost, every single penny of which would have been passed along in

your utility bill and mine, all of it, $39 billion added to the utility bill in ways that just, frankly, didn't make sense. and the e.p.a. has moved away from that, but also not away from -- not away from the idea of regulation or environmental control. in fact, administrator pruitt came to our state, to the thomas hill energy center in april of last year to hear directly from workers, from the electric co-op members that provide electricity to many of our residents and to ag leaders about the impact of that. he listened to that and went back, i'm sure he did that in other places, and withdrew that rule. but at the same time proposing a solution for west lakes landfill that had been on the critical we need to take care of it list for

30 years. the job of the e.p.a. is not to strangle the economy. the job of the pea is to make the -- e.p.a. is to make the environment more protected by doing the things that the e.p.a. was designed to do, and i think, mr. president, that's what they've been doing. looking at that, looking at the rules that don't make sense, trying to be sure that we don't do things at the federal level that cost people their jobs, their livelihood, and their opportunities for no reason at all. i had a meeting this week. it was friday, a week ago, friday at missouri state university where the head of the missouri department of agriculture chris chen and missouri farm bureau president and i answered questions for about 45 minutes from a crowd there to talk about agriculture

and the future of agriculture. not a single question was asked about the farm bill. every question was about -- questions were basically about trade, rural broadband, and regulation. i think you could go to lots of other places and say, what do you want to talk about that you're most concerned about with the federal government, and two or three of those topics would come up again. you know, last year, mr. president, the senate used the congressional review act to block 15 new, major rules that had come up late in the previous administration. that act had been used exactly one time since it was put into law in 1995 or 1996. it had been used exactly one time in the entire life of the law until we were able to look at it and use it 15 times last year to eliminate rules that would have cost our economy $36

billion in compliance costs. they were not rules that had -- we had had before. in the case of the last administration, the country had gone along without these rules being proposed for seven and a half years, but suddenly on the way out the door, there are all these new things that would have held the economy back in a way that, frankly, i think nobody would want to have to do if they were still there to take responsibility for it. so looking at what we can do in regulation, looking at what we can do in transportation, looking at what we can do to make us more competitive and allow things to happen so that taxpayers have the benefit of a process that works for them instead of a process that works with them. rolling back unnecessary red tape isn't just important for infrastructure, isn't just important for individuals, but

also for strengthening our economy. i think we're seeing that happen. these people who are willing to serve like some of the individuals we'll be voting on this week, willing to give themselves and their time, their effort, and their energy to work for the citizens of our country. we should be grateful to them, but we should also be sure we're watching carefully to be sure that they continue to do the kinds of things that create opportunity and competition. and with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor and notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: