reconnecting those eight. five adults were found they were not the parent of accompanying child at all, and these are of the children four and unt. -- under. one of those individuals faced a case of child abuse. we're not reconnecting those. hearing a lot on the news about those individuals saying every one of those children need to be reconnected as fa as possible. and i hear criticism that they are doing ndaa test -- d.n.a. testing of the individuals. what they are trying to do is figure out if that adult is the parent of that child or has that adult picked up that child somewhere through mexico or central america to be able to use them as a tool to be able to try to get into the united states? i only wish that wasn't happening, it is. reconnecting families is a major priority and as i said before, and would say again, our default

position should be to keep families together, but our struggle is determining who are the actual families that we can actually keep them together and who are the individuals who could very well do that child harm? so let's do this. let's keep attention on the reunification of the families. let's continue to ask fair and reasonable questions of the administration as they are reconnecting these families. but let's also make sure that this congress actually acts on the issues that needs to be done with immigration. 21 days ago there was a request to be able to deal with the family reunification of this body. still not acted on. in february of this year, this body had a vote on dealing what's called the flores settlement. that's what causes the separation of these families, a settlement that goes all the way back to 1997. every single administration since 1997 has struggled with the flores settlement because the flores settlement says if you arrest a family illegally

entering the country, the children of that family can only be detained 20 days. that sounds reasonable except it takes on average 35 days just to do a hearing. so with that settlement, all the way back to 1997, every administration has said i've either got to separate families or i've got to release that family into the country and hope they show up for a court hearing at a future date. oh, by the way, we called and checked on some of the future court dates. if you're in line to be able to get into a court date, if you're released into the country to come to a court date, the longest period of time you'll wait depending on the region you're headed to is four years and two months from now is the next available date. so as a family unit, you're released into the country for four years and we hope you show up for your court date four years from now. this body knows all these numbers. and we've not acted to solve the

problem. we need to address these issues. we need to be a country that continues to be open to legal immigration. we need to be a country that's open to work, even workers that cross the border, both sides north and south. we need to be a nation that deals with things like hb2 visas. we need to keep the promise that we're a nation built on a set of values and the american dream and if you want to live under the law and the land of freedom where you can become anything you want to become, you're welcome to be here if you come legally. we need to be that nation. but we also need to just not ignore illegal immigration. and assume there aren't real problems with gang violence, with the movement of drugs, with human trafficking, with child trafficking. because they're real. is it every family that comes across? absolutely not. but are you okay with it

happening at all? ha if it's one in -- what if it's one in ten that's child trafficking? or that's drug smuggling? is that an acceptable number? or should we know the people that are crossing the border and know the issues that are there? we can do better than this. let's solve this. let's keep the debate going and let's actually resolve this in the days ahead. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

mrs. gillibrand: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new york. mrs. gillibrand: i ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: ukraine. without objection. mrs. gillibrand: i rise to speak in opposition to president trump's nominee to the supreme court, brett kavanaugh. more than 8 million people have health problems in my state. they're living in diabetes. they've had treatment for cancer. they have a childhood disease. before the affordable care act became law, if you had a health problem and you needed to see a doctor, health insurance companies were allowed to make you pay much more. the health insurance companies were allowed to turn you away, to tell you, sorry, you're not

profitable enough for us because you're circumstance and they did it many times. and let's not forget. that included women who were pregnant. but they can't tell them that anymore because of the affordable care act. the affordable care act made that simple statement illegal. now insurance companies must cover you if you're sick. they must cover you if you had a health problem in the past. and millions of americans are better off now because of that fact. so what does this have to do with the supreme court? president trump has made it clear that one of his biggest goals as president is to destroy the affordable care act. he's already tried hard to get congress to repeal the law and luckily for us he failed. because people don't want their health insurance taken away from them. it's really that simple. millions of americans raised their voices and told congress that if the affordable care act got repealed, they would lose their insurance.

and that would be devastating for them and their families. and congress listened. but now there's a new challenge to the law in federal court, and the trump administration is refusing to defend the affordable care act. when this case makes it to the supreme court in a few more years, the next supreme court justice could be the deciding vote in whether or not the affordable care act is overturned. that means the next supreme court justice could have the power to decide that insurance companies don't have to cover you anymore if you have a health problem. you could have the power to decide that insurance companies don't have to cover you or your child anymore if your child is sick. health costs in my state have already skyrocketed because of the fact that the trump administration has attacked this law over and over again. but repealing the law would absolutely be devastating to so

many families. more than 8 million new yorkers could lose their health insurance or pay more for their coverage. so would millions more all across the country. and i'm very concerned that that's exactly what judge kavanaugh would do if he was given this opportunity. just look at his record. when judge kavanaugh had a case before him that was attacking another part of the affordable care act, he dissented in the case and he said that even though the affordable care act requires employers to cover birth control medicines for their workers, they shouldn't have to do it if they don't want to. he even took it so far as to say that if the president doesn't like a law -- if the president doesn't like a law, then the president could ignore the law and ignore the courts. listen to this one opinion, mr. president. this will interest you, i am sure. and tell me if you think this is sound judicial judgment.

he wrote, under the constitution, the president may decline to enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the president deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold the statute constitutional. anyone with the most basic understanding of how the constitutional system of government works in this country knows that this is not what our founding fathers intended. if this judge is confirmed, then there is a dangerously high likelihood that he will strike down the affordable care act. mr. president, we must not go back to the days when an insurance company could charge more to a person just because they have health problems. we cannot go back to the days when an insurance company could say no to a patient because they could say, you're just not going to make us enough money. we must listen to our constituents. listen to the millions of men,

minimum, and children all across this country who need access to basic health care, and they cannot afford to lose their insurance. we must reject this nominee. i yield the floor, mr. president, and suggest the absence of a quorum. ifer officer the clerk will call the roll. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. nelson: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: i ask unanimous

consent that the quorum call be lived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, very good us in for florida. this morning the army corps of engineers signed off on a long-awaited report that will allow congress to authorize a new reservoir project south of lake okeechobee in the upcoming water resources development act. what we refer to as the water bill. we, many of us in florida have been pushing the army corps and the trump administration to approve this project for months and months, and last week when i was in the area of lake okeechobee visiting with folks affected by the algae blooms on the west coast over in fort meyers on the caloosahatchee river and on the

east coast with the st. st. the st. lucie river, they're facing a problem that steams to repeat itself almost every year. the heat of summer, the excess nutrients in the water put all of that together and you get algae blooms which sucks up the oxygen out of the rivers and makes it a dead river because there's not enough oxygen in the water for the fish. well, there was a similarly very bad algae bloom back in 2016, previously again in 2013, and many times in years past. the pollution in lake okeechobee created a toxic brew of a blue-green algae that blooms and

that at one point this summer -- this summer covered 90% of lake okeechobee. now, the lake has risen to a 14 and a half foot level. the army corps is considering that they're going to have to stop -- start again, releasing water to the east in the st. lucie, to the west in the caloosahatchee because of the pressure on the dike around lake okeechobee. and thus here we go again. more nutrient-laden water flowing into these waterways in the heat of summer and then the algae blooms just keep going and going. well, there's a project that will help. it's one of many projects that will help but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

the reservoir project that the army corps approved today is so critical because once it's constructed, it will provide storage so that the corps doesn't have to discharge as much water to the east and to the west. and when you combine that with the fact that the army corps just last week let us know through the white house budget office that they have approved the funds to strengthen the dike and accelerate its construction, a combination of these kind of things are going to help so that the army corps of engineers doesn't have to release that extra nutrient-rich water which will cause the algae blooms. and so this reservoir to the

south of the lake will include water treatment features so that the water can be cleaned as well as stored before it is sent further south in the long journey that mother nature intended sending that water in a slow gravity-drained southward flow through the river of grass otherwise known as the florida everglades. many of us have been cheering the news today that this project is now going to be ready for inclusion into the water bill. and i think momentarily here in the senate, perhaps next week, we'll be taking up the water bill. and that was the interesting timing to get the corps of engineers report so that we

could get this project in as a part of the overall everglades restoration project. now, mr. president, unfortunately, we've received some very somber, sad news this afternoon. that one of our great everglades restoration advocates nathaniel reed has passed away. nat reed leaves behind a long legacy as an environmental champion. he served as environmental advisor to governor claude kirk beginning in 1967 and in 1971, he became assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife, and national parks under president nixon.

and he stayed in that position through the gerald ford presidency. nat returned to florida in 1977 and continued his career in public service by working under seven different governors in various capacities, including chairman of the commission on florida's environmental future. and that commission was instrumental in the land acquisition projects that we now know as everglades restoration. he also served as a board member for the national audubon society, the nature conservancy, the national parks conservation association, and the natural resources defense council as well as the national jeer graphic society -- the national geographic society.

one of nat reed's most passionate projects has been to expedite the construction of this reservoir south of lake okeechobee. the project that the army corps just approved today. i have spoken to nat on numerous, numerous times about this important project and about our shared goal of restoring the everglades. mr. president, we have lost a real environmental champion, and he was bipartisan in his approach. i mentioned that he served seven governors. it didn't make any difference if the governor was republican or democrat. nat was all about restoring as much of mother nature back to

its functioning self. and so, mr. president, i want to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a column written by nat in 2012 that lays out the history of the everglades' environmental problems and how we can fix them. he recommended focusing on projects like bridging the tamiami trail which is u.s. 41, virtually a dike across the southern peninsula of florida. it's now being bridged first with a mile-long bridge and now under construction a two and a half mile bridge so the water can flow under the road into the water-starved everglades national park. thank you, mr. president.

and he recommended focusing on other projects like restoring the kiss simi river to its natural state when half a century ago when all the emphasis was just on flood control, get the water off the land, they took this meandering stream called the kissimmi river that cleansed the water as it oozed south and all of the marsh grasses. and what did they do? they dug a straight ditch. and that -- and nat has been one of the leaders in advocating to restore that river to its natural remanderring state so that by the time the water gets to lake okeechobee, that it's cleaned up by natural processes.

so both of these projects, tamiami trail as well as the kissimmee river are now well under way and we're already seeing the benefits to the environment and to the wildlife. and he also wrote about the importance of water storage and treatment projects, both north and south of the lake, a refrain that this senator often repeats as well. and that's why i not only respect nat so much and appreciate so much what he has contributed to our country and to our state, but also i love him as a friend and for his untimely death today in an accident in canada, it is a

huge, huge loss. and that's why nat and i have been so focused on advancing this new reservoir project south of lake okeechobee. it saddens me so much to announce that good news at the same time of announcing the death of one of the nation's true environmental champions. and i hope as we go about in years to come actually constructing that reservoir, it would be a fitting tribute to name that project in nat reed's honor. all we can do is just try to continue his life's work of protecting florida's unique

environment. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i spoke before the 4th of july recess about two financial risks that are coming our way thanks to not getting anything done on climate change. one, of course, is the risk to coastal properties, not something that the presiding officer has to worry too much about given his home state but something that rhode island's ocean state has to care a lot about and the distinguished senator from florida and his constituents have to care a lot about because there is a point where rising sea levels intrude into the sailability, the mortgagability, and insurability of houses and none other than freddie mac, the huge federal housing corporation is

predicting that there will be a coastal property meltdown. the other risk is that of a carbon bubble. there is a lot of talk in the economic literature about a carbon bubble. one recent financial study reports the potential effects of a carbon bubble on financial stability have been recently discussed in the academic literature and are increasingly on the agenda of bank regulators and supervisors. indeed, the bank of england in an official statement has warned, and i quote them, investments in fossil fuels and related technologies may take a huge hit. end quote. that huge hit is the other side of a carbon bubble.

it pops and you have a crash. so let's look at the prospects for not just a carbon bubble but a carbon crash. there are several elements in the runup to a crash. some of these we witnessed in the crash of the housing bubble back in 2008. when these conditions exist, we should take warning. one condition is whether you can trust the players. in the housing crash, the rating agencies were in bed with the banks, and you couldn't trust their risk evaluations. the whole thing was cooked. the big fees, the rating agencies were taking also took their eye off the ball and they gave wildly erroneous ratings to

high-risk investments. so at the heart of the 2018 housing crash was a failure of trustworthiness. can we trust the fossil fuel industry any better than those rating agencies? there is no reason to think so and there's plenty of reason to think not. this is an industry that has been lying about fossil fuels' effect on our climate for decades. and once you get used to lying about one thing, it's hard to contain the spread of the rot. exon even once gave its c.e.o. the infamous, phony oregon petition urging the u.s. to reject the kyoto protocol to cite to his shareholders at an annual meeting.

i've spoken before about what i consider to be the untrustworthiness of exxon's response to the black rock shareholder resolution which required exxon to report the predicted effect of climate policies on exxon's business model. as nations enact carbon emission restrictions, fossil fuel reserves now claimed as assets by energy companies may become undeveloppable, stranded assets. well, in a nutshell, exxon seems to have wildly -- indeed, so wildly you can only conclude deliberately overestimated the adoption of carbon-capture

utilization and storage, wildly underestimated the adoption of electric vehicles, and wildly underestimated renewable energy growth, all to reach its rosy conclusions that its assets were more or less secure. and on the subject of trustworthiness, right now big oil companies are still being untrustworthy, telling the world that they want a price on carbon while statement telling their political fixers here in congress to kill any such thing. who knows how much they push around their analysts and others who are curious about a carbon bubble. what we know is that trusting this industry is asking a lot. so that is condition one for a bubble and a crash. untrustworthy actors.

condition two is market failure. markets usually correct and have a smoothing effect. but if there is a market failure, markets can go off-course until the correction comes and then the correction is so immediate and so big that it amounts to a crash. there is a market failure in fossil fuel that props up this bubble. indeed, there is several. the biggest is that the fossil fuel industry rides on what the i.m.f. calculates is a global, multitrillion-dollar annual subsidy -- $700 billion in subsidy every year in the u.s. alone. -- says the international monetary fund. that subsidy massively warps the operation of the market. there is also what appears to be a method logical issue. the oil industry is ordinarily

measured by net asset value analysis. as one paper noted, this is, and i quote, an industry valuation methodology that assumes full extraction of fossil fuel reserves. a methodology that assumes full extraction of fossil fuel reserves becomes a problem when the question is the extraction of those reserves, whether that is even possible. there is also what i would call a massiveness factor at work here. lehman brothers and bear stearns were so massive it was had ard to imagine them vanishing, but they did. the market value of fossil fuel reserves that can't burned is around $20 trillion, do, according to the world bank. that is such a big wipeout, it is hard to comprehend, let alone

anticipate. so people wait until tomorrow and then the tomorrows pile up into a bubble and then the crash comes when the first person panics and everybody runs. one other market failure here is actually how the crooked political pressure of this industry is causing us not to focus on the 2-degree celsius ceiling scientists warn us about for global warming or the 1 .5- degree celsius burning ceiling. but existing reserves will blow us through. we cannot have both a safe planet and full extraction, and the fossil fuel industry is choosing extraction. that political castle of climate denial will fall sooner or

later. it is false. so not only is condition one met -- untrustworthy players -- but condition two is met. there is actually a massive, multiple market failure in fossil fuel awaiting correction. which brings us to condition three -- the energy market is undermining fossil fuels as a technology. we are reaching a tipping point. here is lazard's cost cub for on-shore wind energy. it shows over eight years a 67% decrease in cost. this line shows the cost of wind energy steadily declining from 2009 until 2017. at the same time that these wind costs were dramatically

declining, utility-scale solar costs and rooftop solar costs also declined dramatically. this line represents rooftop solar costs. this line below it represents utility-scale solar costs. again, a percentage decrease of 86%. new solar and wind energy projects are already becoming more economical than existing coal plants, as we just saw in colorado. new solar and wind projects now compete on price with new natural gas plants as a recent auction in arizona showed. the cost trajectory for renewables continues steeply

downward. when you compare u.s. wind and solar to other energy sources, you see the trend is clear, and here's the result. on cost, the lowest cost providers are on-shore wind and utility-scale solar. more expensive than them is natural gas, more expensive is coal, more expensive still is nuclear. that's not counting the subsidy. that's apparent price. this same trend is also happening globally. this graphic is prepared by the world economic forum, and it shows the same thing for renewables. in particular, here is the rapidly declining cost of solar photovoltaic, and here has been

the cost of coal, and here right now they cross over. we are at the tipping point where it is cheaper worldwide to develop solar and wind than it is to burn coal. stanford economist tony seba studies economic disruptions, and he likes to show these two photographs. it'll be a little hard to see from where you are. this is fifth avenue, new york city in 1900. if you look at the photograph, you can see that every vehicle there is drawn by a horse. in 1900, every vehicle is drawn by a horse. if you look very closely, there's actually one leading-edge non-horse-drawn vehicle it appears. but the whole street is filled with horsedrawn carriages and wagons.

1900. 13 years later, fifth avenue, new york city, every single vehicle in that street is now an automobile. in only 13 years, there was a complete transition in transportation. if you were a harness maker, this was a tough transition for you. in just 13 years, the world changed, illustrating the point that major economic disruptions can take place fast. think landlines and cell phones, if you want a modern example. now, people still ride horses, and they probably always will, but our transportation sector shifted rapidly from horse-drawn conveyance to automobiles, because horse-drawn conveyance

was an antiquated technology that got left behind. people still have landlines. i have one at home. we hardly ever use it. the communications industry shifted is rapidly, as antiquated landline technology got left behind. as the energy market shifts to cleaner, cheaper, more efficient renewable technologies, fossil fuels soon just won't compete in the marketplace. so there's our third condition. not just untrustworthy players, not just market distortion, but also a technological tipping point making the fossil fuel technology obsolete. there is a fourth condition, and this fourth condition basically puts an accelerator on condition three in certain sectors of the

energy market. condition four is based on the fact that the marginal cost of production of a unit of fossil fuel energy varies considerably. some fuels are low-cost and high-cost to produce. some geographical locations are low-cost and high-cost locations. in this variance, coal is pretty much dead already, at the hands of oil and gas, purely because of cost. so we can set coal aside for a moment. in the world's oil markets, much of this cost of production variance is masked right now by energy cartels that prop up the price of oil. cartel behavior to prop up the price of your product makes

economic sense if you can maintain monopoly pressure to prop up the price, but it also only makes sense for the cartel participants if you can anticipate that you can sell your product out into the future. you hold back your output to drive up price, to maximize your return in the hopes that in the future you'll be able to keep doing the same thing. you'll be able to sell your product. well, if you're not sure that there will be another day to sell your product at the propped-up price, you start to get anxious. -- about your product becoming stranded, about your product becoming valueless, and at that point it doesn't make sense to engage in cartel behavior. what makes sense is to maximize your output, to sell as much as

you can while your commodity still has value. to basically have a firesale. low-cost fossil fuel energy producers would be rational to drop their prices and maximize their market share firesale pricing while their fossil fuel still has value. get the damn stuff out the door while you still can. that behavior, dropping the cost, pricing at your marginal cost of production, and sells as much of your product as you can, will fend off the inevitable for low-cost producers for a while. however, for those producers who can't match that firesale price,

the downward trajectory of their crash steepens catastrophically. as soon as you can't produce not at the cartel price but at the lower firesale price, as soon as you cannot meet that price, you are out of business. there still is a fossil fuel market. you're just not in it. the bad news for the united states is that's where much of our market is. economists looking at this carbonnable mess -- carbon bubble mess warn that high-cost regions like the united states could, and i quote, lose almost their entire oil and gas industry. let me quote that again. lose almost their entire oil and gas industry.

so to recap about a fossil fuel carbon bubble, the players aren't trustworthy, the fossil fuel markets aren't efficient in the economic sense, fossil fuels as a technology are now tipping into being obsolete, priced out by renewables, and our united states industry is particularly vulnerable to an accelerated market mettle-down when -- meltdown when the tide shifts. those four conditions don't make a great scenario. that is a warning that we need to start considering. what should we do? well, everyone seems to agree on two safety measures. first, there's one sensible hitch. don't invest all in fossil fuel. invest more in renewables. be on the winning side of the

shift. start making cash ray -- carburetors, not just mule harness. but there's also one sensible economic strategy, and that is to manage the transition. as one paper on this subject concluded, and i quote it here, the issue of concern is the lack of any transitional strategy. inadequate, conflicting, or slow responses to climate change in investment and finance can entail risks that could be avoided under a more orderly transition. you could equate it to jumping out of an airplane. you're going to end up on the ground anyway. wouldn't you like a parachute to make it a gentler and more survivable voyage?

what's the parachute? a transition plan for managing this shift. the best one, a price on carbon. so this takes us back to the discredible -- discredible conduct of the fossil fuel industry which far from leading this transition, far from trying to build itself a parachute is busily still trying to deny that there is any such transition, including in my view falsely reporting to shareholders that this is all going to be okay and we're going to be able to extract and sell all of our reserves. this is an industry that is still fighting like a wounded bear to prevent anyone from organizing the orderly transition that they need. at some point there has to be a

grown-up in the room, and the fossil fuel industry has shown no capacity for that role, which makes it up to us in congress, mr. president, to help america prepare for both the predicted crash in coastal property values as sea level begins to enter the mortgage and insurance horizon for those properties, and the predicted carbon bubble that we see coming that economists write about coming, that we can manage our way through if we are responsible. in that regard, mr. president, it is time for us to wake up. with that, 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 hawaii. ms. hirono: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes, we are. ms. hirono: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without

objection. ms. hirono: mr. president, there was a time when blacks and whites couldn't get married or go to the same school. the supreme court changed that. there was a time when gay people could be arrested for loving one another and when it was illegal for them to get married. the supreme court changed that. there was a time when thousands of women died seeking illegal, unsafe abortions, and the supreme court changed that. the justices on the supreme court matter to each and every one of us our lives. that's why there's so much concern over president trump's nominee to fill the vacancy on the supreme court, judge brett kavanaugh. right-wing groups like the heritage foundation and the federalist society have been working for decades setting the stage to pack our federal courts with ideologically driven

conservatives. they have invested millions of dollars and decades of time in this effort. these two organizations have played the primary role in vetting and selecting donald trump's nominees to the supreme court, and by including judge kavanaugh on their list of potential nominees, these two organizations certainly expect that he will reflect their own ideological perspectives which include overturning roe v. wade and repealing the affordable care act, the a.c.a. they certainly expected neil gorsuch, another name on their list, to do the same when he got on to the supreme court, and in the short time he has been on the court, justice gorsuch has not disappointed them. is it any wonder that millions of people across the country are raising concerns over the nomination of yet another nominee on the federalist

society and heritage foundation's wish list? isn't it reasonable to conclude that judge kavanaugh will also reflect the ideological agendas of these organizations? this is why judge kavanaugh does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. he has the exceptionally high burden of proof to assure the american people that he can be fair and objective. the senate has a constitutional obligation equal to the president's to vet a president's nominee to the supreme court and fulfill its advice and consent obligation responsibilities. i take this responsibility certainly -- seriously because a fight for the future of the supreme court will have ramifications for so many issues that we care about. our federal courts have been at the center of the republican party strategy to dismantle, gut and weaken the affordable care act, the a.c.a., since it was

passed over eight years ago. the supreme court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of the a.c.a.'s core provisions in 2012. the a.c.a. provides affordable, accessible health insurance to millions of people in our country who would otherwise not have such insurance. but the republican party's efforts to sabotage this critically important law through the courts continues unabated. right now, texas and 19 other states have a lawsuit pending in federal court that claims, among other things, that the affordable care act's protections for americans living with preexisting conditions, illnesses like diabetes, asthma, or cancer are invalid. the trump administration filed a brief supporting texas in its attack on the a.c.a.'s protections for millions of people in our country with preexisting conditions. this case will likely end up

before the supreme court. if texas wins its lawsuit, the health care of millions of americans will be at stake. with nearly one in four americans either losing their health coverage or paying exponentially more, much, much more for health care. the outcome of this case is personal to millions of americans and their families, and it's certainly personal to me. a little over a year ago, i was diagnosed with kidney cancer. i was fortunate. i had health insurance. it allowed me to focus on fighting my illness rather than worrying about how i was going to pay for my treatment. i now join the millions of americans living with a preexisting condition. exinlz that don't discriminate on the basis -- exinlses that -- illnesses that don't discriminate on the basis of age, gender or ideology.

as this case makes its way to the supreme court, the american people should not forget that donald trump and his administration have been openly hostile to the a.c.a., a law that has helped millions of people. in fact, the president has openly bragged about all the things he's done to gut the a.c.a. does the president expect his nominee, judge kavanaugh, to protect the a.c.a.? i don't think so. quite the opposite. the next supreme court justice will also play a determining role in the future of a woman's right to make her own reproductive health decisions. i remember vividly the stories of women dying in america unable to access safe, legal abortions. the fight for reproductive freedom prompted by these stories was one of the reasons i got involved in politics. when i was in college, the first letter i ever wrote to hawaii's congressional delegation was about abortion, at a time when

our state legislature was debating whether to legalize abortion, and hawaii became the first state in the country to do so. those of us who lived in a time before roe v. wade where a woman was forced to have a child against her will are deeply concerned about the future of a woman's right to have an abortion, to have that freedom of choice. throughout his campaign for the presidency, donald trump repeatedly promised to appoint justices to the supreme court who would favor overturning the core holding in roe v. wade. the heritage foundation and federalist society share this goal, and it is not a stretch to assume that the names they included on their supreme court wish list hold the same view. judge kavanaugh's record on this issue is deeply troubling and of significant concern. last year, judge kavanaugh issued a dissent in a case that granted a 17-year-old immigrant

in the custody of the department of health and human services, h.h.s., the right to get an abortion. kavanaugh argued that holding the young woman in custody, refusing to release her for a medical appointment for her procedure until h.h.s. was able to find her a sponsor who could serve as a foster parent was not undue burden under the supreme court's legal test. he did not consider holding someone in government custody to be an undue burden. this is the view of someone who will not follow the law as it is currently set forth by the supreme court if confronted the challenges to roe. and let us remember it is the supreme court that sets precedent. that can't happen if judge kavanaugh is on that court. and really, the dissent in this case is a view of someone chosen for a reason, ready to fulfill donald trump's campaign promise

to see roe v. wade overturned. this fight matters. who sits on our courts matters and how we exercise our constitutional duty to examine a nominee for the highest court in our land matters. just as well-financed conservative interests have spent decades setting the stage for the court packing going on today, those of us who opposed this agenda need to mobilize, resist, and stay engaged for the long haul in the fight for a fair and independent judiciary. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i come to the floor today to discuss the continuing need for aggressive, hard-hitting oversight of the department of defense.

that need for oversight is as great today as it ever was. waste is alive and very well at the pentagon. i have a poster here, a cartoon, a blowup of a cartoon published in "the washington post" in 1985, my early years in the united states senate. it shows ernie fitzgerald, a famous whistle-blower, confronting what is quite obvious, his chief adversaries, the big spenders at the pentagon. as a senior air force official, ernie fitzgerald committed a crime, and he says his crime was that he committed truth.

ernie fitzgerald's famous for in 1968 exposing a $2.3 billion cost overrun on the c-5 aircraft program. in those days, having a senior pentagon official like ernie fitzgerald speak the truth about a cost overrun on a high-visibility program was unheard of. in fact, it was dangerous. it was so dangerous that it cost ernie fitzgerald his job. that's why i like to call ernie fitzgerald the father of whistle-blowing. the cartoon also depicts the infamous $640 toilet seat that

made history back in those days as one example of the terrible waste at the defense department. that happened in 1985 when i as a first-term senator began watchdogging the pentagon after a report uncovered the $640 toilet seat and a $400 hammer, i began asking very tough questions. something like how could the bureaucrats possibly justify paying such exorbitant prices? i'm still waiting for a straight answer. a lot has changed since the 1980's. the internet, which was in its infancy in the 1980's, is now part of everyday life. mobile phones back then were

once the size of bricks. now those mobile phones can fit in the palm of your hand and do a lot more work in helping you make telephone calls. but one thing hasn't changed in all those decades -- wasteful department of defense procurement practices. since i began my work on this issue, there have been six presidents and 12 secretaries of defense, yet the problem of wasteful spending at the defense department just keeps going on. since those earliest revelations, there has been a steady flow of new reports on spare part rip-offs. no political party is immune from these horror stories.

during the administration of george h.w. bush, oversight efforts uncovered soap dishes that cost $117 and pliers that cost nearly $1,000. in some cases, the department of defense admitted some high prices didn't even pass the smell test. true, better deals were negotiated. people tried to make some changes, but to offset losses on lower prices, the contractors jacked up overhead and management charges, making the overall contract price the same. exercising oversight on these contracts is like working with a balloon. you know the famous balloon. you squeeze it in one place and the problems pop out someplace else. under president bill clinton, a

report by the government accountability office, as we know it here, the g.a.o., revealed one defense contractor paid its top executives more than $33 million a year, an amount that was reimbursed by the federal government as part of the contract. now, i happen to agree that a company has the right to pay its executives whatever it wants. however, when the government enters into cost reimbursement contracts, those happen to be contracts in which the government directly repays the company for costs incurred instead of paying a fixed price, the contractor loses incentive to control costs, and top executives draw sky-high salaries at the taxpayers' expense. i introduced -- if you want to

know my history in this area, i introduced an amendment in 1997, a defense authorization bill, to curb executive compensations billed directly to the taxpayers, but as you might expect, with the respect that the defense department has in this body, that amendment was voted down. during the bush administration in the early 2000's, i worked with the g.a.o. to expose abuse of government charge cards by department of defense employees. we found some truly egregious expenditures. examples -- over $20,000 at a jewelry store. over $34,000 on gambling, and over $70,000 on tickets to sporting events and broadway shows. in some cases, employees who spent thousands of these

taxpayer dollars on personal expenses way beyond anything that was ordinary business expense were not only not asked to repay the money to the taxpayers, but oddly were promoted, and even issued new charge cards. instead of being held accountable, it's quite obvious they were rewarded for their illegal activity. during the presidency of president obama, i pressed the pentagon to answer for a $43 million gas station built in afghanistan. this project was revealed as part of an audit conducted by the special inspector general for afghan reconstruction. when i pressed for answers, the

defense department responded by saying that the direct cost was actually only $5 million, but that the number didn't include the massive overhead costs charged to the project, which pushed the overall price tag up to that $43 million. now, anybody anywhere else outside of this beltway knows that that doesn't meet the smell test, and that's not even a commonsense answer to my overall question, how did we waste $43 billion there? even more alarming is what happened to the rest of the $800 million provided for other business development projects in our efforts to help afghanistan recover. auditors could only find documentation to support about half of the money spent, leaving

about $400 million unaccounted for. this kind of sloppy bookkeeping means that we may never, never know how the rest of the money was spent. was it used for unauthorized purposes or pocketed by crooked people? we'll probably never know. and now under the presidency of donald trump, over 30 years since all of this started with me, the overpriced airborne toilet seat has really gained altitude. instead of the $60,040, the new price tag reported by the air force was reported to be $10,000, and that was only for the lid of the toilet stool. any american can tell you that

$10,000 for a toilet seat cover is ridiculous. americans work too hard to see their precious tax dollars flushed down the toilet. i asked the department of defense for confirmation that the seats costs $10,000. they still haven't answered my letter, but after my inquiry, the department of defense has changed their story. they clarified to the media that there are now 3-d printing the toilet seat lid for much less. but they never answered my question. we don't know how many seats were prached at the -- purchased at the $10,000 price tag. we don't know when they moved to

3-did printing -- 3-d printing. and we don't have the documentation on the price of two toilet seats and especially just for the lid. but if the issue of the toilet seat has been sorted out, it is clear -- even if the issue has been sorted out, it is the clear that the department of defense still does not have a grip on spending. other spare parts o.i.g. reports revealed that the pentagon frequently overpays for simple parts and does not perform adequate kotion cost a -- adequate cost analysis. one of the primary culprits here is for this continuing waste and misuse of tax dollars is the department of defense

noncompliance with congressional mandate to pass an audit. the department of defense has a very bad record. they stand out as the only department of government. it's impossible to know how much things cost or what is being bought when nobody is keeping good track of the money being shuttled out the door. for nearly 30 years we've been pushing the pentagon to earn a clean opinion on any of their audits. way back in 1990 congress passed a chief financial officers act which required all departments of the government to present a financial statement to an inspector general for audit by march 1992. all departments have complied

and earned clean opinions except one, that's the department of defense. instead of clean opinions, the department of defense has earned a long string of failing opinion, and these happen to go by the name of disclaimers. but it boils down to the fact that the books at the department of defense are unaudittable. now 20 years later after that 1990 congressional action, so now 2010, congress finally got fed up and passed a new law requiring the pentagon to be ready for audit by december 2017. the department was given seven long years to get its act

together and to meet the same requirements as every other federal agency entrusted with the public money. well, obviously that deadline has come and gone like other deadlines have come and gone. according to the controller and the chief financial officer mr. david norquist, a clean audit is still at least ten years away. so ten years of not being able to follow the money, and if you can't follow the money, you don't know whether it's spent legally. there is a longstanding underlying problem preventing the pentagon from reaching the goal of a clean audit. this is the so-called feeder system. i won't describe a feeder system. but feeder systems are supposed

to capture transaction data, but those feeder systems are broken. auditors cannot connect the dots between contracts and payments. you can't follow the money. that's because there is no reliable transaction data and little or no supporting documentation and you tend to spend money without knowing what you even bought. the pentagon will never earn a clean opinion until those accounting principles are able to produce reliable financial data that meet accepted standards. over the last 25 years the department of defense has spent billions trying to fix these outdated accounting systems but with no success.

how is it then that the very mighty pentagon can develop the most advanced weapon systems in the world but can't seem to acquire something as simple as an accounting system? we need to get to the bottom of this problem and fix it. so i'm working with my colleagues on the budget committee to get the government accountability office to conduct an independent review of the pentagon's efforts to acquire modern accounting systems. what's the problem is what we're trying to find out? should the defense department keep trying to fix the antiquated feeder systems or is it time to develop new fully integrated systems that can deliver reliable financial information? we need and we want some

answers. the department of defense is currently attempting to conduct a full financial audit. secretary mattis has directed all employees to support the audit and the results are expected in november. although the new chief financial officer appears to be making good-faith effort to get a handle on the problem, he also happens to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year for audits with a zero possibility of success could be very wasteful spending that kind of money if they don't have a feeder system in place. the first priority of our federal government remains and ought to be national security. we must ensure that our military force remains strong -- strong

enough to deter any potential aggressor, and as a result, preserve the peace. the men and women on the front lines deserve fair compensation and the best weapons and equipment money can buy. we want to feel the most capable -- fill the most capable military force in the world because national defense is so very important, congressional watchdoing of -- watchdogging is very expensive. we don't want one dollar to be wasted, not even a penny, until the department of defense can earn a clean opinion, we have no idea if the d.o.d. dollars are being spent wisely.

report after report show that precious defense dollars are being wasted, misused, and unaccounted for. reforms have been made but the -- clearly, very clearly, the war on waste has not been won. much more work needs to be done. from my oversight posts in the united states senate, i'll continue to apply pressure on the pentagon to step up the war on waste. i don't expect much help from the inspector general, mr. fein seems to be awol on waste. i raised the issue of the $10,000 toilet seat cover to him over a month ago and still haven't received an answer. his office found the time to

update the media on the toilet seat cover, yet my letter has gone unanswered. however, after revelations about the $43 million gas station, secretary mattis' reaction was music, sweet music to my ears. he issued an an all-hands memo. in that memo he stated flat out -- i think these are his word directly -- i will not tolerate that kind of waste. nonfor being a man of -- known for being a man of his word, secretary mattis, i'm counting on you for your help. maybe together we can wipe out the culture of indifference twoord the american -- twoord the -- toward the american

people's money on the pentagon. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. ms. cortez masto: i ask that the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. comers -- ms. cortez masto: i want to share with my colleagues and the american people what i witnessed on a couple of immigration facilities on our southern border and to share the stories of the people, children, infants being held there. on a visit to an adult detention facility, i sat down with a group of six mothers whose children have been taken from them. one of them, her name was anna, and she had a five-year-old daughter she brought with her to the united states. after witnessing a brutal murder in her neighborhood and receiving death threats in her home country, she decided to leave that country to keep her

five-year-old daughter safe. she traveled 3,000 miles to get to our southern border, and when she finally arrived, she thought i'm safe, i made it. i'm going to tell them who i am and why i'm here because i know i finally made it to safety. so she flagged down customs and border patrol agents thinking that they would help her. but when she did, c.v.p. officials arrested her. they took her into custody and then they separated her from her daughter. anna's daughter was put on a bus and driven hundreds of miles away. and as anna was telling the story to me, every single one of the mothers began to cry, because what anna told me was that was the first time that she had ever been separated from her five-year-old daughter and had no idea, no idea where her daughter was or what they were doing with her. and all of the women, as anna was telling me this story, had

experienced the same thing. each one of the women i spoke with had children under the age of 12 who were taken away from them. their stories were the same. they had all faced horrific gang violence and abuse in their home country and fled to protect their family. they had been raped and tortured. they saw loved ones killed before their very eyes. another one of the women i spoke with, her name es with rizelda and she explained that in her community the gangs expect extortion payments every week from business owners like herself. and if you can't pay, they come to your house and kidnap your children or rape them and kill them. one day gang members came and started threatening her son. she knew in that moment that she had two options: stay and watch her son die or pack up her children and run. i asked the group of women why didn't you go to the police for

help, and they explained to me that the police in their country are just as corrupt as the gangs, in their country there is no rule of law. there are no protections. if you want to save your children's lives, your only option is to run. and that's what these women did. they came to the u.s. expecting to find freedom and protection. instead they were thrown in jail, and their children were loaded on buses and driven away. and these parents want to know now where are their children. when they asked me, i told them i didn't have the information they needed, and i too was asking the same questions. but i promised, i promised them that i would take their stories back with me to washington, d.c. and share them with the american people. mr. president, because of president trump's inhumane family separation policy, we have almost 3,000 children separated from their parents.

their moms and dads just want to have their children back in their arms. and just recently secretary azar testified that there is no reason why any parent would not know where their child is located. well, that is absolutely false. i spoke with ten mothers and fathers who have no clue where their children are. they looked at me with tears running down their faces. they pleaded with me to help them find their children. this administration gave no thought to the damage inflicted on these families, and they clearly had no plan for how they would reunite them. we have three different entities working to reunify these families, two under the umbrella of the department of homeland security, u.s. customs and border protection and immigration and customs enforcement, and one under the department of health and human services, the office of refugee resettlement. but none of them are working together. as a result, the trump

administration has missed its court ordered deadline to reunite young children under five with their parents. 102 children under five years old are waiting to be reunited with their parents. but as far as we know, only four families have been reunited. the trump administration has been ordered to reunite up to 3,000 children with their parents by july 26, but they are on track to miss that deadline too. in the midst of all of this, h.h.s. officials discovered that they have been holding a toddler who may be a u.s. citizen in detention for over a year. how could that be possible? how could the reunification process be so erratic, inefficient and slow? this administration has been making excuses left and right, trying to pin the blame on anyone but themselves. they suggested that the

reunification process is slow because too many members of congress are taking tours of these detention facilities. i couldn't help but laugh when i heard that, because i can guarantee you, i was not taking a tour when i tried to enter a children's detention facility and they locked me out. they would not let me in. i was not allowed in to check on the condition of these children or even to talk to anyone in charge about how they were taking care of children. toddlers, infants, kids under the age of 12 who have been separated from their parents, many for the first time. i was there to find out how taxpayer money was being spent and how the kids were being treated. but the facility's manager locked the door and gave me the number for a communications director to call to seek assistance. and with a handful of

exceptions, most of my colleagues have also been turned away. the trump administration is also saying that they're having trouble located some of the parents. part of the problem is that at least 12 of the parents with children under five years old have already been deported. can you imagine that? babies who can't even speak have no clue where their moms and dads went, and they might never know. the trump administration can't pin the blame for this on congress, democrats, or anyone else. they're missing the deadline for one reason and one reason only, because they never made a plan to reunite these families. they never intended to. they didn't have a plan two weeks ago when i went down to the border, and they don't have one now. they created this chaos with no plan to put the broken pieces back together. they had to start from scratch trying to locate parents and children detained across the country. and now we are hearing heartbreaking stories of

reunification, toddlers who do not recognize their mothers anymore. the physiological trauma they have inflicted, this administration has inflicted on these children will last a lifetime. so today i am calling on president trump to finally do his job and provide us with a concrete plan. i want to see results, and i won't stop fighting until every child has been reunited with their parents. stop making excuses. stop blaming democrats for the crisis that you created, president trump. and the other thing that i keep hearing from this administration and mr. trump, president trump's allies is that the democrats want open borders. this is not about open borders. listen, i support strong, secure borders. i spent my career fighting to uphold the laws, the attorney general of the state of nevada for eight years fighting to

secure our borders. it's not about secure borders. we need a plan to reunite these families because this is about our values. this is about human rights. this is about who we are as a country. and separating families is not who we are. we do not tear babies out of their mothers' arms. we've always, always had a guiding principle when it comes to children. we do no harm, whether they're honduran children, guatamalan children, salvadoran children, or american children. we do no harm. and so i call on president trump, abandon your inhumane zero tolerance immigration policy. abandon the heartless decision to separate families. we should be looking for humane, cost-effective alternatives to detention for families fleeing

violence. we don't need the department of defense to build internment camps for babies, toddlers, and kids. locking up families who are seeking asylum under the laws that we have put in place to protect them would be a moral stain on our country for generations to come. president trump, the american people demand that you explain how you plan to reunite these families that you've scarred forever and that you've ripped apart. work with democrats to solve the refugee crisis in central america. don't treat innocent children and their parents as political pawns. don't turn your back on everything this country stands for. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: mr. president, on roll call vote 150, i voted aye. it was my intention to vote no. therefore, i ask unanimous consent that i be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: thank you.