the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: thank you. madam president, i want to start today by sharing a story that is very personal to me and that has informed my work and my values ever since it happened. when i was in college, a friend of mine -- we were close and lived together in the dorms -- went out on a date. she was raped, she got pregnant. she didn't know where to get a safe abortion, and she wasn't wealthy, so she knew she couldn't afford it either. the botched procedure she ended up having left her at a very young age unable to bear

children. i saw my friend hurt and frightened, alone and unable to get the care she needed because someone else's beliefs mattered more under our laws than her health and her future. that impacted me a lotters and it stayed with me until this day. let me tell you a few other stories. this is a story of a woman who i met just a few weeks allege -- weeks ago. when she was 23,she became pregnant while working paycheck-to-paycheck while in a volatile relationship. she had and her partner realized they couldn't raise a child. she was informed of her options, was treated with respect and kindness and got a safe, legal abortion.

today she is a writer and an editor and the mother of an adorable little boy with another child on the way. there's another story, madam president. this young woman became pregnant in her first semester of college after a contraceptive failure. having a baby would not only have met dropping out of college but returning to an abusive home. she was grateful to be in new jersey when this happened, where she could get an abortion without a waiting period and where there are a number of providers. she wrote that abortion access was, quote, critical in allowing me to determine my life path and in escaping the abusive household she is she'd grown up in. final i will madam president, the story of a partner at a major law official who is already the mother after 3-year-old child. she was thrilled to find out she was pregnant with another child but headed into the sixth month of her pregnancy, she and her

husband were told that because of a rare heart defect, there wasn't a base-case scenario, why a 10% of the pregnancy making it to remain it. and there was less than a one percent term of the baby making it to its first birthday with no hope of a reasonable quality of life. now, there is no right answer when it comes to decisions like these, some women, some families choose one way, some another. but this woman and her husband made the decision to end the pregnancy. it was their family, their future, her choice. she says she knows she did the right thing for her and her family, as difficult as it was. and a year later she gave birth to a healthy son. she wrote, ann quote, i have shared my story with my children and hope that should my daughter ever find her nevada is the position -- five herself in the position similar to mine, she will find the same rights that were available to committee. madam president, there are

decades between my college friend's story and the three i just told. decades and the historic ruling in roe v. wade that affirmed that our constitution protects a woman's right to control her own health care decisions. roe and the rulings that have upheld it -- reproductive freedom is essential to a woman's ability to control her future, to plan her family and contribute to her community in all the ways she may choose to as those three women were able to. madam president, reproductive freedom means women are more able to participate equally and fully in our country. and while i can't adequately express how frustrating it is to have assert this in the 21st century, we are stronger today because women in the united states are treated more equally

than we were in the 1970's. in fact, former federal reserve chair janet yellen, the only woman to hold this position in the reserve's 100-year history, has said that our country's economic growth in the last half-century was in large part due to women joining the labor force and that to continue the growth we have seen, we will need to do more to ensure more women have a level playing field in the workplace and society as a whole. but the progress women have made and the prospect of future progress today truly hangs in the balance. today i want to emphasize how real this threat is and paint a picture of how much more unequal life would be for women in the united states of america should judge kavanaugh be confirmed, and add a fifth vote on the supreme court for overturning roe v. wade and roll back reproductive rights women have

had for more than four decades. let me say again the threat to women's reproductive rights is frighteningly real. it is real because unless democrats and republicans come together, president trump will follow through on his promise to overturn roe. on the campaign trail, candidate trump assured extreme antichoice special interest groups he would implement their agenda, if elected. he established a litmus test for supreme court nominees and released a list of potential picks, each of whom had demonstrated opposition to a woman's right to choose. he said that under his presidency roe would be overturned automatically once he had the opportunity to appoint justices because they would all be pro-life. he said women should be punished for having abortions.

he chose a vice president, mike pence, whose views on women and women's health are about as antiquated as smelling salts and far more damaging. madam president, candidate trump aligned himself unequivocally with those who want to roll back women's rights. and while president trump has broken promise after promise to workers and families, he has never once wavered in following through for those antichoice special interests. he has done virtually everything he can to chip away at women's constitutionally protected reproductive rights from the oval office, whether it's proposing a reproductive gag rule that would allow the government to interfere in provider-patient relationships, attempting time and again to defend planned parenthood, or trying to allow vitter lit any employer, any employer, to decide to the exclude birth

control coverage from their employer-sponsored coverage. i could go on. so, madam president, anyone who says president trump isn't applying an antichoice litmus test in this nomination or thinks it's unclear where president trump's allegiance lies when it comes to women's health should take a look at what he said and done. and unless they willfully ignore the facts, they will quickly realize that the president, who far beyond any modern president has championed the antichoice cause, has found exactly what he's looking for in judge kavanaugh -- a fifth vote to overturn roe v. wade. madam president, the best evidence that judge kavanaugh would overturn roe is that extreme antichoice groups vetted his likelihood to do exactly that and sent him straight to president trump. but i do want to address a few aspects of judge kavanaugh's records that to me expose how

unqualified he is to make decisions that will impact women from all backgrounds for generations to come. when i examined the record and history of a supreme court nominee, i hope to see a breadth of life, experience, or the ability to walk in someone else's shoes. judge kavanaugh has not demonstrated either of those qualities. in expressing support for justice rehnquist's dissent in roe where the justice argued for allowing restrictions on women's reproductive rights, kavanaugh agreed with the idea that if a right is not explicitly stated in the constitution, it must be, quote, rooted in the traditions and conscience of of our people. but he made clear he does not believe a woman's right to choose is rooted in the traditions or conscience of our people. so, madam president, i am deeply concerned about who judge kavanaugh thinks about and

trusts when he imagines the traditions and conscience of the our people and makes those decisions accordingly. and in his opinions from the bench, it only heightens my concern. in one opinion judge kavanaugh ruled to allow the trump administration to block a pregnant 17-year-old who arrived alone at our border from accessing an abortion until the government could place her with a sponsor. he felt she needed, quote, support network around her before she was capable of making that decision, even though she had been seeking an abortion for months and had already met state level requirements. in another opinion he expressed the belief that a woman's -- if a woman's employer doesn't believe in birth control, that employer shouldn't even have to fill out a one-page form to allow the women to get birth control coverage directly from her own insurer. madam president, the traditions

and conscience judge kavanaugh referred to may be in his mind that of a very powerful white man -- first in wigs and then in suits -- who never faced the challenges that women in these cases face. but these women matter, too, and they deserve a justice who accounts toker their rights and liberties in his or her decisions. unfortunately, judge kavanaugh's opinions indicate he will not do so. instead, thet display a fundamental lack of trust in women's ability to make their own health care decisions. and they also show something more -- a very iing of the -- a very poor understanding of the economic and social realities women continue to physical in our country despite the progress we've made and the degree to which she is differences make it all the more important that women be trusts and treated equally under the law,

independently and in their own right. because, madam president, if an employer tries to deny his employee affordable birth control because he thinks he knows better or if a politicized federal agency is detaining a young woman in hopes it can impose its beliefs on her or if a woman does not want to carry her rapist's child to term, our nation's laws must affirm her autonomy because our laws are her last resort. but under judge kavanaugh's determination, women would have haven't that last resort. instead, a woman's ability to get reproductive health care would overwhelmingly depend, like it did before roe, on whether she could afford it. and, therefore, disproportionately honor race and zip code as well.

our country on a whole would see outcomes like we are already seeing in states like texas and mississippi where abortion access is heavily restricted under policies judge kavanaugh has referenced approvingly. while women with resources have more options, women without resources see the provision where they got affordable health care close down because of antiabortion politics. and reproductive health care from sex education to birth control to abortion becomes a privilege for the wealthy rather than the right of every woman, regardless of who she is. that isn't fair. it is not right. and it truly isn't what people in this country want. president trump said that roe is a 50/50 issue in the united states. he's wrong. people in our country -- democrats, republicans, women and men of all ages and

backgrounds -- understand that abortion is a deeply personal decision, one our laws should allow women to make, just as every american's bodily autonomy should be their own concern, not their government's. despite what the white house would have us believe, this is not a country that wants to follow president trump and vice president pence and five male supreme court justices back to 1972. but the only way to stop this from happening is for people to take action. so i urge anyone -- women or man -- who is concerned right now to make that clear loudly and immediately. if you have a story that shows why reproductive rights matter in our country, share it. if you haven't signed up to vote, told your friends to, do it. madam president, one year ago this week three of my republican colleagues stood with democrats and stopped president trump's

effort to enact trumpcare, which would have gutted protections for patients patients with preeg conditions and ended medicaid as we know it and more. that happened because people across the country knew what was at stake and spoke up, despite how long the odds seemed. and that is what we need now. and i'm confident we can see it again if people who care show it. madam president, the last story i'll tell is one i hope women and men today will be able to tell their daughters and their granddaughters decades from now should they ever need to hear it. it's that our country went through an extremely is frightening time when one of the many rights on the verge of being taken away was a woman's right to choose, and we thought about the them -- our daughters and granddaughters -- and how important it is that each one of them be treated equally under our country's laws and have the opportunity to achieve the goals

they set out to achieve. so we did everything we could to fight back. we didn't let it happen on our watch. and i hope we make that our story. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: thank you, madam president. madam president, this week, we hit a milestone, but not the kind of milestone you celebrate. nearly one year ago, the commission appointed by president trump to examine the opioid crisis recommended that the president declare a national public health emergency to help combat the epidemic. the mission, led by former republican governor chris christie, said, and i quote here, the first and most urgent recommendation of this commission is direct and completely within your control, declare a national emergency. but the president dragged his feet. while he twiddled his thumbs,

thousands of americans continued to die from drug overdoses. over 115 people a day. finally, in october, 2017, the president formally declared what we already knew, that the crisis was a public health emergency worthy of federal action. the first declaration that the president issued lasted for 90 days, but during those 90 days, nothing changed. the president didn't take action, and americans continued to suffer, and more people died day after day after day. on january 24, 2018, the first emergency declaration expired, so the president had his h.h.s. secretary sign a second one. then before another 90 days ran out on april 24, the administration signed a third one. yesterday, another 90 days

later, on july 24, 2018, we began the fourth competitive period of public health emergency due to the opioid crisis. nine months since the original declaration, nine months within which more than 30,000 people have likely overdosed and died, all while the president and his administration gave us a lot of talk but no action. our communities are on the front line of this epidemic, and they are working hard to fight back, but they can't do it alone. they need funding, support, and new tools. i have worked with my democratic colleagues to make sure that communities have what they need in this fight. time and again, we have pressured congressional leadership for additional funding to help states and local communities address this epidemic, and the pressure has worked. i have secured millions of dollars, not just for opioid

addiction and prevention and treatment, but for increased mental health services, including the biggest increase in funding for the community mental health block grant in history. i passed bipartisan legislation to reduce the number of unused opioids sitting in medicine cabinets. once that legislation became law, i continued to work across the aisle with senator capito to make sure it was actually being implemented, and we're still working on that today. and i have introduced legislation to send $100 billion in extra resources to fight this epidemic, send that money right to the communities and tribes that need the help the most. i'm in this fight because communities in massachusetts and all across this country deserve it, but president trump, he's not in this fight. the president has made a lot of promises about the opioid crisis, but time and again this

president has broken his promises. take the first time he declared the crisis an emergency. the president held a big event, talked a big game, and then he produced no tangible plan and no new commitment of federal money beyond meager funds left over from responding to other public health emergencies and disasters. declaring the crisis a national emergency was the top recommendation of the president's opioid commission but wasn't the only recommendation. the commission's final report included 56 recommendations that they asked the administration and congress to implement as soon as possible, and nearly all of those recommendations required the involvement and the leadership of this administration. so what has come of these 56

recommendations? who knows? at best, maybe, maybe a few have been implemented. the majority just seem to have been ignored. even members of the commission itself have called out this administration's shameful lack of action. former congressman patrick kennedy stated that the commission's work has been turned into, quote, a charade and, quote, a sham. why is the trump administration refusing to take this crisis seriously? why? to start, it doesn't help that the administration has put people in charge of addressing this emergency who lack relevant experience in public health or addiction. kellyanne conway is apparently running the show, but she is also apparently running multiple other shows at the same time. not only is the opioid crisis not ms. conway's full-time

responsibility, but she has also reportedly pushed aside drug policy experts and made comments about addiction that are not evidence based. james carroll, president trump's nominee to run the office of national drug control policy, ondcp, also appears to have no experience in public or behavioral health policy. and let's not forget, ondcp is the agency that president trump has essentially proposed eliminating, by cutting 95% of its funding. this is also the agency with such high staff turnover that earlier this year, a 24-year-old with no public health experience was promoted to deputy chief of staff while the position of chief of staff remained unfilled. and this agency that has not

released its required annual drug strategy for the last two years running. now, that's a lot, but as if that's not enough, the trump administration has taken repeated steps to undermine the very programs that are critical to fighting the opioid crisis. the president tried to slash health care coverage for millions of americans with preexisting conditions, conditions like addiction issues. he's tried to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of medicaid, medicaid which provides coverage for two out of every five nonelderly adults with an opioid addiction. he has proposed slashing funding for health work force programs, for the prevention and public health fund, and for mental health programs that are all critical to addressing the epidemic. i have asked the administration

time after time, i have asked them to explain the work they are supposedly doing on this crisis. i have asked john kelly for clarification about kellyanne conway's role. no response. i have asked ms. conway directly about her role. no response. and i have asked the administration about their progress on implementing the opioid commission's recommendations. no response. to me, it looks like a whole bunch of nothing. just empty words and broken promises. and while the president plugs his ears and closes his eyes, americans are dying. 42,000 people died of drug overdoses in this country in 2016. from july, 2016, to september, 2017, across the country, emergency room visits for opioid overdoses on average jumped 30%,

but only one in ten individuals in need of specialty addiction treatment are actually able to access it. there is no shortage of steps that we could take right now to tackle this crisis. we have confronted large-scale public healthy crises before, and we have made a difference. back in the 1980's, the death toll from a poorly understood and stigmatized disease grew larger and larger. for years, the federal government refused to act as americans died. that disease was hiv-aids, but activists and their loved ones demanded action. and in 1990, the federal government finally made a meaningful investment by passing the ryan white comprehensive aids resource emergency act. today the aids epidemic isn't

over, but h.i.v. is no longer a death sentence, and thanks to the ryan white act, everyone who needs treatment and support can get it, regardless of their ability to pay. so i have introduced legislation with representative elijah cummings modeled on the ryan white care act to apply this very successful model to fighting the opioid epidemic. the comprehensive addiction resources emergency act would invest $100 billion over the next ten years to ensure that every single person dealing with addiction can get the help they need, period. if president trump wants to prioritize this problem and make a difference in the opioid epidemic, he could do it. he has the power. he could implement his own commission's recommendations. he could send meaningful budget

requests to congress. he could appoint qualified, hardworking people to tackle the problem, but he won't do any of those things. he's all talk, no action. and while he keeps extending meaningless emergency declarations, americans are dying. people with addiction and their families deserve more. our communities demand more. it is time to stop nibbling around the edges and get to work on this problem. madam president, i yield and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:

the presiding officer: the assistant deputy leader. democratic leader. mr. durbin: i ask the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: thank you. madam president, it's time for the senate of the u.s. department of education to get serious about the student loan crisis in america. it is a crisis in illinois, it is a crisis in iowa, in nevada. you pick the state. student loan debt is now a larger debt in the united states than credit card debt. add up all the debt that americans owe on credit and debit cards, it doesn't reach the number of the student loan debt carried by students and their families. more than 44 million americans have student loan debt. the total amount is

$1.5 trillion. as i mentioned, larger than the cumulative credit card debt of america, second only to the mortgages that we own on our homes across the united states. an american who graduated from college in 2015 with a four-year degree owed an average of $30,100. that debt is often much higher for many americans if they decide to go on to graduate school or if they have the unfortunate -- if they are the unfortunate attendees at the for-profit colleges. for-profit colleges and universities. across the united states, there are many of them. you should remember them. 9% of young people coming out of high school end up at for-profit colleges and universities. 9%. 33% of all the college students defaulting on student loans come out of the same schools,

for-profit colleges. 9%, 33%. why? because they are so darned expensive, dramatically more expensive than community colleges or universities. second, they don't care if you finish. they would just as soon you didn't. and number three, if you finish, you get a worthless diploma and can't find a job, so there you are stuck with your debt. this is about student loans in general, not just the for-profit victims. i hear from students young and old who have to hold off starting a family because of massive student debt. increasingly i've been hearing from parents and grandparents who in a gesture of goodwill and kindness cosign the loans on behalf of that grandchild or child who is a student. and guess what? grandma and mom is now trying to pay off that student loan debt because the student can't.

jerome powell of the federal reserve earlier this year said this about the student debt crisis, at the federal reserve. he said absolutely could hold back economic growth in america. the student loan crisis. we need to take action on it, and we rarely even try. today i am going to try. earlier this year in march, i tried to offer an amendment on the senate floor here to help student borrowers. the senate at that time had a bill up to provide regulatory relief, breaks to banks. i thought it was only fair the senate would also consider taking a look at the student debt crisis. i was blocked from getting a vote on my amendment. i'm not giving up. i'm filing an amendment today to the financial services and general government bill that is part of this appropriation package pending on the floor of the senate. my amendment deals with an important part of the student loan problem. the treatment of staopbt -- student loans in bankruptcy. if you borrow money for a house,

lose your job and have no money, you file bankruptcy, and your mortgage is discharged. if you borrow money for a car and you can't pay off the car and you lose your job, you file for bankruptcy, your auto loan is discharged. how about a boat? buy a boat, take a loan, file for bankruptcy, it's discharged. i'll tell you, there are only a hand full of things you can borrow money for that you cannot discharge in bankruptcy, no matter how bad things get and one of them is student loans. currently most types of debt can be discharged in bankruptcy but not student loans. since 1996 the law has been changed and if you have a student debt you're going to carry it to the grave. you cannot discharge it in bankruptcy. in 1998 congress determined that federal student loans would be nondischargable in bankruptcy unless the borrower would

demonstrate that he or she faced an undue hardship. that's the quote -- undue hardship. but we didn't define it. we left it up to the courts. that's a problem. most students don't even try to pursue the undue hardship exception because of the difficulty and expense of meeting the standard of proving undue hardship in bankruptcy court. listen to what the "wall street journal" said last month. it found that only 473 student loan borrowers in the united states out of 44 million -- 473 out of 44 million -- asked for relief from their student debt in bankruptcy in the year 2017. 473 out of 44 million. and the "journal" found only 16 bankruptcy cases that year where a judge ruled on student loan debt. 16 cases out of 44 million borrowers and in only three of those days did the judge cancel

the debt. what do you think your odds are taking your student loan debt to bankruptcy court when 3 out of 473 out of 44 million actually had their debt discharged. a big reason why the undue hardship path is difficult for student borrowers is because the department of education contracts out the collection of the debt to companies like educational credit management incorporation. this is a student loan guarantee agency that collects on defaulted federal student loans. this company is notorious for aggressively challenging and appealing borrower claims of undue hardship in bankruptcy court because it doesn't want to see loans discharged, so many students don't try to fight them. they know they're going to lose. here's what my amendment does. my amendment would bar the use of federal funds to pay contractors like the one i named to contest undue hardship claims in bankruptcy court when the claims are brought by specific

categories of borrowers who face severe undue hardship. let me tell you the categories i'm trying to protect deeply in debt with student loans who are coming to court asking for relief from their student loans. he tell me whether you think these americans deserve a break when they go to bankruptcy court on their staopbt loans. the first category, veterans deemedunememployable because of a service connected disability. number two, family members of veterans. number three, people who are receiving social security disability or whose only income is social security. and number four, borrowers who finish school but spent at least five years with an income of less than $24,000 a year. those are the four categories. wouldn't you agree that you'd start with groups just like this and say give them a break, they

reached a point where a disabled veteran can't pay back this loan. don't have these credit agencies hounding this poor fellow for the rest of his life. by stopping these federal loan guarantee agencies from contesting and litigating these undue hardship claims in bankruptcy court, we can at least give these hard-hit student borrowers a chance to seek an undue discharge from bankruptcy -- undue hardship discharge in bankruptcy. my amendment includes a provision if the college receives more than 85% of its revenue from federal sources including the departments of veterans affairs g.i. bill and department of defense tuition assistance funds. currently for-profit colleges are able to receive 90% of their revenue from federal sources, the most heavily subsidized private for-profit companies in america. the g.i. bill they can add in on top of it to add insult to

injury. it makes no sense. it incentivizes for-profit colleges to recruit service members to get extra money from the federal government and provide very little in return. not only would this provision help protect students, it would result in long-term cost savings to the federal government. to my colleagues, i say this: i bet you've all given a speech on student loans at home? haven't we all? people come in, young people burdened with debt and saying i don't know what to do with myself. i can't pay off this debt. i can't even buy a car. i'm living in my parents basement. i thought i was supposed to be a college graduate with a a big life ahead of it. what are you going to do about it, senator? there is something you can do. an amendment i'm offering. this issue of student loan debt is challenging. let's not run away from it. let's face it honestly. let's give at least these four groups including disabled veterans and the caregivers who watch them an opportunity to get their student loans discharged so they can get on with their

lives. i'm going to keep at this and keep raising this issue until we get the positive change that these students and their families deserve. i yield. mr. tillis: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: thank you madam president. i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 477, senate 3093. i ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. ms. hirono: madam president, reserving the right to object. this bill being offered by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is a partisan political stunt designed to distract the american people from the crisis created by donald trump's zero tolerance policy. almost 3,000 children have been ripped from the arms of their

parents and traumatized by the president's cruelty. this bill would allow the trump administration to continue to traumatize children by forcing them possibly indefinitely into so-called family detention centers. by offering this proposal, our colleagues are calling for the extended incarceration of children. this bill would invalidate the flores settlement which has insured the humane treatment of children for decades. but it offers no specifics on what constitutes adequate detention conditions and no mechanism for monitoring them. the bill says that families will be given, quote, suitable living accommodations, or, quote, access to drinking water or food, quote, and that services will be offered that are, quote, necessary, for the adequate care of a minor child, quote,. but it does not say who determines what is suitable, whether adequate nutrition will

be offered to the children, and who will decide what is necessary. the so-called standards are not good enough when the welfare of children is involved. this bill would also authorize the border patrol to separate families for the most minor offenses that have nothing to do with parenting or the safety of the children. it puts form above substance and gives d.h.s. no discretion about when detention is the most appropriate or when alternative means such as ankle bracelets or other monitoring programs might be better. the so-called family unit residential centers in the bill are essentially family jails. we've heard from the american academy of pediatrics and other experts about how these children will be traumatized for life. we should be listening to these experts and stop giving the trump administration a free pass to harm immigrant children.

i look at the policies of this administration, and at bills like this one, and i wonder how my colleagues are able to stomach our government treating families in these awful ways. and we witnessed this kind of treatment in america over the last several weeks. the president refers to families with children fleeing war, gang violence, and poverty as infesting our country. i hear echoes from the darkest parts of america's past when african american slaves were depicted as monkeys. chinese laborers in the 1870's referred to as pouring forth from their asiatic hives and japanese americans penned up like animals for the crimes of their hedger during world war -- heritage during world war ii. this mind set as viewing immigrant families as subhuman

does not exist in a vacuum. it has a history and a context that we cannot shy away from. it is because of that history that i have continued to demand not just an end to the detention of children and families, but also to demand accountability from donald trump's government. last week the judiciary committee had a closed door briefing with officials from the departments of justice, health and human services, and homeland security. we didn't get straight answers to our questions, mainly why was this happening in our country in the first place? why were these children separated from their parents? why do we have i.c.e. agents taunting these already traumatized children? why? why? why? we need and indeed we should demand to hear from these officials in public and under oath. i urge chairman grassley to have a public oversight hearing on this issue with all of the

relevant agencies. the chairman has now scheduled this long overdue hearing for july 31 with representatives from the department of homeland security, the department of health and human services, and the department of justice. it's critical that we hear from the witnesses, because after separating nearly 3,000 children from their families, they are now kay yachtically scrambling to comply with judicial orders to reunite these families. the administration would not be reuniting their families without being forced to do so by the court. and they continue on their cruel path, undermining american values and the longest path they have traumatized thousands of children and their families, like me, forever. this administration needs no further tools to continue these cruel policies. to continue to enable donald

trump to pursue his anti-immigrant agenda makes us all complicit in his cruelty and injustice. madam president, for these reasons, i object. mr. durbin: would the senator from hawaii yield? the presiding officer: objection is yield. ms. hirono: i yield. i yield to the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i'd like to ask the senator from hawaii a question through the chair. when the senator is referring to the number of children who are currently forcibly separated from their parents by our government is the senator referring to the children between the ages of 5 and 17 that were reported by this administration as of last monday? ms. hirono: yes, i am. mr. durbin: is the senator referring to the fact that 1,634 children are possibly eligible for unification according to this administration? ms. hirono: yes, i am. mr. durbin: and that leaves 917 children forcibly separated by our government from their parents who according to this administration are not eligible

for unification? ms. hirono: that is correct. mr. durbin: we're also told there are some 463 parents who are, quote, not in the united states, children taken away from them and they have been sent out of the united states? ms. hirono: yes. mr. durbin: of those, incidentally, the administration has 37 children in custody who have not been matched with a parent? ms. hirono: again, correct. mr. durbin: we are asking to reduce the care of these children by this unanimous consent request? ms. hirono: absolutely. continuing the cruelty to these children. mr. tillis: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: madam president, i ask that senators heller and cornyn can join in a colloquy with myself. objection is -- mr. durbin: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the senator from north carolina.

mr. tillis: madam president, i want to talk about my motivation for offering this unanimous consent request for people listening to this debate may not understand. we have a courtesy where we make colleagues on the other side of the aisle aware of our intent. should i yield pending senator durbin's -- madam president, i yield the floor. mr. durbin: madam president, i have a unanimous consent request. the presiding officer: assistant democratic leader. mr. durbin: madam president, i want to make it clear to my friend from north carolina as well as others on the floor, i would like to have this colloquy. i would like to make a formal unanimous consent request and enter into debate or colloquy as the chair will allow. madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. 3263 submitted earlier today. the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the

motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. it is a bill which embodies the keep families together legislation by senator feinstein, a fair day in court for kids by senator hirono, and additional measures which i will then describe later when we go to colloquy and debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: reserving the right to object. first, i want to acknowledge that senator durbin has worked hard to address the daca issue. i don't there's a lot of daylight between senator durbin and i on the path to citizenship. i think there are different ways to come up with a just solution to a myriad issues on immigration. this unanimous consent is from a bill introduced earlier. we have not had an opportunity to study it.

i think it's another positive step in the process of bridging the gap. but without analyzing and reconcile it against a bill that i'm actively involved in that the senator mentioned, i have to object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. tillis: now, madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: i ask unanimous consent that myself, senator heller, and senator cornyn be allowed to enter into a colloquy. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. durbin: i would like there to be an exchange, something perilessly close to a debate and i ask that you refrain your unanimous consent request for that purpose. is i object -- i object to the original unanimous consent request. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: the reason i was trying to explain those who are

watching this what's going on here. what's going on here is that we have a very collegial environment here where we come to the floor with a unanimous consent, if somebody doesn't object, then that -- the bill moves out of the chamber, but we don't surprise people. we inform them. they are able to come down and register their objection, which is exactly what senator hirono did today. you could ask, why would i come down here and offer up something that i knew would be objected to and not move forward. because i think it's important that people understand that we're making progress, and it's pretty important to keep this issue and this discussion active in the u.s. congress because congress needs to act. regardless of where you are on the -- the trump administration's position, that's -- it's congress's job to set long-term clarity. it's our job to set policy that can't move based on who happens to be in the white house.

it's our job to fix the immigration problem, not the president's. and this is the first step in a number of things that we need to do to fix the failed immigration system in this country and to fix what i think are legitimately some injustices going on. i have to disagree. i think it's interesting, and i look forward to reading the measure that senator durbin put forth for unanimous consent, but in his comments he said that a part of the baseline language came from a bill that i've been working on with senator feinstein, keeping families together and enforce the law. what we're trying to do is figure out a reasonable, fair way to keep families together, to have families prioritize so that they can go before a judge and determine whether or not they have a legitimate asylum claim and move as expeditiously as possible. this bill, if you heard senator

hirono, you would think it was some heartless, uncaring -- i think the word was partisan political stunt, but let me tell you briefly, and i know senators heller and cornyn will speak as well. this bill has agreement on most of the provisions. we want to make absolutely certain that if the families have to be kept together while they are going through the ajudd indication process, that it's in proper facilities. we want to make sure that if the parents want the children with them while they wait, which is 40 to 60 days, that they can. we want that time period to be reduced, which is why we agreed that we need to add an aggregate of 700 judges to draw the backlog down. but until the backlog gets drawn down, parents with children get to the front of the line. we want to make sure there's an adequate number of attorneys, about two and a half to every one judge we're adding so it

doesn't get clogged up in the court. talking about indefinite detention is false. we're talking about 40 to 60 days. we want to draw it down further. we want to be sure that these images of people held in tent cities never occurs, we want family facilities while they are being detained going through a legal process. we want to also do the one thing that i heard in senator hirono's comments -- i'm not an attorney, i believe senator hirono is -- but it's false. the fact is that there's a court order that actually prevents children from being detained for more than 20 days. now you have a catch 22 where you detain the parents because they crossed the border illegally, they happen to have children, but you can't keep

children are for more than 20 days, so that's why the separation is occurring. we're not talking about eliminating the whole flores agreement. what we're saying is that we need clear language that allows these children to be kept with their parents while the court proceedings -- these are not children -- these children would be placed within the community in 20 days. there are other reasons including the 2,500 or so that senator durbin mentioned that you may need to keep them a little bit longer. for example, what if their parent or guardian has been convicted on human trafficking or child abuse or some other charge that we need to make sure that that's the right setting for that child to go to? holding the same standards for these guardians, these parents that we do to any american citizen when we're trying to determine whether or not that child is going to be in a safe setting. those are the sorts of things that we put in place with this

narrowly tailored language which, to my understanding, is the only sticking point. i came to the floor today to do this unanimous consent request so we could have this discussion in front of the american people and we put pressure on ourselves to solve this problem. this is not a problem for the president to fix. it's congress's problem for the president to fix, and then it's the administration's responsibility to act on the will of congress. so i'm going to continue to work with people on the other side of the aisle to do everything -- on both sides of the aisle to do everything i can to eliminate the polarizing politics and protect these children who should be with their parents and put them in a setting that i think is respectful and safe. and i yield the floor to senator cornyn -- or senator heller. mr. heller: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from nevada.

mr. heller: thank you, madam president. i want to begin by thanking senator tillis for your leadership on this issue and thank you for bringing us down to the floor so we can have this discussion and bring to the forefront this issue and try to solve it. i also want to thank and acknowledge the leadership of the majority whip and his efforts. i know that being today and an opportunity to have this discussion is based on your efforts and your concern for this very issue also. let me begin by saying that nobody wants to see children separated from their families, period. i don't think there's anybody in this chamber that enjoys or does want to see that occur. so that's why i'm joining my colleagues today to call up and pass the keep families together and enforce the law act. well while -- while america is a nation of laws, we're also a nation with heart and nevadans have a lot of heart.

i heard from over 3,500 of my constituents from across the state share their concerns about these families that have been separated. my constituents spoke to families split apart at the border and some are held in southern nevada and they are, frankly, asking for help. so their being unified with their children is a top priority. i am a father and grandfather. i understand why children should be with their parents. there is nothing more important than keeping a family unit together. i, like the many colleagues down here today, support border security as any type of immigration reform, but i also strongly believe that our country has a rich history. a rich history because we've always been a nation of immigrants. our culture is rich because so many families have come here to the land of opportunity seeking a better life. in fact, in my washington, d.c., office, i have two staffers that

are naturalized citizens who came here as children with their families seeking better opportunities. these individuals, who immigrated to our country, came from parents who worked hard to provide for their children with opportunities. we are, after all, the land of opportunity. we're just but we're also a fair country. the keep families together enforce the law act will ensure families will not be separated at the border. specifically, the legislation allows the department of homeland security to keep children under the age of 18 with their families in residential centers. it would prioritize family immigration cases, would add 225 new immigration judges to expedite proceedings for families who have been apprehended at the border. this legislation are will ensure that any family that has been separated will be reunified.

unlike other proposals, which i believe risk making our current immigration worse, this legislation actually solves the problem by keeping families together while also ensuring the integrity of our immigration laws. so i look forward to this bill being signed into law to make permanent the policy of keeping families together and reunifying these families while still ensuring that our immigration laws are enforced. madam president, thank you. i yield the floor back to -- mr. durbin: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: madam president, there's an important difference between legal and illegal immigration, and they shouldn't be confused. we should all, as americans, celebrate legal immigration and, in fact, the united states is the most generous country in the world when it -- when we naturalize almost one million new citizens each year.

many of whom serve in the military and otherwise serve their newly adopted country and are rewarded, in part, by an expedited path toward legalization, toward naturalization. but as a result of the deadlock here in the united states senate, the drug cartels that traffic in illegal drugs and other contraband, they traffic in my grants -- my grants -- migrants and children, they are suffering today because we have a big problem that we're unable to solve and the status quo is unacceptable, it's dangerous, it's deadly, and it's killing people, not only the people who attempt the perilous journey, but also the drugs that are sold by these same criminal organizations who are, in the words of one expert, commodity agnostic. this is part of their business

model. this is how they make money, and they are celebrating today because the very reasonable solution that our colleague from north carolina has proposed has been rejected out of hand with no real alternative being suggested. this is the same mentality i fear that calls for the abolition of i.c.e. you might as well ask for the abolition of the austin police department or the dallas police department or the san antonio police department. it's an invasion to lawlessness -- it's an invitation to lawlessness. unfortunately there are some who believe that that status quo is better than the very reasonable rational solution offered by our colleague. let me explain why objecting to this commonsense legislation impearls the life and the -- imperils the life and the well-being of children. under the current law, unless this very reasonable solution is

embraced, children are sent across the border unaccompanied by their parent because the traffickers know and the parents know that if they pay thousands of dollars to these criminal organizations, their child will be transported from central america, across mexico, into the united states. and if they make it here under the current law, the border patrol needs to process this child, some of whom are 17 years of age and older, and are for all practical purposes young men, they need to then be handed over to health and human services for placement with a sponsor here in the united states. recently "the new york times" pointed out that 1,500 of the children that have been placed with sponsors in the united states had been lost track of. nobody knows what happened to

them. because under the current law, the government doesn't have to do a background check, a criminal background check. the sponsor with whom this child is placed doesn't have to be a citizen. and there's simply no infrastructure in place, no system in place to monitor the status of these children in the hands of these adult sponsors to make sure that they appear at their subsequently noticed immigration hearing, so they can present a legitimate claim if they have one to asylum or some other immigration benefit. all president trump has said is we're going to enforce our laws against illegal immigration. so if you come into the country as a parent with a child, the parent being legally responsible is going to be prosecuted. that's what the law calls for that passed by congress, signed by the president.

the child will be protected under the law that i mentioned earlier. they will be placed with a sponsor. if the parent or if the person who claims parent is going to be prosecuted, and part of what we've been struggling with is the refusal on the part of some of our colleagues to try to solve this problem, to keep those families together so that they can be kept in a humane, clean facility, family detention facility pending a hearing in front of an immigration judge. and if they have legitimate claims, then those can be rewarded. but what the status quo guarantees, not only that these criminal organizations that profit from transporting people, drugs, and other contraband across the border into the united states, if they win, that's guaranteed by the status quo. it's also that we don't fix the problem associated with

unaccompanied minors or minors that come with somebody who claims to be their parent. so let's say we put the families back together, which is our goah that goal -- we don't have detention facilities for those individuals to be detained pending a hearing in front of an immigration judge. and so they are released and told to come back for a hearing months, maybe years in the future. well, it shouldn't surprise anybody that the vast majority of people don't show back up for their hearing. they simply use this flaw in our immigration system and the status quo in order to exploit gaps in our legal immigration system. and it's dangerous. so i regret that rather than embracing a solution, that there's been an objection to this very reasonable proposal, one which would add additional immigration judges, would move

these families to the head of the line so that they can present their case before the judge rather than to just release them into the vast american landscape, many of whom will never be heard from again. i think it's a terrible lost opportunity. mr. durbin: mr. president. the presiding officer: democratic whip. mr. durbin: mr. president, let me try to put this in perspective and let me start with something that i hope we all agree on. i think there are three things about immigration that democrats and republicans can agree on. let's see if we can say those three things and all agree. we need border security in the united states. we cannot have open borders. we need border security. number two, if someone is dangerous, trying to get in america, we don't want them here. and if there's someone undocumented in america who's dangerous, we want them to leave. those two things i think both parties can agree on. the third thing, it really gets to the heart of it. we need comprehensive immigration reform. it isn't just a matter of

solving the issue of the day. it's a matter of looking at all of our immigration laws and saying we've got to make this all work. the senator from north carolina has undoubtedly heard what i've heard from our friends in agriculture, whether it's ranching or dairy or picking fruit, they need migrant labor. americans are not stepping up to take that backbreaking work, and they need help. that's just one example. so we need comprehensive immigration reform. let's take a look at the whole package. i spent six months with senators john mccain, chuck schumer, four democrats, four republicans. we wrote the comprehensive immigration reform bill start to finish, bipartisan bill. it passed the floor of the house with 68 votes five years ago, and the republicans refused to even consider it in the house of representatives. we still need comprehensive immigration reform. we ought to be working on that together. we ought to take that bill. reintroduce that bill and make

that our starting point. the last point i want to make is about the current issue we face. let's put this issue in perspective. sorry, but i disagree with my friend from north carolina and the senator from texas who says this is our job to fix. or as the senator from texas said, we created this problem in congress. that's not true. the zero tolerance policy that leads us to this moment of debate was created by president trump, attorney general sessions, steve miller, and others. it went into effect in april, and we decided then as official policy stated by the united states we would physically, forcibly physically separate children from their parents. and we argued that they're all criminals if they show up at the border. that is not the case. some people legitimately come to our borders seeking asylum status. they are not criminals per se. and to treat them as such and take their kids away is unwarranted but that was our

policy. so 3,000 children were forcibly removed from their parents starting april 1. and what happened next? these children were sent off into the system, and the parents sometimes were held, sometimes were tried, sometimes were deported. and there was a fear that rose across the united states, that people said what are we doing here? why did we take that nursing child away from the mother? why did we take that little toddler away from his father? what are we doing here? what is our goal? the opposition to this from both political parties, democrats and republicans, got so intense, this president did something he almost never does. he reversed his position. he announced we're not doing the zero tolerance policy anymore. that's the end of it. but it wasn't soon enough. there were 3,000 kids at that point separated from their parents, spread across the united states. i had one i knew in chicago, a woman from the congo who was being held in california.

her 6-year-old daughter had been sent to chicago. that's how i learned about the case. there are cases like that all over the united states. then a federal judge stepped in. and the reason we're here today is because that federal judge said enough, we want these parents reunited with their kids now. and he set some deadlines. two weeks ago he said all kids under the age of 5 need to be reunited with the parents they were taken away from. we set that goal as of two weeks ago. our government identified only 103 out of the 3,000 that were under the age of 5, and they reunited fewer than 60 of them. the rest of them are uncertain as to what's going to happen to those kids under the age of 5 separated from their parents. now there's a vast number beyond that. 2,500-plus kids out there. and this judge in san diego said as of tomorrow -- as of july 26, i want all those kids reunited with their parents too.

and guess what? we're in a position that's not going to happen. it physically can't happen. our government can't do it because here's the heartbreaking secret which we now know. our government separated these children from their parents without any means of reuniting them, without keeping information about where the parents were going to be, where the children were going to be, and how the day may come when that mother may get her baby back into her arms. we have no process for that. to, to me, is inexcusable, disgraceful. you order a package on amazon this afternoon and they give you a tracking number, and tomorrow you want to know where it is, you go to amazon, put in the tracking number and find out where your package is. we sent infants, toddlers and young kids all across the united states without a tracking number. now we're trying to reunite them desperately. as i mentioned earlier to senator hirono, there are 3,700

kids out there this government has admitted. we don't know who they are, don't know where their parents are. can't put this back together again. that's why we're here on the floor to talk about the current crisis, and it wasn't a crisis created by congress. it was a crisis created by the trump administration with his zero tolerance policy. attorney general sessions and others were so proud of it as they took the kids away from their parents, and they didn't keep records. they tossed these infants, toddlers and children out into the bureaucratic sea and said start swimming or sink. i met some of these kids. they were up in chicago. there were ten of them. kids will be kids. they look like just regular kids sitting around a table. two little girls came in, and i thought at first they were twins because their hair was identical and they were about the same size. i looked more closely, they weren't. then we asked in spanish, are you sisters? and the little girl said, no.

amigas. no, friends. these two little girls attached themselves to one another. one was from honduras, the other was from chiapas, mexico. they were hanging on for dear life to one another's hand as they walked around the place because that was their connection. that was all they had to hang on to. they had been taken away from their parents. i don't know what happened to those two little girls. i know, as a father of 6-year-old twins, grand twins -- i should say as a k grandfather of 6-year-old twins, i looked at those girls and thought i know kids like that and i love them to pieces and can't imagine being physically forcibly separated by them. that's what we've done. i say to the senator from north carolina let's find some things we can agree on. let me suggest something. let's increase the number of immigration judges. let's do it on a are merit basis

so we get professional people who mow what they're doing. -- know what they are doing. second, let's say every child who appears in an administrative hearing is going to have an attorney next to them. it is embarrassing to me as an american to think a 6-year-old, 10-year-old, 12-year-old is standing in front of an administrative judge with an interpreter trying to figure out what is going to happen to them. we're better than that in america. we ought to make sure we do much better than that in america. beyond that, we've got to talk about what we do that is humane, that follows the flores system. therethere are no standards fore kids. we've got to have standards, that they are placed in areas we can be proud of, they will be treated fairly and in the right way. those are things we can work on. several weeks ago we met and sent a list of questions to the administration to start our bipartisan conversation. they never got back to us. i think it's been a month now. i think it's time.

if you want to rekindle this bipartisan conversation, count me in. but let's do it with the information and let's try to do it with a common purpose. the last point i'll make is this, you want to make sure that someone shows up at a hearing, 95% of those who are supposed to show up for the hearings do show up if you do one of three things. if you provide them with an attorney who gives them advice, they'll come back for the hearing. if you provide them with counseling, the lutheran family services, catholic family services, they show up for the hearing. or you provide in some cases an ankle monitor, they come back for the hearing. it isn't a question of whether they're going to be lost in the system. we know this works. let's make use of it. it's a heck of a lot more humane than separating kids by thousands of miles. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from virginia. mr. warner: mr. president, i rise today on another subject, but i want to touch on the conversation that's been going on on the floor. i agree with my colleague, my

friend, the senator from illinois. our country's just better than this. i had an opportunity to visit one of the facilities in virginia where some of the children who had been separated were placed. it was a good facility, and they were well cared for. but it still begged the question that unaccompanied minors were being separated from their families. and i saw the news report today that there are -- some of the children have been reunited. that there's close to 1,400 of these kids who -- the determination has been made that they should not be reunited to their parents. what does it mean to those kids? what does it mean to their families? and what does it mean to our obligation -- our country's obligation now that we say they are not going to be reunited with their families, not only from a moral sense, do we have

an obligation for these children if there was a thought-through policy, there would be an answer. i agree with both sides of the aisle who want to come to an agreement. i think when people saw children being separated from their moms and dads at such an early age actually led to a moral gag reflection, and americans, regardless of what party they supported or even if they supported the president, i think there was an overwhelming sense that's not who we are as a people. i'm happy to meet anyone halfway to make sure that these kids who were separated are reunited and more importantly that this country never again is not put in a situation where we are put

on stage. mr. president, the reason i came to the floor today, that was on another subject that i think is extremely important. that is i rise today with great gratitude for the men and women across our country who serve the federal government. now, virginia is home to 178,000 of these public servants as well in virginia we have over 90,000 active duty members of our military. and while many of our federal employees in virginia live in the d.m.v., or in the greater capital region, the truth is even in a state like ours, even in the commonwealth of virginia, 79% of our federal workers live outside the beltway. and as someone who spent longer in business and management than i have as a role as a senator, i know one of the things that any good business leader, for that

matter what i tried to do when i was governor of the state, how you treat your workforce reflects the quality of service that workforce provides to its customers, and in this case the customers of the federal government are the american people. and the work of our federal government and the way our federal government invests in its workforce, the way we manage and invest in human capital is not by any means a partisan, or for that matter, coming from the commonwealth of virginia, a state with so many federal workers, it is not by any means a parochial chish. this is an -- issue. this an issue that impacts all americans, all americans who pay taxes, follow our laws, and expects the federal government to work for them and to work well in an efficient manner. that's why, mr. president, i also rise today with great concern about recent efforts by this administration to scapegoat and undermine the work of our

federal employees. it started with hiring freezes that threw a wrench into the day-to-day operations of nearly every federal agency, and, frankly, this kind of wrench was thrown in with no apparent benefit to the taxpayers. it continued by undermining workforce protections and their ability to organize as part of a union and have that collective voice heard in terms of representations with management. and it culminated last month with the trump administration's plan to freeze federal employee pay and cut retirement benefits for 2.6 million federal retirees and survivors -- 2.6 million federal retirees and survivors having their retirement benefits cut. this is the thanks our federal employees get for their service.

now, president trump campaigned on a promise to drain the swamp, but the great irony is that the most glaring instances of failure and corruption at the federal level in recent months have not come from career federal employees. they've come from appointees installed by this administration. look no further than the e.p.a. where the american people follow some of the most blatant examples of swamp-like behavior in the waste an abuse from former e.p.a. administrator mr. pruitt. we also saw that with few exceptions those at the e.p.a. with the courage to stand up and say this is not okay, we're not appoint east, but we're -- appointees, but we're career federal employees, and for some that meant they were either demoted or reassigned in

retaliation all because they had the courage to speak up and to do what was right. this is the thanks that our federal employees got for their service, got for their service of trying to protect taxpayer funds, got for their service for trying to prevent waste and fraud, got for their service in trying to point out the swamp-like behavior of president trump's appointee, scott pruitt. unfortunately, mr. president, this does not appear to be confined to one agency or one rogue administrator. we have seen disturbing reports of trump employees purging at the state department. this reports should concern all of us, republicans and democrats alike who believe in good and honest government by and for the people. now, my hope is that we can stop

this ongoing onslaught on our federal workforce. we will have differences, but, again, as someone who spent longer in business than i have in government, if you want your workforce to do well, you need to reward those who do well. challenge and penalize those who don't perform, but not take the broad brush strokes that unfortunately has come out of this administration frankly undermining both the performance and morale of federal employees who serve day in and day out without a lot of recognition. before i close, i want to make another comment on this subject because one part of our federal government, in particular, where partisanship not only functions our government but really functions the rule of law itself. what i'm speaking about, of course, is about the attacks against our federal law enforcement agencies and our intelligence community.

the intelligence community, as we know, was founded 71 years ago tomorrow when president truman signed the national security act. that date, july 26, also marks the 110th birthday of the f.b.i. as well as intelligence professional's day, a time to show our gratitude to those brave men and women who keep us safe every day. if only that gratitude, and i know that are shared by people on both sides of the aisle, were shared by the current commander in chief. unfortunately since the months since russia attacked the very institutions of our democracy, we've seen some of the most by czar reaction -- bizarre reactions of the president and his -- instead of bringing adversaries to justice, this president led an attack on the credibility of the f.b.i., the justice department and our intelligence community.

demeaning career f.b.i. officials who saved countless american lives over their careers, impugning the motives of special counsel mueller, perhaps the most respected law man of his generation. worst of all, we saw the president of the united states stand on stage with vladimir putin last week and publicly side with putin over the career men and women of our intelligence community. many of whom risk their lives on a daily basis in order to keep our country safe. this is the thanks they get for their years of service, oftentimes particularly folks in the intelligence community who serve without any recognition. mr. president, the men and women of the f.b.i., the department of justice, and the intelligence community deserve better. all of our public servants deserve better than what we've seen from this administration. my advice for this president, if

he's really serious about draining the swamp is to leave our federal employees alone and take a good look at some of the folks that he's appointed within his own administration. thank you, mr. president. and i yield back. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i'm here again this week to fulfill a promise that i made after i got deeply involved in a situation involving a presbyterian minister who has been held in prison since october of 2016 in the country of turkey. i traveled to turkey a couple of times and i met pastor brunson. he's from an area in western north carolina. he is part of a church affiliated with billy graham and has been a missionary in turkey for 20 years. he was incarcerated in 2016 and

akiewfd of being -- accused being part of a coup attempt, an illegal act that people who were involved with should be held accountable. he was not one of them. and also suspected terrorist activities. back in the late winter i heard that after the indictment, after almost 19 months in prison without charges, after the indictment was issued, he was concerned that the american people were going to look at this indictment and turn their back on him. and i felt like i needed to be able to look him in the eye and tell him nothing could be further from the truth. i traveled to turkey and i met with him in the prison outside offish mir -- ishmir to tell him i would be his voice and i talked to senators and more than 70 signed on to a letter expressing their concern. this is about an illegal incarceration of a minister with

a nato ally. pastor brunson has been in prison 656 days counting today. we just got word this morning that the turkish authorities will release him on house arrest. he has been for 16, 17 months in a cell that was designed for eight people, there were 21 in it. now he is going to be able to be held under house arrest outside of a prison. but, mr. president, for as long as i'm in the u.s. senate, i will come to this floor every week to advocate for pastor brunson and a number of other people who are detained in turki al faisal -- turkey for inappropriate reasons for what wouldn't keep you in jail in the united states. under the authority of

president -- president ergdon, there was a scientist in prison, we have state department staff, and others who are in prison. we have to have a watchful eye on everybody. wyoming glad that the tushish government -- turkish government is moving in the right direction with pastor brunson, but he's still detained, now it's under house arrest. i will continue to work for past pastor brunson -- for pastor brunson's release, but i will also work for those who are illegally and inappropriately detained in the turkish prison system also have a voice in the u.s. senate. mr. president, i again appreciate the turkish officials to take the steps to release pastor brunson under house arrest, but as long as i'm a u.s. senator and they are detained in turkey, they will

have a voice in the senate. i hope over the next couple of weeks that pastor brunson is back in the united states, and i hope that i don't have a reason to come to this floor and speak on behalf of him and be his voice. thank you, mr. president. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mrs. ernst: mr. president, i rise today to voice my support for the nomination of brett kavanaugh to the supreme court of the united states. as the final arbiter of this constitution, the supreme court has the sacred duty of ensuring equal justice under the law to the american people. the supreme court wields the immense power of review. dadetocqueville called it a more

imposing judicial power than was ever constituted by any other people, end quote. as members of the senate, it is not often that we get the opportunity to give our advice and consent on the confirmation of supreme court justices. it is even rarer that we get the opportunity to confirm someone as highly qualified and well respected as brett kavanaugh. i am especially impressed by judge kavanaugh's interpretation of the constitution as it applies to the ever encroaching power of federal agencies. even before the people of iowa sent me to washington, i was horrified by the impact of increasingly burdensome regulations imposed on hardworking men, women, and businesses. this was imposed by unleashed

federal bureaucrats. an excellent example of this is the infamous waters of the united states rule promulgated by the obama e.p.a. the obama administration's bloated definition of the waters of the u.s. would have put 97% -- 97% of iowa under e.p.a. jurisdiction. even a tire track filled with water on an iowa farm would have been subject to federal regulation. federal agencies have been allowed to implement such destructive regulations in part due to the supreme court giving them deference. well, a certain degree of

deference is needed; i am concerned that a too broad deferential standard separates the people of the united states from washington bureaucrats. it fails to place an adequate check on executive and administrative power. throughout his career as both a highly respected legal scholar and a judge on the esteemed d.c. circuit court of appeals, judge kavanaugh has written critically of widening the scope of this already far-reaching deferential standard. he wrote in part that this deference, quote, encourages the executive branch to be extremely aggressive in seeking to squeeze its policy goals into ill-fitting statutory authorizations and restraints. end quote. this could not have been what the founders intended when they

developed our constitution and our government. i could not agree more with judge kavanaugh's concerns, and i look forward to the judge's levelheaded leadership and thinking on the supreme court. in addition, i was proud to hear that judge kavanaugh has had the chance to work with iowans. state representative mary anne hanusa who represents the city of council bluffs had the opportunity to work with judge kavanaugh when he served as staff secretary in the white house. representative hanusa describes judge kavanaugh as hardworking, dedicated, and impartial in his duties, all traits that i require in a supreme court justice. under chairman grassley's leadership, i believe that we will have a thorough, timely,

and successful confirmation process just as we did with neil gorsuch. i urge my colleagues to put aside partisan gimmicks and games and support the confirmation of brett kavanaugh. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from mt. mr. tester: thank you, mr. president. i want to take a minute today to thank a very dedicated group of folks, and those are the federal employees that work for us, the american people. as federal employees gather this week, i want to remind the country about the vital work that's being done each and every day by these hardworking public servants. now it is no secret that organized labor is under attack, and the bargaining rights, hard-earned benefits, safe working conditions, and the fair pay of american workers is under attack from folks right here in

washington, d.c. and in state capitals around the country. but we aren't ones to run away from a fight, and that is why the administration, that is why when the administration proposed a freeze hiring across federal agencies, i and others pushed back. i knew that across-the-board freezes would hurt their ability to serve the american people and do the job within government that the american people expect. then when bad national labor relations board nominees came before the senate, i voted no. i have been proud to stand with our federal workforce, our hardworking federal workforce as we fight to protect those government employees. as ranking member of the senate veterans' affairs committee, i've been working with them to address chronic workforce shortages that are plaguing

veterans clinics across the united states. while building capacity within the v.a. to ensure we uphold our commitment to those who serve, we need the staff at those facilities. i've been honored to work with our friends in labor to address disparities in the federal benefits and pay. congress must make sure that whether you're a border patrol agent or a t.s.a. worker, that they get the same workforce protections as other members in our federal forces. i am committed to defending our workers and holding washington accounting in fighting for a stronger federal workforce each and every day, because that's what the american people expect. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. barrasso: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of both the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, when president trump nominated judge brett kavanaugh to serve on the supreme court, i believe he made

an excellent choice. judge kavanaugh has served on the d.c. circuit court for 12 years. he's distinguished himself as a careful, independent and very intelligent judge. this is a headline in the "wall street journal," july 10, 2018. they take a look at his record and this is what they predicted. they said, trump's nominee will be an intellectual leader on the bench. i had a chance to meet with him today, and that's exactly what i think. i think they got it completely right. the newspaper pointed out that he has written opinions that span nearly every significant constitutional issue. judge kavanaugh is such -- has such a strong reputation that courts around the country actually relied on his opinions. when you look at his whole record, he's written about 200 majority opinions for the d.c. circuit court on which he serves. now he's only been reversed one time by the supreme court. the supreme court has actually been much more likely to agree

with judge kavanaugh in at least 13 different cases over the dozen years that he served on the d.c.king circuit court, they adopted his legal reasoning in their own supreme court rulings. to me, that makes him a mainstream judge. in one case involving the separation of powers, judge kavanaugh disagreed with the opinion of two other circuit judges. he looked at the text of the constitution, and at the original meeting of those words, which is to me what a judge ought to be doing, he wrote that, quote, framers of our constitution took great care to ensure that power in our system was separated into three branches. that's one of the things he and i talked about today, the three branches of government that the founding fathers decided in which to separate the powers within our system. and in that writing judge kavanaugh went on to stress the importance of the constitution's checks and balances.

the fundamental principles on which our democracy has been founded. the supreme court agreed with judge kavanaugh's reasoning, and the court cited his work several times in reaching their own supreme court decision. there was another case that dealt with a regulation that was written by the environmental protection agency. judge kavanaugh found that the agency exceeded its authority under the law when it wrote its regulation. he wrote, quote, it's not our job to make the policy changes and set the statutory boundaries. but it is emphatically our job to carefully but firmly enforce the statutory boundaries. what are the boundaries? it's our job to enforce them. again the supreme court took a look at this, looked at his writings from the d.c. district court and the d.c. circuit court and they agreed with judge kavanaugh's reasoning. one constitutional scholar pointed out that judge kavanaugh

demands wide and deep respect among scholars, lawyers, judges and justices. another legal scholar said judge kavanaugh is one of the most learned judges in america on a variety of issues ranging from theories of statutory interpretation to separation of powers. the third law professor agree. this professor called judge kavanaugh a true intellectual, leading thinker and writer on interpretation and federal courts. here's what we know about judge kavanaugh: it's clear he's a person of strong character. we hear this from people who have known him in the community and people who have worked with him for years in the court. it's clear judge kavanaugh has exactly the right approach, in my opinion, to being a judge. he said it very plainly in a speech last year. he said a judge's job is to interpret the law not make the law or make policy.

i think that's the standards americans should be applying to anyone who's nominated to this high position. then you look at these endorsements from legal scholars, you look at the number of times the supreme court has followed his opinions, followed his reasoning, followed his thought pattern, it is clear that judge kavanaugh has been the incredibly strong intellect that we want in a supreme court justice. when you see someone who commands this kind of respect from the experts, i think senators really need to take that into consideration. i he the ph with judge kavanaugh, as i said, early this morning. i enjoyed a long discussion of various topics relating to the law, the constitution, the separation of powers. and i hope my democratic colleagues will meet with him as well. i look forward to having a full and thoughtful confirmation process. mr. president, i appreciate the opportunity to discuss this topic and ask that the remainder of my remarks be entered into the record in the appropriate place. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: thank you,

mr. president. mr. president, i come to the floor today to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the creation of the wyoming territory. on july 25, 1868, congress authorized the territory that would become the state of wyoming. thousands of people were headed west along the new rail lines that were being built. in fact, the first territorial governor noted it was the first time america had carved out a new territory as a result of the railroad coming through. people were eager to settle in the new territory and build new lives, seek their fortune and raise their families. what they found when they reached the wyoming territory was a place of incomparable view. an observer at "the time" talked about the fertile valley of rivers and streams, and that continues today, mr. president. this observer at "the time" praised the gorges of its majestic mountains. it wasn't just the natural beauty of wyoming that drew

people there, however. it was the natural resources as well. when the senate was debating the creation of the territory, one of the things they talked about right here in this body, right here in this room, was what was the potential future for the area. these natural resources would help power america's expansion west. one senator talked about the valuable springs of petroleum and about the abundant coal deposits. that was 150 years ago. valuable springs of petroleum, abundant coal deposits. these same natural resources still help power the american economy today, 150 years later. wyoming is america's largest producer of coal and we're one of the biggest in terms of producing oil and natural gas. over the last century and a half the people of wyoming have provided america with gold, diamonds, and uranium as well. from the very beginning, from day one, scientists have flocked

to wyoming to explore natural resources. some of the first government-sponsored geological surveys took place in what's now yellowstone national park. today students and scholars come from around the world to study at the university of wyoming. yellowstone is one of the world's most treasure places to visit. more than four million people visited there last year. once wyoming created a territory, we lost no time to set ourselves up as a model for the rest of the country. one of the first acts was to actually grant equal rights to women for the first time in american history. that's why wyoming today even today is known as the equality state. women served on juries. we had the first female justice of the peace, we had the first elected governor of any state. we're a small state by

population, mr. president, but when you look at these things that we've contributed throughout our history, you can see why we're very proud to call wyoming home. wyoming has always been a place where people are driven by hope and by optimism about the future. this optimism is an essential part of who we are today. the polling company gallup found recently that wyoming is the most confident state in the country when it comes to america's economy. people in wyoming are cheerful, they are upbeat, they are optimistic. mr. president, 150 years ago the wyoming territory was the frontier, the people of wyoming still have that same pioneering spirit today. we are patriotic americans. we work hard to care for our families, our neighbors, and our communities. i congratulate all of the people of wyoming today on this historic milestone. 150 years ago today congress

acted to create the wyoming territory. that spirit of wyoming and culture of wyoming has sustained us this whole time and will continue for many, many years into the future. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. hatch: mr. president, last week the finance committee met to consider the nomination of charles readic -- redick to be commissioner of the internal revenue service. charles redick is a highly qualified man who had -- who i had long believed had near universal support for members of the committee. i suppose it should not be surprising, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were finally able to find an excuse for why they couldn't support this well-qualified

practitioner. my friends on the other side of the aisle, including ranking memberwideen -- ranking member widen found opposition to chelsea redick and -- to mr. redick and strongly plan to oppose him because of a recent change at the treasury department. some of you may be scratching your heads wondering how, if he hasn't been confirmed yet, does he have anything to do with this new regulatory change. i know it's puzzling. when you get into the weeds, it becomes clear that my friend have been just looking for an excuse to keep this well-qualified practicer from heading up the i.r.s. when the country needs him the most. there have been a russian person allegedly infiltrating the n.r.a. and there being so-called

dark money. interestingly, though, they seem not to be at all concerned with the subsequent revelations that the very same person had meetings with at least one federal reserve official and at least one high-level official in the treasury department during the obama administration. evidently for democrats when it comes to activities that are quite concerning, the concerns vanish if the activities involve officials in a democrat administration. the point is none of the democrats' concerns or opposition have anything to do with mr. redick. and as his nomination moves forward, i'll continue to move forward about his incredible qualifications to be our i.r.s. commissioner as we move through his nomination process. but today i want to take a minute to address the treasury department's actions. by way of background, the treasury department changed an

outdated nixon administration rule that required certain tax-exempt organizations to report the names and addresses of taxpayers who made substantial donations. this requirement did not arise out of a current statute that isn't useful for tax administration, and it unnecessarily puts taxpayer information at risk. cognizant of these issues, the treasury department changed that rule. not such a dramatic change, but to hear my democratic colleagues react, you would think the treasury department repealed the bill of rights or sold our democracy down the river. that's why i think it is critical to note that despite the rule change, the i.r.s. still has being access to this information should the agency need it. of course, you would never know that when listening to my friends on the other side of the aisle. they cherry pick their facts,

but for the lest of us i think -- rest of us, we should all take a step back, take a deep breath and consider what actually has taken place. back in 1969, congress amended the internal revenue service requiring 501-c-3 charities file an annual return that contains the names of substantial contributors. this rule makes perfect sense. after all, taxpayers receive a tax deduction, these donations -- for these donations so the i.r.s. needs to be able to verify that individual taxpayer actually donated what they said they did. it's a great tax fraud prevention tool. however, this taxpayer information is extremely sensitive and must be safeguarded from a data breach or other improper revelation. that's why congress chose to prohibit public disclosure of

this information. then, two years later in 1971, president nixon's treasury department issued further regulations extending this requirement to contributions made to 501-c-4, 5, and 6 organizations. for those who don't stay up late at night reading the tax code for fun, these organizations include social welfare, labor, and agriculture organizations, as well as chambers of commerce. this legislation went beyond what is required by the statute and thus beyond what congress wrote when requiring noncharity tax exempt organizations to disclose personal identifiable information, namely those who contributed $5,000 or mo to that

particular -- to that particular welfare organization. these contributions are not tax deductible so the i.r.s. has less need for this information. and it's key to remember that the law generally requires the returns of tax-exempt organizations be made publicly available. taken together, this means that the i.r.s. has been forcing the collection of information it doesn't need that can easily get leaked out and cause problems for the i.r.s., the organizations, the individual donors, and the american people generally. as such, and in order to avoid these important privacy issues, the i.r.s. has had to spend very precious time and resources redacting this information. again, information that the agency did not need to collect in the first place and that does

no good in helping thwart tax evasion or fraud. in the end, this process has turned into a disproportionate amount of work and expense of taxpayer dollars with few benefits in return. all of that, while not the most exciting topic for a dinner conversation, is what brings us to today, and all of that is why the i.r.s. has been looking at changing this requirement during and since the obama administration. the i.r.s. has broadly noted three reasons for this change. first, as i mentioned, the i.r.s. doesn't need the personally identifiable information of these donors to carry out its mission. while this information was helpful to administering the gift tax in 2015, the congress changed the law on the

application of the gift tax so it's no longer relevant here, and that change was broadly bipartisan. second, requiring the reporting of donor information consumes a lot of time and money, both at the i.r.s. as well as tax-exempt organizations. this directly conflicts with our goal of making the i.r.s. more efficient and helpful for american taxpayers. third, schedule b returns with personally identifiable information of donors have a tendency to look. this poses a risk to taxpayer privacy. it creates a liability for the i.r.s., and it erodes the trust of the american people in our tax collection agency. this risk is very real. since 2010, the i.r.s. is aware of at least 14 breaches that

resulted in the unauthorized disclosure of this type of information. mind you, those were cases that we know of. that's why earlier this month the trump administration listened to the agency's concerns, contemplated the facts, and did what any sane government should do. it enacted changes that would help the i.r.s. focus on what's important instead of needlessly risking resources and private taxpayer information. and the administration was wise enough to accept the idea that arose out of the obama administration. that's just good government, mr. president. and, yet, if you listen to my democratic colleagues these past few days, you would think that democracy as we know it has been destroyed. you might even think that the i.r.s. and the trump administration have been bought and paid for by this nebulous

so-called dark money. the truth is these attacks are just a partisan stunt because even if you believe this intricate weaving of a conspiracy theory, it ignores the plain fact that the i.r.s. actually still has access to donor information if it wants it. nothing is being deleted. instead, election of sensitive taxpayer information will be less common. the i.r.s. is less likely to become a political beach ball smacked back and forth across the aisle, and this administration had the common sense to take up a democrat president's work to eliminate pointless busy work for the i.r.s. and tax-exempt organizations. honestly, if this isn't good government, i don't know what is. so, mr. president, let's ignore this pointless obstruction and get back to work.

after all, there's a lot to do. with that, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: mr. president, always an honor to follow the president pro tempore of the senate on the senate floor. i'm here today to talk about the work that we're working through and what for decades would actually be an understatement, what for a couple of sent writs was the prince -- centuries was the principal work of the congress was to set priorities on how to spend the money that the people have entrusted us with. i want to talk specifically today about the transportation of important -- importance of transportation and that this ag bill is in here too, the agriculture bill, certainly those things come together in a way that allows us to

competitive or don't come together in a way that doesn't allow us to be as competitive as weed like -- we'd like to be. there's no question that our infrastructure is not what it should be. the highway system, built under the leadership of president eisenhower, much of it is over seven decades old, a lot of it over five decades old. it is not where it should be. it's outlived the protected life, -- projected life, and that's a good thing, the construction and repair thought to be better at the time, but they are not the kind of things that will last forever. it's been reported that we have a backlog of at least $836 billion in highway and bridge infrastructure, just that part of our infrastructure. i'm the chairman of the commerce committee subcommittee on aviation. you and i serve on that committee and in that c