vote:

the presiding officer: are there

any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote? if not, the yeas are 54, the nays are 37, the nomination is confirmed. the clerk will report the next nomination. the clerk: nomination, the judiciary, brian c. buescher, of nebraska, to be united states district judge for the district of nebraska. the presiding officer: the question is on the nomination. a senator: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

change -- the presiding officer: are there any senators wishing to change their vote? the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motions to reconsider are considered made and laid upon the table and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's actions. mr. merkley: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. hoeven: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. the senator from oregon.

mr. merkley: madam president, i ask that my fellow dan basetta has privileges of the floor. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: thank you. i rise in recognition of senator sheldon whitehouse on this special occasion of his 250th speech in his time to wake up series, a series of speeches, as far as i know, unparalleled in the history of the senate addressing a national and world issue, the issue of carbon. if you're sitting at the desk here or on one of the benchs,

that breath of air is different from when i was born. it contains 33% more carbon. this has never happened over the lifetime of any individual in the history of the human species on the planet. it means big changes because every molecule is graping -- grabbing heat and holding it. it means the snowpack that is smaller and melts earlier on average means less irrigation water for our farmers and ranchers and less healthy streams for the salmon and trout. it means that a lot of that is absorbed into the ocean and become carbonic acid and we need to buffer the sea water in order for baby oysters to survive. these changes are happening not just in my state, but all over

the country, and not just in our current, but all over the world. and most of this these changes have manifested themselves over the past ten years. it's when we actually see what has been happening. a few years ago, the sea stars started dying off the coast of oregon, california, and washington. the result is the blue see your urchins has exploded. who knows what impact that will have on the chain of life in the ocean or on the fisheries that are such an important part of our economy. place after place after place, effect after effect, after effect, effects that can be measured with a thermometer or with litmus paper for acidity, it can be felt by our ranchers,

farmers, fisheries and forest, timber economy, the effects felt by the 180,000 americans who have felt the extraordinary heat wave in what has been recorded as the hottest month in history. but we cannot respond by saying, oh, my goodness, it's overwhelming, i want to ignore it. or it's such a large challenge, i can't make a difference. we have to instead increase our attention. we have to increase our efforts. we have to drive a faster transition off of fossil fuels off of carbon to renewable fuels, and in so doing create millions of jobs and make sure they are good-paying jobs, have a race to the top with project labor agreements, with good family wages and benefits. we need to make sure that we

move forward in a fashion that puts jobs in places that are needed, including our front line communities, our frontier communities as they like to call them, our rural communities, our fossil fuel communities, our former fossil fuel workers who did the hard work, took the risk, suffered black lung, they should be first in line for the jobs for the new energy economy. this needs to be bipartisan. this is not blue or red. this is planet earth. we are all on it together. we are all on this little remote planet, long distance to the next planet, long distance between our star and the next star. there is an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe with perhaps a billion stars each, but all we have is our little blue-green orbit, so let's save it. can human civilization rise to

the task? that hangs in the balance. we're not doing very well so far. but my colleague from rhode island has given it this attention, this analysis, bringing everything to bear to say to say pay attention and work hard, and so i applaud him and thank him for his weekly speeches and his efforts to understand and establish momentum around solutions and applaud him in this very robust form of leadership on such an important issue, and thank you. mr. schatz: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. mr. schatz: thank you, madam president. you know, in the senate, in

congress, and in politics, people are a little too loose with their praise, everybody's getting applause, everything's getting thanks, everybody's the greatest, and it gets a little more tiresome. i try to be a little more sparing, i try to be nice to people, but i try to be sparing. sometimes we have these caucus lunches and there are 10 or 15 moments when we're all applauding each other. it gets crazy. but i want to take this moment on the senate floor to applaud someone who really deserves it, who has really displayed extraordinary leadership. whenever you think about the united states senate and how it function, these are pretty impressive people. they've accomplished something prior in their life and just to get to the senate is a real thing. but sheldon whitehouse is the single most fearless individual in politics that i've ever met.

he is the single most tireless individual in politics that i've ever met and it's not just the speech making, but today is a marker because he made 250 -- is this 250 or you already did it? this is 250, it has been 249. it will be 250 individual speeches on the united states senate floor. sometimes there are people in this chamber and sometimes it's empty and you're talking to these incredible young men and women who serve as pages and the presiding officer who has mostly no choice but to sit there politely. but sheldon whitehouse will give his 250th speech on climate and it is not most of what he has done. it is a small part of what he has done to lead on climate with

absolute moral and scientific and political and pragmatic clarity. and i'll just say a couple of more things about my partnership with sheldon. you know, i was a very happy lieutenant governor of the state of hawaii and leading the hawaii initiative which was our effort to get 100% clean energy by the year 2040, and the very unfortunate death of daniel inouye made a vacancy in that the senate seat and i decided to pursue that the senate seat because i wanted to do something about climate. i didn't know most of the members except for the famous ones. and when i came to the senate, everybody talked me to talk to sheldon whitehouse, and we became fast friends. he comes from the ocean state, even though that sounds weird to me. i come from the aloha state and

he comes from the ocean state. i want to report to you, whoever's watching, that i've never felt such momentum on this issue. it is because of the young people who sort of stormed the castle over the last year or so and demanded change and demanded action and demanded the kind of change and action that is equal to the scale of this problem. and people will quibble with the political tactics and the messaging and all that. you know what? when change happens in the united states of america, it is led by young people. and that's what happened. they stormed the castle and even those of us who have been working on climate for a long time felt a jolt of energy in a positive way. so that's number one. number two is a little unfor-profit nat but it is changing the politics and that is events. weather event, climate events. we are no longer talking about climate change as a near-term

future issue or a long-term future issue. climate change is now. it is happening across the country. and it's not just happening to conservation areas or places where you might enjoy the outdoors. it's happening to communities from coast to coast everywhere in between, record heat waves, record floods, record snow storms, coral bleaching events. and it is very difficult to describe something as a 100-year flood or a 500-year flood which means it's supposed to happen statistically speaking about every 100 or 500 years. if that flood is happening every year. it is very difficult to ignore the reality of climate change when the last eight hottest years on record were over the last nine years. the weather is absolutely getting weirder and more unpleasant and our storms are getting more frequent and more

severe. and so public opinion is moving. now you have a majority of republicans, decisive majority of young republicans, a huge, vast majority of independents and pretty much every single democrat wanting climate action. and the other part of that that is encouraging is that sheldon has a strategy. he understands it's not just enough to marshal public opinion. look at what's happened with gun safety. we're not there yet even though public opinion is absolutely on our side. sometimes you have to look at what is structurally happening in politic, especially in the united states congress and sheldon whitehouse understands that we have to deal with the structural aspects of the way campaigns are funded, the way information and misinformation is promulgated, and that we - nd to engage on that battle field as well. i'll close with this. a, i've never been so hopeful

about the prospect of climate change action in 2021 and i've never been so thankful to have a partner that can lead this effort in sheldon whitehouse. i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: let me first thank my friend, senator schatz, for his incredibly kind remarks. he is an outstanding colleague. we work together extremely well. he brings a good cop aloha sensibility to a conversation which i tend to lean more towards the bad cop. and he has a remarkable vision for how this can be solved. and so i'm incredibly honored that he's here. for the 250th week that the senate has been in session, i rise to call this chamber to wake up to the threat of climate

change. in april of 2012 i delivered the first of these speeches. i began i know that many in washington would prefer to ignore this issue but nature keeps sending us messages, messages we ignore at our peril. it was a cry of frustration, frustration that the supreme court's infamous citizens united decision had killed the bipartisan work that i saw here on climate for three years, frustration that the fossil fuel industry's death grip had tightened around this chamber preventing action, frustration that our democratic administration, our democratic administration had abandoned leadership on climate change and would barely even talk about it.

so it's been a run. and here i am still at it seven years on. some things have changed. some things have not. let's start with what has not changed. what has not changed is the scientific certainty about what is happening in our atmosphere and oceans. scientists have understood that burning fossil fuels causes our planet to heat up. since the days when abraham lincoln was riding on washington, d.c. in his top hat. this is not new news. nearly four decades ago exxon's own scientists reported to exxon management that, quote, there is little doubt that atmospheric co2 concentrations were increasing due to fossil fuel burning. they said back in 1982 that the

resulting greenhouse effect -- and this is a quote from exxon -- would warm the earth's surface causing changes in climate affecting atmospheric and ocean temperatures, rainfall patterns, soil moisture, and potentially melting the polar ice caps. there was no legitimate debate over the science when i started in 2012, and there is no legitimate debate over the science today. indeed the science has only strengthened. and with each passing year, as senator merkley said, we rely less on complicated climate models and on scientific forecasts, and unfortunately more on straightforward real time measurement of the changes. today we observe with our own eyes what recently was predict

predicted, glacial collapse and retreat, sea level rise, arctic warming, and increasingly extreme weather. another constant since 2012 is the fossil fuel industry's remorseless campaign. a, to block climate action and, b, to do this while hiding its hands behind front groups. i have delivered dozens of these speeches about the dozens of climate denial front groups. indeed we've had whole groups of senators come to the floor to talk about the web of denial that the fossil fuel industry has constructed to propagate fake science, to hide the fossil fuel industry pulling these strings and pull its muscle and

weight around congress. mostly it's funded by big oil and the koch brothers. they said these groups up and they set them loose to sow false doubt about real climate science and to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct here in washington. they have spent at a minimum hundreds of millions of dollars on this anticlimate campaign. with that money they've talked up some seriously ridiculous notions like the carbon pollution is good for us all because carbon is plant food. they've taken out billboards comparing climate scientists to the unabomber. it is false and ugly stuff powered by hidden money. oil giants still spend huge amounts to infect america's corporate lobbying with their obstruction message.

influence map reckons the biggest anticlimate lobbying force in washington is the u.s. chamber of commerce, a trade group that purports to represent typical patriotic american businesses. it should more properly be called the u.s. chamber of carbon. there it is at the rock bottom side by side with the national association of manufacturers in a statistical tie for worst obstructor of climate action in america. why wouldn't big oil go to all this trouble? they are defending a $650 billion per year subsidy in the united states alone, according to the international monetary fund. so it's logical but it's still shameful. there is a vast majority of

american companies that have a different view and that want to see climate action, but in congress that vast majority is a silent majority. when i say silent i mean they are not showing up in congress, not to push back, not to correct the record, not even to seek serious climate legislation. corporate america was awol in congress in 2012 and they are awol in congress now. corporate america's silence was deafening then and it's deafening still today. so what has changed since that first speech seven-plus years ago? well, first of all the economics of renewable energy changed in a big way. in 2012 wind and solar weren't cost competitive with fossil fuels. storage and electric vehicles were nowhere. that year the average cost of

solar was over $200 per mega watt hour. today it's a quarter of that. the cost of wind power is down and offshore wind is emerging. battery storage now competes on price with gas-fired peek demand plants in many years. and they are making more and more electric vehicles driving costs down and performance up for consumers. even with that massive subsidy for fossil fuel, renewables are starting to win on price. another new area that we're startinstarting to capture carb. this little cube that i have in my hand is co2 that was pulled out of the air by direct air capture technology and can be turned into tiles, blocks,

bricks. there it is. it's the beginning of a new era of carbon capture and the group that did this is competing in wyoming this summer for the x prize for carbon capture. another thing that's changed since 2012 is economists, central bankers, wall street bankers, real estate professionals, asset managers all recognizing the major risks that climate change poses to the global economy. it's not free to ignore it and the costs could come in the form of crashes. back in 2012 these economic warnings, these crash warnings were uncommon. today they are coming from everywhere. freddie mac predicted that rising sea levels will prompt a crash in coastal property values

greater than the housing crash that caused the 2008 financial crisis. first street has shown how sea level rise is already affecting coastal real estate values up and down the east coast. it found that rising seas have already resulted in $16 billion in lost property values in coastal homes from maine to mississippi. moody's warnings climate risk could trigger downgrades in coastal communities' bond ratings. just last week the mayor of honolulu testified at senator schatz' clm committee's first hearing that the committee agencies are already grilling him about this. blackrock has estimated that some coastal communities face annual average losses of up to 15% of g.d.p. from climate change by the end of the century. heads up, florida.

coastal property is not the only financial risk. the bank of england, bank of france, bank of canada, san francisco fed and european central bank along with many top-tier peer reviewed economic papers are all warning of systemic economic risk. that's central banker speak for something that poses a risk to the entire economy. all from stranded fossil fuel assets which is called the carbon asset bubble. one other thing i spent a lot of time on is oceans. the heating, the acidification, the lost and shifting fisheries, the collapse in coral and expanding dead zones and of course the rising sea levels. our terrestrial species needs to pay a lot more attention to the seas. and there has been a real shift in attention in these intervening years. then you have standard and

poor's and moody's and citigroup and more economists warning that the costs of climate change won't be measured in the hundreds of billions, won't even be measured in the trillions, but will be measured in the tens of trillions of dollars. that is penalty worth avoiding and worth the attention in the senate. so here i am seven-plus years later giving my 250th speech. somewhere between persistent, tiresome, and i suppose foolhardy is where you'll find me. i never thought i'd still be at it well into 2019, but the fossil fuel industry, with all its wretched dark money, is still calling the shots here in congress while the rest of corporate america still sits on

its hands. the united states senate still is not seriously considering any serious legislation to reduce carbon pollution, and i'm still frustrated. but i am optimistic because the denial wall is cracking. bankers and asset managers and financial titans recognize the massive economic risks of a fossil fuel-based economy and they see the huge economic potential in a low-carbon economy. they now see real business incentive to push back on the fossil fuel denial apparatus. they now see real business peril in allowing the fossil fuel denial apparatus to rule. and i'd ask unanimous consent that the "economist" statement published in "the wall street journal" be appended at the end of my remarks illustrating that

point. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i am also optimistic because people are talking about climate change again. colleagues are talking about climate change. americans everywhere are talking about climate change. most republicans want action on climate change. voters are engaged on climate change, and more than anyone else, especially young people are engaged, from that young hero greta thunberg to kids all across this country, to the young plaintiffs in the guilianov suit. any politician mo wants a long career had better care about a what young people think. any political party that wants to matter in a decade had better care. over in the house, it's starting to show. a few republicans have actually introduced legislation to put a price on carbon emissions.

even president trump, the guy who handed the keys to his administration over to the fossil fuel industry, feels the need now to talk about the environment. as empty as that talk is, the pressure he feels is progress. the fact that he feels he has to talk about it is progress. as for me, i can't wait to stop giving these speeches. these speeches chronicle the continued failure of this body, the continued failure of our country to grapple with an evident climate crisis, and these speeches chronicle the fake science and the political mischief and muscle that the fossil fuel industry has used to debouch our american democracy.

marking that sordid history is important, but i want it to be history. when the dark days of denial and obstruction are passed, these speeches will no longer be necessary. i particularly want to thank my colleague from hawaii, senator schatz, my colleague from oregon, senator merkley, my colleague from massachusetts, senator march can i, and -- markey, and other colleagues who have been incredible friends and allies in this fight, like senator heinrich of new mexico and senator warren of massachusetts, for being here today and for being such extraordinary patterns and teammates. we are a band of brothers and sisters in this cause, and our band is growing. as more and more americans from kitchen tables to corporate cocktail parties come to terms

with the real scope of the problem and the danger that failure presents, not only am i proud of my colleagues who are with me already, but i'm very hopeful that my colleagues across the aisle will soon also become great partners. until then, i will conclude now for the 250th time by saying, it's time to wake up. i yield the floor. mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. merkley: thank you, madam president.

madam president, first i request that my fellow, michelle buse aa -- bustamanti be granted floor privileges. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: then what i want to say is what an honor it is to be out here with the great leader from the state of rhode island, sheldon whitehouse, who has for 250 times come out here onto the senate floor to say to the senate, to say to our country, it is time to wake up. and his voice is inspiring. his voice cuts through all of the obfuscation paid for by the special interests to ensure that we hear the truth about the danger that climate change poses to our country and to the

planet. and so i wanted to come out here just to say how special it is for me and for every other member who partners with sheldon whitehouse on this issue. this is somebody who has dedicated his career to solving this problem. but he knows that all issue go through three phases -- political education, political activation, political implementation. so he has been a one-man tutor, educated the american public, educating the united states senate on -- that not only tech -- on the not only technical aspects of climate change but the political aspects of it. because ultimately it's not a technology problem. it's a political problem that we have. the technologies are ready to

go. and what senator whitehouse has done is to serve as this inspirational centerpoint, ensuring that the voice of sanity is heard, that the voice of truth is heard. and why is it important for him to be this incredible leader? it's because climate change -- or the climate change is the national security, economic, environmental, health care, and moral issue of our time -- of this century. so everything that he has been saying is something that, in my opinion, is going to wind up putting him in the history books for the incredible leadership which he has shown.

a lot of times you can be right but too soon. people aren't ready to hear it. but what we're finding across the country is that more and more people are ready to hear it, especially the younger generation, especially people who right now recognize that they're going to live their entire lives with this crisis. how do we know that? well, just back in november, our scientists, 13 federal agencies, mandated by a 1990 law, had to present a report to the president on climate change. all 13 agencies -- department of energy, e.p.a., department of state is 13 -- all had to come together. here's what they concluded. that if we do not change what we are doing right now, that the

planet will warm by nine degrees fahrenheit by the year 2100. let's say that again. the planet will warm by nine degrees fahrenheit between now and 2100, 81 years from now. in other words, the pages who are here in the well of the house right now will live through this entire story as it unfolds, if we continuing with business as usual. and, interestingly, the consequences are not those that the deniers want us to know, because all 13 agencies concluded that there could be an upwards of -- get ready for this -- 11-foot rise in the ocean in the northeastern part of the united states. think about that. is -- 11 feet higher. the impact would be

catastrophic. our pages will live through this entire story unless we change what we're doing in our country, unless we change what the united states senate does to put preventive measures in place. what senator whitehouse is saying is, wake up. the science is clear, and it is unchallengeable. and so our problem is that too many republicans -- and especially the denier-in-chief who sits in the oval office -- they are nostalgic for a time that never existed. they pretend that somehow or other all of these climate-related problems are going to magically be solved by policies that don't exist and that perhaps we're just in some kind of cycle on our planet that

will just go away and that these young people will not have a legacy of climate change to have to deal with in their lives. and, of course, every scientist in america, with the exception of those who are bought by the koch brothers, bought by exxonmobil, bout by the fossil fuel companies, they disagree with that. every scientist agrees that this is going to happen. so from my perspective, what we're seeing is something that is deadly. the forest fires, the extreme heat waves, the supercharged hurricanes, the biblical flooding -- all of it is happening as a result of what human beings are doing to our own planet. global temperatures are rising like a runaway freight train. this month is on track to be the

hottest month on earth ever recorded. can i say that again? the month of july in 2019 is on track to be the hottest month ever recorded in the history of our planet. last month was the hottest june in recorded history. every month so far in 2019 has been in the top five hottest on record. the last five years have been the hottest five years ever recorded. 20 of the last 22 years have been the hottest ever recorded. this is not a drill. this is an emergency, and it's an emergency that has an answer in deploying wind and solar and new batteries and all-electric vehicles and energy efficiency and investing in new technologies that can even accelerate the solution even

more. it's all there for us to do. we're right now celebrating the 50th anniversary of the apollo mission to the moon. president kennedy felt that there was an existential threat to our planet that the soviet union was posing. he actually said at rice university that he knew we were behind. the russians had already sent up sputnik. the russians are already sent up yuri gregarin. he knew that we were behind but we would not be behind by the end of the decade. and he made it quite clear that we would have to invent metals that did not exist and propulsion systems that did not exist and we would have to return the mission through heat half the intensity of the sun and we would have to do so

within half a decade so that we would control that existential threat. well, the united nations scientists and our scientists have each now said that climate change poses an existential threat to our planet. not our words, not senator whitehouse and mine. those are the words of the scientists of the planet and our own scientists. so we have to respond in the same way that president kennedy asked our nation to respond back in the 1960's. and the young people in our country, they are ready to go. they are ready to do whatever is necessary, but in order to do so, it's going to require us to take the kinds of actions which are necessary. the u.n. special report said that if emissions are not cut by 100% by 2050, climate change

will lead to natural disasters costing $54 trillion over the next 80 years. a lot of people say can we afford to take on this challenge? what our scientists are saying, we can't afford not to take on this challenge. we can't afford that kind of a price when we can create millions of jobs saving the planet in wind and solar and new all-electric vehicles and buildings, technologies, energy efficiency. we can save all of creation b engaging in massive job creation. it's all there for us. we just did it with the communications -- revolution. we moved from black rotary dial phone to the young people in the well of the senate today, they have iphones that they walk around with. those iphones have more computing power than the

computers on the apollo mission. how did we do that? we're americans. we take on these challenges, and we revolutionize the telecommunications industry to move from the black rotary dial phone which these young people don't even know what it is. we have moved from having no faction machines in our country 40 -- no fax machines in our country 40 years ago to today there are no fax machines in our country in america. the same thing is true in the clean energy sector. senator whitehouse has been leading us on this exploitation to the senate that we can do it. you can't let the special interests dictate it, though. you can't let the dark money control it. that's his lecture to us. that it's incredibly important for us to ignore it, in the same way we ignored the monopolies on

telecommunications, we have to ignore the monopolies, the duopolies that exist in the energy sector as well. so i thank the senator from rhode island again, and i will repeatedly do so because he will reach 300 speeches out here on the floor and 500 speeches out on the floor. you might as well put an infinity sign behind the number because that's how many speeches he will give out here on the senate floor to wake up this institution. but that day is going to come, and i just wanted to come out here to just thank senator whitehouse for his incredible leadership and to let him know that i'm honored to be his partner in this effort, and i will be by your side the entire time it takes for us to get a solution for the young people in our country that they deserve

and they expect from this institution. so with that, madam president, i yield back. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: madam president, may i propose to my wonderful colleague, the senator from massachusetts, that the good lord forbid that i have to get to 500 such speeches before we solve this problem. i would note that if we look back to 2009, there are some very important signs of optimism on the legislative side, senator markey, then-representative markey, with his colleague representative waxman, successfully ushered with significant industry and popular support a serious climate bill through the house of representatives, proving that it can be done, proving that real climate legislation can pass in this body.

and in that same year, in 2009, a gentleman named donald trump, the same donald trump who is president now at the other end of pennsylvania avenue in the white house, took out an advertisement in "the new york times", and in his advertisement, donald trump and his children, donald, eric, and ivanka, as well as the trump organization, all said that the science of climate change was incontrovertible. and they further said that if we did not act, the consequences of climate change would be catastrophic and irreversible. so we have the living experience of legislation passing led by

then-representative markey and representative waxman, and all we need really is to bring that 2009 donald trump back. come on back, buddy. we want you, because you were right in 2009. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. markey: thank you. thank you, madam president. you know, massachusetts is the baystate. rhode island is the ocean state. back 240 years or so ago, paul revere got on his horse and he started riding, warning of great danger. and from my perspective, sheldon whitehouse is a latter-day paul revere, and he's warning that the climate crisis is coming,

and it's going to be much worse than it is today. and so from my perspective, this latter-day paul revere, who is sheldon whitehouse, represents the best of new england, but the best of our country and the best of our planet, because we have to be all in this together. and we can't be leaders by sitting on the sidelines, which is where donald trump wants to have us. the indians, the chinese, and others, they won't listen to us. you cannot preach temperance from a bar stool. you can't tell the rest of the world to do something while you have got a cigar in your hand and a beer in the other. that's where we are now in pollution under president trump. we have to be leaders, not laggards. that's what sheldon whitehouse is all about. that's why it's my great honor to be out here with him. and for as long as it takes, he will be our leader. thank you, sheldon. i yield back, madam president.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that the veto messages on senate joint resolutions 36, 37, and 38, be considered as having been read en bloc, that

they be printed in the record and spread in full on the journal en bloc. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. mcconnell: now, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that veto messages with respect to s.j. res. 36, s.j. res. 37, and s.j. res. 38 be considered at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the minority leader prior to august 2, that they be debated concurrently up two hours with 15 minutes reserved for the chairman and ranking member respectively and the senate vote on passage of the joint resolutions in the order listed. finally that the unanimous consent order adjourn june 19 for the remaining disapproval of armed sales remain in effect. the presiding officer: without objection, it is so ordered.

mr. lankford: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: mr. president, in april of this year, border patrol agents in south texas, near mcallen, one of the most crossed areas for illegal traffic in the entire southern border, saw a group of individuals walking north that had already crossed the border and they broke and ran. they assumed these individuals were illegally present in the united states and they started moving to try to interdict them.

they searched through a very large, very overgrown field. i can tell you that area's very, very rough terrain and it's very isolating and the brush is exceptionally heavy on a day even in april in south texas, it's extremely hot. as they searched through the field looking for individuals, they happened to hear a child crying in their search. they encountered a 3-year-old boy who had been abandoned by the human smugglers when they broke and ran. this young boy, 3 years old, had those shoes on, and on his shoes were written a name and a phone number across his shoes. that's the only identifying thing that they have. they tested the phone number, by the way, and the phone number didn't work. those human smugglers, moving

people into the united states, using children as the vehicle are prone to just cast that child aside if they slow them down. the border patrol agents encountered this child wearing those shoes, took him back to the office. those border patrol agents personally bought him new clothing. the fellow agents entertained him, you can see him playing paw patrol back at the station. they spent time comforting him and trying to figure out who he was and where he was from. and border patrol agents alter natured -- altered taking care of him and personally buying supplies for him until they could transfer him to health and human services care. that's what's happening on the border every single day.

border patrol agents are dealing with children that cartels are using to be able to move adults into the united states. yes, there are some family units that are moving in, but every single family unit that moves into the united states is being ushered by a cartel that works the border and they are choosing the time and the place to be able to move those individuals. these officers are risking their lives every single day. they are working with families every single day to try to figure out who is a family unit and who is a family that's just being smuggled to be able to be used as a vehicle to get across the border and to figure out how to separate the two and once they identify the child to try to figure out what do we do now with this child that we have? where are you from? several months ago most of the children that were moving across were 10, 11, 12, and they could interview those children. the cartels have figured that

out now and are sending more and more children that are infants and 1, 2, and 3-year-olds who don't know where they are from and don't know any details about their background and it is more and more difficult for border patrol agents to figure it out. in fact, border patrol agents just like this are bringing their own car seats and finding them in churches or other places that will donate car seats because h.h.s. doesn't have car seats. so they are paying for car seats to help these abandoned children be able to get to a place of safety. these are the folks that are being criticized. these are the folks that some of my colleagues, even as recently as this week, said they need to get 40 hours of sensitivity training because they are so insensitive to what is happening at the border.

these are the folks that are in these circumstances, putting their lives on the line to be able to solve some of the problems that we have. for years we have been talking about the failed immigration system. for the past three years there's been disagreements on the solutions and wide disagreements on federal law enforcement and what they are doing on the border. there have been a lot of folks casting blame on federal law enforcement, on the president instead of trying to figure out what is the problem at the border, why is this happening? why have our numbers so rapidly accelerated. this past weekend i visited the border with some of my colleagues. i went with senator ernst of iowa, dr. bill cassidy of louisiana. we went to the rio grande area of texas. that is a thin slice of the border, but in that area 40% of all illegal traffic moves across the border in that one zone. the most heavily traveled area

of that zone is the mcallen sector and that's where we went. across that area, one small segment of the border, they've got 1,500 to 2,000 individuals illegally crossing the border, in that one small sector of that 2,000-mile border. in that one small sector, they had 63 different countries, individuals from those countries cross the border illegally. 63 different countries. i hear a lot of folks say it is all folks from central america crossing to be able to flee. that's not true. 63 different countries just around mcallen, texas. you see the cartels sort them by country and background check. they send indians in one direction, they send pakistanis in another direction and they

send folks from honduras and guam in -- guatemala in another direction. when i walked into one of the stations to do a quick pop in to see who was there, at that moment half the adults that there were there -- this is single adults, half were from venezuela, half were from cuba. that's how the cartels sort the individuals. we had individuals from that one station in mcallen from pakistan, yemen, china, venezuela, bangladesh, syria, in addition to many countries from africa and asia and obviously much of central america as well. those individuals are moving coups the border -- across the borders in high numbers. 90% of the apprehensions have been from other countries other than mexico. and just as recently when it was just 2014, only 1% of the men

who crossed the border had a child with them, now the number is 50% of the men crossing the border have a child with them -- 50%. the numbers have dramatically change and what's happening along our border is significant. the men and women that are actually working every single day to be able to protect what's happening at the border, those individuals are also processing trade that's happening. these same individuals are processing 650,000 trucks coming to this area, 2.2 million pedestrians, 9.3 million passengers coming across in different personal vehicles that are happening. there's a lot going on. so when i went down to the border this weekend and visited the five different facilities and then spent much of the evening and deep into night riding along with border patrol with one set of agents and switched vehicles to go with a different set of agents to ride alonged border to get a feel of what is happening.

what i saw was painful, i saw places that were crowded, situations spartan, and it echoed in my mind that for months the administration and the committee that i serve on, members of the homeland security committee have said for months this -- for months there is a humanitarian crisis on this border, but it didn't seem anyone was listening until recently. it's been all of this just has created until recently and now suddenly people are turning their attention to what is happening along this border and saying there is a serious humanitarian problem. and we said welcome to the dialogue because we've been saying it for months. cartels are making millions of dollars exploiting children, they are smuggling children and families across the border. if you're an individual -- if you're a single individual, it costs $8,000 to be able to cross

the border and you pay a toll to the cartels, both to the traffickers and smugglers that are moving people and then more money to be able to cross the physical border. but if you bring a child with you, it's half price, it's $4,000. the incentive now is it is cheaper to cross this area if you bring a child because the cartel knows i don't have to sneak you over the wall. all i have to do is be able to get you to the border and drop you off. and we watched as a family unit and a group of families were sent in one direction and border patrol interdicted them and then a mile away three single adults made a sprint for the border, went to the wall with a makeshift ladder and worked their way up the ladder, but because it took extra time for them to do that, border patrol could get to their location and were able to arrest