mr. carper: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. carper: when i came on the floor, you were not presiding. you were speaking on the floor. talking about the visa waiver program. it's an agreement we have with almost 40 other nations which allow for the free flow of visitors from those countries to our countries. it's viewed in part as a way to promote tourism and to help grow that part of our economy and the economies of these other 28 -- 38 or 39 nations with whom we have this agreement. some people believe it's a gaping hole for fomenting terrorism and the ability to -- giving the terrorists the ability to infiltrate our country and do mischief here and other places around the world. i want to applaud the presiding officer, the senator from missouri, for his comments in actually explaining how the system works. it's actually not just a way to enhance and promote tourism, which is important to all of our economies, but it also

mr. carper: mr. president, thanks very much. talking about earlier just before the leader came to give his close remarks of the day, talking about michael davis was going to be a freshman at high school about 20 miles south of east newark. michael as succeeded as an athlete in ways that people thought would never a he has a disease called cystic fibrosis. it is a genetic disease and i talked with him and his mom jennifer about that disease and how it affects our bodies, and it's a disease that causes persistent lung infection. and according to the cystic fibrosis foundation, the condition is caused by -- apparently by a defective gene that causes a thick buildup of mucous in our lungs and other organs. and that mucous can clog our airways and lead to extensive lung damage and at worst leads to respiratory failure and maybe even likely death. and this is a disease that 14-year-old michael davis lives with. and i heard, mr. president, that for somebody who has cystic fibrosis to run any distance at all, they -- i ran this morning,

mr. carper: i would be happy to. mr. wyden: my friend, as a governor, really has helped to educate me over the years on this whole question of the states being the laboratories of democracy and trying fresh approaches, and delaware has done that and oregon has done that. i ask my friend, as a former governor, what would it mean you to if you are staring at a 20% or 25% reduction in medicaid? because, as you know, that's what's contemplated with the senate republicans. mr. carper: i was governor from 1992 to 2001, started a recession, started with six, seven really strong years in the clinton administration. and we were able to balance budgets eight years in a row, cut taxes seven out of eight, got triple-a credit ratings across the board. the person that was my secretary of finance is now our governor, john carney. and ben knows him, i think, pretty well. a wonderful member of congress, a wonderful lieutenant governor before that. but he's looking at a budget of less than $4 billion, he's looking at a $4 million they wil

mr. carper: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that i speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. casey: the republican bill, and i'm referring to the house republican bill that the senate now is considering in addition to other ideas is in my judgment not really a tax -- not really a health care bill but a tax cut bill. it's a tax cut bill for the super rich, not only the rich but the wealthiest, literally the wealthiest few americans while increasing costs for middle-class families. it gives states the options forker for allowing you states to discriminate again like they did before the a.c.a. was passed. and also would allow those same policies to devastate our hospitals, particularly those in rural communities. i live in a state where 48 out of 67 counties are in fact rural counties. the republican bill would rip away health care according to the congressional budget office, would rip away health care from 23 million americans. here's what that means in pennsylvania based upon the congressional budget office numbers. up to 770,000

mr. carper: i would ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. carper: mr. president, g.a.o. to see you this afternoon. -- good to see you this afternoon. i rise in support of the nomination of the kristine svinicki, to held a position of the nuclear regulatory commission, known as the n.r.c. many of our colleagues heard from people in support of this nominee. i want toed a my voice in support of her nomination as well. since joining the environment and public works committee, i have worked to strengthen the culture of safety within the u.s. nuclear energy industry, in part due to our collective efforts and the n.r.c. leadership, the n.r.c. continues to be the world's gold standard -- the gold standard -- for nuclear regulatory agencies. as i say time and time again, that does not mean we can become complacent when it comes to our nuclear safety. ensuring that the nuclear regulatory commission continues to have experienced and dedicated leadership is one of the most important things that our committee, the committee on environment and public works

mr. carper: thank you, mr. president. i want to thank my friend and neighbor from maryland for inviting us to come to the floor to talk about the affordable care act. i am honored to stand next to him here. we sit next to each other on the finance committee and the environment and public works committee. he's a great leader on both those committees. he and i were on the floor earlier today, along with the presiding officer. we voted on legislation that attempts to send the message to iran that -- who, by the way, just had elections not just a month ago where the president was reelected by a big margin -- there are a lot of young people in that country who want a better relationship with this country. they elected a number of women to serve in positions of real responsibility, not just in their parliament, but as members of day -- tehran's city council. the iranians are keeping their word with respect to the -- with the agreement between five nations, including the u.s., china, russia, britain, france, germany, they are ke

mr. carper: mr. president, nice to see you today again and again. i don't know if i'll be your last speaker, but i'll try not to keep you here too long, just in case. the -- i know the speaker has been through delaware a time or two. the president has been to delaware a time or two. the gentleman from -- the senator from louisiana has been through my state a time or two. i've been through theirs. i want to talk a little bit about a 14-year-old young man who lives in delaware. i used to say to my friend from louisiana, thanks for working to try and pull us together and do something across the aisle on health care. we'll see how it turns out. you come up i-95 on your way to we'll say pennsylvania, philadelphia, trenton, new jersey, new york city, or boston or maine, you pass through delaware. as you cross from delaware -- from maryland into delaware heading north, you cross into delaware, go through the toll plaza, and almost immediately you're at the intersection of a call called 896, state route 896, the north-south highway. if you happen to go nort

mr. carper: thanks so much. i thank my friend for yielding. i take the train back and forth from time to time to my home state. i'm going to try to get on a train later tonight to go home. thank you for letting me have a few minutes to say this. i came to the senate in 2000, was elected in 2000. i got here in 2001. two days after i was elected i called tom daschle who was the democratic leader in the senate. i said to him, i said i understand that what i need to do is to explain my committee selection, what my choice, my preference is for committee. i have to present those to you. he said yes, you should give me a letter today that tells me what committees you would like to be on. i'm not sure how they work it on the republican side. that's the way they do it here and i presume still do. i said my first three choices to be on committees, my first choice would be the finance committee. my second choice would be the finance committee. my third choice would be the finance committee. he said you want to be on the finance committee, don't you? i sa

mr. carper: i love what the senator from minnesota just said. i'm a retired navy captain. for years we had friendly competition between the different branches of our services. i salute the folks in the army, the marines, air force and coast guard. i say navy salutes you. and we -- then i also say different uniforms, same team. different uniforms, same team. and to hear to an extent we wear different uniforms, can he really on the same team. i think the american people are anxious for us to start acting that way. i hope we hit this pause button right now on the legislation that the republicans have pulled off the floor and that we use this as an opportunity not to go our separate corners and figure out how we can do the other team in when we return here in ten days or something. i hope we will explore as some of my colleagues have suggested some ideas that we can work together. several of them already talked about how do we make the marketplaces work. the exchanges are not a democratic idea. they're a republican idea. the tax credit, exchange, that's the republican idea. th

carper. >> thanks. mr. secretary, thanks for joining us today. it's good to see you.when i first heard the words of saint elizabeth i thought why would we spend that much money on creating a campus. i feel a consulted him for the department of homeland security, and over time i became convinced that one of the ways to actually enable the leadership of this department to manage their department and to improve their performance and, frankly, improve the morale of the employees is actually pursue,, implement the plan to create this campus. when jay became a sick to hear the same misgivings i read ahead about the proposal. would you take a moment and tell us whether you had a chance to get a feel for this at how your department is so far-flung, and what do you think we ought to do and how does th the administratn budget actually take us in that direction, or not? >> you know we are, i can't count the number of locations around the city, various parts, every part of homeland security is just spread out over all of hells half acre here. to bring all or most of it or some of

mr. chairman? senator hatch: no, i'm going to kill you if you keep this up. senator carper: i would die happy. senator hatch: you're doing a great job. mr. secretary, you've been very patient. i personally really admire you. i know you know this field very, very well. i know you know the problems. i know you know how difficult it is to solve these problems. i know you know that there's no quick answers to some of these questions that have been asked. you handled these very well today. i just want to personally think you and -- thank you and with that we'll adjourn this meeting. secretary price: thank you, mr. chairman. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org] week ahead in congress rachel oswald spoke about the week ahead in congress, including a debate on iran sanctions. host: are these sanctions on iran new and why do senators in both parties feel they're necessary now? reporter: these senators are coming after there was a big desire last year

mr. carper: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. officer without objection. mr. carper: i understand that we had originally scheduled in about one minute a vote on cloture on the new -- allowing the sanctions bill. i understand that that quorum bill -- not the quorum call but the cloture vote has been delayed until early this afternoon. this comesse comes on the heelsn announcement, a very sad news from iran. and i'm -- and i would be certainly among the first to note that some of the people in iran, revolutionary guard leadership, support terrorism. they wish ill for us and for our country. but that same country had some elections two weeksing a, and the results of those elections -- two weeks ago and the results of those election es were surprising, even for me, but encouraging. the results of the election found that president rouhani was reelected by a resounding majority, close to 60% of the vote. although the supreme leader thought this would be a one-on-one race, despite that, pre