mr. gardner: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the appointment at the desk appear separate any the record as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. gardner: i understand there is a bill at the desk and i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title for the first time. the clerk: s. 3747, a bill to provide for programs to help reduce the risk that prisoners will recidivist upon release from prison and for other purposes. mr. gardner: i now ask for a second reading and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule 14, i object to my own request. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the bill will receive its second reading on the next legislative day. mr. gardner: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. 3748 introduced earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 3748, a bill to amend the removal and transfer procedures for th

mr. gardner: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. gardner: i come to the floor to honor our men and women in law enforcement. as members of congress and their staffs head home this holiday season, we must remember the sacrifice of those who make our community safety, those who make our safety possible. across the united states 143 law enforcement officers have paid the ultimate price. in colorado we honor three fallen officers, deputy sheriff mcdonald gum. we will never forget his bravery. and deputy brick after serving in the sheriff's office for 11 years. i would like to honor the memory of sergeant matthew morano who was killed just last week. he was responding to reports of domestic violence when his cruiser and that of another officer crashed into a civilian vehicle. unfortunately, the occupants of the other vehicle, including a 1-year-old child lost their liestles. the pain of losing loved ones this close to the holidays is unimaginable. sergeant morano ends his wa

mr. gardner: mr. president, as my colleague from utah knows, we offered the chance to vote on those two words tonight. the two words that you are asking for tonight we offered a chance to vote on. mr. lee: will you yield for a question? mr. gardner: let me talk about it because i am pretty darn upset. the people from colorado who are worried about whether or not they can protect themselves from fire lost the wildfire technology act in this bill. that was in this bill. a bill that our committee has heard, that our committee voted on, that voted on bipartisan support probably unanimously. that was in this bill to protect our communities from wildfire and to protect our firefighters from injury in this bill. the other thing in this bill, a city in colorado who has a water system over a wilderness area that has for years been trying to fix it and they can't because it's in a wilderness area, so we have to have an act of congress to allow a city to fix their water system. rejected tonight because we weren'

mr. gardner: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment numbered 4123. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. grassley: reserving the right to object. i'd like to explain my registering my right to make a point before i object. this amendment is inconsistent with current federal law and would allow states the right to break existing law. if there is an attempt to legalize across the country, we should have that debate and let the congress decide the issue instead of creating a back door to legalization. furthermore, the amendment would allow financial institutions to bank marriage distrib tors. this is inappropriate to consider in the context of a criminal justice reform bill. criminal justice is not a vehicle through which we create reform for banks to create more business. so the senator from colorado is very much an advocate for the people in his state. i understand that. i respect his position. he works hard on this, and he may be ahead of the time

mr. gardner: mr. president, as my colleague from utah knows, we offered the chance to vote on those two words tonight. the two words that you are asking for tonight we offered a chance to vote on. mr. lee: will you yield for a question? mr. gardner: let me talk about it because i am pretty darn upset. the people from colorado who are worried about whether or not they can protect themselves from fire lost the wildfire technology act in this bill. that was in this bill. a bill that our committee has heard, that our committee voted on, that voted on bipartisan support probably unanimously. that was in this bill to protect our communities from wildfire and to protect our firefighters from injury in this bill. the other thing in this bill, a city in colorado who has a water system over a wilderness area that has for years been trying to fix it and they can't because it's in a wilderness area, so we have to have an act of congress to allow a city to fix their water system. rejected tonight because we weren'

gardner:: as the u.n. attempted to build a coalition? mr. busby: we have regularly raised that issue, urging them to accept such special visitors. sen. gardner:: has our ambassador asked to visit the region? have not asked recently. our concern is that we need an independent body like from the united nations to go in and do a proper investigation. : i wouldardner encourage the ambassador to it andt such a vis encourage the united nations to get inspections in there immediately. this is someone we are doing millions and millions of dollars of trade with each day, and some of the most heinous human rights violations are occurring before our eyes. mr. busby: unfortunately, such access depends on the ascent of the chinese government. cal -- senator gardner: we are in trade negotiations. has human rights been raised in the trade meetings? laura: the discussions i have been in work on a technical level. but whenever we do preparations for any visit, iowa's raise these issues. always raise these issues. the u.s. government has a real role in making

. >> chairman gardner, ranking member markey, mr. kaine, thank you very much for this opportunity to talk about democracy, human rights and rule of law in china. in support of america's foreign policy, the u.s. agency for international development leads the u.s. government's international development and disaster assistance. our work saves lives and helps countries to become more self reliant and stronger partners to america. for the purposes of today's hearing, i will first highlight usaid's work with the tibetans and provide a brief overview of the support for human rights and rule of law in asia. thanks to a strong bipartisan support in congress, usaid partners with tibetans to help them protect and preserve their threatened way of life. within china we support the preservation of tibetan culture and the assistance with environmental conservation. to date usaid has supported the preservation of nearly 7 million cultural heritage items. in part due to our environmental conservation support, tibetan communities are empowered to lead

beginning with the moment yesterday when colorado senator cory gardner attempted to add an amendment to the bill on marijuana commerce. . >> thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment 4123. >> is there objection? >> i reserving the right to object. >> i'd like to explain my registering my right to make a point before i object. this amendment is inconsistent with current federal law and would allow states the right to break existing law. if there is an attempt to legalize across the country, we should have that debate and let the congress decide to issue instead of creating a back door to legalization. furthermore, the amendment would allow financial institutions to bank marijuana distributors. this is inappropriate to consider in the context of a criminal justice reform bill. criminal justice is not a vehicle through which we create reform for banks to create more business. so the senator from colorado is very much an advocate for the people in his state. i understand that. i respect his position. he works hard on this and he may be ahead of the time when there will be a re

cory gardner in colorado who say maybe on january 10 you know what, mr.dent, would be great if you stopped the shutdown. >> it's interesting you say the president wants to be seen as fighting and when you talk about whether or not there is carrying, politico reported a former white house official said the wall is important but it's more the underlying anti-immigrant message that's the key. doug, is that true or false? >> it's aer have important part of trump's message to his base. remember there were two components to the wall. there was building the wall but there was mexico was going to pay for it and trump failed on the second part so i think he sees the danger in not trying to get the wall built for his supporters and i think that's why he's conducting himself in this way. this is the third shutdown under this president which is unprecedented and it's up to him to come to the table and actually negotiate with democrats and congressional republicans. last week he was all over the place. no one knew what he wanted so it's hard for congressional republic

mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that the gardner amendment at the desk uk agreed to, the committee-reported amendment as amendedden agreed to, the bill be considered read a third time and pass ndz and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 757, s. -- 707. s. 3530. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 707, s. 3530, a bill to reauthorize the museum and library services act. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the committee-reported amendments be agreed to, that the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. con. res. 57. the presiding o

beginning with the moment yesterday when colorado senator cory gardner attempted to add an amendment to the bill on marijuana commerce. . >> thank you, mr president. i ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment 4123. >> is there objection? >> i reserving the right to object. >> i'd like to explain my registering my right to make a point before i object. this amendment is inconsistent with current federal law and would allow states the right to break existing law. if there is

. >> senator gardner's marijuana amendment [inaudible] of thousands of people are in prison for nonviolent marijuana related offenses. any plans to work on that next, especially you, mr. booker? >> we won't have time to work on it with me as chairman of the committee, and i do not know if lindsey graham wants to address that, but -- let me just say this. if i am chairman, and i'm asking for your vote -- thank you for the nice letter. it is first step. let's look at everything. let's look at fentanyl. i have a completely different view of fentanyl. i do -- i want to make things so difficult with totanyl that you don't want do anything with it because you are killing people. that is different than marijuana. >> and i plan on sending brownies to his office to celebrate. [laughter] senator graham, can i get your reaction to -- >> let's save that question until we get the question on the bill. i assume that the questions are over. i do not see any hands up, so thank you all. graham, you said you had to give in order to get this through. can you talk a little bit about the provisions that you had to address in order to get this bill passed? >> i do not think that is what w

sat down with ben bernanke, hank paulson and tim gardner with a look back at the last economic crisis and what could be in store for america in the future. mrone of us were prepared for. we all read about what happened in 1929. >> yep. >> but there was a time, a week or so, when we really didn't know whether all the banks were going to go under, whether the economy as we knew it was going to go under and there was going to be panic in the streets. talk about that time and that uncertainty and your instinct on how to move this country through it. >> well, we were looking into the abyss literally, because i think there was a time if we had one more institution go down, the whole system would have gone down and we wouldn't have known how to put it back together again. it would have been very difficult. but it wasn't really that one week. this thing went on for an extended period of time, and there were plenty of scary moments. but to me the enduring memory of that is how the u.s. government came together. we saw some of the worst in behaviors leading up to that time, but ultimately, we saw great bipartisan cooperation. you know, democrats, rep