mr. merkley: we have watched in 2017, last year, a series of battles related to the very fundamental vision of our constitution, whether we're going to do the people's work or going to be a senate run by the most powerful and privileged in america? there's no question how that came out. it was the powerful and the privileged. three major things happened in 2017. the first was a health bill designed to destroy health care for some 30 million americans thereby also affecting everybody else by rising the cost of health care and putting our rural health care clinics and our rural hospitals out of business. that was a bill for the powerful and the privileged and against the people. then we had the tax bill, a bill that borrows a trillion and a half dollars from the next generation. our pages on the floor here are the next generation. we give the bill to them and then gave the proceeds to the very richest americans increasing, accelerating inequality in wages and inequality in wealth. that is legislation by and for the powerful, not we the people. and then we saw the theft of a supreme court seat

mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: madam president, i'm pleased to be here on the floor in support of my colleague, senator gillibrand's bill, congressional accountability and harassment reform act. and i am pleased that so many members of the senate have supported the earlier version of the bill and are signing up to support this version as well. it's been 100 days since the house acted on a significant and substantive reform of the process here in congress on how we address sexual harassment. there's been plenty of stories about how unacceptable the current system is. now, in spite of how far women's rights and equality have come in america, too many women continue to face inequality, discrimination, and harmed day in and day o and our congressional workplace is not immune to that. the world is changing and the world is changing quickly and movements like the me too campaign are finally giving women a voice they need to stand up and say, no more. yet, in spite of this tide of change, the senate refuses to act

mr. merkley: mr. president, we all have had sad news. while we were back in our districts last week, our assistant parliamentarian michael phillip beaver passed away unexpectedly at the very young age of 39. family and friends gathered this morning to celebrate his life. he was born in mount pleasant. he was the son of linda, susan beaver and william r. beaver. a graduate of st. vincent college where he studied political science with a minor in graphic design, and he earned his juris doctorate from the ohio state university ritz college of law. he was a member of the ohio and california state bars. more recently, he served here in this chamber as assistant parliamentarian. prior to that, he served as deputy legislative counsel for the state of california. aside from being a brilliant attorney, michael was passionate about hockey and music, a talented cook, an avid gardener, and a gifted artist. he was loving husband to his wife gilda and a caring, fun, and patient father to his two small boys, young boys, bradley dastin beaver, age 3, an

mr. speaker. i join in paying tribute to michael merkley and later speaker of the house. he worked in the engineering industry in moscow. he was active in he and i first met over fellow organizers of the national union of public employees in the 1970s, campaigning for his decent public sector pay in the national minimum wage. michael loved the community he represented, let's examine our deepest thoughts and sympathies go to him and his family at this present time. >> mr. speaker, to the prime minister feel the slightest hint of guilt when forced to resign due to the failures of the previous effort? >> can i say to the right honorable gentleman that i think it might be helpful if i first take on the actions the government has taken and has continued to take -- [inaudible] in relation to windrush generations. my right honorable friend, the home secretary will be addressing later today. we shared ambitions to make sure we do right and that is why he will be announcing a package of measures to bring transparency on the issue to make sure that the house was informed and reassu

senator merkley. >> thank you, mr. secretary, and mr. chairman.so, during the confirmation hearing, i asked a question about whether the war powers act, which lays out three foundations for the president to take the country to war, represented the spectrum of activity, and that is a declaration of war, a specific authorization for a specific action or a third, emergency powers, that involve an attack directly on u.s. assets, military, so on and so forth. and you said no, that article two exceeded that. can you give us a sense of how broad article two is, in your opinion? >> boy, i sit here today, i hate to give you my legal analysis in two minutes on this scope and breadth of article two. it's a power that is clearly enumerated. it is broad. but to begin to scope that and define that, i don't think i can do that for you. ok. >> i would love to follow up on that, because essentially, the witness we had on the -- in support of a new drafted aumf, the corker aumf, indicated there were virtually no limits on it, but he liked the idea of us doing a new

mr. chairman. >> thank you. senator merkley. >> thank you very much for coming in and bringing your expertise to bear on our economic situation. i was looking at numbers from the joint committee on taxation which laid out that 17 out of every $20 in the benefits from the tax reductions goes to richer americans or roughly 84%. that did not include the estate tax, by the way, which was specifically excluded which goes 100% to the very richest americans. what is your analysis of the percent of the tax benefits that go to those who earn more than $100,000? >> we haven't updated those numbers. i mean, we did in this baseline we haven't tried to reproduce that. so i couldn't tell you anything different than what jct has on the topic. >> do you have any reason to think jct is far off the park? >> no, i don't. >> would you agree if you include the estate tax the numbers would be even worse? >> that sounds right. >> i think that's an important point because something that was sold as beneficial middle class is actually beneficial to the

senator merkley. >> thank you, mr. secretary, and mr. chairman. so, during the confirmation hearing, i asked a question about whether the war powers act, which lays out three foundations for the president to take the country to war, represented the spectrum of activity, and that is a declaration of war, a specific authorization for a specific action or a third, emergency powers, that involve an attack directly on u.s. assets, military, so on and so forth. and you said no, that article two exceeded that. can you give us a sense of how broad article two is, in your opinion? >> boy, i sit here today, i hate to give you my legal analysis in two minutes on this scope and breadth of article two. it's a power that is clearly enumerated. it is broad. but to begin to scope that and define that, i don't think i can do that for you. ok. >> i would love to follow up on that, because essentially, the witness we had on the -- in support of a new drafted aumf, the corker aumf, indicated there were virtually no limits on it, but he liked the idea of us doing a ne

mr. secretary for your opening comments. >> thank you, chairman hoeven, ranking member senator merkley for the opportunity to visit with you today. as we know, there's no secret that there's a good bit of anxiety out in the farmland today. they have a lot of concerns. i want to thank you all for the omnibus budget amount that you were able to do, pass in the bipartisan budget act to recently here. that gave our producers some hope. but from the longstanding commodity prices that have created anxiety, the current trade disruptions that are there, wild land, fire disasters, hurricanes this last year, even rfs issues of uncertainty have given for quite a bit of concern and anxiety among our community, ag community. the forest management tools that you all were able to give us as well as the fire funding i think will go a long way toward us getting control of wild land fire and budget in that regard. while you bring up many of the issues here, senator merkley, over some of the deficiencies, we think, again, that there are some good things in the proposal that we plan to execute. we commit to you to use and deploy the money tha