[Pages S5218-S5228]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXECUTIVE SESSION--Continued
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
resume executive session and, notwithstanding rule XXII, the time
between now and 3 p.m. be equally divided between the leaders and their
designees.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Indiana.
Whistleblower Appreciation Day
Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, whistleblowers play a key role in holding
the Federal Government accountable for waste, fraud, abuse,
mismanagement, and illegal activity. It is therefore appropriate that
even though Whistleblower Appreciation Day was yesterday, we take a
moment to pause and thank the brave men and women who have the courage
to speak up when they see ways to better or improve our government. I
want to thank them for their efforts to ensure that our government
never loses sight of why we are here--to serve the American people and
to be good stewards of their resources and trust.
I was also proud to introduce legislation with Senator Maggie Hassan
of New Hampshire. Our bill ensures adequate protections for
subgrantees--the folks on the firing line who are most important to
revealing when something is not right. That needs to be protected in a
way that is ensured so that they always feel comfortable coming
forward.
In 1989, Congress approved the Whistleblower Protection Act, thereby
expanding whistleblower protections for Federal employees and later
expanding protections for individuals in certain private sector
employment.
From time to time, it has been necessary for Congress to refine
Federal whistleblower laws. We always want them to be working. In one
such instance, Congress enhanced whistleblower protections as part of
the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 for Federal contractor,
subcontractor, and grantee employees on a pilot program basis. The
program worked well, and, in 2016, Congress saw fit to make the pilot
permanent. It makes sense. This is how the process should work.
Congress saw a problem, addressed it on a test basis, evaluated it to
make sure it was working as it should, and moved to make the program
permanent.
However, the subsequent amendments in 2016, to make sure the program
was working, failed to guarantee subgrantees were recognized in the
legislative text, as necessary, to make sure it would work on a
technical basis. While 2016 amendments explicitly included Federal
subgrantee employees, coordinated changes were not made in the
statute's related sections.
I am proud to introduce this legislation with Senator Hassan to close
this gap because it needs to work in all cases. S. 2315, the
Whistleblower Act, clarifies the scope of the protection statute
specifically as to employees of Federal subgrantees who provide
protected disclosures. Subgrantees are often in the best position to
provide information regarding wrongdoing as to Federal subgrant funds.
I am, therefore, pleased to play a small role in cleaning up our laws
so they operate as they were intended--to protect whistleblowers.
Finally, we take whistleblowers seriously in my office. If anybody
would like to assist, contact me through our whistleblower assistance
line. One can email me at whistleblower@braun.senate.gov.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Election Security
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, over the past several weeks, we have seen
numerous attempts by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to
take a serious issue and, frankly, I think, turn it into a political
football. It is an issue on which the Presiding Officer and I have
spent a lot of time looking at what we need to do, in our having served
on the Committee on Intelligence and, in my case, on the Committee on
Rules and Administration, to be sure that people have the maximum
confidence that what happens on election day is exactly reflected in
the results.
Our friends came to the floor last week and sought unanimous consent
to make sweeping changes to the election laws of the country. Then they
somehow suggested there was a conspiracy that anybody would say no to
that. Unanimous consent means exactly that. It is what we do when we
name a post office. It is what we do when we make decisions that are
unanimously agreed to. It is usually all it takes to get that issue
settled. It is not how we shape the laws that are at the heart of our
democracy. It is also not what we do, in my opinion, when we try to
make a point about that. In fact, one of the bills on which they sought
unanimous consent had passed the House. It had received exactly one
Republican vote in the House. So, clearly, it was not unanimously
consented to over there and would not be unanimously consented to here.
This is about press releases, not policy. In fact, today, the
President called for us to pass voter ID laws that would require voter
ID in every State and a law that would have a paper trail in every
State. Right now, I suppose, if I were to draft that bill and call for
unanimous consent under the same standard, I should expect my friends
on the other side to say: Oh, that is something that others say would
help elections, so I should just be for that and be for that
immediately. Of course, that would not be the case.
These attempts have all been brought to the floor on the basis of
saving democracy--that this is what we need to do to save our
elections. This is in the name of election security, but it is really
not what it is about at all. Three of the bills were about campaign
committees, which are managed by lots of laws and may need to be
managed by more, but how you run a campaign committee is not how you
secure what happens at the voting place on election day.
One of the proposals was for the Federal Government to secure the
personal devices of Members of Congress and their employees. As the
Presiding Officer and I know, one of the things we do on the Committee
on Intelligence is to put a Fitbit, like this one, on the shelf before
we go into a meeting. If you have a phone like this one, you put it on
a shelf before you go into a meeting.
This law would say that the Federal Government should secure those
personal devices of mine so there would be absolute security so that if
they were to interact with a Federal system, there would be no damage
done to that system. I guess it would also mean that if one of my
children were to call me on his personal device, whether he lives at
home or not--and I would, of course, take that call immediately--he
would then have gotten into my personal device. Would the Federal
Government need to secure that as well?
Even if it were appropriate for the Federal Government to do that for
Members and their extended immediate networks, I am not sure it is
possible.
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I am certainly sure that it has nothing to do with election security.
It might have something to do with the security of our system here in
the Senate. Frankly, I think it might make it less secure, which is why
I have chosen not to bring that bill up before our committee until I
know more about it. I think it might make it less secure if everybody,
without hesitation, thinks, well, somebody has looked at this personal
device of mine and has secured it, so I can go into any of the secure
systems in the Senate that I want to with this device and not have any
sense that I might endanger that Senate system.
This doesn't protect the elections. There have been numerous UC
attempts we have seen on plenty of other bills that have claimed to
secure elections. One included a provision that would take away the
authority of the States to determine their own processes for voter
registration. I am not for that. I also think it is hard to make the
case that it would secure elections.
In case you think it would, another one was to require every State to
have online voter registration. I am pretty sure that this would make
elections less secure.
We have talked about all of the infiltration of bad information out
there on the internet, and one of these provisions to secure elections
would require States to have online registration.
One was for there to be automatic voter registration, and another was
for there to be same-day registration.
In the nonurban part of our State of Missouri, we didn't have voter
registration in all elections until 1975 or so. The view was, well, in
small towns and school district elections and all, they are going to
know everybody, so they really don't need to have registration. Yet,
finally, it occurred to somebody that one might just think one knows
five people, and the bond issue might be decided by five people, so we
would have voter registration. In fact, not only would we have it, but
we would have it enough in advance that anybody could look at those
voter rolls 28 days in advance and see if there were any question as to
whether one were registered or not.
Other States have decided to have same-day registration, but one of
these bills that would secure our elections would allow anybody to
register to vote that day who would walk up to vote. If you think that
works in your State, I am not really arguing you shouldn't do it,
because if that is what the voters of that State believe to be the
case, maybe it does. I am pretty sure it wouldn't work in every State.
In revisiting that online voter registration again, I am sure that
doesn't secure elections.
There was one proposal that was rejected in these bills to secure
elections, that being, for every $1 contributed at a certain level,
there would be $6 given to that campaign by the Federal Government.
That is one of the secure election things that was rejected, that
wasn't accepted by unanimous consent.
At this point, it does seem to me, if you are not willing to accept
all of these things--there was sort of this ``hair on fire'' moment--or
are not willing to accept anything somebody else says will secure
elections, then somehow you are undermining the elections system. Yet
we really undermine the system when we say this kind of thing helps it.
Frankly, I have been watching this for a while, and that list of things
I gave you has been on every Democratic wish list for about 20 years of
what would be of advantage to them in the elections. Never before have
they purported that these things have made elections more secure. They
have just said it was a better system and more fair. It was obvious to
them it would help them, and it was obvious to us it would help them.
We haven't done it, and we are probably not going to do it right now.
There are people in this building who simply will not accept the fact
that there is not a Federal solution to every problem. Sometimes if
there is a Federal solution, it is not the best solution. Frankly, I
think the diversity of the election system that we have is one of the
strengths of the system. I may get back to that later, but that is what
President Obama said in October of 2016. In fact, he said that we
didn't have a Federal structure and that it made it really more
difficult to impact our elections than if we had.
I believe everybody here clearly knows that State and local officials
faced a significant threat from the Russians, particularly in 2016,
that they had not faced before. One could probably add that the
Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Iranians could do
very disruptive things for not much money. There is no question that
the Russians affected our elections, but they have been trying to
impact elections in Eastern and Western Europe for well over a decade.
Why this would be a surprise to us is shocking to me and why, in 2016,
we acted like we were totally flatfooted that, oh, the Russians would
actually interfere with the elections just because they interfered in
elections in a couple handful of countries in the previous decade. The
world is pretty small when you get to that internet world we live in
now.
A critical infrastructure declaration came from the Obama
administration in October whereby, frankly, it terrified most State
election officials that, suddenly, the Federal Government, with about 2
weeks left before the election, was going to Federalize a system that
they were personally responsible for.
As for the Intelligence Committee that started this process--the
Presiding Officer and I were both on it, and I am still on it--it
released some key findings about what the Russians had done. The
committee found that the Russians had worked hard to find the seams
between which the Federal Government could be helpful to State and
local governments. They found that the FBI's and Department of Homeland
Security's warnings to local officials came way too late in the process
and were not well thought out. It scared the wrong people and confused
more people when the FBI and the DHS did what they did. While there is
no question that both of those agencies have redoubled their efforts to
build trust with the States and deploy resources to help secure
elections, we have to remain vigilant to see they continue to do that.
Even when the Presiding Officer and I worked on a bill together last
year, the local officials continued to have some problems with it. I
know I said at the time that I had believed we had been doing
everything this bill would do. I am not sure we would still be doing it
10 years from now, so we need to memorialize that. I haven't
significantly changed my view on that, but I haven't changed my view,
more importantly, that we are doing what we need to do now.
Congress needs to be vigilant. We have to insist that State and local
officials have the clearance levels they need. Frankly, let me say this
too. On that topic, I am not sure you can legislate that. I am not sure
you can legislate ``here is what you have to be willing to tell State
and local officials.'' I am not sure you can ever put that in writing,
but you can ask them what they are telling people. I talked to one of
our State election officials just last week.
I asked: How is this going?
He said: Well, everything we request seems to be one level above the
security clearance I have.
Too many of the things we ask meet that criteria. We are going to
have to insist that this not be the case. While this is not likely to
be solved by legislation, I think it can be solved by congressional
oversight and inquiry.
The Intelligence Committee also found that Russian activities demand
renewed attention to vulnerabilities in the U.S. voting infrastructure.
I certainly agree with that. We even said in that report we should
replace out-of-date machines with improved ways to vote and improved
cybersecurity. I think that is happening.
Election officials have been taking this threat very seriously. DHS,
the Department of Homeland Security, has reported that all 50 States
and more than 1,400 local jurisdictions have signed up for the cyber
threat information sharing program. We have had reports to the Senate
on that, and the Committee on Rules and Administration has had hearings
on that. The Committee on Intelligence has asked repeatedly about that.
The monitoring sensors that help to detect malicious activity have been
deployed to election infrastructure in most States.
Remember that, in 2016, we had a cyber defense, but we didn't have a
cyber offense. Early in the Trump administration, I remember people
being asked in an open hearing: Do you have
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any direction now to be fighting out there--to have a cyber offense?
That was about 5 months into the Trump administration.
The person said: No.
You would think that, somehow, the old cyber offense had been turned
off. In fact, there had been no cyber offense.
Sometime in 2017, the cyber fighters were given what they needed, and
they are out there helping. They are fighting back too. We had a report
on that just recently of which all of the Senators are aware.
One of the chief State election officials in terms of that cyber war
said that in their system there are about 100,000 attempts every day to
scam the voter registration system and see if you could possibly get
in.
I don't know how many thousands of those might be from foreign
actors. I suspect a majority of them are from people who just say:
Let's see if I can get into the system. But we should assume all
100,000 are from somebody who wants to do something wrong, and I think
the States are getting the help they need to fight that back.
We have seen States use equipment that didn't have a backup so that
when the election was over, you could count something individually and
that the voter would have been able to look at and get their hands on
and recount. As a matter of fact, if you ask me, the best proof you can
have is a backup, a ballot that could be counted--a ballot where if I
vote in Missouri, my voting machine generates something that I look at
and then I put that in the ballot box and it is counted at the polling
place. But if it ever had to be counted again, if there was any
question about that precinct counter, they can go back and open that
ballot box and count them again.
On election day in 2016, and even in 2018, there were still four
States that didn't have that system anywhere in their States. There are
a couple of other States that have a partial system and four States
that didn't have it. Delaware has it in place for this year's election.
Georgia announced just last week that they had awarded a contract to
replace their equipment that will be in place for the 2020 elections
and have an auditable ballot trail. South Carolina made a similar
announcement last month. The fourth State, Louisiana, is working
through a contracting bidding process right now. Whether they are in
place by 2020 or not in Louisiana I don't know, but I know they will be
in as soon as they can reasonably be in and not confuse voters.
Congress has to continue to move States to do that. We need to look
and see what happened with the States that were given $380 million. In
2018, 49 States took the money immediately. One State, Minnesota, has
some glitch with their legislature so they don't have their money yet.
But of the $380 million that States have, they have only spent 25
percent of it. So there is still $285 million for which States have to
do the kinds of things that the Congress thinks States should be doing.
Now, there may be some States that have already spent all of their
money and need more. That is something that, in the appropriations
process, I am sure we will look at again, just like that $380 million
came through the appropriations process.
As I recall, the Presiding Officer was pretty involved in that
discussion at the time.
The Federal Government's role isn't to run elections for the State,
but it certainly has a place in trying to be a valued partner, ensuring
that the States have all the help they need.
In fact, I believe that a larger Federal role requiring a one-size-
fits-all approach to the election would be a big mistake. I am not for
federalizing the elections.
I spent 20 years as an elections official, either as the individual
responsible for elections in the third-most populous county in our
State or the chief elections official as the secretary of State. In 20
years of doing this, I guarantee you that the person on the ground,
generally elected by the voters for whom he or she is trying to secure
the election that day, is intensely interested in that election going
well and people's having confidence in it.
There is very little kicking the buck up to some Federal official in
a faraway place and saying: Well, we can't prepare for that because we
haven't been told we could prepare for that.
Public confidence in elections is fundamental. It is the central
thread in the fabric of democracy. Elected officials take it seriously
when they are elected to do this job or supervise this job, just like
appointed officials and boards of elections or election commissioners
do.
That system would not be improved if it was directed from Washington,
DC, in a one-size-fits-all world.
These public servants undertake an important job, and they understand
it is an important job. We need to support them. We are supporting
them.
We need to have oversight. There may be a time when that oversight
has produced a system that is so finely honed that we are ready to make
it permanent, but every time you put something in law permanently, you
reduce a lot of your flexibility to insist that something be done
differently that needs to be done right now.
Both the Intel Committee report--and both Senator Warner and Senator
Burr have done a good job at keeping our committee on a bipartisan,
nonpartisan track in this report--and former FBI Director Mueller
focused on the insidious efforts to confuse voters. This is a much
bigger question than what we could do at the government level about
elections security.
Let's not confuse that certain fight about bad information that is
out there with a fight about whether our elections are secure and what
happens on election day.
Frankly, much more attention on what we can do about information is
out there. Put people on alert. You know, sometimes even your political
opponent says things that aren't true, and they don't have to be
Russian to do that. People need to be on alert about information that
is out there, but they also don't need to be scared to death that
somehow we are not taking seriously the important moment of democracy
when people decide.
I believe we are doing that. I am committed to it. I believe the
Senate is committed to it. I think this effort to make everything that
might advantage one side on an election security issue is something
that people need to be thoughtful about, and it needs to stop.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Opioid Epidemic
Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the need to hold
the pharmaceutical industry accountable for putting profits before the
health and well-being of our people and our communities.
I know that my colleague, Senator Brown from Ohio, came to the floor
earlier this week to call out bad actors in the pharmaceutical industry
who have fueled our country's substance misuse crisis, and I am
grateful for Senator Brown's leadership in calling attention to this
issue, and I join him in the effort.
We are constantly learning more and more about the unconscionable
ways that pharmaceutical companies fueled the substance misuse crisis--
a crisis that is killing more than 100 people a day in the United
States.
Recent data released by the Drug Enforcement Administration showed
that between 2006 and 2012, just 6 years, companies distributed 76
billion pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone throughout the country,
including 290 million pills that were sent to New Hampshire, a State
with only 1.3 million people. That works out to about 30 pills per
person per year in the Granite State.
As they distributed those unfathomable amounts of opioids,
pharmaceutical companies pushed these drugs with deceptive marketing
tactics, despite the known risks of addiction, to maximize their
profits. One of these tactics even included pushing the unproven
concept of pseudoaddiction. This false claim asserted that patients
showing signs of addiction weren't actually addicted but instead needed
even higher doses of opioids. The solution that these scam artists
pushed to address addiction was to encourage the prescribing of even
more opioids. So instead of providing actual addiction treatment to
those suffering from substance use disorder, some patients just
received more drugs.
That kind of strategy enabled the pharmaceutical industry to dole out
those billions of doses of opioids and profit enormously from it,
leaving in
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their wake an opioid crisis that is devastating communities.
Outrageously, as they have aggressively pushed doctors to prescribe
these opioids, a tax loophole has enabled Big Pharma to write off the
cost of television ads that blanketed the airwaves, encouraging more
and more people to seek opioids from their doctors for pain relief,
oblivious to the harm that these drugs could do. I have joined with
Senator Brown, as well as Senator Shaheen, on legislation to close that
loophole and end taxpayer subsidies for drug ads, and I am going to
continue to push for transparency from these companies.
In addition to the devastating impact that Big Pharma has had in
fueling the substance misuse crisis, the industry has also hurt
patients by massively increasing the cost of prescription drugs.
One of the top issues I hear about from people in New Hampshire is
that affording lifesaving medications is becoming more and more out of
reach, and high drug costs are too often forcing seniors and families
to make agonizing decisions.
No one should have to decide between buying their prescriptions and
heating their home or putting food on the table, but these are the
types of choices Americans are devastatingly having to make, all the
while big pharmaceutical companies are reporting profits that are
higher than ever. We need to change this system, bring down costs, and
hold Big Pharma accountable.
Last week, the Finance Committee moved forward with bipartisan
legislation to begin to take on Big Pharma and lower prescription drug
prices. This bill would cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicaid
Part D and crack down on pharmaceutical companies that raise drug
prices higher than inflation.
It is a really big deal that a bill to take on the pharmaceutical
industry in a meaningful way advanced out of committee on a strong
bipartisan vote. Pharma did everything they could to try to kill and
weaken this bill in committee, and they will keep trying. I am really
encouraged that we have gotten this far. That is no small
accomplishment. We will continue working with colleagues from both
sides of the aisle to get it across the finish line.
At the heart of the issue with Big Pharma is the blind pursuit of
profits at the expense of people's health and wellbeing.
Representatives from the pharmaceutical industry have told us often how
important innovation is and how much innovation costs because they say
they want to save lives and innovation is critically important.
In my own family, like so many across our country, medical innovation
has been critical not only for saving life but to improve the quality
of life. Our son Ben regularly has a compression vest that helps clear
his lungs without the incredibly labor intensive respiratory therapy
that we used to have to do. He is able to get nutrition through a
feeding tube that runs smoothly, steadily through the night so that he
can have the kind of nutrition he needs.
Innovation in pharmaceuticals have also helped Ben improve his
quality of life, and the combination of pharmaceutical innovation and
medical device innovation means that a baclofen pump inserted in Ben's
abdominal cavity helps his muscles to relax.
But if innovation is about saving lives, then, how did we get to a
point of crisis that started from the drugs that they produced? How did
we get to a point where many patients can't even afford the lifesaving
prescription that pharma promotes?
It seems that, at least for some pharmaceutical companies, they only
want to save lives when it makes them money or when it gives them an
excuse not to restrict their profits.
From the substance misuse crisis to the skyrocketing costs of
prescription drugs, this body has failed to hold Big Pharma accountable
for far too long. That must change, and I am committed to working with
anyone who is serious about finally acting to put patients first.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Romney). The Senator from Alaska.
Tribute to Cheryl Venechuk
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, it is the time of week again when I come
to the floor to recognize a very special person in my State--someone
who I believe helps to make Alaska the best State in the country. We
refer to this person as our Alaskan of the Week. It is one of my
favorite times of the week because I get to brag about my State and
brag about my fellow Alaskans and constituents. I think the pages enjoy
these stories about Alaska and what we are doing up there.
This week, that person is Cheryl Venechuk. She is our Alaskan of the
Week. She is a wife, a mom, a grandmother, an active member of her
community in Healy, AK, which is in the interior of Alaska, and a woman
who is very active not just in her community but in her chosen
profession. She is a proud member of Laborers Union Local 942 in
Fairbanks. That is part of the construction union, Laborers'
International Union, LIUNA.
Many people know it for its great men and women across our country--
one of the biggest construction building trades in North America. These
are men and women who like to go out and build stuff--roads, pipelines,
mines, build things. These are the type of Americans who made our
country great.
Let me talk about Cheryl's life--about raising her five children in
Healy, about her job, and about all she does for her community, which
is a lot. I certainly think she personifies the kind of self-
sufficiency, toughness, kindness, and independent spirit that Alaska
and Alaskans are known for, not just in Alaska but really throughout
the country and the world. She personifies it.
Let me tell you a little bit about Cheryl's life. She was originally
from the Midwest--Michigan. When she was about 23 years old, a friend
of hers, Tom Bodett--who was a high school friend and eventually became
the voice of Motel 6's motto, ``We'll leave the lights on for you''--
told her that Alaska was a good place to make a living and raise a
family. So Cheryl and her husband Tim, with a child on the way, moved
to a beautiful part of Southeast Alaska, a community called Petersburg,
which is a beautiful fishing community in the southeast part of our
State.
They settled there. They made friends. They began to raise a family.
She worked at the local cannery, at the daycare, at the grocery store.
She loved Petersburg. We all love Petersburg. I encourage people
watching or watching on TV, when you visit Alaska, make sure to make
that part of your stops.
Eventually, three kids later, Cheryl and her husband Tim moved north
for Tim's work as a surveyor for Usibelli Coal Mine in Healy, AK. That
is about 100 miles southwest of Fairbanks in the interior.
Usibelli is another great story in Alaska. Several generations of
Usibelli family members have been producing coal for Alaska and the
world, and they are still doing it--a great company, great families.
What did Cheryl find in Healy? Certainly another welcoming community,
but a lot smaller, with a lot fewer amenities than she found in
Petersburg.
So as she does, Cheryl rolled up her sleeves, and along with other
young mothers in the area, she got to work to create a community that
her children--eventually five children--and all the other children and
families could enjoy in interior Alaska.
``We made stuff happen,'' Cheryl said. They started a daycare. They
started Boy Scout and Brownie troops. They made sure hungry children
got a hot lunch. They went around town picking up cans and started a
recycling effort before recycling was even the rage. They helped build
an ice rink for the kids to play hockey on. They even went so far as to
haul the water for the rink in a truck and then spread it out to form
ice. She mentored countless kids and always had time for her five kids.
This is what one of her children said about her: You have a hockey
team that needs a hot meal? Call Cheryl. You need food for a wedding?
Call Cheryl. Your kid is in trouble? Call Cheryl. You need something
built? Call Cheryl.
Every community has a Cheryl--the backbone, the go-to person--who is
usually unsung. We all know someone like that, and they make our
communities so strong and caring, and in
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many ways these kind of people are exactly what my ``Alaskan of the
Week'' series of speeches is all about. So it is very appropriate we
are talking about her right now.
When Cheryl was in her mid-forties, with her kids settled and in
college, like a modern-day homesteader, she yearned for the next
challenge. One day, she saw a group of workers doing road
construction--hard, but very important work--and she thought, I can do
that. Soon, she became a proud member of Alaska Laborers Local 942.
That was almost 20 years ago. Her hard work, along with fellow
laborers, is seen all across the State of Alaska, wind farms, trails,
roads, bridges, and pipelines.
Many people talk about the great natural wonders in Alaska, and we
have so many, but the manmade wonders are also remarkable--bridges,
roads slicing into giant mountains, oil rigs, mines--and she and her
fellow laborers have done so much to build up that part of the State.
She is a strong advocate for anybody who decides to work in the
building trades, and she is particularly focused on women in the
construction and building trades and recruiting them for these good
jobs. She said: These are good jobs. They are good-paying jobs, and
they build confidence. It is a great way to make money and to learn how
to use your hands and of course to give back to your community.
To that end, she and her daughter Halle created, at their own
expense, an Alaska ``Women in the Trades'' promotional calendar. The
calendar features women of all ages who are employed as heavy equipment
operators, welders, truckdrivers, tree trimmers, and on and on and on.
With her own money, she put this calendar together.
She drops these calendars off at laundromats, schools, cafes, union
halls, churches, and always keeps a few on hand to give to women who
might need a new way of thinking about a career, who might need hope.
She also gives them to people she just runs into--people like me. I was
out in Fairbanks, AK, a couple weeks ago in the O'Reilly Auto Parts
parking lot, and bumped into Cheryl and her daughter Halle, and I got
one of these.
This calendar, Alaska Women in the Trades, is a great calendar with a
couple of inspirational quotes:
Nothing is impossible. The word itself says, ``I'm
possible.''
Get it? Pretty clever.
How about another one:
Do something today that your future self will thank you
for.
Think about that, pages. It is good advice, even for Senators.
This is the kind of work she does, on her own dime, giving this kind
of inspiration to her fellow Alaskans.
My team and I have gotten many emails from Cheryl's five children
over the past few days, all of them talking about what a great mother
she is, how giving, caring, hard-working she is, how she is a hero to
all of them, and how she is an inspiring example. Let me quote from one
of the emails.
Her daughter Emmaline Hill, who, by the way, signed up for the U.S.
Marine Corps when she was 18, then went on to graduate from Notre Dame,
got her commission in the Marine Corps, and now is stationed in Japan
as a major in the U.S. Marines--here is what she said about her mom:
My mom believes in people, especially those who have a hard
time believing in themselves or don't think they are worthy
of it. She is a rugged champion for the underdog and a
tireless advocate for employing Alaskans and building our
communities through volunteerism and action.
That is a beautiful testament to her mom from her daughter who is a
major in the Marine Corps in Japan.
We are going to be going into our August work session. I am going to
be back home in Alaska the whole time. We are going to be coming up on
Labor Day, a very important holiday. I think it is important, when we
are thinking about Labor Day, to think about people like Cheryl, her
fellow laborers, and particularly the women who are doing this kind of
hard work. You don't always think about that in terms of the
construction and building trades, but they do great work.
So, Cheryl, thank you for all you have done. Thank you for your hard
work, your inspiration, your dedication and faith, your indomitable
spirit, and your example to your kids, to your fellow Alaskans, and now
to Americans, as we congratulate you for being our Alaskan of the Week.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Nomination of Elizabeth Darling
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in the coming hours, the Senate could take
up the nomination of Elizabeth Darling to serve as Commissioner for
Children, Youth, and Families at the Department of Health and Human
Services. If she is confirmed to that role, she would be a key official
overseeing the foster care system.
I previously had a hold on Ms. Darling's nomination, and I am going
to begin my remarks by saying my hold was never about her personally or
about concerns with her qualifications. In fact, I believe she is
qualified for the position. I placed a hold on her nomination because
of serious problems at the Department of Health and Human Services
affecting child welfare policies that would fall in her area of
jurisdiction if she is confirmed. I think this involves a matter the
distinguished Presiding Officer of the Senate might be particularly
interested in at this point.
I authored, with the former Finance Committee Chair, Senator Orrin
Hatch, landmark families legislation called the Family First Prevention
Services Act.
Family First, that Chairman Hatch and I authored, is a once-in-a-
generation bipartisan update of child welfare laws in America, inspired
to a great extent by Marian Wright Edelman, the head of the Children's
Defense Fund. The implementation of that law, in my view, is moving too
slowly.
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services followed
through on a request from me and a group of colleagues from both
parties and both Chambers to open up the availability of prevention
programs for States that Chairman Hatch and I felt so strongly about
under Family First. This was an important first step, and, if Ms.
Darling is confirmed, I expect to see the Department take more.
What I would like to address for a few minutes, though, is a deeply
discriminatory policy change that has been made by the Trump
administration in the child welfare system. Until the Trump
administration intervened, Health and Human Services regulations
explicitly banned religious discrimination in federally funded Social
Services programs, discrimination that should be barred by our core
constitutional protections. Unfortunately, under this administration,
that safeguard is no more.
This year, the Trump administration has set a precedent that foster
care agencies that receive Federal dollars can turn away qualified
prospective foster parents simply because they are Catholic, Jewish,
Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, or any other faith, or simply because
they are nonbelievers.
What this is all about, in short, is a green light for taxpayer-
funded discrimination on the basis of religion. It stems from a case
involving Miracle Hill Ministries, a foster agency in South Carolina.
Miracle Hill is a faith-based social service organization--the largest
provider of foster care services in South Carolina. It serves around 15
percent of the State's foster care population. I have no reason to
doubt that Miracle Hill has a lot of wonderful staff and volunteers who
wish to do a great deal of good work.
Last year, the Governor of South Carolina asked the Department of
Health and Human Services for a waiver that would allow Miracle Hill to
continue receiving taxpayer dollars despite its practice of turning
away qualified foster parents based solely on their religious beliefs.
In effect, it was a request for a loophole to evade the Federal policy
banning religious discrimination. The Department of Health and Human
Services OK'd it.
At a time--the Presiding Officer of the Senate and I have talked
about this--when there are too many vulnerable kids and too few safe
foster homes in America, the Trump administration actually gave the
largest foster care organization in South Carolina permission to turn
away prospective foster parents because of their faith.
This is not an academic matter. Let me give an example of the
consequences. In 2018, Beth Lesser--a woman who unintentionally brought
this issue to light--went to Miracle
[[Page S5223]]
Hill Ministries to volunteer as a foster mentor. Before she moved to
South Carolina, she was a foster parent in Florida. You would think any
foster care organization would be thrilled to have Ms. Lesser walk
through their door--an experienced foster care parent coming to
volunteer her time, her energy, and her love--but during orientation
training, Miracle Hill found what they consider to be a problem: Ms.
Lesser, like me, is Jewish. After Miracle Hill discovered Ms. Lesser's
religion, they quickly turned her away.
Ms. Lesser is not the only person to experience this discrimination.
Another was Aimee Madonna, who grew up in a foster care home and has
three kids of her own. She contacted Miracle Hill and volunteered to
open her home in the screening process. But when Miracle Hill learned
that Ms. Madonna is Catholic, she got turned away too. She was
devastated by the decision. In February, she sued the State of South
Carolina and the Department of Health and Human Services over this
unconstitutional discrimination. I commend her for fighting for her
rights, and I believe she speaks for people of so many faiths whom I
mentioned earlier.
I do want to explain why I find this precedent the Trump
administration has set to be so objectionable, starting with the most
obvious.
It is horrendous policy because it is going to hurt vulnerable kids
all across this country, particularly if and when the Trump
administration hands out more waivers in more States. If they do it
this way, it is going to reduce the number of safe and loving foster
homes available to youngsters in the child welfare system. That is the
wrong way to go.
This policy is going to limit the diversity of foster homes and
foster parents and growing up around people of different views and
philosophies and religions. Diversity is important for kids. That is
particularly important for LGBTQ youth, who make up one in five kids in
foster care. There are homes where LGBTQ kids are not safe. They
benefit from the chance to grow up in these more inclusive
environments, where there are more diverse families who respect their
sexual orientation and their gender identity.
It raises troubling questions about what is going to happen to
children who were raised outside of evangelical Christianity before
they entered the child welfare system. What is going to happen to a
Jewish kid or a Muslim kid or a Mormon kid who is placed in a home
where they are considered heretics?
This is a personal matter for me. That kid could have been me. I was
so proud of my parents. They fled the Nazis in the thirties. Not all
got out. All my dad--just about the most red, white, and blue fellow
around--wanted to do was serve in our Army so he could drop propaganda
pamphlets on the Nazis, telling them they ought to give up. You can
read about my dad, Peter Wyden, in the Holocaust Museum. I am so very,
very proud of my dad.
I thought about, for example, what might have happened if my parents
had died in a car crash when I was 12 years old and I had been put in
one of these evangelical families through a foster agency that
discriminates. I could have been told that everything my wonderful,
patriotic, Jewish parents had taught me to believe was wrong; that my
parents--that my dad, who was honored in the Holocaust Museum--that his
beliefs were sinful. It would have added a lot more difficulty to a
situation that was already traumatic.
The thought that children who have lost their parents could have
another part of their identity stripped away is appalling. That
religious discrimination in particular, that fundamentally un-American
act--the idea that it is going to be propped up with Federal tax
dollars is just wrong.
In my view, what the Trump administration has done with the South
Carolina waiver is unconstitutional. I also believe it is the latest
iteration of a much larger assault on individual religious liberty.
From a legal perspective, the Department of Health and Human Services
justifies its discriminatory waiver by pointing to the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act, what is known as RFRA. Here is the problem:
That law was intended to stop religious discrimination, not promote it.
In this case, however, the administration is interpreting that law to
protect only the religious freedom of Miracle Hill, not the freedom of
Jewish or Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist individuals who want to become
foster parents in South Carolina.
HHS's waiver disregards the establishment clause in the First
Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from
``respecting an establishment of religion.'' This is a Federal agency
using taxpayer dollars to elevate some religions above others. That is
unconstitutional every way you cut it.
The consequences at this point are limited to one State, but because
of this precedent, that is one too many. It only takes one small step
to set a harmful, dangerous precedent that will change everything.
There are already rumors that HHS plans to turn this waiver into a
nationwide policy. Make no mistake about it--that would be nationwide
religious discrimination.
The consequences of an action like that would reach far beyond our
child welfare system. It is not much further down the road before out-
and-out discrimination against people of particular faiths, gender
identities, and sexual orientations under the guise of religious
freedom bleeds into other areas of American life. These debates are
going to keep hitting the courts, and they are going to keep
confronting the Congress. The Trump administration, Republican
lawmakers, and Republican judges are ensuring that will happen.
I mentioned at the outset that this debate is tied to a nomination
the Senate may take up today--we will see about later in the week. It
involves the Commissioner on Children, Youth, and Families at Health
and Human Services. I made that judgment, after a lot of reflection,
that I am not going to stand in the way of that vote. I believe Ms.
Elizabeth Darling is qualified. But in making that judgment, I was not
willing to let today pass without sounding an alarm on a very dangerous
precedent the Trump administration has set in this field. This is about
the prospect of State-sponsored religious discrimination. In this case,
it is going to come down hardest on vulnerable kids in our country. I
believe it is clear that what is happening is unconstitutional.
I will close by saying again that there is bipartisan interest in
improving our child welfare system. The distinguished Presiding Officer
of the Senate is from Utah. I wish he could have seen Chairman Hatch
and me work together on Families First. As you know, when Chairman
Hatch got enthused about something, he was really enthused.
Marian Wright Edelman came to both of us. This had been her dream for
30 years, to try some fresh approaches in terms of helping these kids.
In effect, what Families First does is it creates a third option. You
have kids in homes where a parent might have gotten caught up in drugs
or alcohol. We can get them some help. There is the foster care option.
We have some very good foster care facilities in this country, and we
have some that aren't exactly so great. So what Chairman Hatch and I
said and what Democrats and Republicans on the Finance Committee said
and what eventually the Congress on a bipartisan basis said was ``We
are going to do better by these vulnerable kids,'' and we created a
third option.
One of them is built on a dream that I was part of. Back when I was
director of the Gray Panthers, we were advocating for something called
kinship care where grandparents could play a bigger role in stepping in
and trying to help these vulnerable families, where maybe if a son had
gotten in trouble with the law or a daughter-in-law had problems with
alcohol and the like, the grandparent could help out.
Under Families First, Chairman Hatch, a Republican, and I, a
Democrat, said: We are going to try to help those families. We are
going to try to give them help. If you have a son who has had problems
with alcohol and drugs, they are going to be able to get some help. The
grandparents can step in and get some help. We are going to create more
options for the most vulnerable families and most vulnerable youngsters
in America.
We were moving forward. We were moving forward to be able to say--and
this, of course, is not driven from Washington, DC; it is driven at the
[[Page S5224]]
State level. The Presiding Officer of the Senate is a former Governor.
We were moving forward. Now we have the Trump administration seeking to
move backward.
There are nearly half a million kids in foster care in this country.
Democrats and Republicans ought to keep building on the work that
Chairman Hatch and I--and I was proud to be his partner, with him as
the chairman, in this effort to help those kids stay safe and get ahead
in life. Now the Trump administration is spending taxpayer dollars not
to help those kids but to promote discrimination. That is not the way
to help these kids, not the way to help these families. I hope my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in opposing these
policies of discrimination.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Tribute to Lieutenant General Aundre Piggee
Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize a remarkable
Arkansan at the end of a 38-year Army career.
LTG Aundre Piggee, who will retire in September, is the Deputy Chief
of Staff of the Army for Logistics. His nearly four-decade career has
taken him literally all over the world, but his roots are and always
have been in Arkansas.
The general was born in Stamps, AR, which is a small town in
Lafayette County with fewer than 3,000 people. The son of a World War
II Army veteran, the general didn't have his sights set on a career of
military service from a young age. After graduating from high school,
he chose to go to the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff, which is about
2\1/2\ hours from home. He was a smart kid, so he received an academic
scholarship to attend school.
There was no real reason for him to choose to go into the ROTC. In
fact, according to him, the only reason he entered the Army ROTC was
because the school allowed him to substitute it for an otherwise
mandatory physical education class that would have required him to walk
all the way across the campus. That seemingly mundane decision to save
himself a few steps each day and maybe allow him to sleep in a few more
minutes ended up being a life-changing decision for him. It set him on
a path to an extraordinary career that he probably couldn't have
dreamed of at the time.
Years later, the general served in jobs in Fort Hood, TX; Seoul,
South Korea; Kaiserslautern, Germany; MacDill Air Force Base in
Florida, and many other places. He deployed to Kuwait, Bosnia, and
Iraq. He commanded thousands of soldiers and managed an $11 billion
Army portfolio. He led capacity-building efforts in Iraq and headed
train-and-equip missions in Syria. He also directed logistics works in
the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. For his exemplary
service, the general earned the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the
Distinguished Service Medal, and many other recognitions.
Throughout all of his great accomplishments and prominent positions,
he has maintained a strong connection to his alma mater and his
Arkansas roots.
For his work with and on behalf of his school, the current chancellor
at UAPB, Laurence Alexander, said of the general:
He not only serves as a beacon of light and hope to our
university and our community, but also to our state and our
country. He continues to positively impact the lives of many,
as well as inspiring a new generation of future military
leaders.
For all of his accomplishments, the general was inducted into the
Arkansas Black Hall of Fame last year. Now he has decided that it is
time to take off his Army uniform and pursue his next adventure with
his wife, Kassi.
The general has risen to such incredible heights during his career.
He is a hero in the sense of his outstanding military service, but more
importantly, he is a hero in the sense that when you talk about duty,
honor, country, and integrity, he is the guy who is a great example for
all of us, one of the best we can find and look to. I am so proud to
call him a fellow Arkansan and a friend. On behalf of all Arkansans, I
wish him and his wife, Kassi, much happiness in the next chapter of
their lives.
Thank you.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Iowa
Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, with August just around the corner,
countless Iowans are preparing to fill up their gas tanks--many with
Iowa-grown E15--and take to our scenic highways for one last summer
road trip. I can tell you one thing: I will be hitting the Iowa
roadways myself, and I really cannot wait, folks. Throughout the month,
I will be continuing on what I call my 99 County Tour, an annual
tradition where I visit each and every one of Iowa's 99 counties. I
will be logging hundreds of miles and speaking with thousands of
Iowans.
It doesn't get any better than heading back home, getting out of this
DC swamp, and talking with folks about the issues that matter most to
them--like solutions to lower prescription drug prices, policies to
help our farmers and small businesses thrive, and efforts to cut
wasteful spending and to make them squeal here in Washington.
So far, this year, my tour has brought me to over 50 Iowa counties,
and I am aiming to visit another 30 or so before Labor Day. I will be
crisscrossing the State, hosting townhalls and visiting the small
businesses, farms, plants, and everyone else that are currently
creating jobs and contributing to Iowa's current economic boom and
record unemployment.
Meeting with and hearing from my fellow Iowans is one of the best and
most important parts of my job. Our elected officials should always be
out there listening to the people we work for. It is our job, and it
really does make us more effective lawmakers.
For Iowans and folks across the Nation planning to hit the road this
August, I hope you will take advantage of all that Iowa has to offer.
With 99 counties, it means 99 unique communities for road warriors and
families to visit and enjoy.
There are national treasures like the Effigy Mounds National
Monument, a sacred site that is located in Allamakee and Clayton
Counties, featuring more than 200 American Indian mounds. There are
historic gems like the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in Cedar
County and Lewis and Clark State Park in Monona County.
I am sure folks will be willing to fill their social media feeds with
one-of-a-kind Iowa attractions like the American Gothic House in
Wapello County, the world's largest concrete gnome, in Story County,
and the famed Field of Dreams in Dubuque County.
And who could forget the Iowa State Fair, truly the best State fair
in North America and the crown jewel of Iowa attractions, with
everything from the butter cow to peanut butter and jelly on a stick,
hot beef sundaes, and, of course, good old-fashioned hotdogs. In fact,
the Iowa State fair lists over 69 foods on a stick. That is right. It
is on a stick, folks. You can try that at the fair this August.
But while you are out on the road, there are a few things that you
will not be able to avoid. First and foremost, it is Democrats running
for President. Folks, they are everywhere in Iowa. You will not miss
them. You also can't avoid Casey's Pizza. Why would you want to? That
is my question.
Now, inside the DC swamp, people may turn their nose up at gas
station pizza--that is what it is, Casey's Pizza--but Iowans know it
doesn't get any better than pizza from Casey's.
One more thing Iowans will not be able to avoid on the roads this
August is me. So, as I am out on my 99-county tour this August, if you
happen to see me at a townhall or at a local business or organization
or maybe even gassing up my Harley-Davidson at Casey's or waiting in
line for a slice of pizza, please be sure to stop and say hello.
[[Page S5225]]
So, folks, hit the roads this August. Make that one last trip with
your family. Get out and see those sites, and for heaven's sake, swing
through Iowa. Visit our Iowa-nice folks.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from Montana.
Montana
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, as we are getting ready for a busy August
work period, I am very much looking forward to spending time in Big Sky
Country back home in Montana, away from the swamp, enjoying the
beautiful State that I am so lucky to call home.
In between meetings, I am taking a few days to enjoy Montana's great
outdoors, including spending 3 days backpacking in the Beartooth
Wilderness with my sweet wife Cindy and a couple of our dogs. As an
avid outdoorsman, I was raised to appreciate our public lands, and I
can assure you, nothing beats going off the grid for a bit, where there
is no cell phone coverage on top of the peaks, with my sweetheart and a
couple of our pups and enjoying Montana's beauty, the fly rod with an
elk hair caddis and chasing cut and sometimes even goldens in Montana's
highest lakes.
I will also be spending a lot of time on the road traveling all over
Montana. I get to each of Montana's 56 counties every congressional
period, to every corner of our State, from West Butte down to Ekalaka,
even Alzada, over in Monida, up to the northwest corner of our State to
places like Libby, Troy, and even Yaak.
I will also work to get to one of my favorite places in Montana, the
famous Jersey Lilly in Ingomar. This place is not well known. It is off
the beaten path. But the Jersey Lilly in Ingomar, MT, is home to the
best bean soup in Big Sky Country. If you ever find yourself in east
central Montana, Rosebud County, you have to get off of Highway 12 and
stop in. I have known the owners of that restaurant for many years--
Boots and June. There is a Montana name for you--``Boots.'' They not
only serve up great food and even better conversation, they are also
yet another example of a local family business--the bedrock of our
small towns and counties across Montana. The fine folks over at the
Jersey Lilly are what Montana is all about. It is about hard work,
family values, passion for their community, and passion for our great
country. I am a proud and frequent customer of the Jersey Lilly, and I
can't wait for the next bowl of bean soup.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Missouri
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, first of all, I wanted to talk about
everything you could be doing in Missouri in the next month or so with
your family, and then I was told I have 5 minutes. That seems to be an
impossible restriction for me. So let me see how many things I can talk
about here as we end the summer travel season. But there are other
people traveling after the summer. Some families still have their
summer vacation. Some schools start after Labor Day, some before. I am
sure I will be leaving things out that I will be glad to talk about at
a later time. Let me first just mention a couple of our national parks.
If you leave my hometown of Springfield, MO, and you head west,
pretty quickly you get to the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield park.
There was a battle in August of 1861. Several thousand people fought
who really weren't prepared to fight. They weren't trained. They
weren't ready. It was a big battle that made a big difference in what
happened in Missouri in the war.
Not too far from there, you get to Diamond, MO, where there is the
George Washington Carver National Monument. It is a 240-acre park on
the farm where George Washington Carver grew up. He was born as a slave
but was quickly freed and raised by the older White couple who lived
there. He managed to get to school there a little bit and in those
years after the Civil War became a leading scientist and spokesman for
agriculture in the country. This monument was established in 1943, and
it was the first national park dedicated to an African American.
I have to circle back a little bit to get to Branson. With 50
theaters in Branson, there are more theater seats than Broadway. It is
never too early to find a show you want to see in Branson.
In Silver Dollar City, in the summer of last year, their great park
was named the No. 1 Christmas venue in America to visit.
Now back to my hometown of Springfield, which is the way this comes
up on my list. It is the home of Bass Pro Shops. The Wonders of
Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium right there by Bass Pro was named
``America's Best Aquarium'' by USA TODAY Travel last year. That museum
has 3,000 fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibious animals there.
A park we just added to our National Park System--I will pop right up
to almost St. Louis, to St. Genevieve, where you have French
architecture that dates back to the 1700s. This is the first summer
that there has been a full-time park person there. This park is rising
out of what the community has preserved so well for so long. There are
a number of houses there that reflect that early French architecture
along the Mississippi River.
South of there, at Perryville, is the full-sized replica of the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. There have been some traveling
memorials, and there are a couple of memorials that are miniature in
some way, but in Perryville, MO, you can see a full-sized replica on a
47-acre family farm that Jim Eddleman and his family made possible,
along with other donations. I was there not too long ago, and I was at
the Vietnam Wall here not too long ago. They are in different places,
but they are the same wall, exactly the same size, with the same names,
and are the same in every way.
On the other side of our State, in Kansas City, is the Negro Leagues
Baseball Museum. Just this week, Senator Kaine and I introduced
legislation for a memorial coin to benefit the Negro Leagues Baseball
Museum in Kansas City. Congressmen Cleaver and Stivers in the House did
the same thing.
While you are in Kansas City here at the end of the centennial of
World War I, the World War I Museum in Kansas City was the World War I
Memorial dedicated in the 1920s. It is the No. 1 place in America to
visit and think about the war and the impact of that war in the 100
years that have passed since then.
If you want to go north to St. Joseph, you, of course, pass some
baseball stadiums and football fields that are good places to visit if
you are there at the right time. In St. Joseph, there is the Pony
Express Museum. The Pony Express didn't last very long, but it became a
very important part of the lore of the West, these young riders--before
the telegraph--taking a message as quickly as they could ride and
changing from one rider to another to go from St. Joe to California.
I wouldn't want to leave out the Mark Twain Boyhood Home in Hannibal.
There was a time when Mark Twain was by far the best-read American
author anywhere in the world. Hannibal is the setting for the classic
American novel ``The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.''
We will circle right back down to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. More
than 135 million people have visited the arch since 1963. It just went
through a major overhaul and a 60-year renewal of the facility, better
connecting it to downtown. It is the first example of what the National
Park Service hopes will be the next century of the park, a true public-
private partnership.
In going to all these places, we drove by lots of lakes and lots of
fishing and boating. There are a lot of things to do in our State. Like
many States, tourism is our second biggest industry. We look forward to
people visiting us this summer and next year and the years after that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Tennessee
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to
participate today and talk a little bit about my State of Tennessee. I
will tell you, as we are talking about what we are going to do and how
we are going to be working across our State during the August work
period and how we are looking forward to having people visit our State
during that time, one of the things that strikes me so very often when
people talk about Tennessee and when they hear that I am from
Tennessee, they will stop and say: That is
[[Page S5226]]
one of the most beautiful States. Our State is beautiful, with its
rivers, lakes, rolling hills, mountains, and the flatlands over toward
Memphis. Indeed, it is beautiful. It is also very long, and that is
also quite remarkable to people when they start to drive through the
State. They say: I spent a whole day driving through the State of
Tennessee. From the time they enter up around Mountain City and Bristol
and make their way through to Memphis, it does really take the whole
day.
I think one of the things that interest people when they cross into
Tennessee as they are going down I-81 is seeing the Bristol Motor
Speedway. They realize that it is truly a feat of engineering--NASCAR
is very popular--and realize the innovation and creativity that has
gone into creating that speedway. Then to be there on race day, I will
tell you, that is something that is quite amazing, to see those cars
speeding around those banked turns and realize it is people who are
handling these feats of engineering.
People also appreciate, in addition to the Bristol Motor Speedway and
car racing, that Tennessee is a State that is very important to the
automotive industry. You have Volkswagen in Chattanooga, and you have
the GM facility at Spring Hill. Nissan North America's headquarters are
located in Cold Springs, right outside of Nashville. Their
manufacturing plant is in Smyrna. You have the Toyota plant that is
over in West Tennessee.
We Tennesseans are also excited about the prospect of having an
aerospace park that is going to be in East Tennessee, up at the Tri-
Cities. As a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Committee, I have had the privilege of working with the Tri-Cities
Airport and local officials to make that a destination and to make it a
reality.
A little further down in the State, as you get on I-40, you will find
yourself in the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the
most visited park in our National Parks System. Senator Alexander and I
are continuing the work to designate the Dean Stone Bridge on the
Foothills Parkway there in Blount County. Dean Stone was a pillar of
the community, and naming the bridge in honor of him is the perfect way
to thank him for his dedication in improving the lives of all those who
live and enjoy the Smokies in that part of our State.
The Smokies are second in my heart to just one Tennessee landmark in
Nashville that I think everyone wants to see. They are all country
music fans, and they want to see the mother church of country music,
which is the Ryman Auditorium. The best singers and songwriters in the
world leave their stadiums and their festivals because they want to
have the opportunity to play just one song on the stage of the Ryman
Auditorium. It is a wonderful place to be and to celebrate Tennessee's
creativity and to celebrate the music that fills our hearts and our
lives.
When I was a Member in the House, I worked tirelessly for several
years and fought for the unanimous passage of the Music Modernization
Act. That is something that fixed a lot of loopholes that were in U.S.
law that adversely impacted our songwriters as they were facing
copyright many times.
Upon coming to the Senate, I worked with Senator Feinstein,
continuing the fight on behalf of our songwriters to close the
loopholes that exempt broadcast radio from paying royalties to music
creators.
Tennessee is also known for some other wonderful music, a little bit
further down I-40, and that is the blues. You can't leave the State of
Tennessee without going through Memphis and having a visit over on
Beale Street, right there on the banks of the mighty Mississippi.
The Mississippi River is our Nation's original superhighway, if you
will. It is vitally important, not only to river but to rail, air, and
highway transportation networks. All of these have found their way
along West Tennessee's river lands.
Shipping and logistics giant FedEx has its corporate headquarters in
Memphis. Memphis is the city of their founding and their headquarters
location, and that takes advantage of Memphis International Airport and
their cargo operations center.
All that being said, one of the things that individuals repeatedly
comment on when they talk about Tennessee is how nice the people are in
Tennessee, how welcoming they are, and how they engage you and want to
make certain that you come back.
You will find in Tennessee a very diverse community. Yes, we are the
home to artists and athletes. We are the home to engineers, to farmers,
to doctors, to soldiers, and to veterans. It is, indeed, one of the
best places on the face of the Earth to call home and, indeed, a
certain not-to-be-missed destination for all Americans.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Alaska
Ms. MURKOWSKI. My colleagues have been to the floor here for the past
little bit talking about various road trips in their State and
destinations, including their favorite destinations. When you think
about where your favorite place is, it is like saying which son is your
favorite son. We all have our favorite places all around our State.
I got to thinking about road trips. I thought, well, road trips in
Alaska perhaps take a little bit of a different meaning than in other
States. We all know the State I come from because we talk about it a
lot. Senator Sullivan and I come from a big State. We have over 663,000
square miles, but within those 663,000 square miles, we don't have a
lot of roads. Over 82 percent of the communities in the State of Alaska
are not connected by roads. We are not part of the road system. So
traveling in Alaska can be a little bit of an adventure. Flexibility is
always key.
More often than not, when you are in a big State, you move around
from town to town, and you rely on the commercial carriers. You rely on
Alaska Airlines. You rely on Ravn. You rely on some of the others. We
pretty much move around by air.
But sometimes it is impossible to get around by air all the time.
Sometimes we have what I call ``forest road trips.'' It is not that I
don't want to be on our roads, but once you get on the roads, you are
on them for a fairly long time. Sometimes the jets don't fly. Sometimes
the jets don't fly because you have bad weather. Sometimes the jets
don't fly because you have a volcano that goes off.
I was holding a field hearing in Fairbanks and needed to get down to
Anchorage, and Pavlof blew. Pavlof is one of our more active volcanos,
and it shuts down the air space. What was going to be a 45-minute trip
home turned out to be a 359-mile drive home--7 hours--that evening.
We had another trip going out of Valdez to Anchorage, and we needed
to get back to Anchorage that night, but the fog and the wind in Valdez
said there are no planes coming in to take you out, and they might not
be there the next day and they might not be there the next day after
that. There is bad weather. The pass is shutting down so you better
move now. When that happens, you get in a car and 300 miles later--5
hours later--you are in Anchorage.
I had Senator Manchin with me just over the Fourth of July break. We
were headed from Anchorage to King Salmon to attend a ribbon-cutting
for a National Park Service facility. We got fogged out in the morning
and waited for hours in the airport, and then we got word that the fog
had lifted, and we were getting ready to get on a plane and they called
a mechanical. If there is a mechanical, I am with you, and we just
don't fly. Senator Manchin turned to me and said: I know it is a long
way, but can't we just drive there?
That was my opportunity to turn to my colleague in another learning
moment and tell him: No, this is one of those 82 percent of our
communities where there is no road. So Joe, we are not flying.
Aviation really is our lifeline here. If you are not on Alaska
Airlines, you are on one of our many bush carriers. This is a picture
of a pilot I had an opportunity to fly with, Eric, who is the pilot and
owner of Arctic Backcountry Flying Service. This is his Cessna 206.
More often than not, these are the type
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of aircraft that we are in. We are not flying in some fancy leased jet.
We are in a small aircraft, what we call a bush carrier. That is when
we have airstrips that we can land on.
But we don't have airstrips in many of our communities. What we do is
we come in and out on the water on our floatplanes. Some people call
them seaplanes out here. We call them floatplanes.
Here is a picture of me and Secretary Perry on Kodiak Island. We had
flown over on Alaska Airlines. But to get around the island, you either
take a boat or fly in a floatplane. We were flying over to Old Harbor
there on Kodiak Island, but we got around on the water.
Sometimes you don't have the water though. In a place like Alaska,
what we do have in the wintertime is a fair amount of snow. You take
your floats off and you put your skis on. You can see the wheels there.
This plane can land in Anchorage and take off in Anchorage on the
wheels, but when you are up on Ruth Glacier, as this Cessna 185 is, you
are landing on skis. That gets your attention because it is a little
bit different than a floatplane, but it gets you in and out of what you
need to get in and out of.
There are some places, though, where you don't have an airstrip, a
floatplane can't land, and the only way to really get in and out is by
helicopter.
Little Diomede Island sits out in the middle of the Bering Straits.
It is 2 miles from Big Diomede. Big Diomede is owned by Russia. Little
Diomede is owned by us. There are about 150-plus people who live out
there on Diomede. They have a school, and they have a community center,
but how do they get the mail? People move in and out by helicopter. The
mail is delivered by helicopter. There are a few weeks in the
wintertime--maybe, sometimes, as much as a couple of months--when the
ocean freezes over and they can make a strip where a plane can land on
the ice. But most of the year, you fly in and out on helicopter. So we
fly.
The other way we get around when we don't have a lot of roads is on
our rivers. One thing that Alaska is blessed with is a lot of rivers.
We have 365,000 miles of rivers. That makes for a lot of roads because
in the summertime, those rivers are our roads.
This is a picture upriver in the village of Napaskiak. There are
about 500 people there. We had Attorney General Barr with us in May. We
took him upriver. This is how he traveled. These are the Bethel Search
and Rescue boats there. They are not fancy boats. They are not yachts.
These are functional. They have decent motors on them because these are
workhorses. Yet how we travel in the summer is up and down these
rivers.
In the summer, it makes it possible to move around these communities.
In the winter, you move around by snow machine. You have trucks and you
have vehicles out there as well. When the rivers freeze, you then have
your frozen highway, and you can have 100 miles of it. The Kuskokwim, I
think, plowed out 250 miles of road on the river.
This is a frozen river. This is actually a picture that was taken
when we took Secretary Moniz from Bethel to Oscarville. We had with us
about four other Members of the Senate because we had a field hearing
for the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. We held it out there
in Oscarville, and we had a motorcade on ice. It was basically about
six trucks that went down the river, but the Secretary said it was his
first official truck motorcade on ice. That really does allow us to get
around when the rivers are frozen over.
Down in the southeastern part of the State, where I was born and
spent a lot of my growing-up years, they are all islanded communities.
There are 32 or 33 islanded communities in the southeast. So to move
around, we either fly Alaska Airlines, fly smaller carriers, or we rely
on our Alaska marine highway system, our ferry system. This is our
marine lifeline. This is how we move freight, how we move vehicles, how
we move goods, and how we move people.
Right now, our very system is threatened on a host of different
levels, which really hurts my heart because, as one who knows how
dependent we are on being able to move on the water, this is our road,
and these types of vessels can move us in ways that are efficient. The
marine highway system is our road. So we are working in the State right
now to address it. Again, this is one more way that I do my road trips
when I am back home in the State.
In the interior, you have communities, again, that are isolated.
There is no road system that gets you there. There are small villages,
Arctic villages, that are about 500 people strong.
I was in an Arctic village just in July, and this is how I was picked
up at the airport. There are not many trucks. There are basically four-
wheelers. There are ATVs, and everybody just hops on. This was my
driver for the day. Again, you just hop on the back and ride.
Then, there are some communities in which, really, the way that you
get around is not on a road and not on a sidewalk but on just a wooden
trail, a wooden boardwalk. This is the village of Napaskiak. This is
out in the Bethel region, in the Y-K Delta. These are just planks that
are put down on top of the tundra because the area is so marshy that
you cannot walk on it. You would need hip waders to be better able to
travel through it. Just walking around on the boardwalk is the extent
of your road trip in a place like Nunam Iqua or Napaskiak.
Whether it is freedom to be on a frozen river or freedom to be out on
the Arctic Ocean, wintertime gives us a little bit more freedom. This
is a picture of me with a friend, off of Utqiagvik, which is on the
Arctic Ocean. It looks like a lot of fun. We were going out snow-
machining. We were going out to work because the community had
harvested a whale, and the whaling crew and the community were taking
their snow machines out to load the muktuk onto sleds to haul back to
the community so it could be shared as part of their subsistence food.
So we were going out to help the community harvest that whale. This is
not fun and recreation. It is your means of transportation. This is
your workhorse.
We do have a little bit of fun every now and again. Everyone asks: Do
you ever travel around by dog sled? That is my dream. That would be the
next career opportunity for me. I would love to run the Iditarod, and I
would love to have my own dog team, but, right now, I don't have enough
hours in my day. Yet, every now and again, you can hop on the back of a
dog sled.
I am looking forward to being back home and traveling around the
State, visiting from Ketchikan to Barrow. It is 4,000 miles for Senator
Sullivan, Congressman Young, and me to get back and forth between
Washington, DC, and Alaska. I have kind of mapped out my trip for the
month ahead. Once I get back to Alaska, in that first couple of weeks,
I will have doubled that airtime, if you will. Then, with the
additional travel that we have toward the end of August, I am looking
at about 15,000 miles of travel within my State.
I know many of my colleagues are going to exotic locations that will
take them to places that will be a long, long ways away. Yet I am just
reminded every day of the privilege and the honor of being able to
travel through an extraordinary State like Alaska, where we use a
little bit of everything to get us to where we need to go in order to
visit some of the finest Americans whom I know and am blessed to be
able to serve.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Oklahoma
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, August is coming quickly. It is the time
that we have a gap in the legislative calendar. As this body knows
well, Congress is in session for 11 months of the year. We have one
month in which we are not in Washington, DC, which gives us the
opportunity to be home and to, quite frankly, catch up with family but
also to be able to travel around our States, see what is going on in
our States, and talk to folks.
I happen to live in an unbelievably beautiful State. In August,
Oklahoma is crazy hot and humid, but it is a great time to get a chance
to see people and to see what is going on.
In just the few weeks around this time period, I have already been to
Ada and Durant and Calera, and I will be heading quickly to Chickasha,
Lindsay, Lawton, Vinita, Miami--that is not ``Miam--ee''; the correct
pronunciation is ``Miam--ah''--Afton, Grove, Jay, Chelsea, Hennessey,
Enid, up to Kaw Lake, and, of course, all around the
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Oklahoma City area and all around Tulsa, to spend as much time as I can
with as many different people as I can to find out what is going on in
Oklahoma. I get this one precious month a year to make sure I have
focus time in the State to see as many people as I can.
I got to thinking about this and the privilege that I have really had
in being able to travel around my State and see so many people and so
many places, to get on Route 66, travel the State from east to west,
and see exactly what is going on.
I have had the opportunity to be out at the E.W. Marland Mansion in
Ponca City. I have had the opportunity to be at Roman Nose State Park
in Watonga. I have climbed up to the top of Black Mesa in Kenton, and I
have been to the lowest point, by sea level, in far southeast Oklahoma
in Broken Bow. I have been out to Mount Scott in Lawton and have
climbed on its tumbled rocks. I have been to the Blue Whale in Catoosa.
I have had the great privilege of getting a chance to walk around
through the Gathering Place in Tulsa. This is an absolutely spectacular
park and gathering place. In fact, USA Today just named it the No. 1
new attraction in America. For folks who have not been to Tulsa or for
the folks who have been to Tulsa before, they need to go back and just
enjoy the Gathering Place.
I have had the opportunity to walk the streets around Black Wall
Street and to visit with the fine folks who are there. I have had the
opportunity to be in Davis at Turner Falls and the Arbuckle Mountains,
and, of course, Falls Creek. I have had the opportunity to be in
Hochatown, which is down near Broken Bow Lake, and the chance just to
enjoy the time there, around the tall trees, in beautiful southeast
Oklahoma. I have had the opportunity to visit Lake Murray State Park in
Ardmore and visit the Ole Red restaurant in Tishomingo. I have driven
the Talimena National Scenic Byway in the fall and have seen the
spectacular scenery in those mountains. I have been to the Robbers Cave
in Wilburton and the Ouachita National Forest in McCurtain County.
I have had the opportunity to walk around through the Heavener
Runestone area and see the Norse Viking carved stones that are there in
eastern Oklahoma. I could see, most definitely, by far, amongst those
high trees and those rolling hills, that I wasn't the first person to
go there.
I have been to the Round Barn, off Route 66 in Arcadia. I have
stopped to get a great hamburger at Pop's, which is there on Route 66.
I have quietly stood at the national Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial in
downtown Oklahoma City, and I have seen the amazing western art at the
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. I have walked through the
Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
You can't go through Oklahoma without stopping at Cattlemen's
Steakhouse and enjoying a great steak or without driving out west to
see the Stafford Air & Space Museum. People who travel to Washington,
DC, go to the Air and Space Museum, and I will often smile at them and
say: Do not miss the Air & Space Museum that is in Weatherford, OK,
because the Stafford Air & Space Museum has a remarkable collection
from a fantastic Oklahoma astronaut.
The Great Salt Plains in Jet and the Oklahoma Territorial Museum in
Guthrie are also really remarkable places.
I do have to brag about a spot because, on my 50th birthday, my wife
surprised me by our taking a trip to the Little Sahara State Park and
the sand dunes in northern Oklahoma. We rented dune buggies and drove
them as hard and fast as we wanted on that day. It was a great day to
just enjoy Oklahoma. It was just like the day I was able to drive to
Pawhuska and eat at the Pioneer Woman Mercantile restaurant and just
enjoy the downtown area.
It is really a fantastic State, and the people and the places that I
miss while I am here in Washington, DC, for 11 months of the year I
look forward to getting a chance to see when I get back home in August.
With as much work as we have to get done here--and we still have a lot
of work to get done--we will spend some time on the phone, we will walk
through legislation, and we will continue to do writing. Yet,
thankfully, I will be able to write and spend time on the phone while I
look out my windshield and enjoy some Oklahoma scenery at the same
time.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
____________________