[Pages S981-S985]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Philip 
M. Halpern, of New York, to be United States District Judge for the 
Southern District of New York.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.


                           The 2020 Election

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor as the Democrats 
seem to be in complete disarray with the voting right now that is 
underway in New Hampshire. For all of their anger and for all of their 
outrage, they have failed to tap into all of the great things that I 
and the people of Wyoming see happening all across America. The 
Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire seem to be on the verge of 
nominating a Socialist for President of the United States. Any way you 
look at it, we have a strong, healthy, and growing economy, and a 
Socialist is now the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for 
President.
  Socialist policies would bankrupt our country. What is the Democrats' 
top priority? It seems to be a complete government takeover of 
healthcare in America. That means, for the 180 million Americans who 
get their health insurance through their jobs, each and every one of 
them would lose it. Also, to pay for it, taxes would go up. They would 
go up significantly. This would be a crushing blow to the economy.
  The Democratic Party's sharp left turn has President Clinton's long-
term strategist James Carville ``scared to death.''
  On Friday, James Carville said: ``We have candidates . . . talking 
about open borders.''
  He said: ``They're talking about doing away with nuclear energy and 
fracking.''
  Then he added: ``You've got Bernie Sanders talking about letting 
criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells.''
  During Friday's debate in New Hampshire--the one that was nationally 
broadcast--there was hardly a positive word from the Democrats about 
our country. Our booming economy continues to create jobs at a record 
pace--millions of jobs. In the last month alone, there were 225,000 new 
jobs. We have a 50-year low in unemployment in our country right now. 
It is a historical number. We have created opportunity for all 
Americans. Everyone is better off. Middle-class wages and blue-collar 
wages are way up. We have a middle-class and a blue-collar boom in this 
country. Americans realize it, and they have high hopes for the future.
  Still, the 2020 Democrats seem to have nothing positive to say about 
our economy and our country--no positive ideas, no positive vision, no 
positive agenda for the American people. Clearly, when I listen to 
them, it is all about grandstanding, not about governing.
  The Republicans, however, have a results-driven agenda. The economic 
renaissance that we are seeing is a direct result of Republican pro-
growth policies. Tax and regulatory relief is what has mattered to this 
economy. Energy independence is what has mattered to this economy. Pro-
worker and pro-farmer trade deals are what have made a difference for 
this economy. We remain focused on priority issues, like lowering the 
cost of healthcare, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, securing 
our border, and building and rebuilding our aging roads and bridges.
  As the President said just last Tuesday night during the State of the 
Union Address, ``The best is yet to come.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, since tax reform was enacted in 
December of 2017, our economy has grown and strengthened with American 
families' and businesses' seeing real benefits, and you just heard 
Senator Barrasso say some of the same things about how the economy is 
booming.
  Unemployment rates have dropped dramatically, with unemployment among 
Hispanic, Latino, and African-American workers at record lows. 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly earnings 
have grown at a rate of 3 percent or higher for 16 consecutive months, 
with the largest wage gains being concentrated in the bottom quarter of 
the wage scale. We should duly note that production workers' wages are 
growing much faster than are the wages for the manager class. In short, 
lower income workers are seeing the highest wage growth.
  Yet, instead of looking at the positive economic effects of tax 
reform, our Democratic colleagues insist that large corporations have 
received a massive giveaway and that only the wealthy have benefited. 
That is simply not true. Tax reform has addressed a number of issues 
that have been frequently highlighted by both political parties. In 
particular, tax reform has made enormous progress toward creating a 
more competitive environment for American companies. Before tax reform, 
the combined U.S. Federal and State corporate tax rate was the highest 
in the developed world--15 percentage points higher than the average of 
the other 35 advanced economies that are members of the Organisation 
for Economic Co-operation and Development, which we commonly refer to 
around here as OECD.
  Over the last few years and before the tax bill, you heard of 
companies going overseas. We had inversions, foreign acquisitions of 
U.S. companies, and the erosion of the U.S. tax base. These were all 
very significant problems that we addressed in the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
Act of 2017. With our worldwide tax system, companies were actually 
incentivized to store corporate profits in low-tax jurisdictions 
overseas rather than to reinvest them back here in the United States.
  How can that help the U.S. economy?
  We had perverse incentives to keep wealth out of this country. 
Ironically, even the Democrats highlighted these same issues in the 
lead-up to tax reform--a bipartisan recognition that we shouldn't have 
a tax system that encourages the storing of money overseas but rather 
one that brings that money and capital back to the United States to 
create jobs here. They are only partisan issues now, as it turns out, 
because tax reform was a Republican effort, but both sides of the aisle 
knew that these issues had to be addressed in order for U.S. companies 
to remain competitive and for the U.S. economy to continue leading the 
world.
  Critics of tax reform complain that the 21-percent rate is too low, 
but with the average corporate tax rate of 21.7 percent among the OECD 
countries today, the United States is finally in line with its peers. 
In other words, we can be competitive.
  As a result, U.S. companies are competitive, and investments in the 
United States are more attractive not only to foreign companies but to 
U.S. companies that used to store money overseas. After tax reform 
legislation passed in 2017, business investment rose by 6.4 percent in 
2018.
  While a weaker global economy, tariffs, and other factors subdued 
growth last year in 2019, business investment in 2018 and 2019 combined 
was still $5.7 trillion, hitting record highs.
  Capital expenditures of S&P 500 companies have risen by 17 percent 
since tax reform, and research and development expenditures of S&P 500 
companies rose by 18 percent. All of this is showing that our law 
accomplished what we wanted it to accomplish. It is hardly, then, the 
anemic response to tax reform that the Democrat critics would have us 
believe.
  Tax reform has changed our international tax rules to remove barriers 
that previously prevented companies from bringing foreign earnings 
home. In the seven quarters since enactment of tax reform, U.S. 
companies have brought back to the United States more than $1 trillion 
of foreign earnings.
  Obviously, U.S. companies are using these earnings to finance new 
capital expenditures, increase research and development, increase 
payrolls, pay down debt, and return cash to shareholders and retirement 
accounts. Companies are putting those earnings to work in this country, 
not leaving them abroad. That economic gain and the jobs created as a 
result of it are because of the 2017 tax cut legislation.

[[Page S982]]

  But we also took care to ensure that companies wouldn't be able to 
take advantage of the new U.S. tax system. Tax reform made signature 
strides to address inversions, foreign takeovers of U.S. companies, and 
base erosion. You will remember the outrage we had before the tax bill 
when there were inversions and foreign takeovers of U.S. companies, and 
then the result of the erosion of our tax base.
  Together, the lower tax rate and new international rules have changed 
the way that companies structure their business operations. For 
example, Assurant, a global insurance company, changed its acquisition 
agreement so that its new parent company remains here in the United 
States.
  Broadcom, a technology firm, announced that it would return its 
headquarters to the United States, and this came after tax reform.
  Similarly, several energy and pharmaceutical companies that had 
previously moved out of the United States also made the decision to 
return, primarily because of tax reform.
  You know, the old, old saying can apply to this tax legislation. What 
we wanted to accomplish was accomplished, and that old saying is: The 
proof is in the pudding.
  So tax reform has leveled the playing field and made the United 
States a far more attractive place to do business--hardly the dire 
consequences that critics would have us believe. Now, you know critics 
never give up. Not to be deterred, the critics continue to look for 
misleading information to distort the picture.
  Most recently, they pointed to the Congressional Budget Office 
projections as evidence that tax reform and recently issued U.S. 
Treasury Department regulations have provided a windfall to 
corporations. I hate to see the Congressional Budget Office's 
professional work and nonpartisan work manipulated to say something it 
clearly does not--and I meant to use the word ``manipulated.''
  First and foremost, CBO's--that is the Congressional Budget Office--
downward adjustment of expected corporate tax receipts does not imply 
that CBO scores particular Treasury regulations or that a regulation 
departs from congressional intent. Rather, CBO's adjustments broadly 
reflect significant economic factors and changes in government data.
  In particular, CBO adjusted its projections because we now know that 
Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates of corporate receipts between 
2016 and 2018 were actually overstated. So you have to make adjustments 
for that. In short, even pretax reform projections of corporate profits 
were really too high. So when the estimate of corporate profits is 
corrected, it translates into lower tax receipts, but the other side 
doesn't seem to acknowledge this.
  CBO also took into account current economic factors, like recent 
trade actions and tariffs, strengthening of the U.S. dollar, and the 
softening of foreign economies, all of which affected expected 
corporate profits and ultimate tax receipts. But our critics don't seem 
to acknowledge that fact.
  In addition, the Congressional Budget Office revised its projections 
to reflect everything that we are learning about implementation of the 
new tax rules, including regulatory guidance, new forms and 
instructions that go with the tax forms, and modeling improvements to 
better reflect updated economic projections.
  CBO is only beginning to take into account how U.S. businesses are 
responding very positively to the new tax rules and Treasury guidance.
  As many regulations are still being finalized, businesses are only 
starting to have needed certainty to invest in new property and 
equipment, to engage in mergers and acquisitions, and to enter into new 
business transactions.
  The Congressional Budget Office's projections are also based upon 
preliminary data. Tax returns for the first year of the new law were 
filed less than 6 months ago, but the critics don't take that into 
consideration. The final data will not be available from the IRS until 
later this year, and, even then, it will still take time to fully 
analyze, but our critics don't recognize that.
  All of these factors go into CBO's revised projections of corporate 
tax receipts, and none of them support the claim that Treasury provided 
a windfall to corporations. I think the critics ought to go the extra 
mile to study and understand the impact of the tax cut law.
  There simply is no basis, then, for the critics' claim that the 
revision to CBO's estimate of corporate receipts means that Treasury 
has given away the store to big corporations through its regulations.
  Despite the critics' relentless attacks, the benefits of tax reform 
are, in fact, proving out. All you have to do is look at the good 
economy to know that that is the case.
  I am encouraged by the promising economic data that I just referred 
to that suggests that American workers, American families, and American 
businesses are seeing positive effects.
  Now, we must continue to promote policies that encourage U.S. 
businesses to keep operations on American soil--the 2017 bill does 
that--increase wages--the 2017 bill did that--and reinvest foreign 
earnings in the United States, instead of leaving them overseas--and 
the 2017 tax bill does that.
  I hope that my Democratic colleagues will stop criticizing the 
policies that have strengthened our economy and, in fact, consider how 
we can work together to make our tax laws work even better for American 
businesses and workers.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here again, as the Senate returns 
to regular business, to call us again to respond to the threat of 
climate change. Here on the floor today, things seem back to normal. 
The floor is empty. We have a Senator instead of a Chief Justice in the 
chair. The quorum calls descend between the speeches. Our new pages are 
figuring out the nonimpeachment routines of the floor.
  Outside of the Senate, things are anything but normal. The threat of 
climate change worsens by the minute. Carbon emissions continue to rise 
globally. We hurtle toward calamity. Yet we do not act. What is 
stopping us? The biggest, most powerful, most motivated force 
preventing climate action is the fossil fuel industry, and, of course, 
it would be. The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the 
history of the planet. The International Monetary Fund estimates the 
global subsidy for fossil fuel in the trillions of dollars every year. 
In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry got a $650 billion 
subsidy in 2015, according to the most recent report from the IMF. That 
is about $2,000 from every woman, man, and child in the country.
  You wrote the check, and they will spend big bucks to defend that 
subsidy. In fact, to maintain their grip on that subsidy, fossil fuel 
companies deploy lots of propaganda on the American people. They swamp 
us in advertising. The game isn't just to sell you more gas. It is much 
bigger than that.
  Professor Robert Brulle of Drexel University--now in Rhode Island at 
Brown University--together with his coauthors, wrote a recent article, 
``Corporate Promotion and Climate Change,'' looking at oil companies' 
carefully crafted public relations campaigns deployed way back since 
legendary muckraker Ida Tarbell chronicled the greed and cruelty of the 
Standard Oil Company. To offset their reputation for greed and 
nastiness, ``fossil fuel companies have attempted to burnish their 
image in various ways,'' Brulle and his colleagues write, ``[including] 
contemporary multimedia promotional campaigns . . . to project the 
corporation as a positive, responsible, and legitimate social actor.'' 
Hah.
  The public began to catch on to the harms of industrial pollution in 
the 1960s and 1970s, and Big Oil deployed public relations campaigns to 
stem the public opinion tide.
  One example Brulle uses is Mobil Oil, pre-ExxonMobil merger. In 1970, 
Mobil began buying space on the opinion page of the New York Times. 
They called these things advertorials--not advertisements, not 
editorials, but

[[Page S983]]

advertorials. They ran in the same section as real opinion pieces. 
Every Thursday, those ads promoted Mobil's image as a good corporate 
citizen and boosted its public policy priorities, like reduced 
regulation of Mobil's operations. Meanwhile, Mobil worked hard to place 
rosy ``earned media'' stories on airwaves and in print. ``Between 1975 
and 1977 alone, Mobil representatives appeared on 365 TV shows, 211 
radio shows, and gave 80 newspaper interviews,'' the study authors 
observe.
  I will pause to note some good news, which is that, just recently, 
The Guardian announced that it will no longer accept advertising that 
props up fossil fuels like oil and coal. The Guardian urged its 
colleagues in the media to do the same. Acting chief executive Anna 
Bateson and chief revenue officer Hamish Nicklin said in a statement: 
``Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that 
industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the 
world.''
  Welcome to our experience here in the Congress. As we have seen here 
in the Congress, the fossil industry companies have done that with dark 
money, they have done that with raw political muscle, they have done 
that through fake science, and they have done it through advertising 
campaigns. So bravo to The Guardian for shutting off that spigot of 
fossil fuel nonsense. I hope American media outlets follow suit.
  Dr. Brulle then turns to recent decades. Using spending figures from 
1986 to 2015, he and his scientists find that corporate promotional 
spending for the five major oil companies in the United States--
ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron-Texaco, BP, and ConocoPhillips--totaled 
nearly $3.6 billion. That is an average of $120 million per year, and 
the trend is upward.
  After $35 million in spending in 1996, from 1997 to 2004, annual 
spending rose to an average of $102 million per year. Then Brulle and 
his team chronicled that spending averages leaped again between 2008 
and 2016 to an average of $217 million per year.
  These spending figures themselves are pretty eye-popping, but what is 
important here is the patterns of spending. Brulle and his coauthors 
write:

       The bulk of this spending . . . corresponds to the 
     increased public and congressional attention to climate 
     change in recent years. Not unexpectedly, the major oil 
     companies spent $315 million in 2010 alone, which is when the 
     highest possibility of binding climate legislation occurred.

  That is no coincidence. Here in this building, something was 
occurring that the fossil fuel industry saw as a threat.
  Brulle and his colleagues continue:

       This high level of corporate promotional spending took 
     place in response to the legislative battle from 2009 to 2010 
     over the House of Representatives' passage of the Waxman-
     Markey climate bill and the subsequent Senate consideration 
     of the Kerry-Lieberman climate legislation.

  This pattern shows Big Oil's purpose: to block climate action in 
Congress.
  While we are talking about that period, right over there in the 
Supreme Court, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, on behalf of 
their Big Oil funders, urged the Supreme Court to open up our politics 
to unlimited special interest spending, and the five Republican 
Justices on that Court, led by Chief Justice Roberts, did. From that 
decision forward, we have seen a disaster in the Senate on climate 
legislation. Before that decision, we had four or five bipartisan 
climate bills going in the Senate at any given time. We had a 
Republican candidate for President--John McCain--who campaigned for 
President on a strong climate platform. But right after that decision 
came out, right after the fossil fuel industry got handed that huge new 
hammer to knock any dissent on climate out of the Republican Party, 
they did so. We have had a lost decade since then. So it is not just 
their advertising, but their PR spending certainly helped the fossil 
fuel industry block the Waxman-Markey bill and obstructed efforts since 
to solve the climate crisis.

  Another study by Professor Brulle just last month chronicled the full 
sweep of this industry's fight against climate legislation. Brulle 
describes how this polluting industry used ads, webs of phony front 
groups, bogus science, and that massive Citizens United political and 
PR artillery to fend off any meaningful action by Congress.
  Professor Brulle breaks this process down to its component parts; 
one, shaping the direction of research efforts into nonthreatening 
areas; two, concealing information about the harmful aspects of a 
corporate product; three, attacking scientific findings and the 
scientists who produce research that threatens corporate interests; 
four, packaging their own carefully constructed interpretations of the 
science to appear legitimate; and, five, aggressive efforts at spinning 
the media to promulgate favorable press.
  A typical example of the first tactic is oil company ads touting 
research and investments in alternative low-carbon fuels or renewable 
energy. For instance, we have seen ExxonMobil ads touting ExxonMobil's 
research into algae biofuels, and we have seen BP ads touting renewable 
energy under its label ``Beyond Petroleum.'' ``Badly Polluting'' would 
be a better term.
  So how much do these renewable investments represent? According to 
Reuters, Exxon will spend roughly $30 billion this year--$30 billion 
this year--in capital expenditures. That is Exxon's capital budget. 
Investments in green technologies round to zero percent of Exxon's 2020 
capital expenditures. You see the ads, but that investment, they call 
it, rounds to zero percent of ExxonMobil's capital investments.
  BP will spend more than $15 billion in capital expenditures. Its 
renewable energy investments is 3 percent--3 percent--of that.
  I challenge Exxon to disprove that it spent more on advertisements 
touting its renewable investments than it does on the renewable 
investments themselves. These investments are a prop for an advertising 
campaign, like the Potemkin villages that were built for the czar when 
he was taken out of Moscow to go see how happy the peasants were, and 
they built phony villages near the railroad with dressed-up peasants to 
dance and wave at the czar so he wouldn't know that revolution was 
coming and that fury and anger raged through his country. This is a TV 
version of a Potemkin village.
  You go through National Airport right now, you will see the most foul 
nonsense up on the walls of that airport designed to convince people 
passing through National Airport at our Nation's Capital that these 
companies are responsible about climate change. People walking in 
forests looking natural, the phony-baloney investments designed to prop 
up ad campaigns, they are immense in the PR space. You can see why the 
Guardian will not take this poison any longer.
  For decades, these ads blared these phony articles at the newspapers. 
Their paid-for pundits populated the talk shows, just as the fossil 
fuel companies polluted our atmosphere and our oceans. While they did 
this, they knew better than anyone what they were causing.
  Back in 1982, Exxon projected that by 2019, atmospheric 
CO<inf>2</inf> would reach between 390 and 420 parts per million. Sure 
enough, as 2019 drew to a close, guess where carbon dioxide in our 
atmosphere was. It had just crossed 410 parts per million. They 
predicted this, and they were right. But instead of acting on what they 
knew, they rammed all this public relations nonsense--this has been the 
atmospheric carbon dioxide climb. But instead of reacting to this in a 
responsible way and trying to really do something with renewable fuels, 
they did fake renewable investments to prop up advertising campaigns to 
convince the public that they were on it. These are the phrases right 
now from the American Petroleum Institute: We are on it. Don't worry. 
Don't get mad. Don't get involved. We are on it.
  And then they shower this body with money and with threats, powered 
up by Citizens United from the five Republican judges across the street 
there.
  Not only did Big Oil correctly model this increase in CO<inf>2</inf> 
in our atmosphere that their product would cause, they also understood 
what this meant. They predicted the hotter temperatures. They predicted 
the melting ice sheets. They predicted the rising seas that Louisiana 
and Rhode Island are so menaced by. They predicted the massive damage 
that climate change would cause. Exxon knew its business was ultimately 
toxic to our planet. And the Exxon CEO who led them through this, the 
craftsman and CEO of so many of these campaigns of lies, now sits 
happily on the board of J.P. Morgan--J.P.

[[Page S984]]

Morgan which claims to be seriously and sincerely interested in climate 
response. J.P. Morgan, a major investor that has been warned over and 
over again by now more than 30 sovereign banks of the danger of an 
economic crash from this carbon bubble popping--they give the man who 
led this campaign of lies sanctuary and fees on their board.
  So what is the purpose of spending all that money? The reason Big Oil 
spends billions on its ads is to implant favorable perceptions of 
fossil fuels into what Robert Brulle calls the ``collective 
unconscious,'' and it does that to support its other great influence 
project, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying 
and on elections to control the politics of climate change and to 
ensure that Republicans block any serious efforts to limit carbon 
pollution. That is a scheme that deserves infamy, and it is a scheme 
being perpetrated as I speak, right now, today.
  Right now, the American Petroleum Institute--the largest trade 
association for the oil and gas industry--has a seven-figure ad 
campaign called ``We're On It.'' They run ads on the internet, on TV, 
and on billboards--the ones I mentioned all over the DC airport--
designed to fool the public and policymakers that the oil and gas 
industry is ``on its'' carbon and methane emissions problem. Not only 
are they not on it, they are cheating about even reporting their 
methane leaks.
  This is an ad in the Washington Post's ``Energy 202'' newsletter just 
last week. It reads: ``Let's create climate solutions together.'' 
Content from the API.
  Seriously? What a joke. API, the same trade association that is 
furiously lobbying against efforts to control methane pollution from 
oil and gas facilities don't even want to report it fairly. When Trump 
got in, job one was to take down the methane leakage reporting 
regulation that was coming. They are lobbying for expansion of offshore 
drilling, and they are lobbying against any price on carbon to offset 
that $650 billion subsidy, and they want to create climate solutions 
together? It is unreal--unreal.
  Let's take a walk back into history. In 2006, here in Washington, in 
the U.S. district court, a judge named Gladys Kessler wrote a long, 
long opinion--well over 100 pages. It was a commanding opinion, and it 
was an opinion that was upheld afterward by the U.S. court of appeals. 
It was an opinion in relation to a case that had been brought by the 
U.S. Department of Justice.
  The U.S. Department of Justice had sued the tobacco industry, and 
they had asked Judge Kessler to find the tobacco companies' PR efforts 
fraudulent and to order them to knock it off. They were committing 
fraud. Stop it. You are lying to people, enough already.
  In her opinion, Judge Kessler found in favor of the U.S. Department 
of Justice. Indeed, she found the tobacco companies' fraudulent PR 
campaigns to have amounted to racketeering. It was a civil racketeering 
lawsuit. I will quote her decision here. She said the tobacco industry 
``coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, 
scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared 
objective--to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and 
expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the 
public.''
  So swap out ``cigarettes'' and plug in ``fossil fuel,'' and you have 
described exactly what big oil companies do: coordinate their public 
relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of 
a shared objective to maximize industry profits by preserving and 
expanding the market for fossil fuel through a scheme to deceive the 
public.
  What the fossil fuel industry is doing is precisely the conduct that 
was racketeering activity when done by the tobacco industry, but don't 
expect Bill Barr's Department of Justice to pursue any type of legal 
action like that. The fossil fuel industry is too strong, and the fix 
is too far in.
  This is all rotten stuff. It is gross. It is banana republic 
behavior. It is not what we expect here in the United States of 
America.
  It is on us. It doesn't have to be this way. We can stop it. We have 
the power here in the Senate to shake off the malign influence of a 
desperate and greedy industry and actually tackle the defining issue of 
our time, like Americans should.
  So let's have a real debate on a real climate change bill. Let's 
surprise the world and pass something big and bold. Let's wake up to 
the threat of climate change and get ahead of its consequences before 
the situation becomes irretrievable.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. McSALLY). The Senator from Alaska.


                    Nomination of Joshua M. Kindred

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I have come to the floor this evening 
to speak in support of the nomination of Joshua Kindred to be a U.S. 
district court judge for the District of Alaska. We were able to move 
forward with the first step toward the confirmation of Mr. Kindred, but 
I just wanted to take a couple of minutes and speak as to why I believe 
he is well qualified to serve in this capacity and deserves to be 
confirmed by the Senate with, hopefully, broad bipartisan support.
  I am glad and I am pleased that he has been willing to step into a 
new role for our State. Josh Kindred comes from Anchorage, where I am 
living. He currently serves as Alaska's regional solicitor for the 
Department of the Interior. He has been doing a good job, a strong job, 
for us there. Before joining the Department, Mr. Kindred served as the 
environmental counsel for the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, as well 
as an assistant district attorney and violent unit supervisor for the 
State of Alaska. He also served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Paul De 
Muniz of the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon.
  One way that you know that Mr. Kindred has good judgment is that he 
went to the same law school I did. So it can't be all bad there. He 
earned his juris doctorate from Willamette University College of Law. 
He served as editor in chief of the Willamette Law Review and certainly 
demonstrated great skills and abilities at that level.
  I think it is important to speak to Mr. Kindred's biographical 
details to illustrate that his experience is both considerable and is 
really relevant. It is directly relevant for this new role that he is 
seeking. It is that experience in a host of different areas that 
matters for our State, and I believe that will help him as a Federal 
jurist.
  Mr. Kindred's experience in civil, criminal, and administrative law 
at both the State and the Federal levels, in both the public sector as 
well as the private sector, is exactly what we should be seeking in a 
nominee for a court of original jurisdiction, such as the U.S. District 
Court for the District of Alaska.
  Josh Kindred is no stranger to the courtroom. He has extensive trial 
experience, which is, of course, important for operating in the 
courtroom. His background also brings a welcomed and valuable 
understanding of Alaska's unique Federal laws and landscape. He has 
extensive experience in Federal lands, mining, natural resources, oil 
and gas laws, and environmental laws and permitting. These are all 
things--all things--that are constantly litigated back home and that 
apply to so many of the important priorities that we have in Alaska.
  You often hear me talk about the fact that Alaska is different. It is 
unique, and, certainly, some of our laws--many of our laws--reflect 
that. Not many are truly knowledgeable about ANCSA, about ANILCA. These 
are critically important to understand, and Mr. Kindred certainly 
understands them. That skill set, that operational base of knowledge on 
Alaska-specific laws and matters, is really vital for our State.
  In addition, and perhaps of equal importance, Mr. Kindred has long 
called Alaska home. He was raised in our local schools. He is raising 
his young family there. He comes from good family. He married into good 
family. He is a good Alaskan. He knows Alaska. He understands our State 
well.
  I am proud of Mr. Kindred's continued commitment to public service 
and his willingness to serve our State. So, again, I would urge the 
Senate to confirm Josh Kindred. I know that he will do well in his new 
role, as he has done in all his others.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

[[Page S985]]

  

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