[Pages S9756-S9759]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

LEGISLATIVE SESSION

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will resume legislative session.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, 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. CARPER. 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the quorum call be rescinded.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 Larry Windley

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, during this break in the action this
evening, I rise today to recognize not one but two members of my staff
who are going to be leaving us this month.
Larry Windley is retiring from my staff as a true public servant for
the people of my home State of Delaware and the people of our country.
Larry was born and raised in a place called Seaford, DE. Seaford, DE,
was the home of the first nylon plant in the world, built by DuPont;
4,000 employees. It is a great town, a town that is actually going
through a rebirth these days, and we are very proud of that.
Larry Windley was one of three sons. His father Bill Windley worked
for DuPont and earned something like 25 patents during his tenure there
for that

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company. One of those three sons is Larry, who was raised to work hard,
spending summers working on poultry farms that are common in that part
of our State. That hard work would later drive him in his 41-year
career in public service.
Larry's career started when he was a young man in college at the
University of Delaware. He and I were introduced in 1982 by Jim Soles,
a legendary political science professor whom we both greatly admired
who would later run for the U.S. House of Representatives for our at-
large seat.
I had been Delaware State treasurer, came out of the Navy and moved
from California to Delaware at the end of the Vietnam war. I got an MBA
and went to work in economic development and got elected to State
treasurer at 29.
Six years later, I was running for Congress. We have one seat in the
House of Representatives, and I was running for that seat. I needed a
right-hand man who could not just keep up the pace of a campaign but
could actually get behind my Plymouth Horizon and drive it all over the
State, to be my driver and my body man in my campaign for the U.S.
House of Representatives.
A story about Jim. When Jim Soles, the professor of political science
who had run unsuccessfully for Congress in 1972, I think, he asked--
when I was State treasurer and running for Congress, Professor Soles
said to one of his students, Larry Windley: Larry, how would you like
to be Tom Carper's driver?
Larry was pretty excited about that. Finally, Larry said: To be
honest, I don't know who Tom Carper is.
Jim explained that I was the State treasurer and running for
Delaware's at-large seat. Lo and behold, Larry said yes. He dropped out
of school at least for a while--he was at university as a junior--and
he helped me get my campaign into high gear, and we were fortunate to
win.
Larry went from driving with me around the State to traveling all
over the world, representing the First State as he worked to attract
trade and business opportunities for Delaware.
Larry had a few different roles over the course of his career. One of
his most impactful has to be his work on economic development. Early in
his career, Larry worked for the State of Delaware's Economic
Development Office, where he helped create the Delaware Strategic Fund
and the Community Redevelopment Fund, providing millions for nonprofit
public service organizations and economic revitalization.
He also helped create something called the Brownfield Initiative to
redevelop contaminated sites and established the Green Industries
Initiative to help businesses reduce, recycle, or reuse waste.
After serving 10 years in the House of Representatives, I ran for
Governor of Delaware, and Larry rejoined my team to help me craft my
economic development platform, the Carper Growth Agenda. We focused on
attracting smaller companies and helping existing companies to grow.
That was in the 1990s, so we had a strong focus on attracting
technology companies.
Once I was elected, Larry helped lead the Delaware Economic
Development Office as its policy director and director of planning.
Then, in 1996--this was the beginning of my second term as Governor--he
was appointed assistant secretary of state and director of the Division
of Corporations for Delaware. It turns out that is a very big job. Half
of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware. Half of the Fortune
500, half of the New York Stock Exchange are incorporated in the State
of Delaware, and the Division of Corporations helps to service all of
those corporations from around the world.
The person who ran that office was Larry Windley, and that office
provides about a third of the State's revenues. The reason why Delaware
doesn't have a sales tax is because of all the revenues that come
through the Delaware State Department that Larry ran for a number of
years. His jobs included running a division that raised something like
half a billion dollars a year for our State and today raises a whole
lot more.
In 2004, he left State government to become Delaware State director
for Senator Joe Lieberman during Joe's Presidential campaign. Then, in
2006, I was lucky enough that he rejoined my team to work on special
projects. At this time, I had been elected to the U.S. Senate and
served here, as I do today.
Over the last 17 years, Larry has been a vital part of my senior
leadership team. He has not only helped to be my eyes and ears in
Delaware, but he has also mentored the next generation of men and women
who want to follow in his footsteps and to work to move Delaware in the
right direction.
He is going to be leaving soon. We have something called Carpertown.
I don't know who came up with the word ``Carpertown,'' but it is the
people who have worked with me in the Navy and when I was State
treasurer and when I was a Congressman, Governor, and now in the U.S.
Senate. There are actually, I think, thousands of folks who fall in
that category, but Larry is one and may be the charter member of
Carpertown.
There is a great song by the Eagles called ``Hotel California,'' and
it has lyrics that say, ``You can check out . . . but you can never
leave.'' That is pretty much how Carpertown works. Larry is going to be
checking out, but he will never really leave. He is going to be joining
the University of Delaware and doing much needed work there. We look
forward to being able to continue to work with him.
Thanks to him, Delaware is a better place to live, and it is a better
place to work and to do business.
I just want to convey, his parents are deceased, but I knew them well
and have thanked them many times--especially his mom--for bringing him
into the world and his mom and dad for raising him and sharing him with
the people of our State.
He now has a son of his own, Michael, and Michael's wife Lindsay,
along with his daughter Tara and her husband Glen and a brandnew
grandson, whose name is Cayden.
I am reminded of a great line from a Detroit Tigers baseball player,
the outfielder Kirk Gibson. When he was ready to retire from the
Tigers, he called a press conference. Sometimes people are ready to
retire and retire at the beginning of the season. Sometimes they retire
at the end of the season. They just don't want to do it anymore. Kirk
Gibson retired in the middle of the season, and he held a press
conference in the dugout at Tiger Stadium. The reporters all gathered
around him, and he told the press--he said that he had been traded back
to his family--traded back to his family. In a sense, Larry is being
traded back to his family, but we know that he is going to still
continue to do a lot of good work for the people--not just for the
University of Delaware but for the people of our State. We are grateful
for that.

Tribute to Christophe Tulou

Mr. President, I know I don't have much time remaining, but I just
want to also recognize the service of Christophe Tulou, who serves as
our senior counsel on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Christophe is retiring at the end of the year as well to become the
executive director of the Center for the Inland Bays in Delaware, a
wonderful nonprofit organization that is committed to preserving our
natural beauty and natural resources, including our inland bays and the
southern part of our State.
I call him Tophe, T-O-P-H-E, and I have known him ever since we hired
him. He was the second person I hired to work for me in the U.S. House
of Representatives.
I had gotten on the Banking Committee. As a freshman, I had gotten on
a committee called Merchant Marine and Fisheries, which included
oceanography and a bunch of issues that are of great interest to an
ocean State like Delaware. We needed somebody to handle that portfolio,
and we found a fellow who was a Sea Grant fellow and who was interested
in serving in Congress, and his name was Christophe Tulou. He came on
board.
He was the second person I hired to help me in the U.S. House of
Representatives. I ended up serving there for 10 years. Christophe
would become not just my legislative adviser for a portfolio of
issues--environmental issues and others--but he also ended up for a
short while as my legislative director within the office. Later on,
when I was the subcommittee chair of the Economic Stabilization
Subcommittee,

[[Page S9758]]

he was the director of that subcommittee for me in the House of
Representatives and did a great job in each one of those categories.
I don't have time tonight to go through some of the things we are
especially proud of that we worked on together, but there are a lot of
them, and I will provide those for the record. All in all, he served in
my House of Representatives office for a decade, and I, frankly, don't
know what I would have done without him.
After serving in the House for 10 years, I had a chance to run for
Governor. I did and was lucky to win and became Governor of Delaware to
serve not one 4-year term but two 4-year terms.
We were looking around for someone to serve on my cabinet as
Governor. We needed somebody to be our cabinet secretary for the
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. I asked
Christophe Tulou if he would do the job, and he agreed to do so.
We had a complicating factor, and that is, he and his wife lived in
DC. She had a good job and was not anxious to give that up. For the
next 4 years, Christophe Tulou--his wife continued to live in
Washington, and he would come home on weekends to her and to their home
here in the District of Columbia. But the rest of the time, he would be
in Delaware working as a cabinet secretary at the department, which
really needed the leadership he provided, his extraordinary leadership.

We had a history in Delaware of the department that has jurisdiction
over natural resources and environmental control and the Delaware
development office, which is tasked with creating jobs and attracting
businesses to our State--those two departments had a history of bad
blood and not working together and not being collegial.
At the end of the day, Christophe, who would come to Delaware every
Monday morning and go to work and leave on Friday afternoon, Friday
night, to come back to DC--he and another fellow, who was in charge of
the Delaware Economic Development Office, ended up finding a house
together and rooming in the same house in Dover.
The fellow who was running economic development, his wife--his name
was Bob Corey. Great guy. Great guy. His wife Carol worked for Hershey,
the candy company, the food company in Hershey, PA, and they had a
house there. She continued to live there and work there, and he would
go home on Friday evenings and then come back to work in Delaware on
Monday.
But, anyway, the two departments had for years a hard time getting
along--the department of natural resources and the Delaware division of
economic development. We put the two agencies in the same house as
roommates during the week, and amazing things happened. The two
departments learned how to work together, to be collaborative and
figure out how we strengthen and improve our environment, our water,
our air, and so forth, how we do that and at the same time create jobs
and economic opportunity.
During the 8 years I was privileged to be Governor, I am told there
were more jobs created in those 8 years than in any 8-year period in
the history of the State of Delaware, and part of it is because of the
partnership that I just described between Christophe Tulou, the
secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental
Control, and Bob Corey, who was running economic development--two
roommates who found common ground and helped their departments find
common ground. We ended up better, with a better place to live.
Frankly, they did a lot better jobs, as it turns out.
But I think I probably talked long enough. I just want to say of
Christophe, after he left me--he bailed on me, but he went to work in a
number of, I think, important jobs. One was as the director of the
District of Columbia's Department of Environment in Washington, DC. It
is like being a cabinet secretary in a State. He did that for
Washington, DC, for a number of years.
He followed that service with a stint as a senior adviser on the
Chesapeake Bay to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Gina
McCarthy.
When I became the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works
Committee here in the Senate after the 2016 elections, Christophe came
back and joined us and helped us at EPW from the very beginning. He has
a strong, unwavering commitment to the environmental protection of our
Nation and our planet.
Tophe and his wife Debi are lovely people whom I have been privileged
to know for, gosh, almost four decades, and I will be fortunate to see
him regularly during my visits to Sussex County, one of the three
counties of our State, where he will be working to protect the special
Chesapeake Bay resources of our State.
These are two very decent human beings. I don't think they have a
mean bone in their body. They are smart as whips, and they love the
State of Delaware. They love this planet that we work on. They love
helping people. And they have made our State and, I think, our country
a better place in which to live.
They, as I mentioned, have been members of Carpertown for quite a
while, and since they can check out but they can't leave, they are
going to remain that for us, and we will be able to stay in close touch
with them.
As they get ready to set sail, we are going to leave the light on for
them and provide a warm welcome whenever they come back.
With that, Mr. President, thank you for the time.
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. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Equal Pay for Team USA

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, when you watch U.S. athletes compete
in the Olympics and Paralympics and the World Cup, it probably doesn't
cross your mind that men and women who play the same sport may not get
the same travel accommodations or equal medical care or may still be
waiting to be reimbursed for their expenses that they had out of
pocket. In fact, for women athletes, they may not be sure if they are
even going to get a fair shake at all.
It has taken women athletes at the top of their game stepping up and
demanding their worth over and over for women to be taken seriously in
sports. I am talking about the women of the U.S. Hockey in 2017 and the
U.S. Women's National Soccer Team in 2019 and many other athletes.
It has been 50 years since title IX carved out a place for women and
girls in sports, but still women athletes frequently get less. That is
why we needed the bipartisan Equal Pay for Team USA Act to build on the
promise of title IX for women competing at the international level.
I am happy to say that this Senate bill, S. 233, which already
previously passed the Senate, just passed the House tonight, 350 to 59.
I am happy because we need to make sure that there is equal pay for
team USA and to make sure that U.S. national teams under the U.S.
Olympic Committee comply with this act. It ensures that athletes in the
same sport will receive equal pay, benefits and medical care, travel
and reimbursement expenses regardless of gender. It applies to the U.S.
Olympic and Paralympic Committee and also to the national governing
bodies the USOPC oversees and, basically, any athlete competing for
Team USA on a world stage. It will make sure that they get and receive
equal compensation to their fellow male athletes in the sports.
I want to thank my colleague, Senator Capito, for cosponsoring this
legislation and helping to advocate for it for the last year and a half
and continuing to fight to make sure that we got this implemented into
law. This law requires detailed reports from the USOPC and national
governing bodies--like U.S. Soccer, U.S. Squash, and U.S. Volleyball--
to be sent to Congress each year so we can help make sure that these
women athletes get equal pay. We want to get to the root of any issues
in the future that hold anyone back from making sure that this law is
implemented.
I also want to thank heroes like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan who
brought that case against U.S. Soccer. U.S. Women's Soccer led the
charge

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after winning the World Cup and making it clear to everyone that women
athletes deserve equal pay.
It took a lot of hard work to make sure that this bill got into law,
and I also want to thank my colleagues from the committee who helped
pass this legislation, and Senators Klobuchar and Lummis who also
joined Senator Capito and me in advocating for this legislation.
While I wish tonight there were solutions to the inequities that
exist in professional leagues like the WNBA and the National Women's
Soccer League, this is a huge important step toward the economic
empowerment of women athletes.
I also want to mention the hard work of my staff and Lucy Koch from
the Commerce Committee and many others on Senator Klobuchar's staff and
on the Commerce Committee who helped get this legislation over the goal
line.
This is a strong message to female athletes, not just in the State of
Washington but across the United States. You deserve and you now will
have equal pay, and this is a win for Team USA.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, this is an exciting evening for Senator
Cantwell and me. She just recently spoke very movingly about something
that just passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. House, and that is the
bipartisan Equal Pay for Equal Team USA Act. We call it ``Equal Pay for
Equal Play.'' I want to thank her for her leadership. She has been
spectacular in the dedication that she has shown for this legislation.
I really think this is such a great, not just message, but a vision
for the future of where we see and how we respect our women athletes as
we respect our male athletes.
In addition, I would like to thank Senator Cantwell, also Senators
Lummis and Senators Klobuchar for their partnership during this
process.
I want to thank our House colleagues, Mikie Sherrill and Nancy Mace.
They advocated for this bill on the House side and spoke eloquently
this evening.
Just very briefly, I think what we saw with this dominating success
of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team really shed the light on this issue of
equal pay. I think a lot of us just assumed that, if you were playing
for Team USA, male or female, of course, you would get equal pay. But
that hasn't been the way it has been over the years.
Whether it is pay, salary, accommodations, training, all these
things, there have been great inequities here. Our Women's National
Soccer Team is one of the most successful teams competing in
international soccer today. They have won four World Cups, four Olympic
gold medals, and they are currently ranked No. 1 in the world. They are
continuing to be trailblazers.
U.S. Soccer signed a new collective bargaining agreement this year to
close the gender wage gap and achieve true equal pay. Senator Cantwell
and I were on the field with Team USA here in Washington as they
defeated the Nigerian team, and we had a ceremonial signing on the
field, and it was a wonderful evening. For me, it was very uplifting
because I had my 12-year-old granddaughter and her best friend, who are
both soccer players. As the stadium would erupt to ``Equal Pay for
Equal Play,'' I would look over, and there they were, just yelling
their lungs out: ``Equal Pay for Equal Play.''
So I am really happy today that I can take a Christmas present home
to both of them. This is a historic moment that we must use to build
off of. The bill will require the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee
to provide all athletes who represent the United States in global
amateur athletic competitions, regardless of gender, equal compensation
and benefits.
As a woman sports fan myself, but also--I say former athlete, but I
still like to do lots of sports--as a mother and a grandmother of
female athletes, I recognize that for far too long, women's sports have
been second best to men's sports. Equal pay and benefits should be the
standard for all national teams.
So in closing, this is a simple bill that fixes a major problem.
I will say it again: Equal pay for equal play. It is the combination
of a true bipartisan effort, and I am looking forward to seeing the
President sign this bill into law on behalf of my West Virginia girls
and girls everywhere.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

____________________