December 10, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 197 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S6930-S6943]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      EXECUTIVE SESSION--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will resume executive session.
  The Senator from Maryland.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1060

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, after a discussion that we will have 
on the Senate floor, I intend to ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
pass S. 1060, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation called the 
DETER Act.
  What is the DETER Act? The DETER Act is legislation that I introduced 
with Senator Rubio. It has bipartisan sponsorship, and it is designed 
to send a very clear and simple message to Russia or any other 
countries that are thinking about interfering with our elections and 
undermining our democracy that, if we catch you, you will suffer a 
severe penalty. It won't be a few

[[Page S6931]]

sanctions against a few of the oligarchs. It will hit big parts of your 
economy. It will hit your banking sector. It will hit your energy 
sector. It will hurt, so you better think before you try to interfere 
in any future election.
  Now, Senator Rubio and I introduced this legislation a number of 
years ago, and in response to concerns that were raised, we made a 
number of important changes, but despite those changes, we are still 
here in the U.S. Senate with less than 1 year to go before a national 
election, and we have not passed this bill to deter foreign 
interference in our elections.
  We know what Vladimir Putin's ambitions are. He wants to sow division 
in our electorate. He wants to make our political process even more 
polarized. He wants to undermine the public faith in the democratic 
process. That is not just my conclusion. That is the unanimous verdict 
of the U.S. Intelligence Committee and the community after the 2016 
election, but it is not just them.
  Our own Senate Intelligence Committee, on a bipartisan basis, issued 
its findings. It also found that those were Putin's intentions, and it 
found that, in 2016, Russia interfered in all 50 of the States, to a 
greater or lesser extent--all 50 of the States. And what Vladimir Putin 
clearly has learned and taken away from all of this is that he can 
attack our democracy and attack our elections with impunity because the 
rewards are high. He creates division. He accomplishes his objectives. 
And the price is zero. There is currently no cost to Vladimir Putin 
from interfering in our elections.
  So what the DETER Act is designed to do is to raise the costs for the 
coming elections, to make it clear that, if we catch you next time, 
there will be a penalty to pay. We know that Putin hasn't gotten this 
message because there is no penalty right now, and that is why, on 
November 5, just a few weeks ago, we got another unanimous prediction 
from U.S. intelligence agencies. All of them jointly stated:

       Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all 
     will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence 
     voter perceptions. Adversaries may try to accomplish their 
     goals through a variety of means, including social media 
     campaigns, directing disinformation operations or conducting 
     disruptive or destructive cyber-attacks on state and local 
     infrastructure.

  That was just a few weeks ago--unanimously, from the intelligence 
agencies. Clearly, Vladimir Putin hasn't gotten the message. What the 
DETER Act is all about is sending that message that he will now know 
that there will be a penalty to pay upfront.
  Look, there are only two ways we can protect our elections, and we 
need to do both. One is to harden our election infrastructure here at 
home, which is to try to make it harder for somebody to use cyber 
attacks to get into our election systems and make it harder for them to 
abuse our social media platforms. This is a case where the best defense 
is a good offense because we can harden our systems, but you can be 
sure that the Russian Government cyber security folks will always be 
looking for a way around it, just like the arms race. So just like the 
arms race, deterrence is the best way to protect the integrity of our 
democracy by letting them know upfront that there will be this very 
tough price to pay.
  We hoped and thought we could address this issue in the National 
Defense Authorization Act. What better place is there to defend the 
integrity of our democracy than in the legislation that is designed to 
protect our national security? In fact, the U.S. Senate unanimously 
passed the resolution I have in my hand, S. Res. 330, which says very 
clearly that we wanted folks at the NDAA conference to require the 
administration--any administration, future administration--to promptly 
submit a report on Russian interference or other interference following 
every Federal election, and that would include a detailed assessment of 
the foreign governments that were involved in that interference. The 
Senate, as part of that resolution, also voted to promptly impose 
sanctions on any foreign government determined to have interfered in a 
future Federal election, including individuals and entities within that 
country's territories.
  Let me emphasize that point. Every Senator here supported that--or at 
least nobody objected to that. We have been working for over 2 years to 
get this done, and we keep hearing that the Trump administration 
doesn't want to do it. Of course, we haven't been told by the Trump 
administration why they object. Even Secretary Pompeo, in testimony 
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he supported the 
concept. In fact, every witness in the Senate Banking Committee and 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked about this and supported this 
legislation. You have to ask the question why: Why is there such 
opposition? If it is because of President Trump, we need to be doing 
our job here in the legislature, not the bidding of the White House.
  I yield to the Democratic leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Maryland for 
his diligence in this issue of utmost importance to the integrity of 
our elections, to our national security, and basically for trust in 
government. If the American people feel that a foreign country can 
interfere in their elections and, particularly, that their President is 
OK with that, I worry and pray for our democracy.
  For the past few years, Senate Democrats have sought to pass 
legislation to improve the security of elections. There are many ways 
to do this--hardening our election infrastructure, shoring up cyber 
defenses, and requiring paper ballots. One of the most important has 
been advocated with passion and vigor by my colleague from Maryland, 
and that is deterring foreign adversaries from trying to interfere with 
elections in the first place.
  For the past year, Democrats have been pushing legislation that would 
do just that by instituting mandatory crosscutting sanctions against 
any adversary--Russia, China, Iran, North Korea--that even dared to 
attempt to meddle in our democracy. It is a bipartisan idea. Senator 
Van Hollen has legislation that is cosponsored by Senator Rubio. We 
tried hard to pass this measure in the annual defense bill. Senate 
Republicans and Leader McConnell blocked the provision from the final 
agreement.
  Here we are today, asking our Republican colleagues to relent and 
allow this bipartisan legislation to pass the Senate on its own. Our 
top national security officials have warned us that our adversaries are 
right now--right now, as we speak--working on ever more sophisticated 
methods to meddle in our elections. That is what Putin does. He doesn't 
have the military power or the economic power, but he has long 
tentacles and clever ways to undermine our democracy. Are we going to 
stand there benignly and let it happen? That is outrageous.
  Why have Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans opposed it? I hope 
it is not because the Russian Foreign Minister is in town this week. I 
hope it is not because anyone wants to invite foreign interference.
  I am worried that it is just as my colleague from Maryland said: 
Donald Trump, who has shown no regard for the rule of law, for 
fairness, for decency, or for honor, if he thinks Russian interference 
will help him, he says: Let's do it. What is bothersome is that my 
colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle move forward on his 
wishes, right to the undermining of our democracy.
  I guarantee that if Leader McConnell would allow the vote on this 
legislation, it would pass almost unanimously. Remember, the motion to 
instruct conferees on NDAA to include this legislation passed nearly 
unanimously. I would plead with my good friend--he is a good man from 
Idaho, Senator Crapo--and I would plead with Leader McConnell: Stop 
this now. If Trump is getting you to do this or if the White House is, 
which I suspect is true, that is not your duty to this country, and you 
must put that higher than your duty to President Trump.
  I yield back to my friend.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I thank the minority leader. As he 
indicated, the Russian Foreign Minister, Foreign Minister Lavrov, is in 
town. There is a report saying that Secretary Pompeo said to the 
Russians: Don't interfere in our elections.
  Wagging your finger is not enough to scare off Vladimir Putin. That 
is why you need the DETER Act.
  Of course, saying that is a big advance over the President of the 
United States, who has been denying Russian

[[Page S6932]]

interference in our elections. It is not enough to scold the Russians. 
It is not enough to scold Foreign Ministers. It is not enough to scold 
Vladimir Putin. You have to raise the price for interference, and they 
need to do it upfront.
  Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent 
that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged 
from further consideration of S. 1060 and the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read 
a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered 
made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I think the record really needs to be set 
straight. The picture that is being painted here is that the 
Republicans or President Trump or both don't care about the fact that 
Russia is and has been trying to interfere in our elections and that, 
for some reason, our refusal to allow this specific act to move forward 
until it is fixed is evidence of that.
  In support of that, he said that there is no penalty on the Russians 
because of their actions. I will remind my colleagues that I am the 
chairman of the committee that has jurisdiction over economic 
sanctions. On this floor, last Congress, we had this very debate. I was 
making the case then that we needed a broad, strong sanctions law 
against Russia for its election interference and not only for its 
election interference but also for its invasion of Crimea and for its 
cyber security attacks on the United States.
  What happened then? We passed what I believe is probably the 
strongest, most extensive legislation putting into effect sanctions on 
Russia for election interference, for cyber security violations, for 
invasion of Crimea, and other malign conduct. Under that legislation, 
the administration has been active.
  I want to read you just a little--I think that President Trump has 
probably put more sanctions on the Russians than any other President in 
our history. The Treasury's Russia sanctions program is among the most 
active of the sanctions programs that the United States has. This 
administration has sanctioned 335 Russian-related individuals and 
entities, 317 of which were sanctioned under Treasury authority.
  By the way, the bill I referred to has an acronym. It is the 
Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA. That 
is the legislation that the administration is using to deter Russian 
election interference and other activities in addition to other malign 
conduct.
  Now, I want to state again, as my colleague knows, I agree and have 
agreed that we can work on further legislation, but we need to get it 
right because economic sanctions legislation is a two-edged sword. It 
hurts the United States and our allies often as much as it hurts the 
entities sanctioned, and because of that, we have to have the ability 
to be flexible in when to apply, how to apply, and how to adjust the 
impact of our sanctions; otherwise, we will see that we will do more 
damage to ourselves and our allies than to Russia.
  By the way, we don't just need legislation dealing with Russia. We 
need legislation dealing with the same types of activities from Iran 
and China and North Korea, to name just a few of the others. We need to 
do it with the appropriate mechanisms.
  The mechanisms in this bill have been designed more to attack the 
Trump administration and Republicans than to attack the Russians and 
those who would attack our country and our elections. I have said again 
and again and again that if we can fix the mechanisms so that they will 
work effectively to work against our enemies and protect America and 
our allies, as our current sanctions regimes do, then we can move 
forward with legislation that will even enhance what we did in CAATSA.
  I will also remind my colleague that in addition to CAATSA, one of 
the reasons we have been so active in the United States is that we have 
passed significant additional legislation. I remind my colleagues and 
everyone that in addition to CAATSA and the already existing IEEPA 
legislation, which are very broad and powerful international emergency 
economic authorities that have previously existed in the United States 
to help our administrations push back against malign conduct from our 
enemies, we have also passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act. I 
referenced Crimea earlier. We have passed the Magnitsky Act. President 
Obama, President Trump, and I believe President Bush, before them, have 
issued significant Executive orders on their own with their Executive 
order authority to expand sanctioning authority.
  To create the picture that there is no deterrent is false. To create 
the picture that the Trump administration is trying to turn a blind eye 
to Russia's malign conduct is false. To create the picture that the 
Republicans, because they want to get a mechanism that works properly, 
are therefore willing to turn a blind eye to Russia is false.
  When we can finally stop trying to play politics with this issue, 
when we can stop trying to make it anti-Trump or anti-Republican or 
make politics out of the problems that Russia truly is creating for us, 
maybe we can come together and pass yet another strong piece of 
legislation to move forward--but not as long as it is done with 
mechanisms and with lack of flexibility that actually undermine our own 
economic security and our system in applying the sanctions. Because of 
that, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I want to address some of the 
comments made by the chairman of the Banking Committee and start by 
saying that I have appreciated the conversations he and I have had on 
this legislation over the years. Let me just address some of the 
comments that were made.
  One is to say that, currently, the CAATSA scheme is enough to deter 
future Russian interference in our elections. If that were true, you 
would not have had every single one of our intelligence agencies just a 
few weeks ago predict that Russia will interfere in our elections 
again, along with other foreign malign actors.
  If the laws on the books could deter that interference, why did they 
predict just a few weeks ago that they are coming for us in the 
upcoming elections?
  Second, this is not a partisan attack on President Trump. This is a 
bipartisan bill. This bill not only has Senator Rubio as the chief 
author, coauthor of the legislation, there are a number of other 
Republican and Democratic Senators on this bill as cosponsors. In fact, 
they are evenly matched on this legislation.
  This has nothing to with President Trump. In fact, this determination 
and this law would not even kick in until after the 2020 elections. I 
don't know who is going to be President then. This has nothing to do 
with President Trump. This has to do with protecting our elections. Is 
it informed by what happened in 2016? You bet it is. We know--again, 
from all our intelligence committees and community agencies, every one 
of them headed by somebody nominated by President Trump--that the 
Russians attacked us in 2016. A few weeks ago they said the same thing 
will happen in 2020, and that will happen especially if we don't raise 
the price.
  The CAATSA legislation, as the Senator knows, was put in place by an 
overwhelming veto-proof vote in the U.S. Senate. It was required 
because the Russians interfered, but it was retrospective. So, yes, we 
punished some of the oligarchs who were close to Vladimir Putin, but 
that is not enough, clearly, to raise the price to Vladimir Putin from 
deterring him from doing it again.
  Again, we just heard that from our own intelligence agencies. If you 
want to raise the price for future interference, you need to not just 
hit a few oligarchs, you need to let them know, some of those Russian 
Government banks are going to get hit; their energy sector is going to 
get hit.
  By the way, there is actually more flexibility in this bill than I 
would like. As the chairman of the committee knows, the original bill 
Senator Rubio and I introduced did not have waiver authority for the 
President of the

[[Page S6933]]

United States. The version that is before us right now contains waiver 
authority for every single one of the sanctions if the President makes 
a national determination and says the waiver will not hurt our national 
security.
  It has more flexibility than I would like because my view is you need 
to set up a machine that is almost automatic. If we catch you 
interfering, there will be a price to pay. Under this bill, if we catch 
them, yes, there will be sanctions, but the reality is, the President 
can decide to waive those sanctions.
  We have come a long way. This is a bipartisan bill. This is about 
protecting our democracy. It is not about any particular individual or 
any particular President. It wouldn't even kick in until after the next 
elections, and those sanctions will only kick in if there is 
interference. The whole purpose of this bill is to have sanctions that 
are tough enough so Putin doesn't interfere or another foreign 
government doesn't interfere and so they don't go off the sanctions. 
That is the whole purpose.
  I hope we will vote on this. The clock is ticking. I am going to be 
on this floor week after week until we come together and pass something 
that actually has some teeth and will deter that very foreign 
interference that every intelligence agency predicted will happen as 
recently as 5 weeks ago. That will happen unless we act.
  I yield floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, not to belabor the point, but I just want 
to respond briefly. Yes, there are Republicans and Democrats on this 
bill, but many of the Members who are on this bill have told me they 
are ready and willing to amend and make it work.
  I have offered and have tried now for months to get that done. I am 
willing to continue trying to improve and strengthen this bill, but the 
notion that this is just somehow trying to protect the President from 
having to make tough choices is simply false.
  I will read today--as has been indicated, we have leaders from Russia 
in America today, and in response to that, our Secretary of State 
Pompeo said:

       The Trump administration will always work to protect the 
     integrity of our elections, period. . . . Should Russia or 
     any foreign actor take steps to undermine our Democratic 
     processes, we will take action in response.

  All of the authorities in this legislation we are debating right now 
exists already under CAATSA. I guess the argument is that President 
Trump will not use them. Well, the reality is he will. Secondly, I have 
indicated my willingness to work on this legislation.
  Rather than continuing to stand on the floor and debate why we like 
or don't like what President Trump is doing, I think we ought to get 
down to the serious business of legislating.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I hope we will get down to the 
serious business of legislating. As I indicated in the hearings that 
have been held in the Senate Banking Committee and Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, there was overwhelming support for moving forward 
with the DETER Act; that is, deter Russian interference in our 
elections.
  I will say it again. This authority, this sanction, if there is 
interference, does not kick in until after the next Presidential 
election. It is not designed to focus on any particular President. It 
is designed together on a bipartisan basis--and this is a bipartisan 
bill--to set up a mechanism in advance to let Vladimir Putin or other 
malign foreign actors know, if they interfere, there will be a price to 
pay. Not maybe, not let's just guess about it, there will be a price to 
pay unless a President decides to waive it, which, as I said, was a 
concession we made to address people's concerns about some flexibility, 
but we need to send the upfront message that at least initially these 
sanctions will take effect, and they will hurt. That is the only way to 
deter someone like Vladimir Putin and the Russians from interfering in 
our elections: raise the price and make it clear they will pay it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.


                     Nomination of Lawrence VanDyke

  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Madam President, I rise today because of my firm 
opposition to Lawrence VanDyke's nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court 
of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over my home State of Nevada. Mr. 
VanDyke lacks the support of both his home State Senators, Jacky Rosen 
and I. His qualifications are inadequate and his ties to Nevada are 
minimal.
  His nomination sets a dangerous precedent for the Senate and would 
allow future administrations to nominate virtual outsiders to 
communities across the country over Senators' objections.
  The President could have chosen a better nominee. Senator Rosen and I 
tried to work with the administration to identify well-respected 
attorneys from Nevada as potential appeals court judges. Instead, the 
President decided to nominate someone with no current ties to our 
State, someone whom the American Bar Association has rated as ``not 
qualified'' for the Federal bench, someone who holds extreme beliefs 
about reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, gun violence prevention, and 
environmental protection.
  The American Bar Association interviewed 60 of Mr. VanDyke's former 
colleagues, and those colleagues characterized him as arrogant, lazy, 
an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice, 
including procedural rules.
  Mr. VanDyke's nomination is unprecedented for all of these reasons. 
If confirmed to the Ninth Circuit, Lawrence VanDyke would be the first 
judicial nominee appointed to the bench without the support of his home 
State Senators, with a ``not qualified'' rating from the American Bar 
Association, and without ties to the community whose appeals court seat 
he would occupy.
  I would like to ask my colleagues: What kind of message are we 
sending when we confirm individuals who don't have the support of their 
local communities?
  We need judges with the knowledge, the maturity, and experience to 
understand the impact their decisions will have on the States over 
which they preside. How will my colleagues feel when a future 
administration attempts to do the same thing to their State, when a 
Democratic President, perhaps, nominates a Californian to sit on a 
district court in Kentucky or a lifelong DC resident is sent to a court 
in Texas?
  Mr. VanDyke's qualifications and connections to Nevada are just one 
part of my objection to his confirmation. I also believe Mr. VanDyke's 
views are just too extreme to promote to the Federal bench. He signed 
the State of Montana on to a brief in an Arizona case that argued that 
Roe v. Wade ``should . . . be revisited.''
  On LGBTQ protections, Mr. VanDyke at his confirmation hearings broke 
down in tears of frustration at the very idea that he might be unfair 
to LGBTQ litigants. He insisted that he believes in treating ``all 
people . . . with dignity and respect,'' but he didn't treat LGBTQ 
people with dignity and respect when he wrote in a 2004 article that 
same-sex marriage hurts families, children, and society. It certainly 
doesn't reflect an attitude of dignity and respect to support extreme 
groups like the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending 
Freedom, both of which have been designated as anti-LGBTQ hate groups 
by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
  The people who can legitimately shed tears about Lawrence VanDyke's 
record on LGBTQ rights are those who are still shunned because of whom 
they love.
  On the issue of preventing gun violence, Mr. VanDyke made his stance 
clear in a questionnaire the NRA sent to him when he was running for 
the Supreme Court of Montana. In his answers to the NRA's questions, 
Mr. VanDyke said he believed that ``all gun control laws are 
misdirected.'' In Nevada, we believe in Second Amendment rights, but we 
also agree--as almost all Americans do--that commonsense measures like 
background checks keep us safer.
  Finally, Mr. VanDyke has done his best to erode environmental 
standards and protections. As solicitor general of Nevada, he signed on 
to a lawsuit that threatened the critical sage grouse protections. 
Governor Sandoval, the Republican Governor at the time, said that 
lawsuit ``did not represent the State of Nevada, the governor, or any 
state agencies.''

[[Page S6934]]

  The Western United States has some of the most fragile and iconic 
public lands in the Nation. I object to letting Mr. VanDyke oversee 
them when he seems to care so little for their values. Mr. VanDyke's 
record shows that he is not a neutral arbiter of the law. Because of 
his poor qualifications and because of his extreme activist approach to 
the law, I will vote against his confirmation, and I urge my colleagues 
to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                                 USMCA

  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, there are just 21 days left in 2019. With 
the days dwindling, Congress has made little progress on its to-do list 
that without question must be addressed before going home for the 
holidays. This is largely due to the distractions and delays caused by 
the Democrats in this body and especially by those across the Capitol.
  Let's take the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. President 
Trump signed it over 1 year ago. If approved, USMCA would create 
176,000 new jobs by expanding access to markets and providing much 
needed certainty for American businesses and farmers. Literally, 
everyone benefits. Yet here we are still waiting for the House 
Democrats to bring it up for a vote--a vote that would be broadly 
bipartisan.
  Speaker Pelosi even admitted today that there is no question that 
USMCA is much better than NAFTA. I am hopeful the House will finally 
vote on the measure next week before leaving town. This would be a 
great Christmas gift for American workers, farmers, and businesses.
  But it is not just on trade deals. We are now over 2 months into the 
new Federal fiscal year. Yet Congress still has not approved the annual 
funding bills for this fiscal year. These bills will actually fund the 
government. Yet Democrats are stalling and throwing up roadblocks at 
every turn. They are failing to support our servicemembers, including 
providing them with the largest pay raise in a decade.
  Just recently, I was on the ground in Kuwait and Afghanistan to meet 
with our U.S. troops, including Iowans of the Des Moines-based 103rd 
Sustainment Command. These servicemembers are relying on Congress to do 
their job so that our military men and women can carry out their job of 
protecting our homeland. As a former company commander in Kuwait, I 
realize just how vital resources are to our troops.
  Let's not forget that Democrats agreed to a framework months ago on 
all of these bills. Yet they have repeatedly blocked consideration of 
these bills.
  Similarly, the authorization for the Violence Against Women Act--a 
law that is deeply personal to me--expired a year ago and remains in 
limbo. For months, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and I 
worked to develop a bipartisan bill to renew the law, which provides 
desperately needed resources to prevent domestic and sexual abuse and 
care for our survivors. We were making real progress, but all of a 
sudden, Senate Democrats walked away from the progress we made in an 
apparent attempt to make violence against women an election issue.
  Folks, we cannot allow our political differences to keep us from 
performing our most basic constitutional duties: to provide for the 
common defense, fund the operations of the Federal Government, and 
support women and children across this country facing sexual and 
domestic abuse. I plan on continuing to work with Senator Feinstein 
without regard to the political winds because we have to stop playing 
politics with women's lives and our Nation's defense.
  At a time when Democrats and Republicans in Washington can't find 
many areas of agreement, these are all issues on which we should and 
absolutely can find common ground. I implore my Democratic colleagues 
to end the obstruction and delay. Work with us to fund the government 
and support our servicemembers. Pass the USMCA and provide resources 
for my fellow survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. The American 
people are counting on us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I am privileged to be on the floor 
today with the Senator from Iowa, Ms. Ernst. I am here to join in a 
chorus of voices to ask this Congress to do better, to do our to-do 
list, and to do the things people sent us here to do. I am going to 
highlight some of the critical items Congress still needs to get done. 
Senator Ernst talked about them very eloquently.
  When I am home in West Virginia, people ask me about policies that 
impact their everyday lives. They ask about healthcare. They ask about 
the pensions and healthcare for our retired miners. They ask about 
surprise medical bills. I have certainly received them, and many people 
in this country every day, 2 or 3 months after an operation or a visit 
to the hospital, may receive a bill in the mail they had no idea was 
coming their way.
  The high cost of prescription drugs is an issue that hits many of us 
in our pocketbooks, and particularly for those who suffer from disease 
or who are elderly, it is a particular strain on their wallets. They 
ask about national security and caring for our veterans. Here is one 
everybody complains about, including all of us here--robocalls. Can 
somebody please stop the onslaught of robocalls?
  We have legislation, but we are not getting the action on it that we 
need. We need better trade deals that will help grow our economy and 
support our American workers.
  Do you know what they are not asking me about? My constituents are 
not asking me about the latest impeachment headline. They are not 
asking me about witnesses in front of a House committee or the newest 
``breaking news'' over on the House side. In their minds--it is just a 
bunch of Washington hoopla to most people.
  A few days ago, I ran into some constituents while I was running 
errands, and they said to me: Just stop this. Stop this. Something 
similar happened while I was grocery shopping. The butcher said to me: 
Aren't you just tired of it?
  Well, yes, I am.
  We have 2 weeks until Congress leaves for Christmas break and 21 days 
until the end of the month, and we still have so much to do. Our sole 
focus should be on legislating and making life better for people across 
the country.
  I can tell you, as somebody who has been in this body and in the 
House for several years, when you rush to judgment and when you rush to 
legislate, that is when things that you don't know get into bills and 
things that you want in bills don't get into bills. So rushing into 
legislating is not the fairest way to do it.
  I am pleased that at long last, we are going to pass the National 
Defense Authorization Act that protects our national security and 
supports our men and women in uniform. We still need to pass 
appropriations bills that fund much of our Federal Government. I am the 
chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee, so I very much want to 
see us enact a bill that will provide critical resources to protect 
this country.
  Homeland Security. Sure, we have Border Patrol, we have the wall, and 
we have ICE. Do you know what else we have? We have the Coast Guard, 
TSA, the Secret Service, FEMA--absolutely essential services. This 
includes funding for our immigration laws and also continuing to fund 
the work on the border wall system. I want to see us pass all 11 of 
these bills, as well as provide funding for our troops and our 
veterans. Funding medical research. I am committed to funding 
Alzheimer's research, addressing the opioid epidemic, infrastructure, 
and many other priorities.
  I also have a priority that really affects just part of the country 
but deeply affects those of us in West Virginia. We need to enact the 
Bipartisan American Miners Act this year. Congress must act to save the 
healthcare of 13,000 retired miners and protect the pension benefits of 
about 92,000 people. More than 25,000 retired miners received benefits 
in West Virginia last year. We have a bipartisan bill to address this 
critical issue for our mining families and for West Virginia 
communities. It is critical that we pass this bill before the end of 
the year because this situation is getting more dire every single day.

[[Page S6935]]

  The USMCA--United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement--has been 
waiting for action all year, as Senator Ernst said. I am glad to see 
that Speaker Pelosi is finally moving on this. It is an agreement that 
will grow our economy and includes robust protections for American 
workers. We have to get this across the finish line.
  I am especially proud of the work we are doing on the Environment and 
Public Works Committee. We passed a bipartisan 5-year highway bill. It 
had a unanimous vote, 21 to 0. It would help improve roads, highways, 
and bridges that Americans count on every day to travel safely, whether 
they are going to church, going to the job, or going on a family trip. 
Reauthorization of the Federal Surface Transportation Program is a top 
priority for the coming year.
  We have a lot to do in the coming days, but we also have lots to do 
in the coming year. I hope we will work together and not practice the 
past practices of this year. I hope we will work together to get the 
job done.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, I rise to speak today about 
the things Congress is failing to accomplish while Democrats in the 
House continue their obsession with impeaching this President to 
overturn the results of the 2016 election. Let's be clear. That is what 
is happening here. Democrats lost the election in 2016 and realized 
they are going to lose again in 2020. They are trying to use the 
impeachment process to hurt the President.
  That is shameful enough, but let's think about what Congress is not 
doing. Congress is not passing a budget. Congress is not funding our 
military. Congress is not securing our border. Congress is not lowering 
the cost of prescription drugs. Congress is not doing the things the 
American people sent us to Washington to do.
  I won't accept that. I have a background in business, and in the real 
world, if you don't do your job, you don't get paid. It is that simple. 
If Congress can't accomplish even the most basic tasks--passing a 
budget and appropriations bills in an orderly fashion--lawmakers 
shouldn't get a paycheck, period.
  The current system is broken. No one takes responsibility, and there 
are no consequences. That should change. That is why we need to pass my 
No Budget, No Pay proposal now. Withholding paychecks from Members of 
Congress who fail to pass the budget will help prevent government 
shutdowns, which hurt the economy and millions of everyday Americans. 
It is also an important step to promote fiscal responsibility in the 
face of our staggering national debt, which stands at over $23 
trillion.
  No Budget, No Pay is moving through Congress with bipartisan support. 
It was approved by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs Committee in June, and it is included as part of the Prevent 
Government Shutdowns Act. We need to pass No Budget, No Pay now to show 
we are serious about the future of this Nation.
  Members of Congress make $174,000 a year. All we are asking them to 
do is the most basic function of government--pass the budget. It is not 
complicated. If you are a Member of Congress, rich or poor, and you 
don't believe Congress can or should pass a budget every year, then go 
home. There are lots of other competent people who can have your job. 
When the American people don't do their job, there are consequences.
  It is time we make Washington just a little bit more like the real 
world, so I ask all my colleagues to join with me to pass No Budget, No 
Pay.
  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. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                     Nomination of Lawrence VanDyke

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, in the midst of all of the historic 
and profoundly significant events happening these days in Congress, 
there may be a temptation to overlook some of the judicial nominations 
that are coming to the floor of the Senate, some of them almost a 
caricature of the unqualified nominees that we have seen all too often. 
One is before us today, Lawrence VanDyke, who has been nominated to the 
Ninth Circuit.
  Over the past 3 years, we have watched the Trump administration march 
ceaselessly to degrade the judiciary. Yet, even in having witnessed 
this travesty firsthand, I find Mr. VanDyke's nomination truly 
astonishing and alarming. Once again, we are faced with a nominee who 
lacks the support of his home State Senators, who is not even from the 
State for which this seat is designated, and who was rated ``not 
qualified'' by the American Bar Association. That is a pretty tough set 
of qualifications--or lack of them--to match, but Lawrence VanDyke has 
done it.
  These departures from bedrock principles that once guided the 
exercise of the Senate's constitutional duty to advise and consent 
should disturb all of us, but even more disturbing is Mr. VanDyke's 
record as an unrelenting ideologue who has spent his entire legal 
career promoting an extreme political agenda. Unfortunately, that is 
exactly what we can expect of him if he is confirmed to the Ninth 
Circuit Court of Appeals. That ideological, rightwing, extremist image 
and record are exactly why he has been nominated by the President, who 
has outsourced many of these decisions about nominations to the far-
right groups that he feels, evidently, he has to follow.
  Mr. VanDyke has already made it abundantly clear how he will rule on 
gun violence prevention issues. In an NRA questionnaire that he 
completed when he ran for the Montana Supreme Court in 2014, Mr. 
VanDyke stated that he would not support any legislation that would 
regulate firearms and ammunition; any restrictions on the possession, 
ownership, purchase, sale, or transfer of semiautomatic firearms; or 
legislation mandating the use of locking devices and safe storage 
procedures.
  There are currently bills before Congress that would do each of these 
things. I should know, for I sponsored them. None of these proposals--
none--would get a fair hearing in Mr. VanDyke's court. That 
predilection never disavowed, never refuted, never denied should be 
disqualifying.
  Worse still, in the same questionnaire, Mr. VanDyke stated that the 
only reason he was not currently a member of the NRA was that he didn't 
``want to risk recusal if a lawsuit came before me where the NRA was 
involved.'' In other words, he would join the NRA; he supports the NRA; 
he feels like he should be a member of the NRA; and he wants to rule in 
favor of the NRA, but he might have to recuse himself if he were to 
join the NRA. That statement alone should be disqualifying.
  Remember, we are talking about a life-tenured position on the Federal 
judiciary, not just for a few years. This is not an elected position on 
a State court. This is a Federal nomination to the second highest, 
appellate-level court in the United States, second only to the U.S. 
Supreme Court.
  Mr. VanDyke's hostility to commonsense gun violence prevention also 
led him to challenge a law passed by the voters of a State he was 
charged with serving. In 2016--now we are talking about Nevada, not 
Montana--the voters of Nevada approved a ballot measure to expand 
background checks to cover the private sale of firearms. This closed a 
critical loophole in that State's laws. I have repeatedly emphasized 
that we must address this loophole at the Federal level. Nevada 
addressed it at the State level, but Mr. VanDyke, who was at the time 
that State's solicitor general, took the very unusual step of working 
to undermine the voter-approved law.
  Meanwhile, when he worked for the Montana attorney general, he was 
all too happy to defend an extreme and poorly drafted State law that 
sought to exempt from all Federal regulation the firearms and 
ammunition that were made in Montana. Don't take my word for it, as 
Yogi Berra said. You can look it up. Mr. VanDyke himself stated in an 
email to the Federalist Society that this statute was ``ill-advised'' 
and that he could not come up with ``any plausible (much less good 
arguments)'' to

[[Page S6936]]

defend that State's law. That didn't stop Mr. VanDyke from defending 
the law nor did it stop the Federalist Society from providing him with 
the help he had requested in contriving arguments and concocting ill-
founded claims to support the law.
  When Mr. VanDyke wants a particular outcome but can't figure it out 
himself or he can't find the legal path to it, he turns to the 
Federalist Society for answers. There is no great mystery here about 
how he will act when he is faced with similar situations if he is 
confirmed as a judge for the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth 
Circuit.
  Unfortunately, Mr. VanDyke's promotion of the NRA's extreme positions 
is far from the only plank of his far-right agenda. He has made many 
statements that are hostile to LGBTQ rights, including questioning the 
ability of gay parents to raise children and suggesting that protecting 
LGBTQ rights is an affront to religious liberty. He has fought 
tirelessly to uphold State bans on gay marriage, and he has fought to 
allow discrimination against LGBTQ people in public accommodations. His 
open hostility to LGBTQ people was one of the main reasons the ABA 
rated him ``not qualified.'' Not only is it clear how he would rule on 
issues relating to those rights, but the ABA was not even confident 
that he could treat LGBTQ litigants fairly regardless of the issue 
before him. That is disqualifying.
  Mr. VanDyke is also an ideologue on reproductive rights issues. His 
adherence to his extremist positions against women's healthcare and 
reproductive rights has blinded him to the need about these rights. In 
2013, he signed an amicus brief that stated: ``A growing body of 
scientific literature shows that a fetus can suffer physical pain at 
20-weeks' gestation.'' That view was rejected emphatically by the 
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which felt 
compelled to put out a statement that laid this dangerous ``fetal 
pain'' myth to rest.
  Whether he cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction or 
simply feels comfortable misleading the court, this kind of behavior is 
disturbing for a Federal judicial nominee. Ordinarily, this kind of 
indifference to the truth would be disqualifying for a Federal nominee. 
Ordinarily, blind adherence to ideology would be disqualifying for any 
nominee to an important position of trust and respect. Ordinarily, the 
fact that a nominee is unqualified would be disqualifying itself. Yet, 
for Mr. Trump, these are not disqualifying flaws. They are, in fact, 
the reasons for his nomination.
  So let's send the White House a message that we will insist on 
qualified nominees. They may have views that are different from ours, 
but they should be qualified to hold these lifetime positions of trust 
on our Nation's highest courts. I hope that we will reject Mr. 
VanDyke's nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Connecticut, 
Senator Blumenthal, and others in urging my colleagues to oppose the 
nomination of Lawrence VanDyke.
  I may risk repeating some of the ground that has been covered by 
Senator Blumenthal, but I think it is important enough that we 
reiterate over and over the dangerous nature of this particular 
nomination.
  I have come down to speak on the floor in opposition to maybe only a 
handful of the President's judicial nominees. In fact, if you look up 
the voting record, I probably am amongst a very small handful of 
Democrats who have routinely voted for the President's nominees--not 
just judicial nominees but also his appointments to positions in his 
administration.
  Often in committee, I am the only Democrat supporting some of the 
President's nominees and appointments, and that is because I have come 
to the conclusion that this body should give deference to the 
administration and to the President when it comes particularly to 
filling the positions of those who work for him in political 
appointments but to a degree as well in the judiciary.
  So I put my votes where my test is, and probably with only two or 
three exceptions in the Democratic caucus, I have voted for more of the 
President's nominees than the rest of my colleagues on this side of the 
aisle. My test is pretty simple. One, I want individuals who are 
qualified. Obviously qualifications are sometimes in the eye of the 
beholder, but I want folks who know something about the job they are 
about to undertake or have some set of skills that will be relevant. 
Second, I want to make sure the candidates we are reviewing for 
judgeships or administration posts are not out of the mainstream--I 
mean the conservative mainstream. I don't want folks who have radical 
points of view.
  Mr. VanDyke doesn't pass that test as far as I am concerned, and that 
is why I chose to come down to the floor and express my opposition to 
his nomination. In particular, I do not believe Mr. VanDyke is within 
the mainstream when it comes to his positions on the issue of gun 
violence.
  Obviously this is a personal issue not just to me but to everybody in 
this Chamber, and we have a lot of disagreement--maybe a narrowing set 
of disagreements on the policy surrounding what we should do to better 
protect this country against the growing scourge of gun violence. But 
Mr. VanDyke has held a position that would take away from this body the 
ability to keep our friends and our neighbors and our constituents 
safe. Mr. VanDyke's record as a candidate for the supreme court and as 
solicitor general was to endorse views outside of the mainstream that 
would take away from us the ability to pass laws to keep people safe. 
Let me tell you what I am talking about.
  First and foremost, he was a vocal proponent of something called the 
Firearms Freedom Act. As solicitor general of Montana, he argued that 
the Federal Government should not have the power to regulate gun 
ownership in his State of Montana.
  This is a political cause that is picking up steam in some 
conservative circles around the country, but it is still a radical 
notion, the idea that the Congress can pass a law restricting who can 
own a gun or what kinds of guns can be owned and that a State can just 
claim those laws are not valid in that State. That is what Montana was 
attempting to do, and that is what Mr. VanDyke was pushing--the idea 
that that State was just going to conveniently avoid enforcing Federal 
firearms acts and laws.
  That position is unconstitutional, and Federal courts have held that 
it is unconstitutional, but that didn't stop Mr. VanDyke from pushing 
what is essentially a political cause--the idea that one of the ways to 
stymie Federal action on guns is to just convince States to pass laws 
saying they won't enforce Federal laws. That is a very slippery slope 
to go down--certainly on the issue of enforcement of firearms laws, but 
it is a slippery slope to go down with respect to any Federal laws that 
States may want to ignore or invalidate.
  Second, Mr. VanDyke has taken a position opposing the 
constitutionality of restrictions on the sales of certain types of 
weapons.
  We have big disagreements here as to which kinds of weapons should be 
sold commercially and which kinds of weapons should be reserved for law 
enforcement and the military. I believe that semiautomatic, assault-
style weapons like the AR-15 are best left in the hands of those they 
were designed for--soldiers and law enforcement. Many of my Republican 
colleagues don't agree. But that should be a debate we have here, and I 
simply do not believe our Founding Fathers would accept the premise 
that the Constitution restricts our ability to decide what kinds of 
weapons should be in civilian hands and what kinds of weapons should be 
in the hands of the military. There was all sorts of gun regulation 
happening at the time of the passage of the U.S. Constitution. They 
were not unfamiliar with the idea that government was going to have a 
hand to play in regulating firearms, and I reject the idea that the 
Constitution bars us from having those debates.
  Mr. VanDyke has spent a lot of time arguing that the Constitution 
prohibits Congress from acting to keep dangerous weapons out of the 
hands of civilians. It is one thing to have a policy objection; it is 
another thing to put somebody into the Federal court system who doesn't 
think we should have ownership as a political body of a question that 
is inherently political, not constitutional.

[[Page S6937]]

  I come to the floor to point out just a handful of ways in which Mr. 
VanDyke's record, I believe, is outside of the conservative mainstream 
when it comes to guns. I think he holds positions that would make even 
NRA-endorsed Republicans in this body a little uncomfortable, 
especially this idea that States can nullify Federal firearms laws.
  Although I think there are many reasons to draw issue with this 
particular nominee, I put this set of issues at the top of the list. 
Again, this is coming from someone who has spent a lot of time 
supporting the President's nominees with whom I have big policy 
disagreements. I think this is beyond a question of policy 
disagreements. This is someone who is going to bring some pretty 
radical ideas on what the Constitution allows States to do and what the 
Constitution allows this body to do when it comes to keeping our 
constituents safe.
  I would urge us to oppose Lawrence VanDyke's nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  (The remarks of Mr. Lankford pertaining to the introduction of S. 
3009 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. LANKFORD. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, let me begin by commending our friend from 
Oklahoma for his patience. It takes a lot of patience to get things 
done around here. It also takes a lot of perseverance. Sometimes I 
think that if you can't convince people, maybe you can just wear down 
their resistance over time. But this is an idea whose time has come, 
and I congratulate our friend from Oklahoma and Senator Hassan and 
would love to join them in supporting their effort. Thank you.


                              Impeachment

  Mr. President, as you heard from the Senator from Oklahoma, this has 
been another wild week in Washington, DC. It looks like the House is 
working to remove the President of the United States and that their 
work is nearing the finish line.
  This morning, the House Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment, 
and it looks like the Judiciary Committee is headed for a vote later 
this week. I assume that means it will come to the floor of the House 
next week before they leave.
  On top of that, this morning, Speaker Pelosi announced that House 
Democrats and the Trump administration had reached an agreement on the 
USMCA--the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement--which would be 
the successor to NAFTA.
  In my State, NAFTA is not a dirty word, and indeed, I believe, by the 
Chamber of Commerce figures, which indicate that NAFTA and trades 
between Mexico, United States, and Canada supports about 13 million 
jobs in the United States alone, and the USMCA will improve that NAFTA 
trade agreement, create more jobs and more prosperity. I will be 
looking to see what this looks like in writing.
  We had Ambassador Lighthizer, the Trade Representative, on the 
conference call this morning trying to go through some of the top 
lines, but I am still reviewing the details of this agreement to ensure 
that it is in the best interest of my constituents, Texas farmers and 
ranchers, manufacturers, and consumers.


                           Government Funding

  Mr. President, as you heard from the Senator from Oklahoma, we are 
just 10 days away from a complete government shutdown unless we reach 
some sort of agreement on spending bills. We thought we had taken care 
of this last August when Democrats and Republican Senators and House 
Members agreed to a top line of spending, but unfortunately, after the 
August recess, our Democratic colleagues walked that back and led us 
now up to the precipice of, yes, another government shutdown.


                          Russia Investigation

  Mr. President, on top of all of this, the Justice Department 
Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, yesterday released his report on 
the counterintelligence investigation of the Trumbull campaign and any 
potential contacts with Russia.
  We know Director Mueller, Special Counsel, has concluded after about 
2 years that there was no collusion, no obstruction, but this was an 
investigation of something called Crossfire Hurricane, which is a 
counterintelligence investigation by the FBI that ultimately led to the 
appointment of the special counsel.
  I want to talk a little bit in advance of Inspector Horowitz's 
appearance before the Judiciary Committee tomorrow because it is very, 
very important. We may recall that this process started about a year 
and a half ago after speculation over the motivation and the methods of 
the FBI in opening up an investigation on President Trump when he was 
still Candidate Trump. The 2016 election was historic in many ways, but 
one of the ways in which it was historic in not a positive way was the 
fact that both Presidential candidates were under active FBI 
investigations leading up to the election--Hillary Clinton, for her use 
of a private email server.
  We saw the press conference held by Director Comey on July 5, I 
believe it was, only to reopen the investigation publicly days before 
the election. You can imagine how Secretary Clinton felt about Director 
Comey's actions and what potential influence it had on the outcome of 
the election, but now, depending on which TV channel you watch or what 
sort of social media feed that you subscribe to, there are vastly 
different narratives about what this inspector general report that 
spans 400-plus pages does or does not prove. But when you take away all 
the spin, there are some key findings in this report that should be of 
grave concern to every American--Republicans, Democrats, unaffiliated. 
If you are an American citizen and you care about civil liberties, you 
should care about what is in this report.
  First of all, there are errors and inaccuracies in something called a 
foreign intelligence surveillance warrant. People may not realize it, 
but the intelligence community cannot open up an investigation on an 
American citizen unless they get a warrant issued by a judge upon the 
showing of probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed.
  Now, the law is different when it comes to non-citizens overseas, and 
that is what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act purports to 
cover, the procedures and the protocol and the oversight of that very 
delicate yet very important process.
  One of the things that gives me assurance that our intelligence 
community is operating within its guidelines and the law is the 
oversight that Congress provides on a regular basis. It is the laws we 
pass, like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is the work 
being done by the committees, the Select Committee on Intelligence.
  I see Senator Wyden from Oregon who serves and served with 
distinction on that committee for a long time, but those intelligence 
committees, both in the House and the Senate, provide essential 
oversight of our intelligence agencies to make sure they stay within 
the hashmarks, to stay within the guardrails that Congress prescribes 
under the law.
  Then there are the internal rules used at the FBI, the National 
Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, that they have to 
comply with, their own internal guidelines derived from the authorities 
Congress provides. Then there is a very important court called the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. When the FBI believes they 
have to open an investigation into a potential intelligence matter, 
they can apply for a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant, which 
opens up authorities they can use to gather intelligence to investigate 
this threat to national security of the United States, but it is a very 
laborious and detailed process.
  They have to apply to the court, and the court relies on the 
representations made in that application. That is why you have heard so 
much discussion in recent months and even years about the foreign 
intelligence surveillance application issued on some of the people 
affiliated with the Trump campaign, including a man named Carter Page. 
These documents are submitted to a Federal court to determine whether 
the government should have access to what would otherwise be private 
communications.
  In this instance, the question was: Was there any indication Mr. Page 
was

[[Page S6938]]

an agent of a foreign power and improperly using his relationship with 
the Russian Government and the Russian intelligence services to become 
a threat to the national security of the United States?
  I would think we would all agree, as a fundamental matter, that 
spying on an American citizen is no small thing, but that is what we 
are talking about here. There are strong and exhaustive processes in 
place to prevent the government from abusing the powers provided under 
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and that supports where the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court comes into play.

  This court, like most courts, relies on the honesty and the accuracy 
and the completeness of the information provided to do its job 
properly, but we know in the case of the Carter Page application, there 
were a multitude of errors. In fact, the inspector general has 
identified 17 errors in the four different applications for a warrant 
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  One of them jumps out at me because it involves a lawyer in the 
general counsel's office at the FBI altering a government record and 
intentionally deceiving the FISA court about Carter Page's involvement 
with the intelligence community--in this case another member of the 
intelligence community, a Federal agency. But this lawyer with the FBI 
Office of General Counsel intentionally altered that record so that, in 
the application for the FISA warrant, the FBI would literally be 
relying and deceiving the FISA court about the facts. That is a grave 
and serious and profound problem.
  We know there are a number of other errors. That is hardly an error. 
That is an intentional act for which I understand the gentleman who 
made that doctored email has now been referred for a criminal 
investigation and perhaps prosecution for intentionally violating the 
FBI's policy and providing a deceptive piece of information to the FISA 
court.
  Willingly, I know Mr. Horowitz is going to be asked about political 
bias, and he says there is no documentary or testamentary indication of 
political bias, but I think what this report demonstrates is something 
a lot more serious than political bias. It demonstrates an abuse of 
power that ought to concern every American citizen because, if these 
rogue agents at the FBI--primarily the leadership of the FBI--can do 
this to a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, or the President of the 
United States, they can do it to any one of us. What sort of power 
would we have if the might of the Federal Government was concentrated 
in a raid against us in this sort of investigation? That is why we must 
take these sorts of failures and intentional deceptions very, very 
seriously.
  Well, to make matters worse, we know this application relied on the 
deeply flawed Steele dossier. Well, the Steele dossier was a piece of 
opposition research produced by the Hillary Clinton campaign against 
Donald Trump. What they did is they hired a former intelligence agent 
from the United Kingdom, Mr. Steele, to generate what has now been 
called a dossier. I want to remind my colleagues that, when Attorney 
General Barr testified before the Judiciary Committee earlier this 
year, I asked him if he could state with confidence that the Steele 
dossier was not a part of a Russian disinformation campaign, and the 
Attorney General said, no, he could not make that statement with 
confidence.
  He told the committee that this is one of the areas he was reviewing 
as part of his investigation, but he said, ``I don't think it's 
entirely speculative.''
  The inspector general touched on this in his report but noted that an 
investigation of this dossier falls outside the scope of the inspector 
general's oversight role. His job is primarily to do oversight of the 
FBI and the Department of Justice and not to investigate these outside 
matters. But we need to know with confidence whether this Steele 
dossier was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. We are all 
profoundly concerned about foreign countries becoming involved in our 
elections, and there was no more intrusive means of getting involved in 
the 2016 election than the generation of this dossier. We need to know 
its providence. We need to know whether this was planted by our 
adversaries in order to create distension and discord, which has been 
obviously the result of this investigation for the last 3 years. So I 
hope Attorney General Barr or U.S. Attorney John Durham will be able to 
provide clarity on this topic.
  This is especially important considering we learned from this 400-
page-plus report that the dossier played a central and essential role 
in the FISA process. As time went on, a new and even exculpatory or 
innocent information was discovered. We know that the information 
provided by the FBI in these renewal applications for this FISA warrant 
were not correct.
  Well, the inspector general failed to resolve whether the FISA was 
improperly issued, but the report suggested the FISA board is 
considering this question, as well it should. I have never sat on a 
FISA court, but I have spent 13 years as a State court judge. When you 
lie to a judge, that judge takes it seriously, and they have contempt 
powers and other recourse when that happens. So it is essential that 
the FISA court weigh in.
  Let me say once again, no American should be subjected to this kind 
of abuse of power by their own government. That is why we need to 
restore the public confidence in the FBI. I believe Director Chris Wray 
has begun that process and make sure that these types of egregious 
errors and intentional acts do not become the norm.
  Director Wray sent a letter to the Department of Justice's Office of 
Inspector General, detailing actions his agency will take to strengthen 
the FISA processes and make these documents less susceptible to errors 
or intentional alterations. I appreciate the Director's acknowledgement 
of these problems under the agency's previous leadership and his 
commitment to preventing similar errors and alterations.
  That brings me to another concern. This has to do with something 
called the defensive briefings. This is something that Loretta Lynch, 
the former Attorney General, said was routine in counterintelligence 
matters. Let me explain for a minute.
  The FBI provides many different functions. We are most familiar with 
its law enforcement investigation function. They investigate potential 
crimes and present that to the Department of Justice, which then 
decides whether to charge a person with a crime. That is one of the 
most important roles the FBI plays. But it also plays a very important 
role when it comes to counterintelligence; that is, countering the 
malign activities of foreign nations like Russia and China and the 
threats they pose to our national security.
  What Loretta Lynch told us is that these defensive briefings are 
fairly standard. It is an opportunity for the FBI to advise the target 
of these threats by a foreign influence so that they can take steps to 
protect themselves. We know that both candidates, Hillary Clinton and 
Donald Trump, received something called the defensive briefings in 
August of 2015.
  The defensive briefing for the Trump campaign lasted 13 minutes, 
according to this report. It was a check-the-box, perfunctory defensive 
briefing. I am confident the FBI did not come in to tell President 
Trump, then-Candidate Trump: The Russians are checking the doors and 
the windows, and they are trying to break into your campaign. You need 
to tell these people who are affiliated with your campaign to keep 
their eyes open and to knock off their association with these likely 
Russian intelligence officers.
  At the time, the FBI believed the Russians were infiltrating the 
Trump campaign. The FBI should have told them, but they didn't. So this 
is different from a criminal investigation, as I said.
  The FBI was presented with a couple of options when it came to 
advising the Trump campaign. One was to provide as much information as 
possible so that they could have given a real, constructive briefing 
about known threats and sufficient information to help the Trump 
campaign mitigate the threat. But that is not what the FBI did.
  Option two was to provide a generic briefing--no specifics, no names, 
no real details, just a generic warning that foreign governments are 
actively working to interfere with the election and maybe a little 
lecture about cyber hygiene and why you should change your passwords, 
maybe get dual authentication when it comes to accessing websites and 
email, and not to

[[Page S6939]]

click on those phishing emails that we all get from time to time that 
could unload a Trojan horse or some other malware onto your computer. 
But that is not what FBI did here either.
  Somehow, the FBI managed to come up with a third option, as 
documented in this report. They used this briefing not as a way to 
alert the Trump campaign of potential threats from Russian intelligence 
services; they used it as an opportunity to conduct an investigation 
against General Flynn, who worked on President Trump's campaign. They 
were even so bold as to insert one of those investigatory agents--part 
of the Crossfire Hurricane investigative team--into that briefing with 
President Trump and his campaign.
  Knowing that the FBI did that in this case, I can't imagine many 
campaigns that would want a defensive briefing because you, frankly, 
couldn't trust the intentions of these officials. Would you believe 
that they were there to share intelligence and help you protect 
American national security or conduct an investigation, unbeknownst to 
you?
  When we talk about the need to secure our elections from foreign 
interference, you can't, in the process, destroy public confidence in 
all of our institutions, including the FBI.
  I want to be clear. I am glad Director Wray addressed these defensive 
briefings yesterday, among other matters. I have confidence in Director 
Wray, and I think a new leadership in the FBI since all of this 
terrible period occurred has been encouraging.
  Director Wray has clarified what his predecessors clearly missed, 
saying: ``The FBI's role in these briefings should be for national 
security purposes and not for investigative purposes.''
  This report has left me with a number of questions and a lot of 
concerns, and I am glad we will have the opportunity to ask Inspector 
General Horowitz more about this report tomorrow in the Judiciary 
Committee.
  It is important that we get to the bottom of concerted efforts to 
deceive the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the use of 
salacious and unverified materials in order to justify the issuance of 
these very sensitive FISA warrants.
  I believe some of the actions the inspector general has identified 
undermine public confidence in our public safety and national security 
measures, and that is something we should all be willing to fight for.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.


                               Healthcare

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when the Trump administration comes to an 
end, it is going to leave behind a host of sad and, I would consider, 
shameful legacies, and right near the top of the list will be the 
shocking number of children who have lost healthcare coverage under 
this administration.
  I am sure folks can't really see the specific numbers here, but this 
trend line is what is important, taking figures from the Census 
Department--people who are not political; they are not Democrats or 
Republicans. What this chart, based on census data shows, is that, for 
year after year after year, we saw the number of uninsured kids in 
America go down. That is something I think was important for our 
country. It said a lot about our values, and it certainly said a lot 
about our healthcare system.
  Sure, we are going to spend more than $3.5 trillion on healthcare. If 
you were to divide that up into 320 million Americans, you can send 
every family of four a check for $40,000. So we are spending enough on 
healthcare, but we are not spending it in the right places.
  In particular, I wanted to come to the floor--and I am glad to see my 
friend, the Presiding Officer, who has worked with me on a variety of 
healthcare issues; we have some areas we are going to be talking about 
in the days ahead. To me, one of the areas of healthcare, until 
recently, we could all take pride in was this chart, which nobody could 
really see, but it showed this trend line in which the number of 
uninsured kids was going down.
  Unfortunately, in the Trump administration, that trend line of years 
and years and years of more kids getting healthcare coverage has been 
reversed, and now more kids are uninsured.
  How did the Trump people do it? They are not going to stand up in 
front of a government agency and say: Oh, we just don't like kids. But 
what they did is hurt those kids and their parents by keeping them in 
the dark for years while there were efforts, bipartisan ones--my 
friend, who joined the Finance Committee recently, knows that our 
previous chairman, Senator Hatch, worked with me for a record-setting 
extension for the Children's Health Insurance Program. The efforts to 
expand coverage for kids were all bipartisan--always--going back, 
really, for decades now, particularly on the Finance Committee.
  I think of the late Senator John Chafee and the late Senator John 
Heinz--people whom I admire so much--and they always wanted to find 
common ground, Democrats and Republicans, working for children. But now 
the Trump administration, in the dark, has come up with proposals that 
have made it harder for parents to sign up their kids, harder for them 
to stay enrolled, and harder for these families--parents with young 
kids--to even know about their rights, their rights to healthcare.
  So now, as a result of the Trump administration's reversing this 
trend of years and years of expanded coverage for kids, we have 
hundreds of thousands of parents clinging to the hope that their kids 
don't get hurt on the playground, catch flu in the classroom, or worse.
  We know that this falls hardest on the families walking an economic 
tightrope. Every month they are balancing their food against their fuel 
bill, their fuel bill against their healthcare. One injury, one 
illness, could be financially devastating for these kids and their 
families, and it can be a major setback for kids for years, if not for 
the rest of their lives. How is a sick kid supposed to succeed in 
school and get ahead if they are unable to see a doctor when they have 
serious illnesses?
  I have mentioned that I know the two sides--this side of the aisle 
and that side of the aisle--can work together to find common ground on 
children's healthcare.
  At the end of his service, Chairman Hatch--who, as my colleague the 
distinguished Presiding Officer knows, cared greatly about kids; he was 
very involved with the late Senator Ted Kennedy and others in coming up 
with the children's health plan--said: We want to set a record. We want 
to get a 10-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program.
  We managed to do it. But if you cut the services for people to find 
out how to get enrolled, stay enrolled, and if there are changes in 
programs, those changes in policy, which took place when the Trump 
administration came to Washington, rippled through very quickly to 
communities across the country where vulnerable Americans depend on 
getting good quality healthcare. I just think it is unconscionable.
  As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, for a country with the 
resources America has, you wouldn't step in if you saw this trend of 
progress--fewer uninsured kids--suddenly be reversed. And it really 
happened very quickly. When the Trump administration took over, you 
would say: Hey, let's get Democrats and Republicans together, pull out 
all the stops to fix it, and get the trend line going in the right 
direction again with more kids getting healthcare coverage. We would 
have had to take on the Trump administration here in the Congress. We 
would have had to take on all of those programs in which the Trump 
administration made it harder for kids to get enrolled and to stay 
enrolled, but it would have been the right thing. It would have been 
the right thing for Democrats and Republicans in the Congress to step 
in and take on the Trump administration and say: Look, we understand 
there can be debates and differences of opinion, but you don't score 
points by attacking the services for children available under the 
Affordable Care Act.

  I am going to keep working to reverse this crisis. My colleagues have 
been coming from this side of the aisle all through the day to talk 
about this scourge: the reversal of the trend in this country with 
respect to healthcare coverage. We used to be expanding it for kids. 
Now it is going the other way. The amount of coverage is being reduced.

[[Page S6940]]

  I just want to say, as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance 
Committee, which has jurisdiction over many of the healthcare programs 
that are most important for kids and families on an economic tightrope, 
I and I know my colleagues on the Finance Committee--several of whom 
have spoken over the last few days on this subject--would be glad to 
work with any Republican in this Senate who wants to turn this around. 
If any Republican is listening to this and wants to come to the floor 
and say: I am interested. I am interested in turning around this 
ominous trend. I am interested in turning around this trend where 
healthcare coverage for kids is going down, and I want to work with 
Democrats to do it, I will commit, as the ranking Democrat on the 
Finance Committee, to say: Thank goodness. We have to get on this. This 
is too important to our country and to our future to just sit idly by 
and say we are going to reduce the number of kids who are getting 
healthcare coverage because we are not going to give parents the 
opportunity to find out how to get enrolled and stay enrolled and know 
what their rights are.
  A country as strong and good and rich as ours ought to be looking for 
every possible opportunity to help kids get ahead in life. That, in my 
view, starts with access to healthcare. Right up at the top of the 
list, it starts, in my view, by saying that this trend line, which 
after years and years of showing more kids were getting covered, is now 
going the other way, and fewer kids are getting covered. We are going 
to say, as a body in the U.S. Senate: We are going to change that, and 
in a country that is as strong and good and rich as ours, those 
vulnerable families are going to be able to get healthcare again.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. McSally). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            Legislative Work

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, it has been so interesting today to 
hear my colleagues talk about the things we have done this year, the 
things we have to get done before the end of the year that haven't been 
addressed yet, and then things that need to be addressed this next year 
in 2020.
  I will tell you, 2019, for me, I look at it as, I would say, 
successes and stalls and then some forward motion on some really 
important pieces of legislation. To get there, we really have had some 
fairly intense debates, which have prompted our constituents and those 
back in Tennessee to have their own discussions about what they think 
is or is not happening here in Washington, DC.
  My hope is that their debates around the kitchen table are sometimes 
less heated than ours, and certainly I hope that their Thanksgiving 
table debates were less heated than some of these that you see taking 
place here.
  Tennesseans, like a lot of Americans, when they end up talking about 
what we are or are not doing here in Congress, they revert back to 
first principles. I cannot tell you the number of times over this past 
holiday that I heard people say: Look, for me, it is all about freedom. 
It is all about defending the freedoms that we have--protecting that 
life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
  They are looking at that. It is fair to say they think in the long 
term. While many times I think the media here in DC just follows that 
shiny object story of the day, whatever is generating clicks and likes 
and headlines, that is where they are, but Tennesseans are not focused 
that way. What they would like to see is for our actions here in 
Washington to be taken in a way that are going to keep them and their 
neighborhoods and their friends safe and secure and healthy and free 
and keep them out of the reach of government overreach, if you will.
  As someone said to me last weekend, ``I just want the Federal 
Government off my back and out of my pocketbook. I want to be able to 
keep working and keep growing my business.'' A lot of people are there.
  Now, we have seen movement this week. A very good thing that has 
happened is the National Defense Authorization Act. I know that Madam 
President has worked tirelessly on this, as have I, for all of our 
military community members in Tennessee. We have been very pleased that 
we are going to see Fort Campbell and the divisions that call Fort 
Campbell home getting the funds and the equipment they need in order to 
protect themselves and to do their jobs--whether it is Chinooks or more 
training capacity or equipment and also an emphasis on making certain 
that we are keeping their homes safe so those families are safe in that 
military on-post housing, that privatized housing, while their loved 
ones are deployed.
  While we are looking at other components of the NDAA, Tennesseans 
have been very concerned and are very pleased, I will say, about what 
has transpired with Oak Ridge National Labs and Y-12. Oak Ridge is a 
treasure for our Nation, and much of the research in supercomputing and 
hypersonics is being done there.
  Also, in the Senate this year, we are paying attention to the 
implementation of legislation very important to our songwriters. I know 
you have heard me say, time and again, that Middle Tennessee, 
Nashville, is one of the most creative communities on the face of the 
Earth and home to more songwriters than anywhere else on the face of 
the Earth, and the Music Modernization Act is going to make certain 
that Nashville artists and songwriters are being paid fairly for the 
work they are creating. We are pleased that these are all things we 
have worked hard on, and we see these as priorities.
  When it comes to a legislative agenda that has taken much of my time, 
I started this term in the Senate working on some things that protect 
the unborn, much as I had done in my service in the House. The first 
bill I introduced over here was the Title X Abortion Provider 
Prohibition Act, and this is something Tennesseans wanted to see done 
to make certain that tax dollars would not be used to fund or support 
abortion providers, and it would not go to those clinics.
  What Tennesseans wanted to see was those tax dollars being put to 
work in rural healthcare and enable access to healthcare for women and 
for individuals who did not have access to basic healthcare needs. Our 
State has been hit hard by rural hospital closures, and thousands of 
Tennesseans are now forced to drive miles out of their way to seek 
basic care. I will tell you, this is concerning, especially for the 
people living in the most remote areas of the State for whom there is 
no such thing as a quick ride or a quick ambulance trip to the 
hospital. It is miles of travel sometimes, when those minutes are very 
precious and they feel that time is passing quickly and it is critical 
to get to that care.
  As part of my work this year, I have worked on and developed a rural 
health agenda, which has earned bipartisan support here. I thank 
Senator Durbin for his work with me on this. I will tell you, this is 
legislation that, yes, it has bipartisan support here, but it has a lot 
of support scattered around the country.
  What this will do is support the establishment and expansion of 
medical facilities in rural areas. It will help doctors and other 
medical practitioners set up shop outside of the more convenient and 
lucrative urban bubbles. It also will enable telemedicine so that you 
are taking healthcare out to these areas that have a difficult time 
getting in.
  Speaking of the urban bubble, a lack of access to healthcare isn't 
the only thing that is causing headaches right now in rural America. 
Here, in Washington, we don't have to worry about having a reliable 
phone signal or an internet connection. We are really fortunate in that 
regard. We know when we click on, it is just going to work, but outside 
of America's metropolitan areas, communities that lack these resources 
are falling behind. My Internet Exchange Act will ensure that rural 
areas are able to build and maintain the infrastructure needed to 
support high-speed internet connections, which will in turn support 
business growth and e-commerce and encourage investment from outside 
corporations looking to expand.
  You cannot have 21st century education, economic development,

[[Page S6941]]

healthcare, or law enforcement without access to high-speed internet. 
Continuing to close that digital divide is a priority, and I thank my 
colleagues for the good progress we have made this year.
  Of course, that connectivity comes with a price. Opening ourselves up 
to the online world means opening ourselves up to the possibilities of 
cyber attacks. This is a problem we have to approach as a matter of 
national security, as well as on the corporate side and in our homes.
  In addition to funding for military pay raises and upgraded 
equipment, this year's NDAA, or the National Defense Authorization Act, 
includes support for the assessment and expansion of our cyber 
warfighting capabilities. As I said, that is only one very important 
part of the equation. While I was serving in the House and before I 
came to the Senate, I worked on legislation that will get consumers all 
the information they need in order to make a decision about how they 
want to share their private information and to whom they want to give 
access to that information.
  Once passed, my bipartisan BROWSER Act will give consumers more 
control over how big tech uses their personal data. You, the consumer, 
should be able to own your virtual you. You should be able to protect 
your presence online, just as you are able to protect your being 
yourself in the physical space.
  In return, tech companies will be free to innovate and use that data 
to build their platforms, and that is what helps make them profitable--
new innovations. They can do that as long as they respect your wishes 
on how you want them to use your data.
  As head of the Judiciary Committee's tech task force--and I do thank 
Senator Feinstein for her leadership in leading this group at the 
Judiciary Committee--I have had the privilege of bringing both sides 
together on this debate and to the table to have productive discussions 
on how to responsibly regulate big tech. I look forward to continuing 
that in the New Year.
  As we draw to a close, I remind my colleagues that in Tennessee 
people remind me regularly that we are a government of the people, by 
the people, and for the people. As we talk about things that have been 
done this year and things that we need to do before the end of the 
year--things like getting VAWA passed--we need to remember that for all 
of the shiny-object stories that circulate around here every single 
day, the people back home are saying: Your responsibility is to care 
for the issues that are important to me. That is where they would like 
to see us spending our time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I have one very short remark that I 
want to make and then longer remarks to my colleagues.


                              Impeachment

  Madam President, House Democrats announced that they are moving to 
impeach President Trump for--in their words--abuse of power. When all 
of this started, Democrats said the President committed a quid pro quo, 
but that didn't poll very well among the American people. At that 
point, the House Democrats switched to an accusation of bribery against 
the President. Maybe that didn't poll well either or maybe they 
discovered that history doesn't support their definition. Finally, they 
settled on abuse of power.
  It is kind of like a Goldilocks impeachment. The ``quid pro quo'' 
bowl was too cold, and the bribery bowl was too hot. But, apparently, 
abuse of power tastes just right, while the American people are 
increasingly getting a bad taste in their mouth about the Democrats' 
partisan impeachment story.


                          Russia Investigation

  Madam President, I want to comment on the Horowitz report, out 
yesterday. On Monday of this week, the Justice Department inspector 
general released his report on the Justice Department and the FBI 
investigation into the debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded 
with the Russian Government. I have pushed to shine a light on the 
origins of the FBI Russia investigation for more than 2\1/2\ years. You 
can see that it has been a long road.
  When information is embarrassing, the FBI has a way of fighting tooth 
and nail to keep it all secret, to keep it heavily classified. The FBI 
is hiding behind vague procedural excuses about protecting the 
integrity of ongoing investigations and all kinds of excuses not to 
come forth and not to let public information come forward that might 
embarrass them.
  In this case, they put up a wall. You have to keep swinging in order 
to crack that wall. I started looking into the origins of the FBI's 
corrupt Russia investigation way back in March of 2017. At that time, 
it became clear that the FBI had used Christopher Steele's work to 
investigate then-Candidate Donald Trump. This was all done even though 
the FBI knew that Steele was working for an organization called Fusion 
GPS. Fusion GPS is an opposition research firm paid for by the 
Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. The FBI knew 
that.
  When the FBI didn't answer my questions, I used my authority as 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold up the nomination of 
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. That got the Judiciary Committee a 
briefing from the FBI. It consisted of a lot of veiled half answers and 
assertions that somehow Christopher Steele was reliable. We all know 
that he wasn't reliable. I will give details on that shortly.
  In June of 2017, I asked the FBI to produce all the FISA applications 
related to its Russia investigation. After 6 months of wrangling, in 
December 2017, Senator Graham, Senator Feinstein, and I were permitted 
to review the four FISA applications in which the FBI sought authority 
to surveil former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page, as well as a 
number of classified documents relating to Mr. Steele.
  I also directed my staff to look in public places that others were 
ignoring. That led us to Mr. Steele's court filings in London. What my 
staff found was that Mr. Steele had admitted to passing some of the 
contents of his dossier far and wide to media organizations. That 
raised a very important question about whether information Steele 
gathered was open to manipulation or just part of one big feedback 
loop.
  We also learned that, according to the FBI, Steele had told the FBI 
he had not spoken to the media about his findings, and that was in 
direct contradiction to what he said in court in London.
  After reviewing all of this information, Senator Graham and I wrote a 
letter referring Mr. Steele to the FBI for potential violation of 18 
USC 1001. That section of the code makes charges of lying to the FBI. 
At the heart of our referral was an 8-page memorandum that laid out 
much of what we had learned from my investigative efforts at that 
point.
  We now know from the IG report that the FBI top brass was aware of 
Mr. Steele's statements to the British court in spring 2017, but the 
FBI never accessed those filings and never considered telling the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its assurances about 
Steele's third party contacts were in fact wrong.
  As soon as the referral went out, I began pushing the FBI to 
declassify as much of those referrals as possible. The FBI resisted my 
efforts every step of the way because this is probably going to be very 
embarrassing to them.
  My fight to make information in the referral memo public was helped 
along very directly by President Trump, who declassified a memo 
prepared by the House Intelligence Committee that touched a number of 
the same topics.
  In February 2018, Senator Graham and I also wrote Inspector General 
Horowitz to call his attention to everything we had learned and request 
that he conduct a comprehensive review of improper political influence, 
misconduct, and mismanagement of the FBI's Russia investigation.
  My efforts have been based on my investigative activity and also the 
overriding need for more transparency from the American Government 
because transparency brings accountability.
  After the release of the Russia report, there had better be 
accountability. The inspector general's findings ought to concern every 
single Member of this Chamber because it concerns the American people. 
We the people have a profound, deep, and abiding respect for 
fundamental constitutional rights. These fundamental rights

[[Page S6942]]

have not been granted or created by the government. Our rights are God-
given. Our rights are inalienable, and our rights are self-evident. The 
inspector general's report shows that despite all the checks we put in 
place to ensure the government will not infringe on those rights 
without proper cause, it is still possible for bad actors to lie, for 
bad actors to withhold information, and for bad actors to doctor 
documents in order to get around those safeguards to achieve their own 
goals.
  The inspector general's report has finally let some light shine on 
the wrongdoing that occurred with the Justice Department and the FBI 
during this infamous Russia investigation. Let's start then with that 
Steele dossier. The Steele dossier played a very ``central'' and 
``essential'' role in the Russia investigation, according to the 
inspector general's report. Those words, ``central'' and ``essential,'' 
come from the report.
  Before the FBI got it, they tried to open a FISA on Carter Page, and 
there wasn't enough evidence, but once the dossier was acquired, that 
was the tipping point for the FBI to tell the FISA Court that it had 
probable cause that an American citizen was an agent of a foreign 
government.
  We now know that this central and essential document was not even a 
finished product. The dossier was based on single-source reporting, and 
Steele wasn't even the original source. He had a primary subsource who 
used multiple sources who, we now know, didn't even have direct access 
to the people they were reporting on. Some of these sources were 
Russian Government officials. We are talking about many, many levels of 
hearsay.
  Well, the FBI got around to interviewing that primary subsource but 
only after the FBI opened a FISA warrant on Carter Page. Think about 
that, will you? The FBI used one of the most powerful and invasive 
investigative tools without first verifying the information it provided 
the court. The primary subsource raised the following issues: One, 
Steele had reliability issues; two, the primary subsource had not seen 
the dossier until it was made public; three, Steele misstated and 
exaggerated claims; four, the primary subsource didn't think his or her 
material would be in the report; five, much of the information in the 
dossier was based on rumors, including conversations over beers, we are 
told, or some of those conversations were made in jest; and lastly, 
six, none of this material in the dossier had been corroborated.
  After the FBI acquired this information, subsequent FISA renewals 
continued to rely on this same document that had lost all credibility, 
and everybody knew it. They had relied on the Steele information with 
no revision or notice to the court that the primary subsource 
contradicted Steele. Simply said, that is a fraud on the court. So the 
FBI couldn't get a FISA warrant until they got the dossier, and then 
they kept renewing the warrant despite very clear evidence that the 
dossier was faulty.
  It looks to me as though the FBI couldn't get their way, so they used 
whatever information they could, whether it was false or not, all to 
accomplish their goal. Their goal was pursuing an inquiry into the 
Trump campaign.
  We all know about one of Strzok's infamous text exchanges. Page said 
this in the text: ``[Trump's] not ever going to become President, 
right? Right?!''
  Strzok said: ``No. No he's not. We'll stop it.''
  These are people involved with the FBI with a very anti-Trump agenda.
  So we go back. The FBI had a plan, and they would do anything. The 
FBI would do anything to keep that plan going. The information loop was 
contaminated from the start, and nobody at the FBI seemed to give a rip 
about it. They just wanted to continue the investigation into Trump. A 
part of that investigation included using defensive briefings for the 
Trump campaign--Can you believe this?--as a means to collect 
information relative to the Russia investigation and the General Flynn 
investigation. Would you believe that the FBI decided not to 
defensively brief the Trump campaign on alleged Russian attempts to 
interfere with the election--information that served as a predicate to 
opening this inquiry? But the FBI did decide to use the briefings as an 
intelligence-gathering operation.
  Why wouldn't the FBI simply give the Trump campaign a heads-up on any 
and all threats? They were looking out for his safety. Why would they 
hide the ball? We know that they did so for prior Presidential 
campaigns, so if they did it for every Presidential campaign, why 
wouldn't they do it for Trump? Again, the FBI had a plan, and they 
would do anything to keep that plan going.
  Another disturbing finding in the report is that the FBI recorded 
Page and Papadopoulos before the FISA warrant was issued. But it is 
unclear who the FBI used to record them. Did they work for another 
government? Was it a spy?
  Both of these recordings offered exculpatory evidence that was 
withheld from the FISA Court. The FISA Court should have known this 
information, but it didn't. Included were denials that anyone 
associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or 
with outside groups like WikiLeaks in the release of emails and, No. 2, 
that Page had never met or said one word to Paul Manafort and that 
Manafort never responded to Page's emails. To that second point, the 
dossier said that Page participated in a conspiracy with Russia to act 
as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign. None 
of that information is accurate.
  The Steele dossier served as a--again, these words--``central and 
essential role'' in the FBI's investigation, yet it was filled with 
inaccurate and very false statements. It is important to remember that 
the FBI knew all of this. They knew about those faults all the time, 
and they did nothing to apprise the FISA Court, and they had a 
responsibility to do that. In fact, as it turns out, the FBI actively 
altered documents to make a better case for themselves.
  The FBI altered documents. One FBI official altered an email from 
another government agency to say that Page ``was not a source'' for 
that agency, when, in fact, Page was with that agency.

  The FBI relied on the false statements to renew the FISA warrant. 
That means that the FBI used Page's work, apparently, for the American 
Government as evidence that he was a Russian agent. The FBI couldn't 
get their way unless they literally falsified documents to the court to 
spy on an American citizen working for the Trump campaign. That ought 
to shock everybody in this country. The conscience of every citizen 
ought to be bothered that the FBI can do that. If it can happen to 
Carter Page, it can happen to any one of us.
  The inspector general report also specifically identified 17 errors 
and omissions during the Carter Page FISA process and additional errors 
in the Woods procedures. Wrong and incomplete information was passed 
through the chain of command for those approving the FISA warrants. 
After the inspector general interviewed within the FBI chain of 
command, the inspector general had this to say:

       In most instances, the agents and supervisors told us that 
     they either did not know or recall why the information was 
     not shared with the [Office of Intelligence], that the 
     failure to do so may have been an oversight, that they did 
     not recognize at the time the relevance of the information to 
     the FISA application, or that they did not believe the 
     missing information to be significant.

  Regarding that last point, that they did not believe the missing 
information to be significant, the inspector general noted that ``we 
believe that case agents may have improperly substituted their own 
judgments in place of the judgment of [the Office of Intelligence] . . 
. or in place of the court to weigh the probative value of the 
information.''
  That is a very extraordinary finding. We all know about the 
politically charged anti-Trump texts that were exchanged among FBI 
officials who didn't want Trump elected, and they probably hate him to 
this very day, including an FBI lawyer who altered documents--an FBI 
agent did this--to support the FISA application. Clearly, that bias 
affected the decision-making process. Indeed, the inspector general 
noted that in light of the substantial and fundamental errors in the 
FISA process, there are ``significant questions regarding the FBI's 
chain of command management and supervision of the FISA process.''
  Really, it is quite obvious that something was terribly wrong. For 
example,

[[Page S6943]]

Stu Evans, the DOJ National Security Division official with oversight 
of the FISA process, did not even know that Bruce Ohr, another DOJ 
official, had been in communication with the FBI about the Russia 
investigation. He didn't know that Ohr had been interviewed by the FBI 
until he saw the Grassley-Graham referral.
  Ultimately, the inspector general was not able to interview everyone 
involved in the chain of command to the extent that the inspector 
general wanted to do that. For example, James Comey and Jim Baker, the 
former FBI general counsel, did not request that their clearances be 
reinstated for the interviews. Quite obviously, they didn't want to be 
interviewed. That means the inspector general was unable to ask them 
classified questions related to their conduct.
  Comey claims that he is transparent, but he clearly wasn't in this 
case. Moreover, Glenn Simpson and Jonathan Winer--the latter a former 
State Department official--refused to sit for any interviews at all. 
These individuals played key roles in the Russia investigation. It is a 
shame that they didn't want to speak up. So can't we legitimately ask: 
What are they trying to hide? From what I have seen, they are trying to 
hide an awful lot.
  With all that said, the FBI's FISA-related behavior has been so bad 
that the inspector general has initiated a comprehensive audit that 
will fully examine the FBI's compliance with the Woods procedures. In 
the past, when there has been evidence of our government improperly 
infringing on the civil liberties of American citizens, we as a nation 
have firmly rejected that course of action. We have taken those moments 
as real opportunities to strengthen our resolve and to renew our 
commitment to the values that we all share about our God-given 
liberties and freedoms.
  Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, from about 1920 to 1969, 
which was when he died, the FBI would wiretap, recruit secret 
informants, and fix the paperwork in ways that trampled on the rights 
of ordinary Americans as a matter of practice. In those times of the 
FBI, it was business as usual. Let's hope it doesn't become business as 
usual now. That is why, during the 1970s, because of the abuse of J. 
Edgar Hoover, this Chamber undertook vigorous oversight efforts, under 
the leadership of the late Senator Frank Church, to shine a light on 
the excesses and abuses of our intelligence bureaucracy.
  Based on what we learned from that inquiry 40 years ago, Congress 
passed FISA. This legislation establishes protections to ensure that 
government bureaucrats can't just spy on American citizens willy-nilly, 
whenever they feel like it. In order to surveil an American citizen, 
the FBI must acquire a lawful order and do it from a court of law. We 
give those in the FBI that power along with an expectation that they 
will do their due diligence in using it.
  We have found out now, during this Russia investigation, that those 
in the FBI--in this decade--did not do that due diligence. We give this 
with the expectation that they will provide the court full and accurate 
information, which they didn't provide to the FISA court in regard to 
the Russia investigation; that they will follow the rule of law and 
their own internal guidelines; and that they will respect the 
boundaries Congress has set for them, instead of reverting to the 
freewheeling and very heavy-handed tactics that they embraced in the 
past.
  Most of the hard-working men and women in our Department of Justice 
and in our FBI today understand and truly respect these boundaries. 
However, it seems old habits really die very hard. Politics has crept 
back into the FBI's work, at least at the highest levels. The actions 
that were taken by Obama and Comey's FBI sound an awful lot like the 
ones taken under Hoover.
  Where do we go from here? We have to learn from our past mistakes. I 
have said it before, and I will say it again: Sunlight is the best 
disinfectant. Transparency brings accountability. It helps us take 
reasoned steps to ensure that the mistakes of the past will not be 
repeated in the future.
  After what I believe was far too long a wait, I am happy to have 
finally received this Horowitz report that we call the inspector 
general's report. I thank IG Horowitz and his staff for all of their 
hard work. I am pleased to see that much of the inspector general's 
report is publicly available. Once again, this is due in no small part 
to President Trump's unprecedented commitment to transparency.
  I appreciate the President's willingness to grant Attorney General 
Barr broad declassification authority, and I appreciate Attorney 
General Barr's willingness to use that authority to bring much of what 
happened out into the open. It is an important first step towards 
ensuring accountability. Of course, there are still many, many 
unanswered questions.
  In going forward, I eagerly await Mr. Durham's findings with respect 
to how the intelligence community handled its part of the corrupted 
Russia investigation. Mr. Durham is the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, 
but he has been awarded by Mr. Barr the responsibility of getting to 
the bottom of all of these problems that I am talking about now and a 
lot of other problems. Unlike Horowitz, Mr. Durham has authority to 
prosecute, and he has already opened criminal investigations.
  In the sense of Mr. Durham's work, I view this most recent inspector 
general's report as just one part in a multi-part act. Durham's public 
comments make clear that he finds issue with whether the opening of the 
Russia investigation was properly predicated. His findings may prove 
critical to finally and fully understanding what happened during the 
Obama administration's fabricated investigation into Trump.
  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. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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