July 11, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 116 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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EXECUTIVE SESSION; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 116
(Senate - July 11, 2019)
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[Pages S4782-S4786] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] EXECUTIVE SESSION ______ EXECUTIVE CALENDAR The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report. The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Robert L. King, of Kentucky, to be Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi. Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. China Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I call to the Senators' attention today a disturbing article in the June 29, 2019, issue of The Economist, on pages 36 and 37. It is about the military buildup in China and the way it affects the United States. It says: Xi Jinping wants China's armed forces to be ``world class'' by 2050. He has done more to achieve this than any of his predecessors. I will quote from the lead of this article in The Economist. Over the past decade, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been lavished with money and arms. China's military spending rose by 83 percent in real terms between 2009 and 2018, by far the largest growth spurt in any big country. The splurge has enabled China to deploy precision missiles and anti-satellite weapons that challenge American supremacy in the western Pacific. China's leader, Xi Jinping, says his ``Chinese dream'' includes a ``dream of a strong armed forces''. That, he says, involves ``modernising'' the PLA by 2035 and making it ``world-class''--in other words, America- beating--by mid-century. He has been making a lot of progress. In the second column of this article, it goes on to say: He has done more in the past three years to reform the PLA than any leader since Deng Xiaoping. This quote is not from some advocate of defense spending but is from one of the leading publications, The Economist. I say to my colleagues, we need to be mindful of the threat that is arising to the United States from around the globe--not only from China, as I have just read, but also from Vladimir Putin's Russia, from Iran, and from international terrorism. There is a deteriorating security situation in almost every sector of the globe. The fact that the United States has always been super supreme and able to defend the free peoples of this world is being challenged. We can no longer assume that any war would never be a fair fight. That has been the goal of the United States if we have to go to war. And we want to avoid war. But the best way, in our judgment, as a national strategy down through the decades, to avoid conflict of any kind is to make sure that if America ever gets in a fight, it will not be a fair fight; it will be a fight where we have overwhelming superiority, so no one will dare challenge the sea lanes and the freedom that we stand for in the United States of America. That is being challenged today. I would submit to you that it is a good time for the United States to point out that we passed the National Defense Authorization Act--the NDAA--on a huge bipartisan basis. It was 80-something votes to 8. It is just unbelievable, the way we came together under the leadership of Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed, his Democratic counterpart, working together as professionals, as legislators, and as Americans to send a strong statement that we need to go from the $700 billion that was spent last fiscal year to $750 billion to give our troops the pay raise they need, to recognize the sacrifice they have made, and to give our military--the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines--the tools they need, the equipment they need, and the innovation and manufacturing they need to get us where we need to go. We went through a 7- or 8-year period when--we ought to all be ashamed because our fingerprints are all on it, those of us who were in office at the time. The distinguished Presiding Officer was not a Member of the Senate at that time, but those of us who were, we got our fingerprints on it, Republicans and Democrats. Somehow, try though we might, say what we might, we were unable to prevent sequestration from happening--an unthinkable result. The military branches couldn't believe this was happening and couldn't believe Congress would be so irresponsible, but somehow we were. We have righted the ship over the past 2 years. It would be unthinkable to me, my fellow Americans, after making the progress to get back on the right track and return to responsible defense spending and responsible stewardship of our national security, if somehow we heeded some voices we have been hearing in Washington, DC, and around the country during the past few days about a continuing resolution, perhaps--maybe a continuing resolution of an entire year. The thinking there is, well, we just do a continuing resolution, and that will amount to level spending, and we can live with that. I just left a hearing on the confirmation of GEN Mark Milley as the next, I hope, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I asked him about that. Would a continuing resolution simply be level spending, and might we be able to live with that? And he absolutely made the point which we all know if we study the law. It is way more than level spending. It stops innovation. It stops the new starts. It stops everything that we planned in the NDAA, which we passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote, and it makes it against the law for the shipbuilders to do anything new and for the people working on our next- generation aircraft to do anything new. It stops them in their tracks. It creates uncertainty in every branch of the military. And then we have to pay millions and billions to get back going again. It is an unthinkable result. Surely we can avoid that as Republicans and Democrats. Let me quote now-retired Secretary Mattis. When he was asked about this very subject on a recent occasion, Secretary Mattis said this: I cannot overstate the impact to our troops' morale from all this uncertainty. The combination of rapidly changing technology, the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous stretch of combat in our Nation's history, and insufficient funding have created an overstretched and under-resourced military. According to Secretary Mattis, ``Under continuing resolutions, we actually lose ground.'' We need a budget deal. We need a 2-year budget deal, as we have had in the past. Give our defense leaders, the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries, as well as the ones who put on the uniform and agreed, for a career, to put themselves in harm's way--give them the certainty they need in order to defend against the threats The Economist talked about and the threats General Mattis talked about. Give them that certainty. A new CR--a continuing resolution--would prevent us from having that certainty. It would delay maintenance for the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. It would prevent a guided missile frigate program we already authorized from even starting. This would happen September 30 if we go to a continuing resolution. It would cripple research and development, and it would prevent the Pentagon from aligning its funding with upcoming priorities. We need to realize a fact of life around here. I didn't exactly get my way in the election last November. If I had my druthers, the House of Representatives would have remained in Republican hands, with a Republican Speaker and a Republican Chair. The voters, in their wisdom, decided to vote for divided government last November. Our team was elected to continue leadership in the U.S. Senate. The Democratic team was elected to leadership in the House of Representatives. And I can assure you, if I were writing a defense appropriations bill, which is half of discretionary spending, and all of the other appropriations bills, which is so-called nondefense discretionary, it would look far different from the bill [[Page S4783]] Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposes to write. I can assure you that it would look different and that we would have less domestic spending. But the fact of life is that Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, is the one who guides legislation here in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is the one who guides legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives, and if we get a bill passed, we are going to have to get a compromise bill passed. If anybody within the sound of my voice doesn't realize this, they don't understand government. They don't understand the dynamics that have taken place since Philadelphia in 1776 and Philadelphia again in 1787, where give-and-take had to occur, but we moved things along for the greater good. We can come to an agreement, or we can show ourselves to Vladimir Putin's Russia as unable to govern adequately, and we can show ourselves to Xi Jinping's China as unable to make the tough decisions to protect Americans. We have that choice, and we have a willingness on this side of the aisle and on the other side of the aisle. I was with some of my Democratic and Republican friends from the other body just yesterday. I think there is the willingness there. We are going to have to have an agreement that the administration will sign on to because the President's signature has to be affixed to this. Now is the time--July 11, 2019--to get this decision made, before we leave for August. I would hope we wouldn't leave for August until we get that number agreed to. We come back after Labor Day, and then it is brinksmanship, and then suddenly it is shutdown city, and that is being threatened. Russia knows this, the Iranian leadership knows this, and China knows this. Let's do it now. So I call on the Democratic and Republican leadership in the House, I call on our leadership, and I call on our President to get down to business in the next few days. Let's go ahead and make this decision that we know will eventually have to be made, make a responsible decision and send a message to the rest of the world that we intend to take care of our security. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri. Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, first of all, let me say that I couldn't agree more with the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Wicker, than I do. His points are exactly right. A democracy is finding a way forward. It is not finding your way forward necessarily. It is obviously finding as much of your way forward as you can find. But it is finding a way forward. Clearly, a top priority of the Federal Government is to defend the country. It is my top priority. I think I would be safe in suggesting it is Senator Wicker's top priority. And it is an important priority for our friends on the other side, but it may not be quite the same priority on the other side. For this to work, the House and the Senate have to work together and the White House has to work together to come up with just that spending number. Once we have the number that we are going to spend, having the debate on the floor is suddenly possible. I am fully in agreement with that, but I want to talk for a few minutes today about a program that we need to extend for a short period of time to get it extended to the end of this spending year. Mental Health Madam President, I know the minority leader, the Democratic leader, just arrived, and he has heard a lot about this program from my friend Senator Stabenow. The excellence in mental health program--something we started 2 years ago. We passed legislation in 2014. We have come to the end of the first 2 years of that trial program. I want to talk more about why we need a longer term expansion of that trial, but first of all, we need to get a 3-month extension to get us to the end of this spending year. I am always glad to talk about this program because what it does is it really begins to close the gap between how we talk about physical health and how we talk about mental health. Somewhere between one in four and one in five adult Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health, has a mental health problem that is diagnosable and almost always treatable, but less than half of the people who have that problem actually receive the care they need. These are people who are our neighbors, our family members, and our colleagues. There is no stigma to seeking care, and society needs to do a better job--as I believe this program is helping us to do--talking about mental health like all other health. On the last day of October 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the Community Mental Health Act, which was the last bill President Kennedy signed into law in 1963, Senator Stabenow and I came to the floor to talk about that 1963 bill and how many things have been closed down because of that bill and how many things have not been opened to replace them when that happened. In the decades that followed, about half of the proposed community health centers that bill anticipated just simply were never built, and the facilities used for people who had substantial mental health challenges were closed. What really happened over these 50 years is that the emergency room and local law enforcement became the de facto mental health system for the country, and nobody has been well served by that, including law enforcement, emergency rooms, and most importantly, people with mental health challenges and their families. The Excellence in Mental Health Act was signed into law in 2014 to try to begin to address that problem. What the bill did was it created a 2-year, eight-State pilot program that would provide mental health care at locations that met the standards, just like any other help would be provided. These would be certified community behavioral health clinics that would have, among other things, 24/7 crisis services available, outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment, immediate screenings, risk assessments, and diagnoses available, and care coordination, including partnerships with emergency rooms, the law enforcement community, and veterans groups. All of that would have to be done in order to be part of that eight-State pilot. Twenty-four States initially applied. Nineteen States went through the entire process. Eight States were chosen, including Missouri. Among other things, our State participated in the Emergency Room Enhancement Project. This is a project that is designed to identify people who present themselves at the emergency room as people who really need treatment for addiction issues and mental health issues, not other health issues, and then get them to a place where that treatment is going to be much more appropriate than it is likely to be at the emergency room. In just 6 months of working with the emergency room, law enforcement, and mental health services in our State, we think there has been a reduction in homelessness of people who came to the emergency room of about 72 percent and a reduction in emergency room visits of 72 percent. Unemployment was reduced by 14 percent among the people who have gone to the emergency room with a mental health concern, and law enforcement contact was reduced by 59 percent. So we have 2 years of study that indicates where we have gotten in our State, and I think other States are seeing similar kinds of numbers. I have been to clinics all over our State and have talked with those who have dealt with this. I talked particularly to law enforcement people all over our State, who have seen the change in the people they are dealing with and the options they have available. Suddenly, the option is not just to go to somebody's house at a crisis moment in the middle of the night and be taken to the emergency room for one night to have that problem solved; the option is actually to go somewhere where your mental health challenge is being dealt with, just like if you had a heart attack or a kidney problem or some other problem. That is why we have introduced legislation to extend this for another 2 years and, if money is available in the pay-for we have proposed, to see whether we can add more States to the program. When we announced this new legislation, Laura Heebner, who is with Compass Health systems in Missouri, was one of the people who joined us. She said that in the past, before this program was able to help in our State, roughly half of the people who sought an appointment from their mental [[Page S4784]] health facility could not get scheduled for several days, sometimes several weeks, and half of the people didn't come back. If a person shows up that one time and says ``I am here because I have a real problem and I need help'' and the answer is ``We are not going to help you today; we are not going to do an evaluation right now,'' more often than not or as often as not, they don't come back. So at Compass Health, as well as many of our other certified clinics in our State, we increased access. We established same day walk-ins to attempt to look at their problem and see if they needed help that day or could, in fact, come back a few days later for an extensive visit. At that facility and others, everybody is being seen when they come in. The suicide care path they established has reduced suicides by 70 percent since last year. I will make two quick points as I conclude. No. 1, the goal of this program is not for the Federal Government to take over the behavioral health costs of the country; the goal of this program is to look at mental health and keep track of 24 or 25 other healthcare markers and decide how much other healthcare is impacted in a positive and, in fact, a cost-saving way if you are dealing with mental health at the same time. The second point I would make is that we need to see Congress step up in the next few days and extend the current program through the end of this spending year, and then let's have a debate about why 2 more years of putting all that information together gives States and communities the information they need to find out. As a result, I believe everybody will understand that it is not only the right thing to do, but fiscally it is the smart thing to do. By dealing with mental health like all other health, the overall healthcare cost of that big mental health community goes down dramatically if you are seeing your doctor, showing up for your appointments, and taking your medicine. Our other problems are much more easily managed when adding the cost of mental healthcare to all our other healthcare priorities. It isn't just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. Hopefully the Congress will deal with that and the Senate can take a leadership role in dealing with that. The House has already sent us a bill. We need to respond to that by doing the two things I just mentioned. Let's treat mental health like we treat all other health. I yield the floor. Recognition of the Minority Leader The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader. Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, first, let me thank my friend from Missouri for what he and Senator Stabenow are trying to do on mental health. I know some States were included and other States were not, so I support that aspect of what he was talking about. 2020 Census Madam President, later today, President Trump will give a news conference in the Rose Garden about his attempts to create an Executive order to add citizenship questions to the 2020 census. That is outrageous. It is outrageous substantively, and it is outrageous because this President has so little respect for the rule of law. He thinks he can just issue Executive orders and go around the Congress, go around established law, and try to bully the courts. I believe he will be thwarted by the courts, and this will be a real test of John Roberts and the Supreme Court, whether they stand for the rule of law or are always looking for an excuse to move the country rightward. We will see. Today, the Trump administration has provided no legitimate legal rationale for adding this question to the census. Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that Justice Department lawyers ``resigned from the lawsuit out of ethical concerns and a belief that the suit was unwinnable.'' Well, we all know what is going on. The Trump administration doesn't have a legitimate legal rationale. The true motivation was even clear before the papers of that deceased designer of this question came to light. The true rationale is blatantly political and self-serving. President Trump wants to include the citizenship question to intimidate minorities--particularly Latinos--from answering the census so that it undercuts those communities and Republicans can redraw congressional districts to their advantage. The Census Bureau itself determined weeks ago that including such a question would result in a significant undercount. That alone is enough for disqualification. That is not what the Constitution says-- manipulate the census so you don't get an accurate count. The President knows this. Yet he continues to pursue a cynical idea--typical of the President--cynical and against minorities, with no respect for the rule of law, mores, and values that made this country great. Day by day, he destroys them. Day by day. The President's action is nothing more than a naked political power grab, which is one of the few things he is good at as President. It shows once again just how little respect the President has for our democracy. It is also one prong in the Trump administration's multifaceted attack on communities of color. They are doing another one today in addition to this, which I will speak about in a minute. Let's not forget that the census is a constitutional mandate. It has been conducted impartially by Democratic and Republican administrations alike since 1790. It should be beyond the reach of partisan politics. But this President has such disdain for constitutional law norms and the rule of law that he will try anything to set the rules to his advantage, even if it means circumventing Congress and circumventing the courts. This is what dictators do in banana republics. They try to change the rules to consolidate political power no matter what their constitutions and rule of law say. The President is moving us in that direction, and our Republican colleagues are supine. They say nothing. Many of them know what he is doing is wrong, and knees clatter because they are too afraid to tell the President he is wrong. The American people should be outraged about this. Republican Senators should be outraged about this, but, like so many other instances in which the President subverts our Democratic norms, the silence from Republicans in Congress has been deafening and degrading to the very fabric of this wonderful democracy that the President day by day tries--usually unsuccessfully, thank God--to undo. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madam President, on the ICE raids, last night the New York Times reported another thing President Trump was trying to do--ordering ICE to resume plans to carry out nasty deportation raids over the weekend. His plan will tear families apart and disrupt immigrant communities across America, including immigrants here legally and those in the process of legally applying for asylum. Cruelty. Cruelty seems to be the point of these raids. This is not an effort to root out dangerous individuals. This is an act of brutish force designed to spread fear in the immigrant community. Steve Miller whispers in the President's ear: Treat them cruelly. Make them afraid, and maybe they will not come. They are going to come. The dangers in their home countries are much worse. What would any citizen do in America or any other place in the world if a gang came to you and said: I am going to rape your daughter unless you do what I want; I am going to kill your son; I am going to burn your House--you would flee. These are not criminals. They are people trying to preserve their families, their children, their lives. Yet the President--egged on by some of the rightwing news media--tries to make Americans believe they are all criminals. Sure, if one of these folks is a bank robber or a burglar or hurts somebody, they should be out--one, two, three. If they are simply trying to escape brutality, we still should have rule of law, but they should be treated with some decency, honor, and humanity. That has been the American tradition for some 200-odd years. The President's policy is not only cruel--that is the worst of it-- but it is brainless. When it comes to intelligently using our immigration resources, the administration should focus on the small minority that are actually criminals, not families and not 10-year- olds. [[Page S4785]] These raids will not make America safer. They will not solve our immigration challenges for the reasons I mentioned. They will, instead, terrorize innocent families and rip children away from their parents. I warn President Trump, the pictures of these raids aren't going to be pretty. Average Americans who may agree with him on many issues will be appalled. President Trump, you are going to have to back off from this cruel policy because the American people are a lot better than you. They will see the pictures. What are they going to do with a father driving his child to school? Will they stop the car, pull the father out? They have done that. Will they let the 8-year-old sit in the car traumatized? They have done that. President Trump, mark my words, there will be a huge backlash against this. The American people are not cruel like you in this regard. I would plead with the President to call off these raids. We Democrats have proposed real solutions to the same migration problems that will stop the influx or greatly reduce the influx at the border. We would simply say: Let these would-be immigrants from Nicaragua and El Salvador and Honduras apply for asylum and beef up the number of immigration judges so they can get an adjudication quickly. If they are turned down, they can't come. Tough luck. If they get asylum, they should be welcomed here as America has always welcomed people, as that great Lady in the Harbor of the city I come from has done for centuries. That is the solution. We should also help these countries go after the gangs that are making the people flee. Go after MS-13 down there. Go after the drug dealers. Go after the coyotes. It was working in the last few months of the Obama administration and even the first few months of the Trump administration, until the President rescinded the policy because he got mad at somebody, which is typical of how he operates. That is what we should do. Until then, when these folks get to the border, I call on the President to work with us to put an end to the cruelty that the migrants are being shown when they come into U.S. custody. They are a small percentage of the people in this country. It is not a large number in terms of our total population. Another round of reports this week describes the horrid conditions endured by migrant children at our border. Facilities built for no more than 100 people are now housing up to 700 children. Many have nothing to sleep on, no change of clothes, and sometimes not enough food. These are reports from the President's own executive agencies, not from someone outside. In Arizona, these kids are reportedly being abused. CBP agents use racist slurs, deprive them of sleeping mats and, in one case, according to the report, potentially assaulted a 15-year-old girl. It is barbaric. It is not American. We need to put an end to this behavior now. We have just passed a supplemental appropriations bill to provide more resources to improve conditions and speed the asylum process, but it didn't go far enough. That is why, later today, I will join with my colleagues Senators Merkley and Feinstein to introduce the Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act. This new legislation would establish mandatory standards for the appropriate and humane treatment of children. It would make it easier for children to be connected with sponsors and legal counsel, and it would, once and for all, end the inhumane practice of separating families, pulling children--even little children--away from their parents. Democrats have been fighting for these provisions for months. We were able to secure some of them in the last border supplemental, but unfortunately our Republican colleagues blocked many additional provisions from going into the bill. This new legislation marks a clear bright line of what is left to be done. Now the only question that looms is, Will Leader McConnell finally stand up for the children and work with us to pass these new standards into law? I want to thank Senators Merkley and Feinstein for working on this very important bill. It is a necessary step to restoring America's moral credibility. A nation as powerful as ours has no need or right to treat the weak and suffering this way. We can deal with our immigration issues with dignity, common sense, and rule of law. The bill is how we get that done. China Madam President, yesterday it was reported that President Trump told President Xi of China that the United States would tone down its criticism of Beijing's approach to Hong Kong in order to revive our trade negotiations. If these reports are true, once again, President Trump has made another error when it comes to China, for two reasons. First, it is crucial always for the United States to stand up for democracy, human rights, and civil liberties everywhere--to be the ``shining city upon a hill'' that John Winthrop talked about 375 years ago. From Tiananmen Square to Tibet, from the brutal suppression of the Muslim minority Uighurs to the recent protests in Hong Kong, China's human rights record has been an abomination. They want to join the family of nations and be treated equally, but in some ways they are like a Third World dictatorship. America used to champion religious rights, minority rights, and democratic values abroad. It helped us in immeasurable ways, not just morally but economically and politically. It gave us strength. It gave us the moral high ground that the Scriptures have always said was important in human dealings. Unfortunately, under this President, that doesn't happen. Second, the idea that going easy on China's human rights record will ease trade talks is exactly backward. I know China. They respond to strength, not flattery or capitulation. Every time the President gives in to President Xi, President Xi smells weakness and says: I can get more out of the Americans. I generally am supportive of the President on a tough policy toward China on trade. China has ripped us off over and over again, but the way to win is to show strength. On some days, the President does, and a week later he backs off. There is no consistency. The Chinese smell that they can outfox the President. Backing off from fully telling Huawei they can't operate was a huge mistake. Huawei, with these exceptions, if they are given broadly, will gain economic strength. Huawei is a national security problem, but it is also a trade problem. When China steals our intellectual property, as Huawei has done, why do we then allow them to come into this country when they don't allow our best tech companies to go into theirs? It is ridiculous. The President's instincts are right, but he is never consistent about them. The way to speed successful trade talks, where America secures real and enduring concessions, is to keep the full-court press on Beijing, on human rights, on foreign policy, and certainly on trade. President Trump must not be weak on China for the sake of America's role as a champion of democracy and for the sake of driving China to accept meaningful reforms to its predatory trade policies. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott of Florida). The Senator from Illinois. Border Security Mr. DURBIN. I want to thank my colleague and friend, the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, for raising the issues of immigration. We are at a moment in the history of this country that I am sure will be reviewed and reflected upon for many generations to come. Decisions that are being made in the White House today in the area of immigration will be criticized, analyzed, and in many cases repudiated in years to come. It is time for us, at this moment, to have a sober reflection on what this administration has done in 2\1/2\ years with the issue of immigration and where we stand at this very moment. This President came to the White House promising he was going to get tough on immigration--immigration. Probably at the heart of America, more than anything, has been the issue of immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. My mother was an immigrant to this country. I believe the diversity of our Nation is one of our core strengths because we have attracted people from all over the world. This President doesn't understand it. If he does, he is not pushing policies that show any reflection on that reality and that historic background. [[Page S4786]] Think of how this administration started. Within hours after this President was elected, he announced the Muslim travel ban; that he would single out countries with Muslim-majority populations and say that their people were not welcome in the United States. The reaction was immediate across the United States. In the city of Chicago, I can remember the supporters of those coming from other countries heading out to O'Hare and attorneys volunteering to give them counsel. There was an outpouring of support for these people, realizing that fundamentally innocent people were traveling to this country. Yet the President, with his travel ban, made it clear from the very start of his administration his view on these immigrants. What followed from there was a decision by this administration to eliminate temporary protective status. Three hundred thousand immigrants in this country came here because of natural disasters and political upheaval and got protection in the United States. The President wanted to turn them away. Was there any measurement as to which ones might be dangerous? No. All would be turned away. Then, of course, there was the President's decision to eliminate the DACA Program. The DACA Program was created by President Obama. These people were brought to the United States as children because of decisions by their parents. They grew up in this country, and every day in classrooms they pledged allegiance to that flag, believing it was their flag too. At some point in their lives, they learned they were undocumented. They didn't have legal status in America. President Obama felt--and I, as a sponsor of the Dream Act, agreed with and encouraged the creation by Executive order of the DACA Program. So 790,000 of these young people came forward, paid a filing fee, went through a criminal background check, and after they were approved, they were given 2 years to stay in the United States, renewable, where they couldn't be deported, and they could work legally in this country. That program, as I said, attracted 790,000 successful applicants, many of them outstanding students and amazing young people. I told their stories on the floor of the Senate. President Trump decided to abolish that program and to end the protection for these young people--790,000 of them. That wasn't the end of it. The President continued with policies such as zero tolerance. Do you remember that one? Last year, the Attorney General of the United States stood up and quoted from the Bible as to how it was the right thing to do to separate 2,880 infants, toddlers, and children from their parents at our borders. Zero tolerance; treat the parents like criminals and separate the kids. What was worse was that no effort was made to track those children as to where they were placed and what happened to their parents. It wasn't until a Federal judge in Southern California came forward and forced this administration to finally match up the children with their parents that the effort was undertaken, and still more than 100 of them were never matched--lost in the bureaucratic sea of the Trump administration. That wasn't the end of it by far. What we have seen at the border in the last several months has been shocking and unprecedented in American history. This ``get tough'' President, who says he is going to cut off foreign aid to countries in Central America and get tough at the border with his almighty wall, has ended up attracting larger numbers of people who are presenting themselves for asylum status at the border of the United States than we have ever seen--dramatic increases we haven't seen for decades with regard to the number of people at the border. The President's immigration policy has backfired. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for an additional 2 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. DURBIN. The net result of this has been the announcement by the administration that, come Sunday, we will see mass arrests and deportations in this country. Reports from the New York Times are that thousands will be rounded up, arrested, and deported. When possible, they say, family members will be arrested together and will be held in family detention centers. Have these people committed crimes since they have been in the United States? There is no evidence of it. It is simply the fact that they are undocumented at this moment, and many of them may have lived here for years. These arrests and mass deportations are going to create fear in communities across the United States, including in the city of Chicago, which I am honored to represent. For what? It will not make America safer for us if we deport these people. Sadly, it is going to mean that their families will be torn apart and that there will be more children and families in detention. We were told there was a humanitarian crisis and that we needed to apply ourselves and make certain that we had billions of dollars to deal with it, and we did. Now the administration has turned around and announced a new wave of splitting up families and deporting them from the United States. This is not what America is all about. There is a way for us to deal with immigration in a sensible, thoughtful, rational way. Cruelty has no place in the history of this country, and it has no place when it comes to the treatment of those who are in the United States today. I yield the floor. Vote on Robert L. King Nomination The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the King nomination? Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll. Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote? The result was announced--yeas 56, nays 37, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 200 Ex.] YEAS--56 Alexander Barrasso Blackburn Blunt Boozman Braun Burr Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Daines Enzi Ernst Fischer Gardner Graham Grassley Hawley Hoeven Hyde-Smith Inhofe Isakson Johnson Jones Kennedy Lankford Lee Manchin McConnell McSally Moran Murkowski Paul Perdue Portman Risch Roberts Romney Rounds Rubio Sasse Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Shelby Sinema Sullivan Thune Tillis Toomey Wicker Young NAYS--37 Baldwin Blumenthal Brown Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Feinstein Hassan Hirono Kaine King Klobuchar Leahy Markey Menendez Merkley Murphy Murray Peters Reed Rosen Schatz Schumer Shaheen Smith Stabenow Tester Udall Van Hollen Warner Whitehouse Wyden NOT VOTING--7 Bennet Booker Gillibrand Harris Heinrich Sanders Warren The nomination was confirmed. ____________________
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