EXECUTIVE SESSION; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 3
(Senate - January 07, 2020)

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[Pages S32-S42]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the 
following nomination, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Jovita 
Carranza, of Illinois, to be Administrator of the Small Business 
Administration.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is 
recognized.


                                  Iran

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, now, in the aftermath of the U.S. 
military operation that took out Iranian General Soleimani, we need to 
be asking the right questions and remain clear-eyed about what might 
happen next.
  I have grown increasingly concerned about the strike against 
Soleimani and what it might mean for the safety of American troops in 
the region and the future of America's involvement in the Middle East. 
The President has promised that he would not drag the American people 
into another endless war in the Middle East. The President's actions, 
however, have seemingly increased the risk that we could be dragged 
into exactly such a war.
  Unfortunately, this contradiction is far too typical of how the 
President has conducted foreign policy over the last 3 years. The 
President's decision making has been erratic, and it has been 
impulsive, without regard to the long-term consequences of America's 
actions abroad. He prefers reality show diplomacy and photo ops with 
foreign leaders to substantive progress. As a result, the President's 
foreign policy has been dangerously incompetent.
  When you look at nearly every hotspot around the globe, he has made

[[Page S33]]

the situation worse, not better. North Korea--3 years after failed 
``negotiations,'' North Korea remains belligerent, defiant, and intent 
on developing ICBMs. Syria--after years of sacrifice and struggle 
against ISIS, one impulsive decision to withdraw our troops risks 
undoing all our progress. Russia--every meeting the President holds 
with Putin always seems to result in Putin's coming out ahead. We are 
now at risk of the situation with Iran heading for a similar 
deterioration.
  The President's foreign policy actions so far in North Korea, in 
Syria, in Russia, and just about everywhere else can be described in 
two words: ``erratic'' and ``impulsive.'' I am worried that a few 
months from now his Iran policy will be described in exactly the same 
way.
  As the President's circle of advisers has gotten smaller and more 
insular and as nearly all of the dissident voices have been forced out 
of the administration, there seems to be no one left to tell the 
President no. At times like this, skeptical voices need to ask the 
right questions, and Congress--Congress must provide a check on the 
President and assert our constitutional role in matters of war and 
peace.
  In my view, President Trump does not--does not--have authority for a 
war with Iran. There are several important pieces of legislation by 
both Senators Kaine and Sanders to limit further escalation with Iran 
and assert Congress's prerogative on these matters. Both should receive 
votes in the Senate.
  I plan to ask pointed questions of this administration at a briefing 
for the Gang of 8 later this afternoon. We need answers to some crucial 
questions, and there are many. Here are the two that are most on 
Americans' minds: What are Iran's most probable responses to the strike 
on Soleimani? Are we prepared for each of these responses, and how 
effective will our counterresponses be?
  There was some alarming confusion yesterday about the military's 
position on the future of U.S. troops in Iraq. What, in truth, does the 
Soleimani strike mean for the long-term stability of Iraq and our 
presence there? How does the administration plan to prevent an 
escalation of hostilities and the potential for large-scale 
confrontation with Iran in the Middle East? These are just some of the 
questions the administration has to answer. The safety and security of 
our American troops and of the American people are at stake.


                              Impeachment

  Madam President, on impeachment, this morning, I return to the most 
pressing question facing my colleagues at this moment: Will the Senate 
conduct a fair impeachment trial of the President of the United States 
of America?
  The Framers suspected that any impeachment would ignite the passions 
of the public and naturally would create partisans who are either 
sympathetic or inimical to the President's interests. That is why the 
Framers gave the Senate the responsibility to try impeachment cases. 
When it came to a matter as serious as the potential removal of a 
President, they believed the Senate was the only body of government 
with enough independence to rise above partisan considerations and act 
with the necessary impartiality. Will we live up to that vision?
  Right now, the Republican leader and I have very different ideas 
about what it means to conduct a fair trial. Democrats believe a fair 
trial considers all the relevant facts and allows for witnesses and 
documents. We don't know what the evidence will say. It may exculpate 
the President. It may further incriminate him. We only want a trial 
that examines all the facts and lets the chips fall where they may.
  The Republican leader, in contrast, apparently believes that a trial 
should feature no witnesses, no relevant documents, and proceed 
according to the desires of the White House, the defendant. The 
Republican leader seems more concerned with being able to claim he went 
through the constitutional motions than actually carrying out our 
constitutional duty.
  Because the Republican leader has been completely unwilling to help 
get the facts for a Senate trial, the question will have to be decided 
by the majority of Senators in this Chamber. That means four Republican 
Senators at any point can compel the Senate to call the fact witnesses 
and subpoena the relevant documents that we know will shed additional 
light on the truth.
  I have heard several arguments from the other side as to why we 
shouldn't vote on witnesses and documents at the outset of the trial. 
The Republican leader and several Republican Senators have suggested 
that each side complete their arguments, and then we will decide on 
witnesses.
  This idea is as backward as it sounds. Trials should be informed by 
witnesses and documents; they are not an afterthought. Their reasoning 
and McConnell's reasoning has an ``Alice in Wonderland'' logic to it: 
Let's have each side make their case, he says, and then vote on whether 
the prosecutors and defense should have all the available evidence to 
make those cases.
  We know what is going on here. Our Republican colleagues, even Leader 
McConnell, knows that the American people want witnesses and documents. 
Sixty percent of Republicans do. They are afraid to say no, but they 
don't want to vote on them because that might offend the defendant in 
this trial, President Trump, so they are trying to kick the can down 
the road.
  It is a strange position for Republican colleagues to take. They are 
willing to kick the can down the road, as I said, on questions of 
witnesses and documents, but they are not willing to say when or if 
they will ever support it.
  Just yesterday, one of the four witnesses we have requested, former 
National Security Advisor Bolton, said he is ready to testify and has 
new information to share related to the case at hand. Republicans were 
dodging and twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain why 
someone with direct knowledge of what the President did shouldn't 
testify under oath immediately.
  I believe that illustrates the fundamental weakness of the Republican 
position. None of our Republican colleagues can advance an argument 
about why this evidence shouldn't be part of a trial from the 
beginning.
  To put it another way, none of our Republicans have advanced an 
argument about why it would make sense for the Senate to wait until the 
end of the trial to obtain all the evidence.
  Make no mistake, on the question of witnesses and documents, 
Republicans may run, but they can't hide. There will be votes at the 
beginning on whether to call the four witnesses we have proposed and 
subpoena the documents we have identified. America and the eyes of 
history will be watching what my Republican colleagues do.
  Another argument I have heard from the other side is that it is not 
the Senate's job to go outside of the record established by the House 
impeachment probe. I would reply that it very much is the Senate's job. 
The Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to try impeachment 
cases, not review impeachment cases, not go over impeachment cases but 
the sole power to try them. It is not the Senate's job to put the House 
impeachment proceedings on a weeklong rerun on C-SPAN. Our job is to 
try the case, to hold a real, fair, and honest trial. That means 
examining the arguments. That means letting the prosecutors request 
witnesses and documents to make their case.
  This is not just my view. It has been the view of every Senate facing 
impeachment trial in our history. Every single impeachment trial of a 
President has featured witnesses. Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial 
had 41 witnesses. Several of my Republican colleagues here today voted 
for witnesses in the Clinton trial. Except for one solitary case, every 
impeachment trial of any official, in the history of the Senate--and 
there have been a bunch--had witnesses.
  A trial isn't a trial without evidence. A trial without all the facts 
is a farce. If the President is ultimately acquitted at the end of a 
sham trial, his acquittal will be meaningless. That is why the 
President himself should demand a full and fair trial.
  President Trump, if you have nothing to hide, if you think the case 
is as flimsy as you say, call your Chief of Staff. Tell him to release 
the documents. Call Leader McConnell and tell him what you already told 
the country; that you would ``love'' for your aides to testify in a 
Senate trial. President Trump, if you believe you have done nothing 
wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of from witnesses and documents. 
To the

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contrary, if you are afraid of witnesses and documents, most Americans 
will believe you have something to hide and that you fear you have done 
something very, very wrong.
  If my Republican colleagues believe the President has done nothing 
wrong, they should have nothing to fear from witnesses and documents. 
In fact, they should welcome them. What better way to prove to the 
American people that we are treating this matter with the gravity it 
requires. What better way to prove to their constituents that they are 
not just doing the President's bidding and not just making this a sham 
trial because of obeisance to the President of the United States.
  If every Senate Republican votes to prevent witnesses and documents 
from coming before the Senate, if every Republican Senator votes for a 
rigged trial that hides the truth, the American people will see that 
the Republican Senate is part of a large and awful coverup.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.


                            Japan Trade Deal

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I have come to the floor today to 
start this new year by really encouraging my friends on each side of 
the aisle to approach this coming legislative session with some 
optimism because there are some good things we can do.
  We come to the floor and we hear about Iran and we hear about 
Soleimani. There are differences of opinion there. I am one of those. I 
represent a major military post, and I know that so many of our men and 
women in uniform said: You know what, this should have been done long 
ago. This is a known terrorist who has conducted terrorist attacks on 
six continents, even tried it here in the United States. They felt like 
the President was justified.
  We hear about impeachment, and of course we know it has been widely 
reported that our friends across the aisle and over in the House 
started 3 years ago trying to find something they could impeach Donald 
Trump on--just something. It was going to be emoluments, or it was 
going to be collusion, or it was going to be coercion, or it was going 
to be Russia, or it was going to be bribery. There had to be something 
there because, you know what, they just don't like the guy. They don't 
like him. So they have been at it nonstop. They let that get in the way 
of some good things that people would like to get done.
  For the next few minutes, I would like to encourage us to think 
beyond subpoenas and trial and negativity and witness statements and 
instead focus in on three things that are right in front of us: two 
successfully negotiated trade deals that will benefit farmers, 
manufacturers, and small business owners and producers not only in my 
State of Tennessee but across the entire country.
  In the Volunteer State alone, we have 967 foreign-based businesses, 
and they have invested $37.3 billion in capital improvements, and 
currently they employ more than 147,000 Tennesseans. That is good for 
our State. Trade is important to us in Tennessee, insourcing these 
jobs.
  Of particular importance to us is maintaining great trade relations 
with Japan. Do you know what is so amazing? We have so many people who 
didn't even know that the Japan trade agreement went into effect on 
January 1. The mainstream media was so busy focused on impeachment and 
other things that they didn't even realize this was a deal that will do 
a good job for us.
  Our former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, who is a Tennessean, Ambassador 
Hagerty, had negotiated this before he left. This recently agreed-to 
Japan trade deal will support 40,000 jobs that are already provided by 
Japanese companies. The new deal will also solidify Tennessee's 
relationships with Japanese partners like Nissan North America, Toyota, 
Bridgestone, Nidec, and Denso Manufacturing--all with a presence in 
Tennessee and all employing Tennesseans.
  It is going to create greater market access to Tennessee's 
agriculture products, specifically pork, cheese, and wine. It will 
eliminate or lower tariffs on 7.2 billion dollars' worth of U.S. 
exports, including beef, which will put Tennessee and American farmers 
on a level playing field with their competitors. That is a good thing 
for our agricultural community. I cannot overstate how big a win this 
is for Tennesseans and for Americans, and there is more on the horizon.


                            China Trade Deal

  Madam President, later this month, President Trump will solidify a 
trade deal with China that will eliminate or roll back the section 301 
tariffs and provide some much needed protection for our patents and 
trademarks and copyrights that will allow innovators in our creative 
community, like our Tennessee songwriters, screenwriters, TV producers, 
and our actors, to enjoy the benefits of a free market. This has been a 
long time coming. There is a lot more to do.


              United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement

  Madam President, you may recall at the end of 2018--not 2019 but at 
the end of 2018--President Trump notified Congress that he would soon 
provide us with implementing legislation for the newly signed United 
States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. We call it the USMCA.
  At that moment, at the end of 2018, our colleagues in the House were 
put on notice that this highly anticipated and desperately needed 
legislation was on its way. Get ready. It is coming to you. At that 
moment, the House majority leadership was presented with the 
opportunity to prioritize American workers over partisan politicking. 
What was their choice? Their choice was to choose partisan politicking 
and leave the American workers on the sideline, leave these auto 
manufacturing workers on the sideline while they focused in on partisan 
bickering. We all know what happened.
  In 2019, petty revenge schemes took priority and trade relations with 
our closest allies were shoved aside to accommodate a yearslong 
campaign. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, for 3 years they 
have wanted to undo the 2016 election.
  In May, instead of prioritizing the creation of nearly 176,000 jobs, 
House Democrats decided to spend their time drafting subpoenas. In 
June, instead of focusing on the 12 million jobs already depending on 
good trade relations with Canada and Mexico, House Democrats held four 
votes on these subpoenas.
  It was the same story in July, in August, and in September. House 
Democrats pushed forward with their impeachment ambitions at all costs. 
They had to do it. They had made a promise that they were going to go 
get him. They neglected the owners of over 120,000 American small 
businesses that export goods throughout North America. They put 
themselves and their priorities before the needs of the American 
people.
  Even as late as October, the Speaker of the House continued to stall, 
inventing excuse after excuse when it came to pushing the USMCA 
negotiations to the sidelines in favor of partisan attacks. Even 
Members of her own caucus sought to distance themselves from those 
attacks.
  By the end of the year, the House majority's resolve to ignore their 
duty, finally began to splinter.
  They struck a deal with the White House, but even then, the 
compromises they pushed for were barely, hardly worth wasting an entire 
year's worth of potential economic opportunity. There was a lot of 
opportunity cost to businesses to make way for House Democrats' 
partisan bickering.
  We have brokered successful trade deals with Japan, with China--deals 
that America's farmers, manufacturers, producers, and small businesses 
have waited for, for a very long time. Now, after a year's worth of 
delays, excuses, and outright obstruction on the part of House 
Democrats, we are forced to ask those farmers and workers to wait just 
a little bit longer. It isn't fair, and it certainly is not what is 
best for our Nation's economy and certainly not what is best for 
Tennessee.
  In the coming weeks, I encourage my colleagues to stay focused on 
policies that may not dominate the headlines but that are dominating 
the thoughts of Tennesseans from one end of the State to the other and 
certainly of Americans all across this country who are looking for 
trade opportunities and opportunities to grow their businesses in this 
robust and growing economy.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.

[[Page S35]]

  



                                  Iran

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this morning, the Republican majority 
leader took to the floor and spoke at great length about the execution 
of General Soleimani. General Soleimani, who was the head of the 
military forces in Iran, was killed by a drone strike at the 
authorization of the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
  Senator McConnell, this morning, made a lengthy case about the 
background of General Soleimani. It is hard to argue with the facts he 
brought to the floor. In fact, I would concede and most would agree 
that General Soleimani, in his time, was an architect of terrorism and 
that, in the course of his career, there has been American blood on his 
hands. That is fact, but it wasn't a fact just discovered in the last 
few weeks. The Presidents of both political parties have known this 
about General Soleimani for a long period of time. They have had 
opportunities to end his life, yet they didn't seize those 
opportunities. Presidents of both parties decided it was prudent not to 
do it.
  The question that has been raised now is why this President, at this 
moment, made the decision to execute the general. We know this general 
and his past activity have had an impact not only on the United States 
but on the Middle East and many other innocent people. The question 
that has been raised is, Why at this moment? Why did it make sense at 
this moment?
  But for a few Members of the Senate, most of us have not had 
extensive briefings or an opportunity to ask questions of this 
administration about the timing of this critical decision. We will get 
our chance tomorrow. There is a classified briefing in which 
representatives at the highest level of this administration will come 
before us and explain why they believe the President's decision at that 
moment was the right thing to do for America. So many of those who come 
to the floor and defend the decision or criticize those who question 
that decision really have not had the benefit of a classified briefing, 
which will be offered to Members tomorrow.
  I am going to withhold any comments about those elements, as much as 
I can possibly say publicly, until I get the chance to have more 
information. But this much I do know: Regardless of that decision on 
General Soleimani, we know for certain the Constitution of the United 
States empowers the American people, through their elected 
Representatives in the Senate and the House, to make the ultimate 
decision about whether the United States will go to war with Iran or 
any other country on Earth. We have learned, bitterly, that the 
ignorance or refusal of Congress to exercise that constitutional right 
can be disastrous.
  Many of us have memories of the war in Vietnam, where 58,000 American 
lives were lost, 2 million Vietnamese were killed, and $170 billion--
now, in today's terms, $1 trillion--was spent on a conflict that 
divided America and cost so many American lives. Congress did not 
exercise the authority given to it under the Constitution to make the 
initial decision about that war in Vietnam. Many times thereafter, 
people said: Why didn't you step up and make the decision before this 
costly mistake was made?
  If there is to be a war with Iran, I join with Senator Kaine of 
Virginia in saying that the American people, once again, need to make 
this decision under the Constitution through Congress, article I, 
section 8, which provides, in clause 11, that only Congress has the 
power to declare war.
  If we are going to proceed down a path to war with Iran, the American 
people have the right to know and the right to hear the fulsome debate. 
In the time I have served in the Senate, I have seen Presidents in the 
past who have come before the American people with flimsy evidence or 
even misleading evidence to justify military action. I know the bitter 
consequences of war. Even the best American troops are going to suffer 
casualties and deaths in the execution of a war.
  Let us make certain that if we are going to move forward with 
hostilities against Iran, we do it under our constitutional requirement 
to have a fulsome debate before the American people and have an 
official declaration of war before we move forward. We owe the American 
people nothing less.


                              Impeachment

  Madam President, secondly, I would like to address the issue of the 
impeachment trial, which the Senate majority leader, Senator McConnell, 
raised this morning.
  Before I was elected to Congress, I made a living as a lawyer. I took 
many cases to trial. Few, if any, ever moved to a final decision 
without the introduction of evidence. The evidence, of course, consists 
of documentation, sometimes physical evidence, but often the testimony 
of people who were witnesses to events critical to a jury's final 
decision.
  This impeachment trial should be nothing less. This is an opportunity 
for us--a rare opportunity in American history--to come forward and to 
demonstrate that we are going to handle a trial in the U.S. Senate in a 
professional manner. For the Senate majority leader, Senator McConnell, 
to announce that there will be no witnesses, there will be no evidence, 
there will be no documents in advance is to deny the very basis of a 
trial, as I understand it and as most Americans understand it.
  If this President believes, as he has said so often, the charges in 
the impeachment articles do not rise to any serious or credible level, 
then, certainly, there is evidence that could prove his case. He will 
have his managers on the floor of the Senate when the articles are 
presented to us. They can certainly call witnesses. They can bring 
evidence before us. But so far, the record is not very strong for that 
to happen.
  One of the Articles of Impeachment, the second one, relates to the 
President's refusal to cooperate with the investigation in the House, 
refusal to provide documentation and witnesses. For a President who is 
arguing that there is really nothing to these charges, he has refused 
to provide even the most basic evidence to prove his point, if it 
exists.
  What we are saying on the Democratic side is that if there is to be a 
trial for impeachment in the U.S. Senate, common sense and the 
Constitution require that it be a fair trial with evidence for not only 
the Senators but the American people themselves to see. What we have 
asked for so far is limited in terms of what we are looking for: four 
witnesses and documents that can be clearly identified. Those are 
things I think should be part of this trial record so that regardless 
of the outcome of the trial, the American people will believe it was 
handled fairly, in a dispassionate and nonpartisan way.


                  For-Profit Colleges and Universities

  Madam President, I have come to the floor many times to speak to the 
American people about an industry, the most heavily federally 
subsidized industry in America today. No, it is not a defense 
contractor. It has nothing to do with American agriculture. What I am 
speaking of are the for-profit colleges and universities of the United 
States. These colleges and universities, sadly, have written a 
notorious record when it comes to the treatment of their students. They 
have often cheated their students, luring them into signing up for 
expensive, often worthless college courses with false promises and 
inflated outcomes if they graduate.
  At the end, the students are left with massive student debts, a 
diploma that is worthless, credits that can't be transferred to any 
other reputable college or university, and the prospects of a job that 
is almost impossible to find. In many cases, these sham operations 
actually go out of business in the middle of the student's education.
  As an industry, for-profit colleges need to be remembered for two 
numbers--two numbers that tell the story of this industry. Nine percent 
of all postsecondary students go to for-profit colleges and 
universities in the United States. The University of Phoenix, DeVry--
you have heard their names. They advertise quite widely. Nine percent 
of students are attracted to these for-profit colleges and 
universities. But 33 percent of all of the federal student loan 
defaults in the United States are by the students who chose to attend 
those colleges and universities.
  What is going on here, with 9 percent of the students and 33 percent 
of the student loan defaults? The answer is obvious. The cost of 
education at for-profit colleges and universities is too

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high. Students incur more debt than they would by attending community 
colleges, city colleges, or other universities and colleges that have 
good reputations.
  Secondly, the education is substandard. You can advertise everything 
online about this great education. I can recall an ad that was on 
television in the Washington, DC, area a few years ago, and it showed a 
young woman--probably a teenager, not much beyond--in her pajamas, on 
her bed, saying: I am going to college on my laptop here.
  Well, that kind of easy education, many times, is no education at 
all. At for-profit colleges and universities, too many students end up 
taking these expensive courses that are meaningless. It turns out that 
none of these courses can be transferred to some other school or 
university. When you take these courses and you spend your money and 
you spend your time and you end up with so-called college credits by 
for-profit colleges and universities, no one else will take them. No 
one else accepts them. They laugh at them. Then the students, if they 
can hang in there long enough with massive student debt, end up with a 
diploma that is a joke, a diploma that can't even lead to a job. That 
is what the for-profit colleges and universities are all about. Despite 
the fact that they have been pretty widespread across the United 
States, many of them have gone bankrupt.
  What happens to you as a student if you have gone to one of these 
universities that has made all these promises to you along the way 
about taking college courses and how it is going to end up being an 
education that will lead to a job, and it turns out they were all lies, 
fraud, deceit, deception? You have the debt, right? You have the 
student debt, but you can't find a job. You went through 4, 5 years of 
these so-called courses at for-profit colleges and universities, and 
the only thing you have to show for it is a debt that is going to 
decide the rest of your life.
  It is not just the for-profit college industry that is burdening and 
exploiting our students. I come to the floor this morning because, 
sadly, at this moment in time, an agency of our government is 
complicit. Secretary Betsy DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education 
have made a fateful decision for hundreds of thousands of American 
students that I have just described. Let me explain.
  After a for-profit college defrauds a student--lies to the student--
Federal law gives that student the right to have his or her Federal 
student loan discharged under a provision known as borrower defense. 
Follow me. I have gone to a school and incurred a debt. They lied to me 
about their courses leading to a certain degree or to a job. Now the 
college is going out of business, and I still have the debt, but, under 
American law, I am protected as a student.
  The law says that if you were defrauded, you can use something called 
a borrower defense to discharge the student debt, wipe it clean, and 
get another chance at life. Congress has rightly decided with this law 
that we shouldn't leave students holding the bag when these schools 
should be held responsible.
  Is that something most Americans agree with? Take a look at this New 
America poll. Americans agree that students should have their Federal 
student loan debt canceled if their college deceived them. For 
Republicans, 71 percent agree with that statement; Democrats, 87 
percent. Seventy-eight percent of the American people say that if these 
colleges lied to them, the students shouldn't end up holding the bag. 
It is pretty obvious.
  But sadly, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is trying to make it 
difficult, if not impossible, for defrauded student borrowers to get 
the relief. Secretary DeVos has allowed a backlog of--listen to this--
more than 223,000 claims of students with student debt who claimed they 
were defrauded by these colleges and universities. There are 223,000 
queued up, waiting in line for the Department of Education to implement 
the law. For more than a year, she has also failed to approve one 
single claim of the 223,000 who say they were defrauded--not one. She 
couldn't help one student who was defrauded out of 223,000.
  Now she wants to change the rules to make it impossible for future 
student borrowers to be relieved from their student debt when the 
schools have deceived them and defrauded them. She has put forward a 
new rule that places unreasonable burdens on student borrowers to seek 
and receive relief. Under this rule, the applicants looking for 
discharge of their student debt must prove that the school 
intentionally misled them. How is the student supposed to prove 
intention on the part of the school? Borrowers must also file a claim 
within 3 years of leaving the school, even though the conduct is often 
not discovered until many years later. The new rule also requires 
borrowers to apply individually instead of receiving automatic 
discharge when they are part of a group who has been harmed by similar 
widespread misconduct.
  We have seen it before. Some of these names may ring a bell with you: 
Corinthian Colleges. They were all over the United States. They went 
bankrupt. It turned out they were defrauding students, saying: Go take 
these courses, and you can end up being qualified for these jobs.
  It turned out it was a lie. After they went bankrupt, under the Obama 
administration, many of the students, as a group, were protected by 
this law, the borrower defense rule. Secretary DeVos says: Every 
student, you are on your own at this point. Lawyer up. You are going to 
have to prove your case as an individual.
  This new rule requires borrowers to apply individually, instead of 
receiving this automatic discharge, which was the case under the Obama 
administration. With this new rule, Secretary DeVos is saying to 
borrowers: We are not on your side. You are on your own.
  In addition, if a borrower's claim for relief is denied, they would 
not be allowed to appeal under Secretary DeVos's new rule. Even if more 
evidence of deception and misconduct is found.
  This new rule also puts taxpayers on the hook for relief, shielding 
schools from being held directly accountable by students. The DeVos 
rule eliminated the current prohibition on institutions using class 
action restrictions and mandatory arbitrations as conditions of 
enrollment.
  These practices, which you have seen over and over again by 
Corinthian and ITT Tech and others, require borrowers to sign away 
their rights when they go to school. Think about that. You are 19 years 
old, and you are starting your college education. You are going before 
one of these schools. They push in front of you that you have to sign 
up for $10,000 or $20,000 in tuition and sign the following contract. 
There you are, at age 19 without much life experience, being asked to 
sign up. Do you know what the fine print says? The fine print says that 
if I am lying to you, you can't go to court. Most students don't even 
understand that. They sign it because they are off to college, 
thinking, finally, here is our opportunity to be educated and have a 
life, a future. They don't know they are being deceived by these 
schools.
  Secretary DeVos has said: Sorry students, you signed that paper when 
you were 19, and now you are stuck with it.
  It is impossible for student borrowers to get relief under this new 
rule by Secretary DeVos. According to an analysis by the Institute of 
College Access & Success, the new Secretary DeVos rule will end up 
forgiving, at most, 3 percent of the loans associated with school 
misconduct. They will be able to recoup just 33 percent of that relief 
from the schools themselves, and taxpayers will foot the difference. 
The current rule is estimated to forgive 53 percent of loans associated 
with misconduct and recoup a greater percentage of the relief from 
schools. Secretary DeVos has loaded up the U.S. Department of Education 
with people who were in the for-profit college industry. These are 
folks who are devising rules good for their industry but not good for 
the American student borrowers. The bottom line is, the DeVos rule 
makes it harder for borrowers to receive relief, and the schools who 
commit the misconduct will pay for a lower portion of the relief that 
is given.
  I introduced S.J. Res. 56 last September to overturn Secretary 
DeVos's borrower defense rule. Representative Susie Lee of Nevada 
introduced a companion resolution in the House. Many organizations have 
endorsed my bill, including the Leadership Conference on

[[Page S37]]

Civil and Human Rights, the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, 
National Education Association, Consumer Federation of America, Student 
Veterans of America, and the NAACP, but there is one most recently that 
I want to share with you because I think it is important that Members 
of the Senate of both political parties realize that we now have a 
major organization--a nonpartisan organization--that speaks for the 
veterans of America who have endorsed this effort.
  I have in my hand a letter submitted to me by James Oxford, who goes 
by the nickname ``Bill,'' national commander of the American Legion of 
the United States of America, sent to me on December 18, 2019. He tells 
the story of veterans who were exploited by these for-profit colleges 
and universities. They ended up serving our country, earning their GI 
bill of rights, then losing their benefits to these schools--these 
worthless schools--and going further in debt to pay for their 
education.
  Commander Oxford sent this letter.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                December 18, 2019.
       Dear Senator Durbin: On behalf of the nearly 2 million 
     members of The American Legion, I write to express our 
     support for Joint Resolution 56, providing for congressional 
     disapproval of the rule submitted by the Department of 
     Education relating to, ``Borrower Defense Institutional 
     Accountability.'' The rule, as currently written, is 
     fundamentally rigged against defrauded borrowers of student 
     loans, depriving them of the opportunity for debt relief that 
     Congress intended to afford them under the Higher Education 
     Act. Affirming this position is American Legion Resolution 
     No. 82: Preserve Veteran and Servicemember Rights to Gainful 
     Employment and Borrower Defense Protections, adopted in our 
     National Convention 2017.
       Thousands of student veterans have been defrauded over the 
     years--promised their credits would transfer when they 
     wouldn't, given false or misleading job placement rates in 
     marketing, promised one educational experience when they were 
     recruited, but given something completely different. This 
     type of deception against our veterans and servicemembers has 
     been a lucrative scam for unscrupulous actors.
       As veterans are aggressively targeted due to their service 
     to our country, they must be afforded the right to group 
     relief. The Department of Education's ``Borrower Defense'' 
     rule eliminates this right, forcing veterans to individually 
     prove their claim, share the specific type of financial harm 
     they suffered, and prove the school knowingly made 
     substantial misrepresentations. The preponderance of evidence 
     required for this process is so onerous that the Department 
     of Education itself estimated that only 3 percent of 
     applicants would get relief.
       Until every veteran's application for student loan 
     forgiveness has been processed, we will continue to demand 
     fair and timely decisions. The rule that the Department of 
     Education has promulgated flagrantly denies defrauded 
     veterans these dignities, and The American Legion calls on 
     Congress to overturn this regulatory action.
       Senator Durbin, The American Legion applauds your 
     leadership in addressing this critical issue facing our 
     nation's veterans and their families.
           For God & Country,
                                         James W. ``Bill'' Oxford,
                          National Commander, The American Legion.

  Mr. DURBIN. Let me read one paragraph from Commander Oxford:

       As veterans are aggressively targeted due to their service 
     to our country, they must be afforded the right to group 
     relief. The Department of Education's ``Borrower Defense'' 
     rule eliminates this right, forcing veterans to individually 
     prove their claim, share the specific type of financial harm 
     they suffered, and prove the school knowingly made 
     substantial misrepresentations. The preponderance of evidence 
     required for this process is so onerous that the Department 
     of Education itself estimated that only 3 percent of 
     applicants would get relief.

  Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, don't go waving that flag 
and tell everybody how much you love our veterans and ignore this 
letter. The leader of the largest veterans group in the United States 
of America--a nonpartisan group--told us these schools exploited 
veterans, and Secretary DeVos's new rule means that these veterans will 
never get relief. Ninety-seven percent will never get any relief.
  In a matter of a few days--maybe weeks--I will be calling this matter 
to the floor. I am asking my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
put the party labels outside, hang them up in the cloakroom, come on 
inside here, and stand up for students across America who did their 
best to get a college education and were deceived in the process, stand 
up for students who were loaded up with student debt, which could 
destroy their lives, and give them a fighting chance for a future by 
saying that Secretary DeVos's borrower defense rule is unfair to 
veterans, unfair to students, and unfair to American families.
  I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the right thing 
when the time comes and give these borrowers a second chance at being 
financially independent Americans who can contribute to their families 
and our national economic growth. For our veterans, please join me in 
making sure that Secretary DeVos's borrower defense rule is disapproved 
by both the House and the Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott of Florida). The Senator from 
Connecticut.


                                  Iran

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, at a time of international turmoil and 
crisis like this, all of us, I think, are sometimes prone to hyperbole. 
I count myself as part of that club. I endeavor to do better.
  It doesn't serve this body well to warn of bad decisions that could 
lead to war if we are only doing it to serve political ends or to 
bloody up a political opponent. Crying wolf also anesthetizes the 
public and risks dulling the country's senses at a moment when the 
peril is real. Anytime we are considering asking the men and women of 
our Armed Forces and their families to make further sacrifices for 
their country, we have to treat those moments with the gravity they 
deserve.
  Let me state at the outset of my remarks that there are important 
reasons why I believe that both Iran and the United States do not want 
to enter into a conventional conflict that would likely involve the 
United States taking steps to remove the Supreme Leader from power and 
which would likely involve an invasion that would make Iraq in 2003 
look like child's play.
  The United States, of course, remembers the Iraq war--at least, I 
think we do. Our military leaders know that a short-term fight in Iran 
would be much bloodier and would be much more costly than the initial 
invasion of Iraq. Iran, for instance, has twice the population of Iraq. 
A long-term counterinsurgency in Iran would be endless, potentially 
costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
  The Iranian leadership also knows that the United States might never 
defensively defeat a drawn-out insurgency on Iranian turf, but Iran's 
leaders also know they likely wouldn't be around to see that eventual 
conclusion because the United States would, at the very least, likely 
be successful in ending the existing regime.
  So neither side is likely war-gaming for victory. Even those of us 
who are deeply critical of President Trump's Iran policy should 
acknowledge this, but as a student of history, I know that the annals 
of war are replete with cataclysmic conflicts that began not by choice 
but by accident, negligence, and incompetence.
  So today, when I warn of the United States being on a potential path 
to war with Iran, that is my concern, that the utter lack of strategy, 
the complete absence of nuance, the abandoned communication and 
coordination with our allies, and the alarming deficiency of 
experienced counsel will end up getting thousands of Americans 
needlessly killed.
  This is not the first warning of this kind I have presented. A year 
and a half ago, the President ignored the advice of his first Secretary 
of State and his first Secretary of Defense, and he unilaterally pulled 
the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement, despite the fact 
that every expert agreed that Iran was in compliance. Then, to make 
things worse, President Trump enacted a series of devastating 
unilateral sanctions on Iran. No other nations joined with us. In fact, 
most of our allies actively and aggressively worked against us, trying 
to undermine and work around those sanctions in order to save the 
nuclear agreement. That fact, in and of itself, is simply extraordinary 
and a sign of how weak President Trump has made America abroad.

[[Page S38]]

  The sanctions still took a dramatic toll on Iran's economy, and like 
everybody predicted, the Iranian Government didn't sit still. They 
began to push back, attacking Saudi oil pipelines, capturing European 
oil tankers, and ratcheting up threats against U.S. forces in Iraq. 
During this time, the President changed his story every week. Some days 
he said he would sit down and negotiate with the Iranians without 
preconditions. Other days his top people said they wouldn't sit down 
unless Iran met an absurdly long list of preconditions. Other days, 
President Trump said he wanted to blast Iran off the map. It was a 
comedy of diplomatic errors, compounded nearly weekly with conflicting 
message after conflicting message that made it difficult for Iran to 
approach negotiations with us, even if they wanted to.
  By this winter, the situation was spiraling out of control. Iranian-
backed militias launched a rocket attack that killed a U.S. private 
contractor in Iraq. The United States responded by killing at least 24 
Iraqi militia members. Then Iraqi militia, supported by Iran, stormed 
our Embassy, culminating, for now, in the drone strike that killed 
General Qasem Soleimani last week in Iraq. There is no reason things 
had to get to this point. When President Trump came into office, Iran 
had stopped their quest for nuclear weapons capabilities, and Iran was 
complying with an intrusive inspections regime that made sure they 
didn't cheat.
  Iranian-backed militias had stopped firing rockets at U.S. personnel 
in Iraq. In fact, they were actually working on a U.S.-led project in 
Iraq--the eradication of ISIS.
  President Obama had united the entire world against Iran. Even Russia 
and China were working side by side with the United States to constrict 
Iran's nuclear weapons program. And with the nuclear agreement secured, 
this global coalition was teed up and ready to be mobilized by 
President Trump to pressure Iran to make the next set of concessions on 
their ballistic missile program and their support for terrorist proxies 
across the region.
  But Trump's bizarre and nonsensical Iran policy threw all that 
leverage away willingly, voluntarily. Despite the economic sanctions, 
Iran today is more powerful, is more menacing than ever before. Just 
weeks ago, Iran had been wracked by anti-government protests, but 
President Trump's recent actions have united the country against 
America and against our allies in one fell swoop. One only needs to 
look at yesterday, when millions of Iranians took to the streets for 
Soleimani's funeral--a mass outpouring of support that the Iranian 
regime could never have hoped to inspire on its own.
  Compared to 3 years ago at the end of the Obama administration, today 
Iran is closer to restoring its proxy state in Syria, Iran is more 
influential in Yemen, Iran is more threatening to U.S. troops in Iraq 
and across the Middle East, and Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon.
  The simple truth is that Iran is stronger and we are less safe today 
than when President Trump was inaugurated, but it gets, implausibly, 
even worse.
  Because the strike on Soleimani is so destabilizing and so 
unstrategically provocative, the U.S. position in Iraq--where we are 
still battling ISIS--is unraveling. All U.S. civilians have been 
ordered to evacuate. All U.S. counter-ISIS operations have been 
suspended. NATO has stopped its ongoing efforts to fight ISIS. The 
Iraqi Parliament has begun the process of kicking out all U.S. forces 
from the country--exactly what Qasem Soleimani had worked for years to 
achieve.
  All of that, on the back of Iran's newfound strength in the region, 
is the reason there is so much head-shaking happening right now about 
why President Trump has so willfully bungled Iran policy, emboldening 
Iranian hard-liners and putting our Nation's safety at risk.
  With that for context, we come back to the crisis moment of today and 
the real possibility that more of President Trump's stumbling will lead 
us into a world-changing conflict with Iran.
  We, the Senators, have seen no evidence that the assassination of 
Soleimani was necessary to prevent an imminent attack on the United 
States. I remain open to seeing that intelligence, but 5 days later, 
Congress has not received a briefing from the administration. We are 
apparently going to get that tomorrow. But both President Obama and 
President Bush had the ability to kill Soleimani. They didn't because 
their experts believed that executing the second most powerful 
political figure in Iran--no matter how evil he was, no matter how many 
American deaths he was responsible for--would end up getting more, not 
fewer, Americans killed.
  We don't know in what form the reprisal from Iran will come or when, 
but it will come. And, listen, we shouldn't be afraid of reprisals in 
the wake of truly necessary military actions by the United States to 
protect our interests abroad. But when that attack arrives, President 
Trump has telegraphed that he is preparing to respond by committing war 
crimes against the Iranian people. He says he will bomb cultural sites, 
filled with civilian visitors, in retaliation. I can't believe this 
needs to be said on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but that is something 
terrorists do, not the United States.
  Although this administration keeps saying they don't want war, there 
is no logic to their circular theory of Iran policy. Trump believes 
that to change Iran's behavior, we need to escalate our own actions. 
Then when our escalation begets more escalation from Tehran, Trump and 
his Iran hawks come to the conclusion that this must be due to the fact 
that our escalation wasn't serious enough. The theory becomes 
unprovable because the Iran hawks just contend, failure after failure, 
that we just need one more escalation and one more escalation and one 
more escalation. This is the exact behavior that could land us in a 
kinetic conflict with Iran that costs American lives.
  As I said at the outset, this is likely not going to be a full-on 
conventional war--at least I hope it is not. It may be that Iran sends 
missiles into Israel or ramps up the temperature in Yemen. They may try 
to assassinate American military or political leaders or use cyber 
warfare to go after critical infrastructure. And maybe we don't invade 
Iran. Maybe we just blister their countryside with bombs or try to 
disable their military from above.
  Of course, no matter the scope of the conflict, no matter how long 
this escalatory cycle lasts, the one thing we know is this: None of 
this has anything to do with making us safer. This cycle started with 
Trump's rejection of a diplomatic agreement with Iran that he didn't 
like just because it had Barack Obama's name on it.
  A political grudge set off a series of events that now has us lodged 
in a crisis of harrowing scope, a crisis that this President--so 
unstable, so reckless, so capricious--likely cannot handle. 
Unfortunately, his rejection of diplomacy and lack of concern for our 
allies has left America more isolated than at any other perilous time 
in our history. At a moment when we cannot afford to be out on a limb, 
out on our own, we are.
  Politics is part of what got us here, but maybe politics is part of 
how we get out of this mess. Congress can cut off funding for President 
Trump's war of choice with Iran. We can make clear, Republicans and 
Democrats, that the President cannot take military action without 
congressional consent. And of course the American people can have their 
say too. They can rise up, as they did in many cities this past 
weekend, and cry out in protest over President Trump's decision to put 
politics over our Nation's security. That public pressure may push 
allies of the President's here in the Senate to stand with Democrats in 
opposition to this reckless risk to our Nation's security. It is not 
too late to put a stop to this madness.
  Iran is an adversary. I don't want anything I have said today to 
paper over all of that nation's misdeeds in the region. It is in our 
national interest to conduct a foreign policy that weakens Iran's 
ability to threaten us, our allies, and our interests. But for the last 
3 years, President Trump has done exactly the opposite. Iran's nuclear 
program is back on. Iran has restarted attacks against the United 
States. Iran is more influential in the region. Everything the 
President has done has worked to degrade our Nation's safety and has 
worked to make Iran stronger.
  The order to strike Soleimani has already been given, but what 
happens

[[Page S39]]

next is not predetermined. My fear--my belief--is that last week's 
killing of Qasem Soleimani will end up fitting into this pattern. But 
we have serious choices to make in this body, and we can choose to get 
off this path of escalation and make decisions that correct this 
President's recklessness and keep America safe. I hope we step up to 
that challenge.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds 
Force, was killed by U.S. forces last week. That has already been well 
discussed and well understood. The failing regime in Iran has done 
everything it could, between his death and right now, to make the most 
of it, to make him a martyr to the cause of terrorism.
  I think we should all understand that the cause of terrorism was his 
cause. He is not a general in any traditional sense of what that would 
mean. He has been described a number of different ways. He has been 
referred to as Iran's top general. Don't think for a minute that means 
anything like almost any other country's top general.
  One newspaper called him Iran's ``most revered military leader.'' 
That might be true, but remember Iran's purpose as a State is to 
encourage terrorism all over the world.
  I heard one news broadcast where he was referred to as ``an 
irreplaceable figurehead,'' though they went on to explain that he was 
a significant person. There apparently are no editors anymore because 
the term ``figurehead'' doesn't mean what they were suggesting. If they 
meant he was an irreplaceable figure, I hope that he is. I think he is 
hard to replace, and I hope he is hard to replace. I would like to 
think that in many ways he will not be able to be replaced, but that 
doesn't mean he deserves our sympathy, respect, or our grief.
  He was, in fact, a bad person. He spent his career largely outside 
the boundaries of what any civilized nation would consider a military 
context. He led Iran's terrorism agenda around the world.
  Iran funded and provided weapons to the Shia militias in Iraq. They 
provided arms depots and military forces to the Assad regime in Syria. 
They supported Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. They provided advanced 
weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Hundreds of U.S. military 
personnel in Iraq were either killed or injured by the IED attacks 
encouraged and funded by Iran in Iraq. That is what the Soleimani 
agenda was all about.
  Over this past year, Iran has continued its campaign of aggression 
against the United States and our allies. In almost every report of 
these activities, Soleimani was one of the persons mentioned as, again, 
structuring, masterminding, encouraging, or taking credit for these 
things as they happened in some cases and denying responsibility in 
others for activities for which he and Iran were responsible.
  Last June, Iran shot down a U.S. intelligence drone flying in 
international space. In July, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps 
captured a British-flagged commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. 
Iran was behind the attack on Saudi oilfields last September using 
drones and cruise missiles. Iran was been behind an earlier attack on a 
Saudi airport used by civilians. The Quds Force also launched a 
crackdown on Iranian citizens who protested oil prices and are 
vigorously seeking out others who are complaining about the failing 
economy in Iran's failing system.
  Someone has already been named to replace Soleimani as the head of 
the Quds Force, but hopefully no one really can fully replace him.
  I am not at all sympathetic to the idea that this action to eliminate 
this individual somehow came out of the blue. I think the President has 
been presented multiple times with this option as one of the things we 
could do if we wanted to send the clearest possible message to Iran. 
The President was criticized last year because when going down the list 
of things I mentioned, he was hesitant to act--until last week. The 
same exact critics in many cases decided, after a year of thinking what 
would be the best response, that when the President did act it was 
suddenly a hasty action. They went from calling his actions hesitant to 
calling this hasty, looking for a way to criticize the President.
  The President took this action after an American contractor was 
killed by forces associated with Iran and Soleimani, after the U.S. 
Embassy in Baghdad was attacked and weapons were used to get into the 
building.
  There have even been some suggestions that we shouldn't have done 
this because we should be afraid of how Iran will react. We do have to 
be thinking about how Iran would react. We need to be thinking about 
what their next aggressive act might be. It would not be their first 
aggressive act, and I have already gone down a pretty long list that 
others can expand upon of the aggressive acts Iran has done up until 
the last few days.
  We do have to be thinking about what is an appropriate response, but 
maybe it is now time for Iran to be thinking about what our next 
response may be to their next aggression. The aggressive list is long, 
the response that the U.S. Government took was significant, but we 
can't fail to act decisively just because it might upset our terrorist 
enemies. We can't fail to act decisively just because it might upset 
the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, Iraq.
  Soleimani was not a high-ranking military official in any acceptable 
military structure. If your idea of a leading general is a general who 
leads in terrorist efforts, I think you have the wrong idea of what a 
military leader is supposed to do.
  Soleimani was not a high-ranking government official in any job that 
a responsible government would have. Soleimani was the mastermind of 
terrorist activities of the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the 
world today. Soleimani has been eliminated and hopefully will be 
impossible to fully replace.
  I would say, in response to that decision, good job to the U.S. 
forces that executed the strike, and good job, Mr. President, in being 
willing to make the call. A bad person and a determined enemy of 
freedom and democracy in the United States of America has been 
eliminated. It is time for the Iranians to be thinking about what our 
next action might be instead of quietly and vigorously planning on what 
their next action might be.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Impeachment

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, many of us here in the Senate thought we 
would be opening the new year with an impeachment trial, but that is 
not what is happening this week because the Senate is still waiting--
waiting for Speaker Pelosi to actually send over the Articles of 
Impeachment.
  Democrats rushed impeachment through the House, throwing fairness and 
due process to the winds in their haste to impeach the President, but 
now they are apparently content to just sit on the Articles of 
Impeachment for the foreseeable future. If Democrats really believe 
that this impeachment is a serious matter, that there is literally a 
crime spree in progress, as they have claimed, they would have already 
sent over the articles. The truth is, Democrats' impeachment efforts, 
which basically started before the President had even taken the oath of 
office, have been politically motivated from the start. Democrats 
thought they could damage the President politically by rushing to 
impeach him, and now they think they can damage the President 
politically by stalling a trial.
  Speaker Pelosi is also attempting to force the Senate to conduct the 
trial she would like it to conduct in hopes of getting the outcome she 
would prefer--demonstrating once again the fundamentally political 
nature of the Democrats' impeachment quest. Here in the Senate, we will 
continue working on the business of governing until

[[Page S40]]

the Speaker decides she is ready to stop playing games.


                                  Iran

  Mr. President, on Friday, we learned that Iranian General Qasem 
Soleimani had been killed in a U.S. airstrike. Iran's terrorist 
activities throughout the Middle East are well known. Iran is a key 
backer of Hamas and Hezbollah and has fomented conflict throughout the 
entire Middle East--escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, fueling 
civil war in Yemen, and supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's 
brutal regime.
  At the end of December, the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah, or 
KH, as they are called, fired more than 30 rockets at an Iraqi military 
base, killing an American contractor and wounding 4 U.S. troops. Days 
later, Iran-backed protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, 
conducting a 2-day siege of the Embassy before withdrawing--although 
not without setting fire to parts of the Embassy's exterior.
  The list of Iranian terror activities is long, and at the center of 
all these activities has been General Qasem Soleimani. As head of the 
Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Soleimani has 
been masterminding Iran's terrorist activities for two decades. Iran 
has been linked to one in six military deaths in Iraq, notably through 
the IEDs that have become so emblematic of the War on Terror. This was 
Soleimani's work. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of 
Americans and thousands of innocent civilians throughout the Middle 
East. It is a good thing that his reign of terror is over.
  While I hope we can all agree that Soleimani was a just target, there 
are naturally questions about the timing of the strike and what options 
were laid before President Trump. The Senate will be briefed tomorrow, 
and I hope my colleagues and I will be given a clear intelligence 
picture of the imminent and significant threat Secretary of State 
Pompeo and other administration officials have described.
  Soleimani's death provides Iran with an opportunity to change course 
and to rethink its participation in terrorist activities throughout the 
Middle East and its aggression against the United States. 
Unfortunately, Iran doesn't seem ready to take that opportunity, and 
there are rightfully concerns about how Iran might retaliate for 
Soleimani's death.
  Iran has vowed severe revenge, but I hope Iran's leaders recognize 
that the United States will not tolerate Iran's aggressions. The United 
States is obviously closely monitoring any Iranian response or 
escalation, from attempted cyber attacks to threats against U.S. troops 
or citizens or our allies. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General 
Milley, has cautioned that there remains a significant risk, and we 
have seen the Department of Defense and the State Department adjust 
their postures accordingly.
  As I said, with Soleimani's removal, Iran has the opportunity to 
change course. In both Iran and Iraq, we have seen protests bravely 
displaying the desire for a new way forward and, in the case of Iraq, 
for freedom from Iran's malign influence. The path to that new day is a 
difficult one. Soleimani's decades of work building terrorist networks 
will not easily be undone, and his replacement has already been named 
and has vowed revenge.
  In addition, under pressure from Iran, Iraq's Parliament advanced a 
nonbinding resolution calling for the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. 
I hope that cooler heads will prevail in Iraq and that we can come to 
an agreement that upholds our mutual security interests and is 
beneficial to both the United States and to the people of Iraq. We have 
invested a lot in regional security efforts that we should see through. 
As we know all too well from the rise of ISIS, the consequences of 
leaving a power vacuum can be dire. I hope that power vacuum will not 
be resurrected as the United States suspends counter-ISIS operations in 
order to defend our installations.
  The world may enjoy a degree of closure with the killing of Qasem 
Soleimani. Citizens of the Middle East who suffered at the hand of 
Soleimani's terror may have hope for a safer future, but this will 
require the Iranian regime to recognize the opportunity it now has to 
rid itself of Soleimani's agenda and chart a new course.
  Iran's leadership knows full well the consequences of maintaining its 
vendetta against America, our allies, and those who seek to live in 
peace and freedom. It got a preview of our military and intelligence 
capabilities last week. This is not a call for escalation but a frank 
acknowledgment that the United States will stand resolutely against 
those who threaten American lives.
  While the initial reaction from Iran has not been promising, I hope 
General Soleimani's death will encourage Iran to think carefully before 
it proceeds any further on its path of terror. I look forward to 
talking with the Defense Secretary, the CIA Director, and others 
tomorrow about what we need to do to minimize the threat of retaliation 
and to keep Americans and our allies safe.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                     Nomination of Jovita Carranza

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I am very happy that our first votes, not 
only of the session but of this decade, are going to be focused on 
supporting small businesses.
  In America, we tend to speak about businesses with a sense of 
reverence that I think is absent in other countries, and there is good 
reason for that. So many of the great companies in this Nation started 
out as small businesses, and some of the greatest companies in America 
today are small businesses. We also have just under 60 million 
individuals who are employed by over 30 million small businesses 
throughout the country.
  The Small Business Administration can play a very important role in 
our success and in the success of these businesses by providing 
entrepreneurs and firms with technical assistance and access to 
capital, so it is critically important for the country.
  Today, as we consider the nomination of Jovita Carranza to serve as 
the SBA Administrator, I thought it was an important point to make. 
There are some additional points I would like to make.
  First of all, the position of Administrator is really crucial to 
ensuring that the agency is functioning well and is successful. It is 
also important that the Administrator be someone who is open to and 
supportive of the need to modernize the Small Business Administration 
and its many programs.
  As we move into this new decade, it is really important that the 
agency evolve to meet the unique and special needs of the entrepreneurs 
of today at a time in which we have ever-changing and increasing global 
and business climate adjustments that are occurring.
  I think we sometimes forget that businesses today face a very 
different environment than we saw 10, 20, or 30 years ago. So as we are 
aware of these changes, it is important that, as policymakers, we have 
an obligation to identify the goals that achieve our national interests 
and that provide for our national defense, that create good jobs for 
American workers, and then that organize the laws that we propose and 
the reforms that we propose around those important items of national 
interest and how to achieve furthering them.
  The last time the Small Business Administration was fully 
reauthorized was 20 years ago, in the year 2000, when just 42 percent 
of households, for example, had internet access. Nearly everyone was 
still using dial-up phones for access. It would be another 6 years 
before the iPhone even existed. Back in 2000, Americans bought fewer 
than 10,000 hybrid electric cars. From 2000 to 2020, those are the 
changes we have undergone, and that was the last time the SBA was 
reauthorized.
  By the way, it also happens to be the year when China became a member 
of the World Trade Organization. I say that because, today, American 
small businesses--if you think our big businesses face unfair 
competition, imagine the unprecedented threat in competing against the 
Chinese Government and its Communist Party's systematic industrial 
espionage and coercion, its large-scale subsidies for their own 
industries, and its sweeping obstruction of market access to its own 
country.

[[Page S41]]

The challenges are extraordinary, and they require resources that allow 
our small business sector to compete against these conditions and to 
operate dynamically, to grow, to be innovative, and to be creative.
  Small businesses need access to services and programs that better 
position them to support not just our Nation's competitiveness on an 
international scale but particularly with regard to Beijing's continued 
economic aggression toward our Nation.
  Just as the SBA was critical in building the technologies and helping 
to spur the creation of the technologies that allowed us to be 
successful both in the space race and, ultimately, in the Cold War, I 
believe the SBA can play an important role in our efforts to compete 
with Chinese economic hostility.
  In that regard, it is important to note that the status quo is just 
not enough. We need an agency that incorporates new and creative 
programs, that focuses on spurring investment, supporting advanced 
manufacturing, promoting innovation, and expanding our export 
opportunities.
  It is important to note, as I said earlier with regard to the SBA's 
role during the space race and the Cold War, that innovation 
breakthroughs we have often seen in our history have often been 
contingent on private-public collaboration, especially in the space 
program that also happens to have a commercial obligation and also 
furthers our national security.
  Small businesses and startups have historically always been essential 
to developing the technologies and the commercialization of products 
that often come out of those partnerships. But unlike what we have seen 
in Silicon Valley--startups that venture capital firms tend to 
gravitate toward over there--these technologies--the ones that are in 
our national interests, which I just spoke about--require significant 
time and resources to finance.
  So on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, we are going 
to continue to work toward a comprehensive reauthorization of the Small 
Business Act and the Small Business Investment Act to achieve these 
ends that I have just outlined. But the leadership and the guidance of 
a forward-thinking SBA Administrator is going to be essential, not just 
to get it passed but to make sure that modernization works.
  As the chairman of the committee, I am very eager to see the position 
of Administrator be filled. President Trump nominated Ms. Carranza to 
serve in this critical role back in August of last year. She has a long 
and successful career, having spent many years in both the private 
sector and government service.
  She started her service at UPS. After 29 years, she retired from 
there as vice president of air operations. Then she was nominated by 
President George W. Bush and was confirmed by this body--the Senate--to 
serve as SBA's Deputy Administrator back in 2006. She served there for 
2 years and then went back into the private sector until returning in 
June of 2017, when President Trump named her Treasurer of the United 
States.
  Last month, the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee 
held a hearing to consider this nomination, and we voted favorably to 
report her nomination to the Senate floor.
  In that hearing, Ms. Carranza made a commitment to work with 
Congress--to work with each of us--on the pressing issues that are 
facing the SBA and the program. She assured us--myself, ranking member, 
Senator Cardin, and other members of the committee--that she would 
address the management challenges in the Office of Investment and 
Innovation to ensure the integrity of its programs but, most 
importantly, that she would appear before the committee after her 
confirmation to provide an update on how she is addressing these 
challenges.
  She has committed to do other things that are important: to assess 
the far-reaching rule governing the agency's critical access to capital 
programs so that it is not restricting access to capital for small 
businesses; to be communicative and transparent with us on the subsidy 
models and calculations they are using for the Federal credit programs; 
to fill the backlog of staff that is needed to properly run the SBA's 
innovation programs; to ensure that Federal grant dollars are being 
properly used--the dollars especially associated with the 
entrepreneurial development programs to modernize the agency's disaster 
loan programs; and to establish better controls to prevent waste, 
fraud, and abuse. She committed to expeditiously establish a women-
owned small business certification program and to provide responses to 
Congress on several of our past communications to the agency outlining 
proposals to aid small businesses against cyber threats, which is a 
critical threat facing many of the small businesses in this country 
today.
  In the business meeting we had after the hearing, we considered her 
nomination. I was pleased to see that the overwhelming majority of our 
members on both sides of the aisle, including the ranking member, 
supported sending the nomination to the full Senate because there is a 
lot of work to be done. Restoring and expanding the SBA's historic 
legacy of assisting businesses and meeting the international challenges 
at hand are very important and very crucial.
  I look forward to working with Ms. Carranza to modernize our existing 
programs to meet the challenges we have before us and working toward 
solutions that ensure that small businesses have access to the 
resources they need to start, to grow, and to empower our Nation at 
large.
  I urge all of my colleagues to support this nomination when we have a 
vote in a few minutes.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Vote on Carranza Nomination

  Under the previous order, all postcloture time has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Carranza 
nomination?
  Mr. ROBERTS. 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. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. 
Perdue).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. 
Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), 
the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. 
Klobuchar), 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 88, nays 5, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 2 Ex.]

                                YEAS--88

     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blackburn
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Hawley
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Loeffler
     Manchin
     McConnell
     McSally
     Menendez
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Paul
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--5

     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Markey
     Merkley
     Wyden

[[Page S42]]


  


                             NOT VOTING--7

     Alexander
     Booker
     Cardin
     Klobuchar
     Perdue
     Sanders
     Warren
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to 
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the President 
will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

                          ____________________