The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“EXECUTIVE SESSION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S1326-S1333 on March 5, 2018.
The Department is primarily focused on food nutrition, with assistance programs making up 80 percent of its budget. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department implements too many regulations and restrictions and impedes the economy.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
EXECUTIVE SESSION
______
EXECUTIVE CALENDAR
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read the nomination of Karen Gren Scholer, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
DACA
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is the day--March 5--the deadline imposed by President Trump on those who are being protected and allowed to stay in the United States under the DACA Program.
It was last September 5 when President Trump's Attorney General held a press conference and said: That is it. The protection that is currently given to 780,000 young people in America to allow them to stay in this country and pursue their dreams will end on March 5 of 2018--today--780,000 who were brought to the United States as infants, toddlers, children, and teenagers, who have lived their lives in this country, who have gone to school, who have never had a serious run-in with the law, who have gone through criminal background checks, come up with $500 filing fees, and who were given permission under an Executive order by President Obama to legally stay in this country for 2 years at a time. During that period, they would not be deported, and they would be allowed to work.
Who are these young people? They are known as the Dreamers, although President Trump hates that term. They are known as the Dreamers because they represent young people who went to school in America, stood up in their classroom every day and pledged allegiance to that flag. This is the only country they have ever known. This was to be the country of their future, but at some point in their lives, a member of their family sat down and said: We have to have a serious conversation. You see, we never filed the papers when we brought you to this country as an infant, and right now you are undocumented in the United States of America.
What that means is that any minute, there could be a knock on the door and you and perhaps your entire family would be asked to leave. I introduced a bill called the DREAM Act 17 years ago. Senator Hatch was my cosponsor when I introduced it. The purpose of the DREAM Act was to say to these young people: We will give you a chance. Though you are illegal in the eyes of the law in the United States--undocumented--we will give you a chance to earn your way to legal status, give you a chance someday to be a citizen of the United States. It will not be easy. There is no helping hand for you. If you want to go to college, there will be no Federal assistance for you. You are going to have to make it on your own. You will have to work and work harder than perhaps the person sitting next to you at their desk in high school. See if you can do it. If you can, we will give you your chance.
That is what the DREAM Act said. It passed with a majority vote in the Senate many times, but it never quite made it to 60 votes, which it needs to become the law of the land.
President Obama, when he was a Senator in this Chamber, was my colleague from Illinois. He cosponsored the DREAM Act with me. So the time came when he was elected President, and I wrote him a letter. Dick Lugar, Republican of Indiana, joined me in that letter. He supported the DREAM Act when he served in the Senate. We wrote to President Obama and said: Can you do anything to give these young people a chance, to spare them from deportation? He worked on it for 1 year. Then President Obama came up with something called DACA, a program by Executive order that gave these young people their chance--780,000 of them went through the background check, paid their filing fee, and proved they were eligible.
They were spared for 2 years at a time and allowed to stay in this country. During the course of the campaign, President Trump said many strong words about immigration. We remember them well--it is hard to forget--the words about the wall, words about Mexican rapists, on and on, but he seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for these kids. Many times he would say: We have to give them a chance. They are different.
The very first time I met President Donald Trump was minutes after he had been sworn in. It was at a luncheon here in the Capitol.
I went up to him and said: Congratulations. I want to thank you for the kind words you said about the Dreamers and those protected by DACA.
He said: Dick, don't worry about those kids. We are going to take care of those kids.
That is what President Trump said on January 20, 2017. I brought it up to him several times too. It is an issue that is important to me, but, more importantly, it is an issue that is critical to the future of these young people.
Then, what happened on September 5 of last year, just 9 months after the President was sworn in? His Attorney General held a press conference and said: That is the end of the protection for these young people. As of March 5, 2018, no protection.
Then he challenged Congress. He said: Pass a law. Do what you are supposed to do here in the House and Senate. Pass a law that will protect these young people.
A number of us took up the President's challenge. We had a bipartisan effort, six of us--three Democrats and three Republicans--and we worked through some really hard issues on immigration and on these young people. I want to salute my colleagues who were part of that: Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina; Jeff Flake, a Republican of Arizona; Cory Gardner, a Republican of Colorado; joined with myself and Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado; Bob Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, and we put together an approach that gave these young people protection and a fighting chance to prove they deserve to stay in America.
We felt pretty good about it. The President called a meeting in the White House on January 9--I remember these dates. I will always remember them--with about 25 Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate. He held an open press conference for an hour, which is unusual and rarely done in the White House.
We talked about DACA and we talked about Dreamers and we talked about what was going to happen next, since the President had given us a deadline of today, March 5, to do something.
The President outlined what he wanted to see, and then he said in front of the television cameras: Send me the bill, and I will sign it. I will take the heat on this one. That was January 9. So a number of us, the six I mentioned earlier, came together immediately that same day and said: Let's finish this bill, and let's get it in his hands as quickly as possible.
By January 11, 2 days later, we were ready. We reached a compromise, and it truly was a compromise. Parts of it I didn't care for at all, but that is what we do around here if Democrats and Republicans are going to produce something that might become a law. We called the President. We met the President--Senator Graham and I and a number of others, and he totally rejected what we had done. In fact, the President went on to reject five other bipartisan proposals to try to solve this problem.
This is the same President who said on January 9 of this year, ``Send me a bill, and I will sign it,'' who turned down bipartisan option after bipartisan option. He just said no.
We had a vote on the floor of the Senate. It has been about 3 weeks ago now. It was a vote on four different proposals to deal with this challenge. Not one of those proposals received 60 votes.
The one I had hoped for, a bill with a version of the Dream Act, was put together by Senator Coons and Senator McCain and brought to the floor. I remember it had 52 votes. It needed 60 votes. It fell short. The bipartisan compromise led by Senator Rounds and Senator King with the President's opposition ended up with 54 votes--6 votes short of what it needed to pass. Then the President's own immigration proposal came up here on the floor of the Senate. Now, there are 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans in the Senate. The President's proposal came up and got 39 votes--60 votes in opposition. It was a rejection by his own party and the Democrats in the Senate.
So here we are on March 5. The deadline is here. No bill has passed the Senate. The House will not even consider the measure--will not take up any version of the measure. What is at stake? There are 780,000 young people protected by DACA, which officially, by President Trump's order, ends today.
They have one ray of hope, perhaps two. Two courts have said they are going to suspend this abolition of DACA until we hear the arguments of the President's authority in the Constitution. So there is a temporary--and I underline temporary--injunction in place while these cases are pending, but I can tell you as a Member of the Senate and as a lawyer, no one--no one--can predict how long that protection will last. Is it a matter of days or weeks or months, at best?
That is what these young people live with, this uncertainty.
This humanitarian crisis in this country--and I call it that--was created by President Trump on September 5. He has failed to agree to six different bipartisan proposals to solve the problem he created, and now these lives hang in the balance.
Well, who are they? Who are these young people?
I was with one of them earlier today. Her name is Ana Flores. Ana grew up in Aurora, IL, and went to the public schools there. She is a very bright young woman who was brought to the United States at the age of 5 from Mexico by her parents. She is undocumented in America and lives under the protection of DACA.
What did she do with her life?
She went to the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of the best in the Nation, and she won a civil engineering degree there. Clark Dietz is an engineering firm in Illinois that stepped up and said: We want that bright young woman on our staff as an engineer, and they hired her.
I met her for the first time today. She is a wonderful person. She struggled against the odds all of her life. She is protected by DACA, a program that officially, under President Trump's edict, ends today.
Will Illinois be a better State, Chicago be a better city, the United States be a better nation with this young lady and her engineering talents at work for us? Of course, there is no question about it. Why in the world would we ever want to deport someone who has gone through our educational system and excelled like this young lady?
She is not the only one, by any means. This is a photo of Elizabeth Vilchis. She is the 109th Dreamer whom I have spoken about on the floor of the U.S. Senate. She was brought to the United States at the age of 7. She grew up in Yonkers, NY. As a child, she heard about STEM subjects--science, technology, engineering, and math. She decided to make that her life's work. She excelled in math and science and decided she would be part of the future of this country and took on these important subjects. She said: ``From that point forward I made pursuing a career in STEM my responsibility, as an American.''
During high school, Elizabeth was a member of the Honor Society, the Key Club, the Architecture, Construction and Engineering Program. She was editor of the yearbook and also played on the volleyball team. She graduated high school with an Advanced Regents diploma.
She was then accepted into the Honors College at City University, New York City College.
Remember, these Dreamers--these undocumented students--don't qualify for Federal assistance to go to school as most kids do. They have to find another way to work and save their money or take private loans.
She received a Community Service Award from the School of Engineering 4 years in a row for her work organizing engineering education programs for low-income students. She received a Student Leader Award for her work with an engineering student association. She was named Volunteer of the Year 4 years in a row for managing the Manhattan robotics competition.
I have seen those robotics competitions. A lot of young people in high school do some amazing things in these competitions, and it launches a career and a life in the STEM subjects.
Elizabeth graduated with a double major in mechanical engineering and political science. She worked as an engineer for Samsung for 2 years. Then she founded a nonprofit organization focused on creating funding opportunities for early stage technology startups. Today, Elizabeth's nonprofit has over 700 members. To date, they have raised over $8 million to grow their companies.
She wrote me a letter and Elizabeth said:
To me DACA is my opportunity to give back to the United States and my family the way I dreamed of since I was 10 years old. It's the ability to help solve the STEM talent shortage after 15 years of preparing for it and being told it was impossible. It's the power to say ``No'' to going back to the shadows and ``Yes'' to serving as a role model for young girls across the country who aspire to be engineers and entrepreneurs.
People like Elizabeth are the reason why more than 400 business leaders signed a letter to Congress urging us to pass the bipartisan Dream Act.
The letter says:
Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy. With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of why we will continue to have global competitive advantage.
It would be a personal tragedy for us to deport Elizabeth Vilchis, but the decision of President Trump to abolish the program that protects her, sadly, makes that a possibility. If this injunction by the court is lifted, at that moment, there could be a knock on her door--or perhaps on the door of the company that hires her or her engineering firm--and she could be told that her time is up. Under President Trump, she has to leave the United States of America.
President Trump created this crisis. Instead of working toward a solution, he has rejected every bipartisan effort that has been sent his way to save the Dreamers.
What will happen next? Do we have to stand by and watch as these families are divided, as talented young people like Elizabeth and Ana are deported? Is that what we are all about? Is that what the President meant when he told me ``We'll take care of those kids''? That is what it has come down to.
It is a sad reality that all across America, hundreds of thousands of these young people now live in fear of deportation. They should be living, as Elizabeth said, outside the shadows and as part of America and its future. What can we do about it? I am at a loss.
Unless and until this President accepts the responsibility to help us solve the problem he created, I am afraid we will never be able to rally the necessary Republican votes to make this a reality. It is up to President Trump.
In the part of the world that I come from in the Middle West, there is a saying that I am going to clean up a little bit, and it goes something like this: Any old mule can kick down a barn door, but it takes a carpenter to build one. This President has kicked down DACA, kicked it down to the dirt, and this is the day--the deadline that he set. The question is, Does he have the will or the heart to rebuild it?
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Order of Procedure
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII and the order of March 1, the confirmation vote on the Doughty nomination occur following the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 2155, with all other provisions of the previous order in effect.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I enjoyed listening to the minority whip, and I don't believe the President is as heartless as he is indicating, but the President does want the American laws to be observed. There are ways of getting that done, and I think he is doing some of that to see that it is done. I happen to empathize very much with Senator Durbin from Illinois and have long been a supporter of the Dreamers.
(The remarks of Mr. Hatch pertaining to the introduction of S. 2495 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Recognition of the Minority Leader
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.
Gun Safety
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, it is nice to hear my colleague's words. I would also want to mention a few things about the same issue.
Mr. President, it has been nearly 3 weeks since the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Still, unfortunately, the majority leader hasn't committed to any floor time for the debate on the issue of gun safety--no time to debate universal background checks, a policy that over 90 percent of Americans support, including the vast majority of gun owners; no time to debate protective orders to allow law enforcement to temporarily disarm individuals who have shown credible signs of being a harm to themselves or others, especially relevant after Parkland; no time to at least have a debate on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines on the floor of the Senate.
The kids who survived that horrific shooting are speaking up and speaking out and are demanding that we address this issue head-on. I believe they are moving the conscience of the Nation. I met with them. They are fine young men and women. Instead of just cursing the darkness after what they went through with the losses of friends and colleagues they suffered, they are trying to light a candle, urging us to debate and do something real. Yet, the majority leader is moving to a banking bill today with no promise of time to consider a package of commonsense gun safety measures.
We need to debate them on the floor. We can't just try to do one little bill by UC with no debate or put it into some other big bill. This needs a national debate. This issue is consuming America, and for the Senate to turn its back and do nothing, or to try to just slip some minor measure through, doesn't work.
Last week, America watched President Trump whipsaw on gun safety issues in a matter of days. All of America felt pretty good when the President met with a bipartisan group. He seemed to be open to tackling gun safety in a bipartisan way in a nationally televised meeting. Then, the next day, he met with the NRA behind closed doors and seems to once again have backed off.
It is a show we have seen before, and it is getting old. Too many times we have watched the President say the right things when the cameras are on but refuse to follow through the moment they are switched off--oftentimes doing a 180-degree reversal of his position.
On the issue of gun safety, just like the issue of immigration, we could find a bipartisan consensus. It is very possible, but it requires the President to show some leadership, some followthrough, and some consistency. Otherwise, Congress will do what it has done after every mass shooting for the past decade--nothing.
Those brave, young students will be here in a few weeks, having watched Congress do nothing again. What a black mark that will be--
lowering the even low ratings of this body.
Republican Tax Bill
Mr. President, on to another matter, the Republican tax bill. Over and over, we have heard the Republican mantra that their tax bill was aimed at giving working Americans a boost. Yet every analysis showed that when you looked at the actual policy, the lion's share of the tax cuts are going to corporations and the richest 1 percent. According to one study, 83 percent of the benefits from the Republican tax bill go to the top 1 percent of earners.
Don't worry, our Republican friends say, that money will trickle down to workers, but trickle-down economics has never worked. It has failed time and again. Most of our Republican colleagues are even afraid to admit that the majority of the tax cuts go to the very wealthy. They simply say it is helping working people, but their mechanism of trickle-down is something they will not utter in public.
Instead of giving workers major wage increases, hiring new workers, or investing in new equipment and research, the most popular use of the savings from the tax bill for corporations is corporate share buybacks. That is from the big corporations. Already, big corporations have announced more than $200 billion in share buybacks this year. We just started March, and already, corporations are on pace to spend over $1 trillion this year buying back their own stock.
The problem here is, share buybacks don't really help workers. They don't really help grow the economy. They are a quick way for a big corporation to take more of their stock off the market, raising the value of the shares. Who benefits? Well, corporate executives who own lots of these shares and wealthy shareholders who hold the vast preponderance of the shares.
As one economist told Bloomberg, ``You're not going to get the macro-
economic benefit the administration thought it was going to get from its tax cuts. It's going to go to the areas that don't stimulate growth,'' namely, buybacks, dividends. An analysis by Just Capital, which the New York Times called ``one of the most detailed accountings to date'' of how companies are spending the windfall from tax reform, finds that ``just 6% of capital allocated so far is going to
[employees], while 58% is going to shareholders in the form of dividends, share buy-backs, or retained earnings.'' That is 6 percent for the workers and nearly 60 percent to share buybacks and other corporate benefits.
Today, the Joint Economic Committee, led by our wonderful ranking member, Senator Heinrich, pointed out that if you distributed the savings that went to just one big company--Berkshire Hathaway, which gained $29 billion as a result of the tax bill--you could give a $1,000 bonus to 29 million Americans.
This is amazing. That is the equivalent of every employee in Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia combined from just one company's worth of savings. The public is beginning to realize what is going on here. They see they are putting their children and grandchildren into deep debt, not to benefit themselves, the workers, preponderantly, but to benefit corporate leadership, owners of shares--the vast preponderance of whom are in the top 10 percent of American wealth.
Corporations are not putting the vast preponderance of the money where they should be--raising the salaries of workers or increasing productivity of the company by investing in new machinery and new techniques. No; it is that quick hit, the stock buyback.
It goes to show how beneficial tax reform could have been if it were aimed at the middle class and those struggling to reach it. Instead, the Republicans made a conscious effort to give corporations and the wealthiest Americans the bulk of the tax cuts and promised it would trickle down to everyone else. Unfortunately, past is prologue, and corporate America will invest in what is best for corporate America, while working America is getting left behind.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator for Texas.
Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Bill
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this week, we will be voting on an important piece of bipartisan legislation that recently passed out of the Senate Banking Committee, led by our colleague, Chairman Mike Crapo.
The bill is called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. The purpose of the bill is to rightsize the onerous regulations that are currently imposed on community and independent banks and that stifle their ability to loan money to people who need access to credit in order to start a business or to grow a small business.
Under the current law famously known as Dodd-Frank, these smaller banks are often treated just like the largest banks and financial institutions in our economy. That doesn't make any sense at all. Main Street, we need to remind some of our colleagues, is not Wall Street.
The bill would make changes to reflect that important distinction. I can't tell you how many of my small bankers in Texas have told me they had to hire additional personnel, not to make more loans, just to comply with the onerous overregulation coming out of Washington, DC.
Unfortunately, we lost over 2,000 banks nationwide since the end of 2010. Two thousand banks have gone out of business, either as a result of a merger with a larger bank that could sustain the additional cost of complying with these regulations or those that have just given up and said: We can't cut it because of the costs, and we are hanging up our spurs. In Texas, 165 bank charters have vanished during that same timeframe--a 26-percent reduction. Like I said, some of the decline is due to mergers with larger banks, but there have also been a number of bank failures.
We all heard about too big to fail, but some institutions were deemed essentially too small to save. They were the ones left behind and forgotten under Dodd-Frank. Because of the regulatory burdens, some small banks said enough is enough and opted to get out of the lending business altogether. You know who ends up paying the price and who ends up getting hurt? It is the married couple who wants to borrow money to buy their first home or, as I said earlier, a business that wants to expand and hire more people. Those are the people who ultimately get hurt.
In this bill we are considering this week, we are trying to change that situation. No less than former Congressman Barney Frank--the Democratic author of the original law--has emphasized the point that we need now to remember: The bill we are voting on keeps in place rules and regulations that were imposed on large Wall Street banks after the financial crisis. In other words, the big banks on Wall Street were the ones that helped contribute to the financial crisis, and they are the ones that will continue to be regulated under Dodd-Frank, but the community and regional banks that were, in essence, the collateral damage to the great recession of 2008, following the big financial crisis, will finally see some needed and welcomed relief. Rigorous stress testing of large financial institutions will continue. Congressman Frank has said it would be ``wholly inaccurate'' to claim otherwise.
So when some try to distort the bill's purpose and the provisions in the days ahead, I think it is important to keep that in mind and don't buy what they are selling. This bill will mostly, as I said, affect smaller community banks, which clearly don't fall under the same category as the titans of global finance.
Last year, the Banking Committee solicited input from a broad array of stakeholders. The committee's idea was to say: Hey, all of you out there who greatly suffered under Dodd-Frank, how can we reduce the burdens you face? Those are the kind of questions all of us need to be asking back in our States.
After extensive negotiations at all levels, and after hearing not just from financial entities great and small but also from consumer groups, the result is the bipartisan legislation we will soon consider on the Senate floor.
The bill was formally introduced by a group of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans. You don't get much more bipartisan than that. I know the Senator from Idaho, the chairman of the committee, has had productive discussions as well with my friend and fellow Texan Chairman Hensarling on the House side, who heads up the House Financial Services Committee.
While the new provisions will help community banks, credit unions, as well as midsized and regional banks, they will also ensure that key consumer protections remain in place. Some of these protections will even increase for consumers who have fallen on hard financial times or who are victims of fraud. Veterans and seniors particularly will benefit.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has agreed that this commonsense bill will provide significant regulatory relief, and his predecessor, Janet Yellen, said it was a move in a good direction.
While I would like to go further and provide additional relief from Dodd-Frank, we should nonetheless pass as much as we can and help America's local lenders build small businesses and strengthen our local communities.
Let's get this bill--which is supported by a variety of stakeholders, including the Texas Independent Bankers Association--across the finish line this week.
I wish to especially congratulate and thank our colleague from Idaho for all of his hard work, and I hope that all of us can emulate that hard work on a bipartisan basis to get this bill across the Senate floor and ultimately to the President for his signature.
Tax Reform
Mr. President, I would like to shift gears for a moment and discuss a matter that my friends back home in Texas are talking about a lot, and that is the benefits of tax reform.
I happened to walk out here just as the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York, was saying that tax reform is not working. Well, I note that his message seems to be a little out of sync with the news, which in part reported today that the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits is at its lowest level in more than 49 years. In other words, our economy is finally growing again, and it is working again for the people who needed the jobs and needed the income that are provided by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Sometimes I wonder whether our Democratic friends, who took great political risk by voting uniformly to a person to oppose the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, are worried not that it will not work but that it will work and they will be proved completely wrong in anticipating what the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be. In particular, Ms. Pelosi, the minority leader of the House, said that these were crumbs--crumbs. Well, I think she will be proved wrong, and that will be to the great benefit of all of the people of America.
So everyone remembers, this was not an easy lift. We passed the first tax reform in more than 30 years. The immediate consequences of the bill have been transformative. In other words, we just did this in December, but we have already seen encouraging signs.
My constituents in Texas know as well as anyone--just ask a man by the name of Scott McDonald, who called my office last week. Scott owns a residential roofing company in Burleson, which is near Dallas. It is called F-Wave, and its mission is to ``create the best [roofing] shingle the world has ever seen. Period.'' That is Scott's dream. Do you know what Scott told us over the phone? He said that his 47 employees are really feeling the positive impact in their paychecks. He said: ``There are a lot of happy people around here.''
People are happy because of the reduced tax rates. Now that the IRS has updated its withholding tables, in February people saw the first boost in their take-home pay they have seen in a long, long time.
Scott also said that the positive climate has created a lot of incentive for his company to invest and grow. If you think about it, looking at what has happened in the stock market and, more importantly, what it has done to 401(k)s and pension plans and people's savings, there is a lot of enthusiasm and newfound confidence in the American economy, and that is an unequivocally good thing. Scott sees that in his place of business. He said that it has created a lot of incentive for his company to invest and grow, and that is good for the people who will benefit from those jobs. He is looking to hand out bonuses when the company's fiscal year ends at the end of this month, and he is hoping that a new facility his company is building will create jobs for as many as 500 people. You heard me right earlier. He said 47 people work there now, and he is hoping that this new facility will create jobs for as many as 500 people.
Scott, we appreciate your story, and we are glad you took the time to share it.
Back home in Texas, we are trying to keep track of all the tax reform successes, but there are so many, sometimes it is hard to keep up.
In West Texas, El Paso Electric has just announced that homeowners will get new refunds on their electric bills due to the lower tax rate. Seniors, people on fixed incomes, will actually see their utility bills go down because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. What great news.
In Helotes, which is right outside of San Antonio, my friend, Representative Will Hurd, who represents that area, tells us that Jeff and Mary Marsh, the owners of two coffee shops, are particularly thrilled. They are passing along the tax savings directly to their staff of 11 employees in the form of increased hourly wages, benefits packages, and bonus programs. They hope to upgrade their systems and equipment and expand with new locations too.
Stories like these sure don't sound like ``Armageddon.'' That is the term House Minority Leader Pelosi used to describe the tax reforms last year, in addition to calling them ``crumbs.'' She called them
``Armageddon'' and ``crumbs.'' Well, I am not sure how those two go together, but she and other Democrats did their dead-level best to scare the living daylights out of the American people and to tell them that this would not work and that it would actually hurt them.
I heard the Democratic leader, my friend from New York, Senator Schumer, out here talking about how money that is being brought back from overseas isn't being invested properly here in the United States, as if it were the government's money. The whole point is that this is not the government's money, this is money earned by the people and the businesses that take the risks and that we need to succeed so that our country will succeed and we will continue to grow so that the American dream can remain alive.
It is almost as if they think that any money saved as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is somehow stolen from the clutches of the Federal Government that knows how to spend that money better than they do. Well, I certainly have a different view.
I guess, though, our Democratic colleagues were not totally off base in mentioning Armageddon because the tax cuts did spell doom for progressive rationales and excuses for not cutting taxes and making our system more competitive globally. It really was Armageddon when you consider what it did to their outrageous arguments.
Our reforms have exploded the notion that the only way government can ensure prosperity is with higher taxes. Again, it is based on this crazy idea that the money you earn is not really yours to keep, it is the Federal Government's, and the government will only let you keep a certain amount of it, and that when we cut taxes, it actually somehow is not money that is yours in the first place. It seems like it is completely reverse logic.
The bill's well-documented effects have killed the ludicrous claims we heard before Christmas that Americans who faced stagnant wages for years wouldn't really benefit from the raises or that companies are incapable or unwilling to actually give those raises or invest in their businesses and create new jobs. I wonder what the critics have to say about all this now. They have mostly been quiet since the good news started rolling in--although I guess, listening to my friend from New York, they have not given up entirely.
I wonder what they have to say to organizations like the Health Care Service Corporation, which operates Blue Cross Blue Shield in my State. Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it has announced a $1.5 billion initiative to make health insurance more affordable. This $1.5 billion initiative to make health insurance more affordable comes as more good news to men and women like those in my State who have struggled to pay for healthcare.
I wonder what the naysayers have to say to this one lady in particular. I am thinking about somebody from Lewisville, TX. She recently contacted me and preferred not to be identified. Originally in my remarks, I was going to mention her name, but out of respect for her privacy, let me just tell her story and leave her name out of it. She had surgery a while back and had to borrow money up front to pay for it. On top of her student loans, this stressed her out. She was pretty anxious. She was wondering: How am I going to pay these bills? Well, in her note that she sent to my office, she said that she is extremely grateful for the reduced taxes because now she brings home an additional $125 in each paycheck--$125. That $125 helps her pay the bills she was so worried about.
I hope our friends across the aisle who opposed this bill uniformly--
every single one of them voted against it--I hope they will listen not to our claims but, rather, to the evidence and realize that this $125 to this woman from Lewisville, TX, is not crumbs; it is the difference between living in fear that she will not be able to meet her obligations and living in peace knowing that she is going to be able to meet those responsibilities. Her story is America's story, too, and it is a snapshot of what is occurring in the economy.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that ``some of the headwinds the U.S. economy faced in previous years have [now] turned into tailwinds.'' The economy continues to pick up steam.
I have already mentioned that the number of people making unemployment claims is at its lowest level in the last 49 years, but when you look at consumer confidence, when you look at the stock market, when you look at businesses willing to invest in new plants and equipment and you see the benefits of employers competing for labor--
you know, one of the benefits of seeing unemployment so low and the economy growing again is that employers are going to have to start bidding up for the workers they need in order to do the job. What that means is that wages, which have been stagnant for so many years, are now going to grow again. So in addition to the lower rates, people will have more take-home pay. They are going to see more take-home pay in addition because of the increased wages they are going to be able to demand for their hard work.
These are great and positive signs, but we have to keep telling the good stories because they so often get drowned out by the scare tactics and the hyperbole that comes from those who seem to be afraid--not that this will not work but, rather, that it will work and they will be proved terribly wrong.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Florida Hurricane Disaster Assistance
Mr. NELSON. Madam President, it has been almost 6 months since Hurricane Irma struck Florida. It has been about a month since we passed the most recent disaster supplemental appropriations bill, which finally included the money for Florida's fisheries, citrus growers, and communities across the State that we have been fighting for since day one, since the storm passed.
Today, I spoke to the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, and I asked him to immediately release this critical funding to help the people of our State. Florida's fishermen are still waiting for their help too.
Hurricane Irma caused extensive damage to vessels, facilities, docks, equipment, and gear, especially in the Keys. Many in the spiny lobster industry lost all of their traps. The disaster supplemental appropriations gave NOAA $200 million for Federal fishery disasters like the one that Secretary Ross declared for Florida. Where is the money?
Let's talk about the broader impact to the oceans. Did you know that Florida's coral reef tract is the third largest barrier reef in the world? It is a reef that starts south of Key West and goes all the way up the coast, almost all the way to Fort Pierce. The coral supports the spiny lobsters and the stone crabs, which are served in restaurants around the country. This industry is important to Florida's economy.
Hurricane Irma tossed all manner of debris around. Monroe County has already spent almost $20 million to remove over 2 million cubic yards of waste--roofs, appliances, bicycles, trailer homes, and boats. The debris was also swept into the water, which is threatening the corals, and into the canals, where it blocks transportation.
I want you to take a look at this picture. This is one of the canals in the Keys. Look at what is sitting in the canal--a whole mobile home that was lifted up from the mobile home park on this side of the canal. There it is, in the water.
Take a look at this. Do you see what is in the canal? Do you see out here? That is the ocean. This canal is coming right in. What happens is that eventually some of the debris goes into the Atlantic. It gets near the reef. Some of it submerges. The wave action is sending it back and forth.
You can imagine any one of those pieces of debris knocking constantly into delicate coral that is already diseased, that is already overheated because the rising temperature of the water. You can imagine what is happening. Whether it is a mobile home sitting in the canal or whether it is all of this junk that is sitting in the canal and that eventually goes out, this is what we need help with.
It has been over a month since we passed the disaster supplemental appropriations bill. Why isn't the money flowing? That is what I called the Secretary of Commerce about this morning. I told him: Mr. Secretary, my request is very, very simple. Just get the money out. The money is appropriated. It is there.
I said: Mr. Secretary, will you please crack the whip on NOAA so that you can get this money out and we can get this place cleaned up, as well as protect those coral reefs from the damage they have already undergone?
Then I said: What happened in this storm is, whether for lobster or stone crab, the traps were all swept away. The poor fishermen don't have any traps. They need help too. That is what this disaster appropriations bill is for. Mr. Secretary, you have to crack the whip to get them going.
Unfortunately, this is not the only issue we are facing. Florida's citrus industry suffered over $760 million in losses from the storm. Why? Because the trees were full of fruit that was going to be picked within just a few weeks. Along came the storm; the winds were severe. In Southwest Florida, some of the citrus crops were 100 percent lost. In fact, the winds were so high that they ended up uprooting citrus trees. Further north, in Central Florida, the groves there lost 50 to 60 percent of their crops.
The citrus industry cannot survive those kinds of losses, and that is why we have a disaster appropriations bill. There were losses of over
$760 million from the storm. The rest of Florida's agriculture took a big hit, too, with an estimated $2.5 billion in total damages.
In February, we finally came through with $3.8 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Of that money, $2.6 billion was supposed to go directly to farmers and ranchers. It is March, and those folks haven't seen a dime.
After I talked to the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, I put in a call to the Secretary of Agriculture. I have called several times today. I have yet to connect with him. If any of his staff are listening, there is a bottleneck at the USDA that is preventing this money from going to the families who desperately need it. I will continue to call Secretary Perdue to ask him to do what I asked Secretary Wilbur Ross to do: Crack the whip on his organization to get the money flowing. That is why we passed supplemental emergency appropriations. Now the Federal agencies need to get the money out the door.
This is so frustrating because the administration knew that Congress was discussing a disaster supplemental bill when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in August. Then Irma hit, and then Maria hit.
Six months later, most of the Federal agencies are just starting to dust off their pencils and figure out how they are going to allocate the funding. What is wrong with you? People are hurting. They are going bankrupt. You have to get that money out.
Can you imagine how you would feel if your family's entire citrus crop had been wiped out and you had been holding your breath waiting for disaster assistance funding, which finally came over a month ago, and then you were told by the folks at the USDA that you were going to have to wait for several more months until USDA figures out how to get you the money? It is no wonder that people are fed up with bureaucracy.
Additionally, many of our cities and counties have yet to see any reimbursements from FEMA for Hurricane Irma. In fact, many have yet to be fully reimbursed for Hurricane Matthew, which struck almost 2 years ago. Unbelievably, all those counties that were devastated had paid for the debris removal. The State of Florida missed the deadline--didn't turn it in on time. Of course, what we had to do to cover the State of Florida's mistake was to plead with FEMA: Forget the mistake; it is the local counties and cities that need the money.
Not getting the money out is totally unacceptable. While we are still waiting for reimbursements from these storms, how can we expect these local governments to prepare for the 2018 hurricane season that will start in just a few months, right around the corner?
Let me say it again. This is unacceptable for the slow-walking--the foot-dragging--that is going on in getting the money out the door. I am going to keep pounding on this until the folks in Florida start getting the help they need and deserve.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Gun Violence
Mr. NELSON. Madam President, since I see no other Senator who seeks recognition, I thought I would take the occasion to bring the Senate up to date on what is happening down in Florida in the aftermath of 17 people being gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
As we know, we have seen those students speak out with a boldness and clarity that is rarely seen, and they are not being intimidated at all as to what needs to be done. As a matter of fact, in the aftermath of the shooting--and while some of the funerals have still been going on--
since our Florida State Legislature is in session, over the course of 2 weeks, the students have gone to the capital city of Tallahassee and have held individual meetings with State legislators. They have held a rally outside of the capital and insisted that maybe--just maybe--this might be a time that the State legislature should confront this issue head-on: that, in fact, there was something to the fact that a weapon that was originally developed for the military, an AR-15--the semiautomatic version of a military weapon--could do such damage and quickly go about killing so many people. It was 17 in the case of the high school.
Just 2 years earlier, it was 49 people in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub. In between, we saw several mass killings with high-powered, military-style assault rifles in Texas, as well as 59 people being gunned down in Las Vegas.
Last week, I talked about the assault weapon, and I have since had, over the weekend, constituents in Florida ask me to come back and speak on the floor of the Senate about the difference in the damage--the mayhem, the carnage, the slaughter--that occurs as a result of an assault rifle as compared to a handgun. You don't have to take it from this Senator. You can talk to the trauma surgeons. You can talk to the radiologist in the trauma center. As a matter of fact, several articles in the past week have been written in various publications in Florida and in the national press, along with there being photographs to show the difference. Let me paraphrase the words of one of the trauma surgeons in Broward County who attended to some of the victims.
He cited that on any normal night, particularly on a weekend, they have to treat gunshots. If that gunshot is from a handgun--say, a .22 pistol or, say, a .9 millimeter pistol--the bullet will enter the victim, and unless that bullet goes to a critical organ, such as the heart or, for example, to the blood supply going into the liver, that bullet will continue through. If it comes out the other side, it will come out with a hole that is the same size as when it penetrated the body in the first place. It is not so with a bullet from an assault rifle because those weapons, which are developed for the military, are clearly for killing.
The bullet, first of all, comes out at three times the speed--three times the velocity. Therefore, when it hits its target, it hits with three times the energy. Often, the bullet is designed so that when it hits the target, it will tumble and just tear through and destroy any flesh in its path, including bone and organs.
The trauma center's radiologist explains that if a handgun's bullet, such as a .9 millimeter, goes through the liver, they can usually save the patient's life. They point out that of almost all handgun wounds, they can save the life unless the bullet hits a major artery or organ, like the heart, or a major blood supply. It is not so with the bullet from an assault weapon. The bullet enters at three times the velocity, with three times the energy. It starts tumbling, ripping away flesh. If it goes, for example, to a kidney or to the liver, it pulverizes that organ and comes out the other side of the victim with a hole as large as an orange.
That is the difference between a handgun wound and a wound from a high-velocity assault rifle, whether it is a semiautomatic or whether it is an automatic. It was made automatic, with what we saw in Las Vegas, with the bump stocks. He made a semiautomatic, which was legal to purchase, into an automatic rifle. It is because of that carnage that one has to ask oneself: Would any American citizen want to have those kinds of assault rifles loose on the streets for people who want to use them for dastardly purposes? I think the answer is no.
This Senator grew up on a ranch. I have hunted all of my life. I still hunt with my son, but an AR-15 is not for hunting; it is for killing. It is an understanding of the difference of these weapons that is causing the American people to gradually understand that these kinds of weapons have no place on the streets of America.
One can imagine the SWAT team. Had they been there while the shooter had still been inside and had they entered that school and tried to find the killer and known that what they were going to come up against was an AR-15 instead of a handgun, that would have been a terrible thing. One can imagine, if there had happened to be an armed guard with a pistol and he had gone after the shooter but the shooter had had an AR-15, that would not have been a fair firefight. With a pistol against an AR-15, one can imagine who is going to win that fight.
These are the questions that the American people need to have answered as we go through these discussions about what to do. Thus, when these students all gather in Washington and in 100 cities around this country on March 24--a Saturday--and start marching in untold numbers, they are going to be asking: Isn't enough enough? Haven't we come to the point at which we ought to reexamine that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms but if these are the arms we want borne on our streets
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). The Senator from Georgia.
Nomination of Tilman Self
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise out of a great sense of pride to exercise one of my responsibilities in the U.S. Senate to speak on behalf of Tripp Self, a judge from the Georgia courts, who has been nominated to become a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. The vote will take place not too long from now, and I encourage every Senator to cast his vote for Judge Self. He is the whole package.
He has a wonderful wife and family and four great children. He worked in the private sector for years and accomplished many things in the private sector. He went to the University of Georgia School of Law and graduated cum laude and summa cum laude from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and went on to have a distinguished private career. He then served as a superior court judge on the Macon Judicial Circuit for the State of Georgia. In that job with the superior court, he did something that I am very close to. He is an entrepreneur because he started the Veterans Treatment Court for the Middle District of Georgia and for that judicial circuit.
The Veterans Treatment Court, as all of you know, is a court that is formed to help veterans who stray from the law or who have difficulties when they come home either because of PTSD or TBI. It helps them with the struggles of battle that they have had and with whatever problems they may have had from representing us on the battlefield. They trip and they fall, and they need somebody to help get them up. We want to make them do the right thing but also help them get themselves brushed off, look forward to careers, and help them get that step forward. We do that with teenagers with what are called CASAs, Court Appointed Special Advocates. We turn people around who otherwise might go to jail--young kids. The Veterans Treatment Court takes those who have risked paying the ultimate sacrifice--that of their lives for you and for me and for everybody else--who might have fallen off just a little bit. When we get them back into the judicial system, we get them straightened out, and we move them forward so they have better lives and rewarding careers of their own--thanking them for all of the things they have done for us as veterans.
As the chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee of the U.S. Senate and as one who recognizes the value of the court system for all of the things it does to administer justice, I am particularly proud to have a judge who has used his entrepreneurial skills to deal with a problem our society has in the legal sense and in the court sense and to see to it that our veterans are getting the help they need and that our communities are getting the representation they need.
I am also a football fan. I know calling football games is tough, just as making judicial decisions is tough. Tripp Self officiates NCAA football in the Southern Conference. Two years ago, he was selected to do the 2017 FCS national championship game, which is a testament to his ability to call balls and strikes on the field.
He is a pretty good shot too. He is a turkey hunter and likes to turkey hunt and likes the outdoors.
Most importantly, he loves the United States of America. He respects and loves the law for what it does. We are a nation of laws and not of men. He does everything in his capacity as an individual and as one on the bench to see to it that our country is a better country and our State is a better State--the State I represent, Georgia.
When each Senator turns to vote in a few minutes on the confirmations of the three judges that will come before us today, when it comes to Judge Tripp Self, of Georgia, may each cast a vote proudly for someone who is a legal entrepreneur for veterans, one who has served with distinction in the State as a private sector practicing attorney and on the bench already, and one who will serve the United States of America very well in the years to come.
I commend him and his family for being willing to take on this responsibility, and I thank the President of the United States for the wisdom to make this appointment.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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 question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Scholer nomination?
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from North Dakota (Ms. Heitkamp) is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 95, nays 0, as follows:
YEAS--95
AlexanderBaldwinBarrassoBennetBlumenthalBluntBookerBoozmanBrownBurrCantwellCapitoCardinCarperCaseyCassidyCochranCollinsCoonsCorkerCornynCortez MastoCottonCrapoDainesDonnellyDuckworthDurbinEnziErnstFeinsteinFischerFlakeGardnerGillibrandGrahamGrassleyHarrisHassanHatchHeinrichHellerHironoHoevenInhofeIsaksonJohnsonJonesKaineKennedyKingKlobucharLankfordLeahyLeeManchinMarkeyMcCaskillMcConnellMenendezMerkleyMoranMurphyMurrayNelsonPaulPerduePetersPortmanReedRischRobertsRoundsRubioSandersSasseSchatzSchumerScottShaheenShelbySmithStabenowTesterThuneTillisToomeyUdallVan HollenWarnerWarrenWhitehouseWickerWydenYoung
NOT VOTING--5
CruzHeitkampMcCainMurkowskiSullivan
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.
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