Volume 165, No. 104 covering the 1st Session of the 116th Congress (2019 - 2020) was published by the Congressional Record.
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.
“NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020--MOTION TO PROCEED--Resumed” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Senate section on pages S4145-S4151 on June 20, 2019.
More than half of the Agency's employees are engineers, scientists and protection specialists. The Climate Reality Project, a global climate activist organization, accused Agency leadership in the last five years of undermining its main mission.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020--MOTION TO
PROCEED--Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the unfinished business.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to S. 1790, a bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2020 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at 1:45 p.m. today the Senate vote on the confirmation of the Baranwal nomination, with all other provisions under the previous order remaining in effect.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Border Security
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday I had a chance to sit down with a group of my constituents visiting DC from the Rio Grande Valley. For those who have never been to the Rio Grande Valley, I highly recommend a visit. It is a beautiful region, a unique part of our country, rich in culture and history and full of hard-working people and businesses that fuel our State's and the Nation's thriving economy. As record numbers of people continue to mass migrate across our southern border, it has become one of the most heavily impacted areas in our country, and it is working hard to manage the growing humanitarian crisis.
Last month alone, 144,000 people were detained coming across our border. It was the largest monthly total since 2006. It only begins to paint the picture of how challenging this mass migration has become. The vast majority of the people who crossed last month were either unaccompanied children or families, putting a strain on resources across the border, particularly when it comes to detention facilities.
It is no mistake that the human smugglers, whom we call coyotes back home, have figured out that if you can smuggle an unaccompanied child or family across the border, you vastly improve the chances of successfully placing them in the United States. That is because they understand our laws better than many Members of Congress do, and they know how to exploit them for their financial gain.
The detention facilities I referred to a moment ago have been around a long time--long before the current surge of families and children began arriving at our borders. They were built as short-term detention facilities for single adults. As trends have changed, the men and women of Customs and Border Protection have done everything in their power to make these facilities workable on an increasingly thin and inadequate budget.
I want to pause for a moment to say thank you to the men and women in uniform who are providing around-the-clock enforcement of our laws and providing quality and compassionate care to the migrants in their custody. It is a tough job. When you train to be a Customs and Border Patrol agent, you are not trained in child care, but that is what many of them find themselves doing--handing out juice boxes and diapers and providing assistance to those families as they seek to have their claims for asylum adjudicated.
This is a tough job, and it is getting tougher every day, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley and along the border. Of the 144,000 crossings last month, nearly 50,000 were apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley, making it the most heavily impacted of the entire border.
In fact, it should come as no surprise that Texas is impacted more than any other State because, of course, we share a 1,200-mile common border with Mexico. Two-thirds of the apprehensions so far this fiscal year have occurred in the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, or Del Rio sectors. As Federal resources have rapidly depleted, Customs and Border Protection officers and agents have struggled to manage the processing, care, and transportation of these migrants, and local communities, it should be no surprise, have stepped in.
The Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen is one of several locations working to care for the migrants and has had its doors open for 5 years now. In the summer of 2014, we saw then-unprecedented numbers of Central Americans, particularly children, arriving at the border. This was back when President Obama called this a ``humanitarian and security crisis.'' The scenes were heartbreaking and spurred many folks to action to try to offer their help.
Sister Norma Pimentel is the executive director of Catholic Charities in the Rio Grande Valley and led the creation of this respite center. Migrants who are released by CBP or ICE and are awaiting a court date are often dropped off at the center by officers or agents themselves. There they can get food, a hot shower, a good night's sleep, and travel to wherever they are going to await their court date.
There is certainly a need for this type of assistance under the circumstances, and it has been in existence only 5 years. The respite center has helped more than 150,000 people and continues its work as more people cross the border each day.
The number of unaccompanied children who illegally entered the United States last month is higher than in any other month since the 2014 surge that I mentioned a moment ago. The weight felt by those trying to provide assistance is getting heavier and heavier. As Federal resources dwindle, local communities in the Rio Grande Valley and along the entire Texas-Mexico border have been filling the gaps, despite the fact that, obviously, immigration and the sovereignty of our borders are Federal responsibilities. In the absence of Federal response, it is the State and local communities that have had to step up to help.
Like the respite center in McAllen, these communities regularly provide care, transportation, food, and shelter for migrants in need. I believe this generosity shows the true Texas spirit and helps illustrate how serious the problem has become and how desperately additional Federal resources are needed.
Thankfully, yesterday the Appropriations Committee took action. The committee announced an agreement on a border supplemental package that will include humanitarian assistance needed at the border. The nearly
$4.6 billion includes funding to support the missions of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is providing care for the record number of unaccompanied children who are arriving in the United States. It also provides funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is working to enforce our laws and properly care for the adults and families in their custody, as well as the Departments of Justice and Defense. The hard-working men and women in these Departments are working tirelessly to care for the migrants in their custody, and I want to thank each of them for working day in and day out to enforce our laws. But, as I mentioned, these are not the only folks trying to provide support with minimal support from the U.S. Government.
Earlier this month I sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member of both the Appropriations Committee and the Homeland Security Subcommittee, requesting that the funding package include reimbursement for local communities that helped carry the weight of the humanitarian crisis. NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, like the respite center in McAllen are trying to do more and more with less and less. Cities and counties are diverting hard-to-come-by taxpayer dollars from their intended purposes, such as public safety, power, and clean drinking water, to do the job that is the responsibility of the Federal Government. It is unfair for these folks to pay for a humanitarian crisis that is not of their making. I am glad to see the Appropriations Committee taking some action to right this wrong.
The funding agreement yesterday includes $30 million available nationwide for direct reimbursement for local governments, States, and NGOs that have spent millions of dollars to respond to this crisis. Communities, both along the border and throughout the State of Texas, will be able to request reimbursement directly through local and national boards of the Emergency Food and Shelter Program at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help lessen the financial burden they have incurred over the past few months.
I want to thank the chairman and ranking member and all of our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee for supporting this effort to help alleviate this strain on Texas communities. The funding bill received broad bipartisan support in the committee and passed by a vote of 30 to 1. I hope we will soon have the opportunity to pass this important funding bill here in the Senate. I encourage our friends in the House to put politics aside and do the same.
As happy as I am that the appropriations committee has come up with this additional money, this is still a matter of treating the symptoms and not the underlying cause. President Trump, in his frustrations with congressional inaction, threatened to impose additional tariffs on the nation of Mexico. Fortunately, the negotiations that ensued came up with a plan for Mexico to work with the United States to begin to slow down or stop the flow of people from Central America across Mexico into the United States.
I have never seen anything quite like that before in terms of our relationship with Mexico. They have historically tended to view immigration as our problem, not theirs, as well as the drug problem, because the demand in America is our problem and not theirs. This really represents a change of attitude on behalf of President Lopez Obrador's administration, and I want to congratulate President Lopez Obrador and his administration for working with the United States to address a joint problem. This is not just Mexico's problem. This is not just the problem of the United States. This is our shared challenge. Working together, I am confident we can begin to address it.
Finally, I want to say that Congress has largely been AWOL when it comes to dealing with this humanitarian crisis up to this point. A couple of months ago, my colleague from the House of Representatives, Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, TX, and I introduced a bill we called the HUMANE Act, which would fix some of the gaps in our laws that are being exploited by the human smugglers and are causing this humanitarian crisis in this huge flood of humanity coming into the United States.
If Congress would accept its responsibility and do its job, it would never have been necessary for the President to threaten additional tariffs on Mexico, forcing this diplomatic negotiation. I am glad it resulted in a good and positive outcome, that negotiation, but the fault ultimately lies with Congress for not taking up and debating and voting on bipartisan legislation like the HUMANE Act that has been introduced in the Senate and in the House.
I will say that Chairman Graham of the Judiciary Committee has been focused like a laser on this issue. We were scheduled to mark up a bill today in the Judiciary Committee that I believe would incorporate many provisions of the HUMANE Act as part of a bill which would, I believe, address this humanitarian pull factor because of exploitation of those gaps in our asylum laws. That now has been postponed, but I hope the discussions will continue because, ultimately, this is a matter of congressional responsibility. We can be glad that the Appropriations Committee stepped up and provided additional resources, including this
$30 million in reimbursement for local communities. We can be glad that Mexico and the United States are finally now working together on this shared challenge, but ultimately, if we are going to address not just the symptoms but the causes of this humanitarian crisis, it is up to Congress. I believe the American people will ultimately hold us accountable, as they should.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). The Senator from Delaware.
75th Anniversary of the GI Bill
Mr. CARPER. Madam President, this Saturday is June 22. It is not just any June 22. It marks 75 years to the day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law one of the most significant pieces of legislation in our Nation's history. It was called, and is called, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. We know it today as the GI bill.
Since 1944, the GI bill has helped literally millions of not just servicemen but a lot of servicewomen. When you look at our Armed Forces today, there are a lot of servicewomen who serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and in the Coast Guard. I remember being a midshipman at the Ohio State Navy ROTC in the 1960s, and we had no women in our unit. There were no women in any ROTC unit in colleges across the country, as far as I know. There were no women who were nominated to attend armed service academies--the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, Merchant Marine Academy. None of them had women. I got to my squadron on the west coast during the Vietnam war, and we had about 300 men in my squadron. About 10 percent were officers. The others were enlisted men. We had no women in my squadron.
All that has changed. When you go to any college that has a ROTC unit today, they are allowing women in. In the academies, you find women. In my old squadron, we find women. They are not just E-1s, E-2s, and E-3s; they are O-4s, O-5s, O-6s, and they are doing a great job. The GI bill is for them too.
Since 1944, the GI bill has helped millions of World War II veterans purchase a home, pay for a higher education or obtain job training and, in turn, transformed our Nation's economy.
Our Presiding Officer, who has served our country in uniform, knows of what I speak. I was just off of Active Duty at the end of the Vietnam war and in Delaware when I finished up my MBA, which is financed in part by the GI bill. I had scraped enough money together to buy a house. I think it cost about $35,000. I didn't have $35,000, but with the help of the GI bill, I was able to get a mortgage and buy my first home, all those years ago.
In the years since World War II, the GI bill has continued to change the lives of millions of veterans by spurring economic opportunity and helping to create the middle class as we know it today. That is why earlier this week I was proud to reintroduce a bipartisan resolution in the Senate, alongside my colleagues Senators Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Jon Tester of Montana. They are the chair and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, which designates this week as National GI Bill Commemoration Week, celebrating the historical significance of the GI bill and renewing our commitment to improving the lives of our Nation's veterans for years to come.
I want to share with you a couple of reasons why the GI bill is oftentimes referred to as the ``greatest legislation'' and share with you how it changed my life and really the life of my family.
After World War II, millions of returning veterans flooded our Nation's colleges, our universities, and our vocational schools. It was the GI bill that made financial support, education, and homegrown programs available to those 16 million veterans returning home and helped to usher in an era of unprecedented economic expansion.
According to the 1988 report from the Joint Economic Committee, it was estimated that for every $1 the United States invested in our GIs through the GI bill, about $7 were returned in economic growth for our country.
I am going to say that again. According to the Joint Economic Committee in 1988, it was estimated, for every $1 the United States invested in the GI bill, about $7 were returned to our economy. It is a pretty good return.
Those are big returns. I wish I could say for every dollar we invested in Federal Government spending that we got seven bucks back, in terms of economic growth. We don't. So this is something to know.
Thanks to the original GI bill, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 112,000 dentists, and thousands of other professionals entered our country's workforce, and many folks entered the workforce with skills in building trades, in assembly operations. You name it.
The GI bill truly democratized our higher education system. It established greater citizenship and civic participation and empowered the ``greatest generation''--my parents' generation--to lead our country following World War II.
At the end of World War II, my dad was the chief petty officer in the Navy and served until the end of World War II and a little bit after that and served many years after that as a chief petty officer in the naval reserve for, I think, 30 years in all. He came back. Before he went to work, he took advantage of the GI bill, and he had a real knack for fixing things and building things. He was very skilled in that regard. He had a high school education. He and my mom graduated from Shady Springs High School in Beaver, WV. They were married during World War II. My sister was born in 1945, and I was born in 1947. My dad used the GI bill, he once told me, to learn how to fix wrecked cars, how to be an auto body repairman. He ended up working at an Oldsmobile dealership in Beckley, WV, Burleson Oldsmobile, using the skills he gained from the GI bill. He worked there for a year or two. One day, a claims adjuster came in from the Nationwide Insurance company. Nationwide insured a car that was being repaired by my dad. The claims adjuster talked to my dad about the car and how it was coming. Somewhere in that conversation, the fellow from Nationwide Insurance said: You know, you could do what I do.
My dad said: You mean be a claims adjuster for Nationwide Insurance?
The guy said: Yes, you could do this. You have a lot on the ball.
Two years later, my father was a claims adjuster for Nationwide Insurance. He continued to repair wrecked cars as a hobby. We had any number of cars in our family that looked as good as new. He would take them on weekends and went to a garage and fixed them, painted them, and they were as good as new.
Out of that humble beginning as a claims adjuster for Nationwide Insurance--he was very proud of the work he did, but he ended up 20, 25 years later as one of the top instructors for Nationwide in their home office in Columbus, OH, teaching all the claims adjusters from across the country for Nationwide how to do the job adjusting claims, working on claims.
Here is a picture of my dad, Wallace Richard Carper. He went by Richard, his middle name, my middle name. He instructed a bunch of folks in the home office in the training school in Columbus, OH. Here he is with some of his compadres, some of the fellow teachers whom he worked with. It started with the GI bill.
I know people who used the GI bill to get an undergraduate degree or 2-year degree, associate's degree, a master's degree, a Ph.D. Not everybody used the GI bill for that. My father used it in a way that actually ended up enabling him to not only get a good blue-collar job but also actually to end up doing this kind of work as well. I am proud of him and thankful to the GI bill for helping him get started and serve as a role model for my sister and me.
My own career, I served 5 years on Active Duty as a midshipman, before that at Ohio State, and served 5 years in the Vietnam war, three tours in Southeast Asia. I wanted to stay in the Navy. I wanted to go to graduate school after my career. The Navy wasn't ready to send me to Monterey. I wanted to go to Monterey to graduate school. The Navy wasn't ready to send me to a postgraduate school. They said to come back and talk to them in a couple of years.
I wanted to go to graduate school. I entered my regular commission, took a Reserve commission, and moved from California to Delaware--the University of Delaware--and enrolled on the GI bill to go to graduate school.
The next weekend, after I showed up in Delaware, I drove up the road to Willow Grove Naval Air Station in Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, and they were just getting the Navy P-3 aircraft. I had been a P-3 aircraft mission commander during the Vietnam war. I said: Are you looking for people who might help train these sailors at Willow Grove on how to use these P-3 airplanes?
He said: We need somebody. We need some help, and we are were happy to sign you up.
I flew with them for another 18 years and retired as a Navy captain.
Before I did those 18 years, I went to graduate school at the University of Delaware and earned an MBA, and that helped me go to work for the State of Delaware in economic development, right out of graduate school, and later had a chance to run for the State treasurer. Nobody wanted to run. In knowing I had an MBA from the University of Delaware, some people thought maybe I could be a pretty good State treasurer. We ended up starting with the worst credit rating in the country back in 1977, and 6 years later, we had doubled the credit rating. Pete du Pont was our Governor, and he was a great Governor.
I hope I helped a little bit along the way. That GI bill helped me in earning my MBA and, later, to have had a chance to have served in the House, then as Governor, and now here in the Senate. So I am deeply grateful to the people of this country for investing in me. I tried to work hard to repay that investment they made in me all those years ago.
Today's veterans can take advantage of the post-9/11 GI bill. It is an incredible benefit that pays the full cost of tuition at public colleges and universities, offers a generous housing allowance, and pays for books. It can even be transferred to veterans' spouses or children.
In 2017, I was proud when Congress enacted the Forever GI bill--
legislation that expanded the GI bill and strengthened the protection for our veterans, for Purple Heart recipients, for National Guard reservists, and for surviving spouses and children.
About 2 or 3 weeks ago, we had a send-off ceremony in the Delaware National Guard facility in Smyrna, DE, which is just north of Dover. There were 20 or so National Guard men and women. They were about to ship off for Iraq and other surrounding countries in that part of the world.
In my remarks to send them off and wish them well, I mentioned, when they come home, they will be eligible for the GI bill if they have a total of 36 months of service, which will enable them to go to college for free--to the University of Delaware, to Delaware State University, or to the Delaware Technical Community College. There will be no tuition, and books will be paid for. If they need tutoring, it will be paid for, and they will receive a $2,000-a-month housing allowance.
When we came back from Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam war, in the GI bill, we received a $250-a-month allowance for everything. That was it. It was all there. The GI bill that our veterans inherit today, receive today, is just incredibly generous and is, actually, very helpful in terms of recruiting people to serve in an all-volunteer military.
One of the aspects of the bill that I mentioned a minute ago was, if a GI doesn't use his or her GI bill, his or her spouse can use it. If his or her spouse doesn't use it, his or her dependent children can use it. Sometimes that happens, and I want to share one sad but, in the end, hopeful story about one servicemember's GI benefits.
His name was Christopher Slutman. He grew up not too far from Delaware, but he ended up serving in New York City as a fireman and had been one for 15 years. In the words of Winston Churchill, he was twice a citizen because, in addition to doing that, he served in the Reserves for a number of years--not in the Navy but in the Marines.
His unit was activated. He was activated, and he ended up in Afghanistan on Active Duty. He took leave from his day job as a firefighter in New York City to put on a different uniform and ship out with his colleagues to go to Afghanistan. He was serving there on Active Duty--a marine reservist activated--when, one day while on patrol within the Humvee, they ran across a bomb that exploded and killed him, Christopher Slutman, and killed two other marines who were in the vehicle.
Along with Chris Coons, my colleague here in the Senate; Lisa Blunt Rochester, our only Representative at large of the U.S. House of Representatives; our Governor, John Carney; the Secretary of Defense; the head of the Marine Corps; and a lot of other people, several days later, I stood on the flight line at Dover Air Force Base with the families of those three marines who died.
One of the people among the three families was Christopher Slutman's now widow. Shannon Metcalf Slutman was there, who has earned three degrees herself--her undergraduate from the University of Delaware, a master's degree, and a doctorate degree--and her three daughters were not. I think it was late at night. They were probably at home and probably in bed.
When Christopher Slutman died, he left behind a widow, and he left behind three little girls, ages 4, 8, and 10. His wife doesn't need to go to school any further. She is educated well beyond my dreams. Do you know what, though? They have three daughters, and we are going to make sure, when they are old enough to go to college, they will be able to inherit and use the GI bill's benefits that their father and their mother will never use.
A lot of times, we think about what the GI bill does to help servicemembers like me and like my dad, but it also helps a lot of families in ways we, maybe, never imagined. So I think we celebrate 75 years of the gift that this legislation provides to those survivors, like to the three Slutman girls, as they prepare to face the world without their father.
In closing, I am proud to join families across our country today in celebration of the importance of the GI bill over the last three-
quarters of a century. It has enabled hundreds of thousands of veterans, including, as I said earlier, my dad and me, to pursue our dreams and to, hopefully, contribute in some way to our Nation and to our economy. This week, we reaffirm our commitment to making sure that all veterans today have similar experiences--maybe even better experiences--than we had and that they get the most out of their hard-
earned GI bill benefits.
I ask all of my colleagues to join us today, here in this Chamber and across the country, in wishing the GI bill a happy 75th birthday. Here is to another 75 years of improving the lives of our Nation's veterans.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Tribute to Billy Payne
Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I rise to do something I rarely do. To start, I want to talk about a very special Georgian and a good friend of mine--a man by the name of Billy Payne. Billy is a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great Georgian, and, yes, a great American. Recently, he was one of five individuals to be inducted into the 2019 World Golf Hall of Fame. It is quite an honor. Billy Payne is a riveting storyteller, a creative thinker, and an effective leader.
Golf Magazine once wrote: ``Wherever he goes, Payne is the most interesting person in the room.''
Billy was born in Athens, GA, and he went on to play football for his hometown team, the Georgia Bulldogs. He earned a law degree from the University of Georgia and went on to open a small practice in Atlanta.
After helping to raise money for a new sanctuary at their church, Billy and Martha, his wife, were inspired and started looking for ways to make a difference in their community. The day after the new sanctuary was dedicated, Billy Payne came home from work and said to Martha: I've got it--we're going to bring the Olympics to Atlanta. Billy was undaunted by the magnitude of this decision.
He didn't have many connections at the time, but he called up city and State officials and formed a team to make a bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games. Billy spent the next 3\1/2\ years personally traveling to 110 countries to convince Olympic officials to bring the games to the city of Atlanta. On September 18, 1990, Atlanta won the bid for the 1996 Olympics all because of Billy Payne's leadership and his vision for the city.
The 1996 Olympics put Atlanta on the world map. It transformed the city and allowed us to build infrastructure that later helped Georgia to become the No. 1 State in the country in which to do business. To this very day, my alma mater, Georgia Tech, actually uses dormitories that were built to house the athletes in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
After serving as President and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, Billy was invited to join Augusta National. In a very short period of time--actually, in 2006--he was selected to be the club's chairman, which is a role he served in for 11 years. Billy oversaw the Masters Tournament and turned it into a global brand with worldwide reach. When Billy took over at Augusta National, the club's membership was all male. Under his leadership, Augusta National broke the gender barrier and allowed women to join the club for the very first time.
He also started two major amateur events--the Latin America Amateur and the Asia-Pacific Amateur. The winners of these tournaments are invited to play in the Masters each year. As a result, young people from all over the world now have a chance to actually compete in the Masters every year.
In 2014, Billy launched the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship--a junior golf competition that gives 7- to 15-year-olds the opportunity to develop their golf skills, to compete with their peers, and to earn the opportunity to actually play and compete at the Augusta National on the Sunday before the Masters. I have seen this. It is an exciting event to see these young people compete at the very home of the Masters.
Probably the greatest achievement, however, for amateur golf may have been this year's first Augusta National Women's Amateur tournament. When the final pair walked onto the 18th green arm in arm--one the winner, the other the runner-up, two women, arm in arm, cheering each other--it was a highlight in amateur sports. In my opinion, Bobby Jones, who is the hero of amateur sports in America, was in Heaven and probably stood up and cheered.
Finally, Billy had a hand in naming his alma mater's football field, Sanford Stadium, after his coach at the University of Georgia, Vince Dooley. Last month, the university's athletic board approved the name change, and now the field is officially known as Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium.
I would be remiss if I didn't say ``Go Dogs'' this morning.
Clearly, Billy Payne's impact on Georgia and the entire country is hard to measure, but I want to tell you a story that really tells the true heart of this leader from our State.
After he announced his retirement from being the chairman of Augusta National, he was at a private dinner and was asked by no less than Bret Baier what he was going to miss the most. Without hesitation, Billy said, ``The people.'' Well, those of us at the table thought he might have been talking about the members, but he wasn't. He was talking about the employees at Augusta National. Its employees have been there for their entire careers, and they adore this man because he loves them. He treated them right, and he built their careers there.
His tenacious spirit, his love for humankind, and his steadfast leadership serve as an inspiration to us all. I thank Billy Payne for his lifetime of service to the State of Georgia and to the United States, and I congratulate him, his wife, and their kids on this induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Border Security
Mr. President, on another topic, there is a growing crisis at our southern border, and we are told, next week, we are actually going to vote on an appropriations package for humanitarian aid at the southern border.
Recently, I and a colleague of mine, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, traveled down to the McAllen sector of the border in Texas. We went out on patrol overnight with the Customs and Border Patrol agents--we were out all night with them--and then went on patrol in the early morning hours just as dawn broke on the river. We saw firsthand that we don't have just an illegal immigration problem--we have a national security crisis right there at our southern border.
My biggest takeaway was that the drug trafficking down there has now risen to being a full-blown crisis. Between fiscal year 1997 and fiscal year 2018, the CBP saw a 22-percent increase in heroin, a 38-percent increase in meth, and a 73-percent increase in fentanyl seizures. In that year alone, fiscal year 2018, enough fentanyl was brought into the country illegally to kill every woman, man, and child in America. The Border Patrol agents we spoke to estimated that they are only able to interdict between 7 and 10 percent, however, of the drugs that actually cross the border in the McAllen sector. That is a crisis. If for no other reason, we have a crisis.
In addition, the amount of human trafficking we are seeing at the border is unprecedented. Last month alone, 144,000 individuals were apprehended at our southern border. This is the highest number of apprehensions in over 13 years.
In just the first 8 months of the fiscal year, 411,000 unaccompanied children and family units were apprehended at our southern border, including 84,000 family units and 11,000 unaccompanied children, just last month--11,000 unaccompanied children. How does an unaccompanied child get all the way from Honduras or Guatemala to our border?
This is a conspiracy led by the cartels. I have seen it firsthand. We heard the gunfire across the river the night we were on patrol. It is real.
If this trend continues, 800,000 children and families could be apprehended at the southern border by the end of this fiscal year alone. To put that in perspective, we issue 1.1 million legal green cards a year that are a pathway to citizenship. This year alone, just the family units alone could be 800,000 people apprehended at the southern border. Clearly, our Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed.
When an unaccompanied child arrives at the border, they are cared for by Border Patrol agents until they can be placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the number of children arriving today greatly exceeds HHS's capacity to deal with them.
As of last week, 1,900 unaccompanied children were in CBP custody awaiting placement in HHS's care. But Health and Human Services had less than 700 beds in which to place them.
Now, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol agents are spending more than half of their time caring for families and children, providing medical assistance, driving buses, and acting as food service workers instead of performing law enforcement duties.
Pulling Border Patrol agents away from their law enforcement duties only exacerbates the crisis at the border. We saw that firsthand on our overnight patrols.
The Acting Commissioner of CBP said recently: ``We are in a full-
blown emergency, and I cannot say this any stronger: the system is broken.''
On May 1, the Trump administration requested $4.5 billion in funds to help address the growing crisis at the border. At the time, we were debating disaster relief for my home State of Georgia and a dozen other States across the country.
On May 23, President Trump broke the logjam and agreed to separate border humanitarian aid from the disaster relief question and it allowed us, then, within hours on this floor, to pass the disaster relief bill. Now we have to do the same thing for this humanitarian aid to the border.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis at the southern border has only continued to escalate, and we have to do something about it right now.
This week, Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to every Member of Congress. It said: ``Absent an emergency appropriation, we anticipate running out of funding as soon as later this month.''
The Department of Homeland Security has already started pulling resources away from critical missions in order to try and keep up with this surge of human traffic. Without additional funds by August, the Department of Homeland Security says they will have to redirect manpower and funding from TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard in order to address the crisis at the border.
The Acting Director of ICE just recently said: ``We are begging. We are asking Congress to please help us.''
This should not be a political issue. I am hoping that it will not be. This is about giving Federal agents the resources they need to care for children and families in their custody and respond to this crisis situation.
Even the New York Times editorial board said this: ``Congress, give Trump his border money.'' That is the New York Times, not a big fan of our President.
The Senate will vote on this emergency funding next week, and I hope it will receive bipartisan support. It absolutely should. Going forward, we have to address the underlying cause of this crisis, however.
Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at the southern border has skyrocketed because of loopholes in our asylum and immigration laws. Minors and family units can easily assert broad and unspecific asylum claims. Then, they are released into the United States while they await formal removal proceedings, which could be months or years down the road.
These loopholes, combined with programs like the DACA Program, have led to a staggering increase in the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at our border.
Oftentimes, these kids and families are exploited by cartels on their journey to the United States and are in dire need of human services by the time they get here. It is truly heartbreaking what some of these people go through. These cartels profit off the most vulnerable. They fuel the drug trade and endanger communities across our country--
indeed, the world, for that matter. We have to put the cartels out of business. We have to close these loopholes that encourage illegal immigration into our country.
Finally, we have to give the Border Patrol officers the tools they need to do their jobs and protect our country. This means more technology, more personnel, and more barriers.
In conclusion, I want to say thank you to the women and men who protect our border. Their job isn't easy, but I will say this today: The best--and I mean the very best--are in our military uniforms around the world and doing our business, they are our Border Patrol people, who are protecting our border every day and night on our southern border here in the United States. We appreciate what you all do. God bless you.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
50th Anniversary of the Cuyahoga River Burning
Mr. BROWN. Fifty years ago this Saturday, in Cleveland, OH, about 7 miles from where my wife and I now live, sparks from a railcar traveling over the Cuyahoga River near Lake Erie ignited debris in the water below, lighting our river on fire for what would be the last time. It wasn't the first time the river had burned. It wasn't the biggest fire ever on the river, but it surely had the most impact.
Soon after that fire, Time magazine published a story calling the Cuyahoga River one of the worst rivers in the country. It was hard even for us who live in Ohio to argue otherwise.
I remember how polluted the river was and the lake was when I was growing up. Even to a child, it was obvious that most of what was in the river didn't belong in that river. Industry used the river as an open sewer, and oil coated the Cuyahoga River.
We knew that for generations Ohio's industry powered our country, making the steel that won our wars, built our skyscrapers, and went into the cars and trucks that carried our products and workers around the country. But our river--the Cuyahoga River--paid the price.
The city's own wastewater system was outdated and ill-equipped for what was then America's tenth largest city. Americans were horrified by the scenes of that burning river. It was a wake-up call to people all over our great country that industrial pollution had real costs.
People were becoming more and more aware of the scope of our environmental problems--polluted air, dirty rivers and lakes, oil spills off our coasts.
Citizens woke up. Citizens demanded that their government take action. Our mayor in Cleveland, Carl Stokes, helped to lead the charge, pressing this Congress for Federal help.
Congress passed the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency. The country celebrated the first Earth Day, and we made real progress.
The city of Cleveland, the State of Ohio, and citizen activists transformed the Cuyahoga River Valley. Representatives Ralph Regula, a Republican, and John Seiberling, a Democrat, led efforts to create the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, which later became the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Think of that. There aren't that many national parks east of the Mississippi River--a national park in the Cuyahoga River Valley.
Today our river is home to more than 60 species of fish. Families canoe and kayak and fish. The industrial river valley in downtown Cleveland, what we call the Flats, has been transformed into a center for recreation entertainment.
NPR this week said that the cleanup ``has been such a success that environmental officials travel from around the world to take notes.''
All the cleanup we have done has not hurt our economy--far from it. We know the talking points. We hear from lobbyists in this building. We know the talking points we hear from corporations. They say that environmental protections hurt businesses and kill jobs.
The Cuyahoga proves them 180 degrees wrong. The river transports millions of tons of materials to and from local industries and supports 15,000 jobs. It produces $1.7 billion in economic activity.
For all that progress, more needs to be done. Last week, I was on the shores of Lake Erie and held a roundtable with Ohioans who love this lake. They told me they are worried that after 50 years of progress on the Cuyahoga and across Lake Erie, the shallowest and most vulnerable of the Great Lakes, we are at risk of going backward. The lake is threatened by harmful algal blooms and by climate change. I thank Senator Whitehouse for being the most important Member of this Senate talking about that issue every day, every day, every day. The lake is threatened by invasive species, and it is threatened by emerging contaminants that are in our drinking water.
Unfortunately, we have a President and an administration that deny climate science and that yesterday, again, with their announcement, want to give polluters free rein.
The President has tried every year to gut the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which keeps our five Great Lakes clean. Every single year the President has tried to do that. His EPA proposes leaving thousands of miles of waterways unprotected. They have abandoned the Paris Agreement--the best blueprint we have to combat climate change.
Having watched for 50 years, first as a young child, then, having seen what has happened, having watched for 50 years the cleanup of this great lake and the waterways in my State, which is still an industrial State and still an agriculture State, I know we can't go back. We can't let our country return to the days when our rivers flowed with trash, sewage, and industrial waste, and our air and water made our children sick.
We can't ignore climate change, one of the great moral issues of our time.
Let's honor this 50th anniversary by committing ourselves to trusting our scientists, protecting our lakes and rivers, taking action to preserve our country for our children and our grandchildren before it is too late.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is my great honor to join Senator Brown of Ohio here on this 50th anniversary.
The image of a river aflame is engraved in our collective memory. For Ohioans, for Senator Brown, and for all others who care about our water and environment, the Cuyahoga River remains a rallying cry.
Time magazine ran a piece in 1969 calling it this: ``Chocolate brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gasses, it oozes rather than flows.''
No fish lived in it. It was too dangerous for drinking or swimming.
``The lower Cuyahoga has no visual signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes,'' a Federal report said.
Virginia Aveni, captain of a vessel charged with cleaning up, told the Plain Dealer that the river ``was a complete gel almost of petrochemicals.'' There was a ``sheen and thickness of the river . . .
. it was totally jammed with downfall from upstream'' and had ``every kind of litter you can imagine.''
Today, waterfowl are back, and paddlers enjoy themselves. It has been named River of the Year for 2019. Fish from the river are now safe to eat. A river that inspired a generation to act in the name of our environment has rewarded that effort.
By the time a spark jumped off a nearby passing train and lit the river on fire in 1969, it was no surprise. The river had burst into flames 13 times before between 1868 and 1969. This is the most economically damaging fire, in 1952, which cost over $1.3 million--$12 million in today's dollars.
An earlier fire in 1912 was the deadliest, killing 5 people.
What was different this time? America paid attention.
Of course the Cuyahoga was not our only polluted waterway. The Potomac River in Washington, DC, was, to describe it in Time's words
``stinking from the 240 million gallons of waste [that] were flushed into it daily,'' and ``Omaha's meatpackers [filled] the Missouri River with animal grease balls as big as oranges.''
Americans wised up to what we were doing to our planet. We grew tired of unchecked industries using our common assets as their dumps, and things changed. It produced some of the most significant environmental and public health protections in history: the December 1970 establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the 1972 amendments to the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, the Ocean Dumping Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act. And, of course, there was the big one--the National Environmental Policy Act.
Each one had broad popular support. Each garnered bipartisan support. It is hard to imagine that today, but it happened.
The American people have made hard-earned progress protecting our waters in the last 50 years. We want to swim in our lakes. We want to fish in our rivers. We want to drink from our streams.
We do not want to go back to the days when rivers oozed, but the Trump administration has the clear aim of allowing industry donors to pollute more and faster.
The price for this is paid in our rivers, on our lands, in our oceans, and in our climate. Right now, in our atmosphere and oceans, we are approaching the kind of environmental catastrophe that befell the Cuyahoga, only magnified many times over.
Let's ensure that the Cuyahoga did not burn in vain and that the lessons of the Cuyahoga River, Love Canal, Deepwater Horizon, and other preventable disasters are not repeated by us, now on a global scale. We took bipartisan action to protect our environment before. If we can break the devil's grip on the fossil fuel industry here, we can do it again.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Change of Vote
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on rollcall vote 176, I voted nay. It was my intention to vote yea. I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to correct my vote since it will not affect the outcome.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
nomination of rita baranwal
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak in support of the nomination of Dr. Rita Baranwal to be Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at the Department of Energy. Dr. Baranwal was reported from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee without opposition in both the 115th and 116th Congresses, and I am glad we will vote to confirm her today.
Over the past several years, the United States has lost influence in nuclear energy to countries like Russia and China. That is not a positive development, but advanced nuclear technologies have the potential to reposition the United States as a leader in the world market.
To achieve that, we will need strong, experienced, and consistent leadership at the Department of Energy. Dr. Baranwal's experience as the director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear, also referred to as GAIN, provides her with an informed perspective to push forward the research, development, and deployment of advanced reactor technologies.
Congress began to demonstrate its strong support for advanced nuclear through the enactment of two bills in the last Congress, the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act and the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act. These new laws are intended to facilitate reactor development and streamline the licensing process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In addition, legislation I have sponsored, the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act, has garnered 17 bipartisan cosponsors in this new Congress. Our bill provides for the next steps on advanced nuclear technologies, including the need to ensure high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel is available for them.
We need a strong leader in the Office of Nuclear Energy, someone who recognizes the potential of these technologies, who will move forward so that we can realize that potential and who will work to restore the United States' leadership in nuclear energy. I appreciate Dr. Baranwal's willingness to serve in this role and urge my colleagues to support her nomination.
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