Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues to pass Iran deal oversight bill without partisan amendments

Mr. President, first I’d like to thank Senator Cardin for his gracious remarks and for his real and strong and capable leadership.

I come to the floor today to speak about the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the need for Congress to play a constructive, meaningful role in reviewing any potential deal.

This week, the full Senate will consider the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, which would ensure Congress has the ability to consider any nuclear deal with Iran before any congressionally enacted sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program are rolled back.  This bill will also ensure that Congress exercises its oversight over the implementation of any agreement through imposing rigorous reporting requirements and certifications on the Administration.

This bill passed the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate unanimously after Senators Corker and Cardin – the Chair and Ranking Member – worked tirelessly together to ensure that it would receive bipartisan support. They carefully negotiated a deal that defeated amendments that would have prevent the Obama Administration from continuing to negotiate in good faith, and in my view, it’s a great testament to their leadership that we were able to come together on a bipartisan bill that passed the committee unanimously, and that the President has now said that he would sign.

For the last four years, I have been hugely frustrated by the failure of Republicans and Democrats to come together in this Senate to pass legislation for the American people.  The Republicans are now in the majority and have a chance to move past obstructionism and into leadership, and to show that in this Senate we have an opportunity to pass a bill that this Senate plays a constructive role in protecting the United States’ national interest.  Leader McConnell has said that he wants a functioning Senate; that he wants regular order; that he wants the Senate to play its rightful role in foreign affairs.  Well, here is the chance.

Let’s review what has happened with this piece of legislation.  The Republican chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, working well with his Democratic counterpart, crafted this bipartisan bill. It has today 44 Republican co-sponsors. It has passed committee, which has fully and thoroughly debated this bill and many potential amendments.  A committee with views as broad as Republican Senators Johnson and Rubio and Paul to Democratic Senators Boxer and Murphy – a very broad range of views on our foreign policy – came together to pass this unanimously. If that’s not regular order, I don’t know what is.

If Senator McConnell wants a functioning Senate, I believe we should respect the committee process that Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Cardin led to achieve this compromise. That bill gives Leader McConnell exactly the opportunity he wants to ensure that this Senate exercises its role in protecting America’s national interest.  I particularly liked what my Republican colleague from South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham said recently.  He said, and I believe I quote: ‘Anybody who monkeys with this bill is going to run into a buzz saw.  Anybody who offers an amendment that will break this agreement apart – that will merely benefit the Iranians.’

That is why I stand here as well today to urge my colleagues to avoid attaching ‘poison pill’ amendments that are outside the scope of the current, ongoing negotiations, and pass this bill as currently passed out of the Foreign Relations Committee and as currently supported by a majority of Senate Republicans.

Mr. President, over the last few years Iran has responded to congressionally enacted sanctions by finally coming to the negotiating table to discuss and deal with its illicit nuclear weapons program. The Obama Administration and the other P5+1 countries have been engaged in difficult, demanding negotiations with the Iranian theocratic regime. After a few extensions that effectively frozen and in some ways rolled back certain parts of Iran’s illicit nuclear program, the Administration is in the final phases of their negotiations. Earlier this month, the President released the parameters of a potential deal with the technical details and a few remaining critical gaps to be finalized possibly by the end of June.

This bill is not a referendum on the President’s decision to pursue a path of diplomacy with Iran.  This bill is not a referendum on the parameters announced on April 2. The bill before us this week has a simple, clear goal. It is about creating an orderly process that allows Congress to review any deal. As negotiations come to an end, it would ensure that Congress can play a constructive role after an agreement is reached by considering whether the deal is strong enough to warrant rolling back congressionally enacted sanctions. Yet, some, a few of my colleagues have insisted on making this bill a partisan exercise rather than keeping it the responsible, bipartisan measure that’s before us now.

This bill is not about debating the merits of an ultimate deal now.  We will have that chance when or if a deal is reached over the summer. It is not about – I hope – killing the negotiations before they have a chance to conclude. This bill is not about creating a list of complaints about Iran’s destructive behavior in areas outside of its nuclear program. It could and should pass now, in its current form, without amendments.

I believe I’ve been as outspoken as anybody about Iran’s destructive behavior, but I’m troubled by some of the amendments being offered to make Iran’s human rights record, its support for terrorism, and its relationship with Israel a part of these negotiations. Yes, Iran’s human rights record is atrocious. Its support for terrorism threatens the stability of its neighbors and has taken countless innocent lives. Its continued threatening of Israel and its unwillingness to recognize the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist is cowardly, dangerous, and just plain wrong. Iran must release the four Americans it currently holds hostage. I think everyone in this body would agree that these are legitimate concerns for our consideration. Yet the truth remains that they are outside the scope of the current negotiations around Iran’s nuclear program, and Congress must resist the temptation to make them a sticking point in those negotiations by including them amendments to this bill.”

Let’s be clear – there are already congressionally enacted sanctions on Iran for its behavior in these areas, and the deal’s parameters, as published on April 2, said, quote, ‘U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, for human rights abuses, and for its ballistic missile program will remain in place under the deal.’ No one is talking about removing those sanctions. The negotiations are about Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program and the critical importance of preventing Iran from ever building a nuclear weapon.

Mr. President, I have long believed a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a grave threat to the region, to Israel, and to the world. The nuclear arms race it would set off throughout the Middle East would have horrible consequences for global security.

That’s why throughout the negotiating process, I have remained adamant that no deal is better than a bad deal, and I’ve closely consulted with the Administration on that point as well as many others. I’ve met with senior Administration officials to discuss these recently announced parameters and been clear that I remain concerned about closing the remaining gaps and the need to maintain pressure on the Iranian regime to close any pathway to their development of a nuclear weapons capability.

I support this bill as it is. It is responsible and focused on the issue at hand. It ensures that Congress gets to weigh in if a deal is reached, and it strengthens this Administration’s ability to negotiate the best deal it possibly can.

Every Republican in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted for this bill, all ten of them, from Senator Rand Paul and Senator Rubio to Senator Johnson and Senator Barrasso.  All nine Democrats supported this bill as well.  All 19 Senators on this Foreign Relations Committee represent as wide a range of foreign policy views as could exist.  So I would urge my colleagues on both sides to pause and reflect before supporting amendments that would make this a partisan exercise rather than a prudent use of congressional authority. If they want Congress to play a responsible role overseeing any potential deal, this bill gives us that chance. The alternative to this bill is not a better bill; it is a deal without any meaningful congressional input.

I have been as critical of Iran and distrusting of its intentions as anyone else in this body, but if unrelated amendments become attached to this bill, I will not support its final passage.

We have here because of the great leadership of these two Senators, a rare moment for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate as a whole to demonstrate its ability to move past what have been divisive and partisan fights over the last four years and come together and enact into law a measure that demonstrates our ability to give constructive and timely input on one of the most important national security challenges of our day and to restrain our sometimes extreme and divisive instincts in this body and instead demonstrate our ability to overcome those instincts and show our relevance.

Let us not miss this opportunity to work together in the best interests of our nation.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons call on Congress to pass budget investing in middle class and economic growth

Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to speak about our budget and how the choices we will make over the next few days will reflect our values and priorities.

As someone who has acted as a countywide elected official writing balanced budgets, I have long viewed them as not just a collection of numbers and programs but also really a statement about our basic values and a reflection of what we hold dear. We can say we believe in this or that, but at the end of the day, our budgets tell the true story. Over the last two years in this body, following the hard work and leadership of Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski, the previous chairs of Budget and Appropriations Committees, we have taken important strides to stabilize our government’s finances, invest in our middle class, and protect the most vulnerable among us.

After a few really hard years, our economy has begun to heal and grow again. We are now in the longest period of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our nation’s history – a period in which our businesses have created 12 million new jobs. Today, our national unemployment rate stands at 5.5 percent, and the deficit has fallen nearly two-thirds since the depths of the Great Recession. At a time when the economies around the world are slowing down, ours remains, relatively speaking, a global bright spot.

We need to continue on this path. We need to invest in this growth. And in my view, it is the wrong time to hit the brakes on our economy’s resurgence.

Unfortunately, the budget proposed by Senate Republicans misses the mark and would, I fear, reverse these gains. It denies our basic values by balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and middle class while cutting investments essential for our nation’s competitiveness and future.

It relies on some budget gimmicks to actually increase defense spending while making broad cuts elsewhere, and it uses overly rosy predictions about growth and our debt that have time and again proven false. It does all this while protecting tax breaks for the very wealthiest and corporations at the expense of working families.

It is my hope that we can reach a budget that is responsible, balanced, and fair, that takes stock of our needs today and what the future will demand of us. So I would like to take a few minutes and outline broadly what I think our budget priorities should be.

First, we need a budget that preserves our social safety net by building a circle of protection around the most vulnerable among us and protecting the promises we have made to our seniors. Part of the basic bargain we make in this country is that when one of our neighbors falls on truly hard times, their country offers a hand up. We need to ensure these basic protections to health care, food, and a home are there for those of our neighbors in deepest need. It is also part of that same bargain that after a lifetime of work, you will be able to retire with dignity and some security. As workers, we all pay in to Medicare and Social Security, and we need to ensure that as future generations of Americans grow up, raise their families, and contribute to our economy, the benefits they have spent their lives paying into will be there for them, just as they were for previous generations.

Yes, we should have a conversation about how to responsibly bring our long-term health care costs under control, but we can’t do it the way this budget does, by irresponsibly shifting costs to seniors and the poor.

For retired Delawareans, for instance, the Republican budget would reverse an important reform in the Affordable Care Act and would raise prescription drug costs by an average of $1,100 a year.

Second, just as we are there for each other when times are hard, we must rebound and grow together by making specific and thoughtful investments in our future. We need a budget that understands that without critical investments in infrastructure, research, and science, our economy will struggle to grow and support a strong middle class. We need a budget that invests in our middle class and gives working families a fair shot – an economy that is built on growth and opportunity. These investments in growth are the basic building blocks of our economy. They make up our economic backbone and help create an environment for our nation’s drive and dynamism to flourish.

Growth, however, requires infrastructure. We have a roughly $3.6 trillion infrastructure debt – investments in infrastructure that are due by 2020. Every year we put off investing in our roads, bridges, tunnels, and ports.

Every year we fall behind our competitors, and we make it harder for our businesses to grow and create jobs. Growth also requires investing in research and development. Our long-term competitiveness depends on our ability to innovate faster than our competitors. Although businesses already invest a huge amount in R&D, the federal government plays a critical role through our national labs, through the manufacturing extension partnership, and other grant programs that either directly invest in or incentivize the research that leads to innovation.

Finally, growth in our country requires ensuring that every child has access to a quality education. It requires making it easier for families to send their kids to college and easier for young people to manage the costs of their college through managing student loans after school, and it requires strengthening the real connection between the classroom and workplace so education can be a sturdier rung to a longer ladder of opportunity.

Throughout our history our middle class has thrived and our economy has been strong when we made these sorts of investments in our economy and middle class. We need a budget that continues those investments.

Finally, we need a budget that lowers our deficit responsibly, in a way that is fair and forward-looking – not on the backs of the middle class and poor and not done in a way that kills jobs and stifles growth. Over the last few years we have done a lot to get our deficit under control, using about three-quarters of spending cuts and about a quarter of increased revenue. We have also benefitted from a steadily growing economy which has lowered our deficit.

As we move forward, we need balanced deficit reduction that preserves our investments in our future and our promises to each other. That will mean raising some revenues by asking the wealthy and corporations to pay a bit more, just as it will mean making hard choices over the long run about the true causes of our deficits and debt.

But let’s be clear. We can do this while investing in our future and keeping our promises to our seniors, to our veterans, and to each other. The best way to lower our deficit is to grow our economy. So we need to invest in that growth. After all, an airplane needs an engine to take off, even in strong headwinds. 

Over the coming days we will be voting on a wide series of amendments that will say a lot about our values and priorities. I would urge my colleagues to keep in mind that which has always powered our economy and will continue to into the future – an economy that gives families a fair shot and invests in the strength and opportunity of the middle class and those fighting to get into the middle class. That is how we build an economy. I hope we will dedicate ourselves to a budget that will help us do so, far into the future.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act and support of the nomination of Loretta Lynch

Madam President, today is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the bipartisan Voting Rights Act of 1965, a day we are reminded of what is possible when we come together across party lines.

It was 50 years ago today that Republican minority leader Senator Everett Dirksen and Democratic majority leader Senator Mike Mansfield came together on this floor to introduce landmark legislation that sought to fulfill the promise of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution and ensure that no person would be denied the right to vote because of the color of his or her skin.

I was reminded of the power of their example just two weeks ago when I gathered with Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate in Selma, AL, to honor the Americans who came from across our country 50 years ago to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and demand equal voting rights. Their example was one of unity, as was the example of Members from both sides of the aisle who came together to introduce and eventually pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So I am concerned as I come to the floor this afternoon about our troubling inability to come together in this Chamber on issues where there clearly should be broad agreement as well.

I have with me a photographic reminder that the last time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law—was reauthorized—it was signed by Republican President George Bush, with the support of both Democrats and Republicans in the then Congress. Those of us who gathered 2 weeks ago at the bridge at Selma were treated both to a stirring speech by our current President, and the cheering presence of President Bush, when a challenge was issued to those Members of Congress present that we should come together, fix the Voting Rights Act, and reintroduce it in this Chamber.

When it comes to voting rights, it surely is true that today’s America is not the America of half a century ago, just as today’s hurdles to the ballot box are not the same as in the time of Jim Crow. Yet it is also true that in too many cities, towns, States, and counties across our country, new roadblocks are being built to make it more difficult for Americans to vote.

It is clear that, as President Obama said to us on the Edmund Pettus Bridge two weeks ago, ‘‘Our march is not yet finished.’’ In the coming weeks, as Senator Leahy, I, and others work to bring to the Senate a new voting rights act that reflects today’s challenges, it is my sincere hope and my prayer that Republican colleagues will partner with us to continue the work that remains undone.

Madam President, this was also to be the week that we would take up, consider, and vote on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to serve as Attorney General. I must say that the Senate’s proceedings this week do not portend well, because we find ourselves, yet again, stuck in regrettable partisan gridlock.

For the past 129 days, we have had before us an incredibly qualified and talented nominee for Attorney General. Loretta Lynch was first nominated by President Obama in November. She has now waited for a vote longer than any Attorney General nominee in 30 years.

As of today, her confirmation has waited longer on the floor than the last five Attorneys General combined. That is unacceptable, and I frankly haven’t heard a single good reason from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for why Ms. Lynch’s nomination deserves such a delay.

Instead, her nomination is being used by many to continue their fight with the President over his immigration policy, and this is after nearly shutting down the Department of Homeland Security because of those same disagreements. While we do need to have a focused and functional debate in this Congress about immigration, it is simply irresponsible to hold up a highly qualified nominee for Attorney General because some don’t like that she agrees with the very President who nominated her.

I take very seriously the Senate’s role to advise and consent on Presidential nominations. So let’s just take a minute and look at Loretta Lynch’s experience, her background.

She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She spent 8 years in private practice at a prestigious law firm, then known as Hogan & Hartson. She served on the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

She has served the public and previously been unanimously confirmed by this body—twice, I should add—to be the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. That is a job where she has prosecuted drug crimes, violent crimes, and where she has taken on corrupt politicians.

At her nomination hearing in the Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, our chairman called an outside witness panel of nine witnesses. When asked, not one of them said they opposed Ms. Lynch’s confirmation to be Attorney General on the basis of her skills or experience. The committee was, in fact, unable to produce one shred of testimony in opposition to her nomination. Yet we stand today in the middle of March and the first African-American woman ever to be nominated Attorney General of the United States, our Nation’s top law enforcement official, has foundered on this floor longer than the five prior nominees combined.

I think this is unacceptable and sets an unfortunate, even dangerous precedent.

We should not play political games with the Department of Justice, an executive branch agency with 125,000 employees and a $28 billion departmental budget that is charged with all sorts of different law enforcement functions, from running the Federal prisons to enforcing the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, to making sure we fight human trafficking and money laundering.

Frustratingly, we find ourselves this week also considering a bill to combat human trafficking, which we don’t seem to be able to move forward. It is important legislation that includes broad bipartisan support, except for a simple, partisan, political provision that has now turned it into a divisive issue. The Republican leader this week has argued that once we finished work on this human trafficking bill, we could then move on to Loretta Lynch’s nomination vote.

But I am forced to wonder when the delay tactics here will end. Not only is it seemingly untrue that we can’t do human trafficking legislation and this nomination at the same time—because if my memory serves, we just confirmed two other executive branch nominees last night—but the Republican leader knows well that if he truly wanted to move this bill forward, Democrats would be ready to partner with him with just a minor revision to the bill.

There is, in fact, a bitter irony that, as was reported last night, Loretta Lynch’s confirmation is being held up over an issue—human trafficking— which she herself said she would prioritize if confirmed. I ask my Republican colleagues: Let’s find a way to move forward on all of these issues—on combatting human trafficking and confirming Loretta Lynch to serve as Attorney General and on reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, which is such an important linchpin of civil rights in this country.

We agree that we need to combat human trafficking. So let’s work together on the broad areas where we are, in fact, united. Let’s confirm an Attorney General nominee who is qualified, smart, and will give the fight against human trafficking the dedication it deserves. Ms. Lynch would make a superb Attorney General.

As someone who has herself served in law enforcement and served in that role at the State level, I think the Presiding Officer appreciates the importance of having a confirmed Attorney General to lead our Federal Department of Justice.

Loretta Lynch has demonstrated— throughout her confirmation process and through her many years of service to her country—that she is well and amply prepared and qualified to take on this vital and important role.

I urge my colleagues to end the delays and give Loretta Lynch the vote our country deserves.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges Republicans to fund Department of Homeland Security

Mr. President, I have come to the floor this evening to speak about the impending shutdown this week of the federal Department of Homeland Security. At a time when the folks I hear from in Delaware, and I suspect what all of the members in this chamber are hearing, as we return from a week spent in our home states, are concerns about our national security.

Whether it is the heinous acts of ISIS abroad, or the real threats of the weather and recent weather-related events here at home, a central concern all of us should share in the Senate here tonight is about keeping our country and our constituents safe. Yet shutting down the whole Department of Homeland Security later this week would show a reckless disregard for our national security by the Republican leader and some of the hardline conservatives who are, sadly, setting this agenda.

In my view, we do not need to be here. The Democrats and Republicans working together on the Appropriations Committee negotiated a strong bipartisan Homeland Security funding bill months ago. It is a bill that if it got a vote before the full Senate would absolutely pass. It makes wide, needed, broad investments in strengthening all sorts of different organs of our government at the federal, state, and local level that strengthen our homeland security.

Instead, the other party has insisted on attaching political provisions to the bill that would overturn the President’s executive action on immigration. I know I do not need to remind the Presiding Officer or any of our colleagues that we have already debated and passed comprehensive immigration reform in this chamber which, if taken up by the House, would have made the President’s action completely unnecessary.

I think we all agree that congressional action is the preferred path toward fixing our broken immigration system. If that is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are really concerned about, then I am eager to discuss how we can fix our badly broken immigration system in a bipartisan manner by the preferred path of congressional action rather than executive action.

But I think we should separate that debate over immigration and what is the right path toward a resolution of our broken system from a discussion about responsibly and sustainably funding our Department of Homeland Security. If we fail to fund Homeland Security, it would have damaging consequences to our economy, to the security of our communities, and to our reputation around the world. At this time of heightened concern about our cohesion, about our unity, and about our security as a country, failing to fund the federal Department of Homeland Security I think sends the worst possible message to our allies around the world about our capacity as a mature democracy of reaching responsible resolutions on difficult and divisive issues.

If the Department of Homeland Security shuts down this week, tens of thousands of its staff would be furloughed without pay. They include the FEMA disaster and preparedness staff, the very personnel who check the immigration status of new employees through E-Verify, critical security intelligence analysts, and the folks who run the domestic nuclear detection offices, just to name a few.

The list of these tens of thousands of Homeland Security employees and the vital functions they perform would take longer than the evening could take.

My own state of Delaware has the lowest mean elevation in the country. That means we are a really low-lying state.

We are incredibly vulnerable to storms and to flooding, and we simply can’t afford to have FEMA’s staff suspended, furloughed, laid off.

Whether we shut down or just have a short-term funding bill, funding for Homeland Security grants can’t go out. Some of the folks who watch this debate in the week ahead will have difficulty discerning between folks on my side who will advocate for a so-called clean bill and others who will advocate for a CR. This is where the difference really is: in the areas of grants for state and local emergency preparedness – the difference between actually moving forward the bipartisan bill that was worked through the Appropriations Committee in the last Congress and simply continuing by continuing resolution the previous year’s authorization. That difference is $1.5 billion for state and local emergency management all over this country.

In my community, which is part of the Greater Philadelphia area, we are about to welcome the Pope. Something like two million people are expected in the Greater Philadelphia area as we welcome His Holiness to Philadelphia for the first time in a long time.

I have heard from state and local law enforcement, first responders, emergency managers, and planners that they are counting on some of the grants from FEMA that are currently on hold, while they wait to discover the outcome of this week’s debates, to prepare for that important, very large event. In my own home community, there are volunteer fire companies which even now are working on submitting grants. The SAFER Act and the fire grants act have become an important part of making sure that our local volunteer fire companies have the equipment they need, the training they need to keep our communities safe.

In Delaware the overwhelming majority of the crash response, the fire education, and the fire suppression are done by volunteer fire companies, which often have badly outdated equipment and insufficient funding. To sustain their training and their personnel, they need the grants that have been made available through FEMA and through the Department of Homeland Security over the last decade to upgrade and update their equipment, their materials, and their training. They have been vitally important. They have made a big difference in the fire service in my home state. There are grants to police departments that help ensure they have the tools, the training, and the equipment to be part of emergency preparedness and to keep our communities safe.

If we shut down the Department of Homeland Security, 130,000 other DHS workers will be compelled to remain at work but without pay. I think the idea that there are Americans who work to keep us safe at the border, at our airports, on our coasts and that we don’t value them enough to ensure they will receive their pay for a hard day’s work just goes against the grain of what we stand for as a country.

So are my colleagues really willing to send a message to everyone at Homeland Security that their work isn’t important enough to our nation to ensure that they can provide for their family? That is the message if the Department of Homeland Security shuts down. It hurts families, it hurts morale, it hurts our preparedness, and it hurts our safety.

I wish to say, as someone who is privileged to serve on the Foreign Relations Committee and regularly gets the chance to meet with and talk with leaders from around the world, it sends the message that our democracy isn’t up to the task.

I know this isn’t what my Republican friends want to do, and I urge us to come together and work in a way that will end this era of politics by crisis once and for all – no more shutdowns, no more manufactured crises, and no more demonstrating that we are better at stopping progress than at enacting progress.

Democrats are ready to work together with Republicans to pass a bipartisan, bicameral bill that we all know we can pass and that will fund the Department of Homeland Security and keep our country safe. I hope that after we – this afternoon – voted down for the fourth time a bill that seeks to repeal the President’s actions on immigration, we can put aside that partisan issue and come together to find a bipartisan solution to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

We already know what that solution looks like. We just need to come together and give it a vote. In my view, this is too important to trivialize as part of the ongoing posturing and partisan games that for so long have dominated this chamber.

I urge my colleagues to work with us. Fund Homeland Security and then let’s talk meaningfully in this Congress about how we can fix our broken immigration system together.

I know we are all eager to continue that conversation. First, we need to solve this challenge and make sure that our communities, our states, and our country are safe.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls up his infrastructure amendment to the Keystone XL bill

Mr. President, this amendment recognizes that climate change is not a hoax, that climate change is a reality, and that we need to do some things together to begin to plan for and prepare for the inevitable consequences and impacts on our infrastructure.

As someone who was in local government for a long time before coming to this body–I was a county executive–I have a sense of what it means for our States, our municipalities, and our county governments to have to plan for and deal with the inevitable consequence, the impacts on our local infrastructure of the coming changes through climate change. 

I happen to represent the lowest mean elevation State in America, and our Governor Jack Markell and his able folks in the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control have led a grassroots statewide effort to begin planning for the future impacts of climate change. Because of the combination of subsidence and sea level rise, Delaware will see earlier than many States impacts on vital local infrastructure. So whether it is our sewer systems, our roads, our water systems or other infrastructure, we need to begin to plan now to bake resiliency into the future of our community.

Given the unique and important role that the Federal Government plays in financing infrastructure and in responding to disasters such as Superstorm Sandy that destroyed a lot of the infrastructure in the nearby States of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, we need to be mindful of what these costs could be.

The U.S. Department of Defense is already preparing plans to understand how climate change will impact its infrastructure. My thinking is that the entire Federal Government should make responsible, timely, and thoughtful plans to assess and to prepare for prudent mitigation of the future impacts of climate change on our infrastructure. So I am hopeful that this will be among the many amendments that will be taken up, debated, discussed, and passed in the coming hours and days.

I am grateful that we continue to have an open amendment process and the opportunity to discuss and debate the issues in front of us, and I very much look forward to passage of Coons amendment No. 115.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls on Congress to focus on growing the middle class

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about President Obama’s State of the Union address last week. It was a speech that I believe laid out a positive and forceful agenda for strengthening our middle class and for accelerating our Nation’s economic recovery.

Over the past year, our Nation’s economic progress has become unmistakable and undeniable. In our home State of Delaware, more people are working. People spend much less time looking for work, and job growth has been the strongest it has been since the 1990s.

Nationally, we are amidst the longest period of sustained private-sector job growth on record. Of particular interest to me is that our manufacturing sector has come back and come back strongly as manufacturers have created nearly 800,000 jobs in the last 4 years–jobs that make up the foundation of our 21st century middle class and our economy.

Our unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level since before the great recession. Our growing private sector is not just creating jobs now. They are also laying the foundation for the jobs of the future.

As test scores continue to improve, high school graduation rates reach record highs, and, as our President said, “More Americans finish college than ever before,” we are laying a path that ensures that future generations of Americans can thrive as well.

But our work remains unfinished. Although we are right to turn the page on the crisis here at home, crises do remain real in the lives of far too many Americans–families I listen to who are struggling to get into and stay in our middle class. For many in the middle class, wages have remained stubbornly stagnant as incomes for the wealthy have continued to grow. At the same time, too many Americans just stopped looking for work altogether during the recession and haven’t begun that job search again. So we have a lot of work to do together to ensure that the middle class experiences the benefits of this recovery.

On that note, I appreciated President Obama’s call for an agenda that would do a lot to strengthen our middle class. Although this isn’t what we will hear about on the news, many of these ideas should enjoy bipartisan support. I wish to spend a few minutes on some of the areas that I think are ripe for bipartisan cooperation and that would go a long way toward actually helping middle-class families and our Nation as a whole.

First, it is no secret to anyone that our country’s infrastructure is badly outdated and in need of repair. From our ports and roads, to our bridges and railways, we have steadily racked up a national debt of investment that we will need to pay for. The only question is when and how we do it. Historically, infrastructure–fixing roads and bridges and ports and railways–has not been a partisan issue. It is something that has been a core value of our Federal Government from its very founding. It is in no small part what the Federal Government was created to help do.

Last Tuesday the President laid out ideas for thinking more creatively about how to make these core investments–from improving efficiency to bringing private capital off the sidelines–and I am encouraged to hear Republican colleagues discussing infrastructure as an initiative they can work on with us. So let’s get this done. Let’s solve our highway trust fund challenges for good and make the long-term investments that will put people back to work and strengthen our Nation’s economic backbone.

Second, the President’s proposal to expand access to community colleges is an initiative that I hope will spark a broader discussion about how to make higher education more accessible and more affordable. I understand there is real disagreement here about how best to pay for it or how wide its scope should be, but that is what we can and should work on together.

We all know that higher education is necessary to ensure Americans have the skills they will need in the 21st century. We know community colleges can and should play a central role in achieving that mission. In manufacturing in particular, community colleges such as Delaware Tech in my home State play a central role in partnering with local businesses to create a talent pipeline that sustains a community and its economy. In Delaware the SEED and Inspire scholarships give students who are willing to work hard the chance to go to college and to learn the skills that will help them to contribute to Delaware’s economy after they finish school. We can replicate Delaware’s example across the country and find ways to work together to make community college and further higher education affordable and accessible. So let’s work on this together.

Lastly, the President laid out some commonsense tax and work proposals to help give middle-class families more of a realistic leg up. Expanding the tax credits for families with children and streamlining childcare support makes sense to me. Making it easier for middle-class families to save for their kids’ college education and to save for retirement at the same time would go a long way toward helping families to plan for the long term.

Around the country, too many of our work places lack family and medical leave policies that appreciate what it really takes to raise a family and live a healthy life. The President’s proposal to work with States to improve their policies would be a great step and would help those communities that choose to, to create policies that suit their own local situations. 

Let’s work together on these ideas. Let’s do something for middle-class families in our country. With a Republican Congress and a Democratic White House, we need to come together if we are going to get anything meaningful done. As President Obama made clear, we have a lot of important and difficult work to do. Our economy has come a long way from the great recession, but there is still work to do to strengthen our middle class. There is still work to do to broaden the opportunity that has always been at the heart of the American dream. We can move forward together, and it is my sincere hope that we will rise to that occasion, that we will seize this opportunity and do the critical work of building and sustaining our vital middle class.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges South Africa to drop duties on American chicken, threatens trade benefits

Mr. President, I would like to speak for a few minutes about our nation’s economic relationship with Africa and one area of concern I have as we work toward further strengthening our ties.

Since its passage under President Clinton, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, known as AGOA, has been a powerful tool for increasing trade and boosting economies across the African Continent, and no country has taken greater advantage of the opportunities provided through AGOA than South Africa. 

Over the past 4 years, as the chairman of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, I have worked closely with African leaders and know the importance of AGOA to their economies and to their growing middle classes. Just last week I met with a group of African trade ministers who emphasized to me how important prompt reauthorization of AGOA is to them, to their nations, and to tens of thousands of men and women who work in reliance upon AGOA.

AGOA is not a partisan issue. I have worked closely with my Republican colleague and friend from Georgia Senator Isakson on its reauthorization. But, as I have also long believed, trade must be fair, and with increased trade comes a responsibility by both parties to play by the same set of rules.

I am concerned because I fear that South Africa’s refusal to drop its antidumping duties that prevent American poultry from having free and fair access to the South African market will have negative repercussions for our relationship and South Africa’s economy. 

Much of the time, nations will use antidumping duties to prevent other countries from exporting artificially cheap goods into their economies, putting their own businesses at an unfair disadvantage. But what South Africa has done for years in this area lacks any merit. They are using the same justification that China has used to ban American poultry imports. They claim our poultry is being sold below market value. Not only is this claim false, the World Trade Organization recently deemed China’s nearly identical ban to be illegal.

American companies want the chance to sell healthy, affordable, and safe poultry to South Africa and at a fair market value. So during the Africa leaders summit last August, which brought the heads of state of more than 50 African nations here to Washington and to our Capitol, I had the opportunity to meet with President Zuma of South Africa as well as other South African senior officials. During our meeting we discussed their country’s policies toward our country, the importance of renewing AGOA, and also my concerns about their unfair practices with regard to our poultry industry. I was optimistic that following our constructive conversations, we could work together with them and with South Africa’s poultry industry to get rid of this inappropriate trade barrier. In September we also had constructive meetings where our Ambassador and their Ambassador were present, and leaders of both poultry sectors began constructive conversation. But soon thereafter their willingness to engage abruptly stopped. They apparently think they can continue to benefit from AGOA and shirk their most basic trade responsibilities.

In my home State of Delaware the poultry industry supports more than 13,000 jobs and has long been the backbone of our agriculture sector. I have made clear to our friends and partners in South Africa that although I deeply believe in their nation’s promise and future, my first responsibility is and always will be to my home State and my constituents. Across the country–and Senator Isakson’s State of Georgia is the single biggest poultry-growing State in the country–the United States supports 1.8 million American jobs, contributing more than $470 billion to our Nation’s economy.

So I want to be clear about this tonight, as I have been before. I support AGOA’s reauthorization, and I hope we can negotiate a fair path forward. But South Africa cannot expect to continue to reap the benefits of increased trade without following fair trade rules. They can’t expect us to open up our markets wide to duty-free and quota-free access for South African goods if they will not fairly open theirs. If they insist on maintaining their longstanding and illegal antidumping duties on American poultry, I will do everything in my power to ensure they do not continue to benefit from AGOA. The choice is theirs. 

Senator Isakson of Georgia and I communicated this concern to President Zuma back in December in writing, and this week we will write to the Senate Finance Committee with the same message. We only have a short period of time where we can get a long-term extension of AGOA done, and I will work hard to reauthorize and improve AGOA so its benefits are even more widely felt on the continent of Africa, but I won’t allow it to include countries that violate fair trade rules, which means an important ally and partner of the United States–South Africa–won’t be included if they are not willing to play by the rules. There are too many jobs at stake, too much work to do to allow a critical trading partner such as South Africa to continue its unfair treatment of American industry.

I hope and pray we can still resolve this needless impasse, but if we don’t, my commitment and my path forward is clear.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for Congress to move on from KXL to work on broader energy package

Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to speak about our ongoing debate about the Keystone XL Pipeline and the need for this debate to shift to a much larger conversation.

Tonight, as we are continuing in what has been 1 1/2 weeks of debate in our Senate about this single, foreign-owned pipeline, it is my hope that we will begin a larger, broader conversation about America’s energy and climate needs.

We have so far voted on amendments confirming that climate change is real, on the future of natural gas and oil exports, on energy efficiency provisions, on rules to ensure that we buy American, and on funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the oilspill fund.

I, myself, have an amendment, No. 115, that I am hoping we will have a chance to take up, debate, vote on, and pass–one that recognizes that given that the Senate has acknowledged the reality of climate change, we must now move forward to take action to prepare to adapt to those changes–changes that have already begun.

I come from the State of Delaware, the lowest mean-elevation State in America, where our Governor, Jack Markell, has led a community-driven process of preparing for adapting to the coming impact on our infrastructure–our public, private, State, local, and Federal infrastructure in Delaware.

We have to recognize that our Federal Government will have financial liabilities to help State, local, and tribal governments prepare for the impacts of climate change on their infrastructure and to prepare for the impacts of climate change on our Federal infrastructure.

My amendment, I hope, will be taken up, debated, and passed, but the larger point I want to make is this is just the beginning of the much larger debate we need to have about our Nation’s energy and climate future.

Energy has long been and will remain central to a strong, diverse, and vibrant economy for our Nation. Throughout our history, Americans have benefited greatly from abundant sources of energy at home. From coal to oil to natural gas, we have been blessed by natural resources that have powered our economy. But new challenges today require new approaches. As human-generated greenhouse gas pollution wreaks havoc on our global climate, we need to come together to create a cleaner and lower-carbon energy future.

There is no single pathway to stop climate change or to deal with it, but there are a number of approaches we need to look at and that I hope we will consider taking.

Tonight I wish to briefly mention four different areas where there were bipartisan bills in the last Congress–areas that I hope, in the spirit of comity and debate in the Senate, we could reconsider and make them part of this broader energy and climate debate.

First, we could start by establishing and implementing a national quadrennial energy review which would ensure that every administration, current and future, takes a hard look at our Nation’s energy landscape, the challenges that we face, and to build a blue print for how we will deal with these challenges and overcome them.

Today we already conduct these kinds of quadrennial reviews for the Pentagon, for the State Department, and for the Department of Homeland Security. They allow us to take a big picture and strategic look at our policies, our challenges, and to chart a predictable, longer term path forward.

It is time we did the same for our country’s energy challenges. This administration is already at work doing this, but Congress needs to act to ensure that future administrations will continue this practice.

Second, we can invest in clean and renewable energy and in energy efficiency technology so that we can out-innovate the rest of the world and lay the groundwork for job creation, not only for today but for tomorrow. We can do this through sustained, annual program funding and through smart and innovative financing models that lower the cost of clean energy, such as expanded master limited partnerships.

Third, we can improve the way our national labs collaborate with the private sector so that the innovation pipeline that takes ideas from the lab to the market is smooth, efficient, and predictable so that today’s discoveries are tomorrow’s world-changing products.

And, fourth, we can improve STEM education and skills training throughout America so that every day we are training tomorrow’s future energy innovators.

We can do this. We need to do these things.

I will admit that at times it can seem quite daunting. But in this country we should have no doubt that if we focus our greatest minds on these challenges, there is no limit to what we can achieve. The bottom line to all this is that we don’t have a choice. Pretending otherwise is an exercise in denial.

We need to curb emissions from transportation. We need to reduce pollution from powerplants. We need to better finance clean energy solutions. We need to strengthen our infrastructure so we are more resilient in the face of coming climate challenges. We need to address the real challenges of energy and water demand. We need to improve our regulations so that we do more to protect and conserve our land. And we need to invest in research, development, and the demonstration of new and innovative technologies. Overall, we can and should institute smart and market-based regional and national policies that will lower carbon pollution and send businesses and households the signal that the future is in cleaner not in dirtier energy technology.

We need to do all this and bring the rest of the world along as well because our national energy and climate challenges are not just ours, they are the world’s, and we need to come together around the world to get this done. The administration’s clean power plan rules and the recently announced accord with China are all great initial steps in this direction. It is my hope as we continue this debate that we will come together in the Senate to show we are willing to rise to these challenges as a nation as well.

Mr. President, for me, all of this ultimately comes down to our obligations–yes, of course, to our Nation, to our constituents, to our home States, but particularly as parents to our children and to future generations. Every day when I get to return home from the train station after taking what is often a late-evening train from Washington to Delaware, I get to see my family, and it is my children who leave me most concerned about the question of whether I will be leaving them a safer and healthier world than we received.

My daughter Maggie in particular is passionate about the environment and is concerned about whether what we do here is not just helping to create jobs today–although that is an important issue for us to turn to–but whether we are helping to preserve our world for tomorrow. Maggie helps keep me focused not just on this quarter, this month, this election, or this term, but on the next 50 years and on whether what we do here leaves to our children and their children a cleaner and a better and brighter future. That is what our focus should be–on the future, on what we are doing not just for today but for tomorrow and all the days after that.

I hope when the debate about this one pipeline is over we will refocus our energies on the bigger picture and on the great and big challenges we face together. That is what we get elected to do, and that is what our time demands.

Floor Speech: As new Congress begins, Senator Coons urges bipartisanship in efforts to repair Affordable Care Act

Mr. President, I come to the floor today at the start of this new year and this new Congress to speak about how we can and why we must work together to improve the Affordable Care Act.

Since work on health care reform really began in earnest in 2009, debate in this Chamber and across this country has too often been defined by fantastic claims and fearmongering. In the midst of this division, I believe that too often the experiences of real people have been lost. While politicians on both sides cling to their sacred cows, too many Americans become casualties of our divided politics.

On few issues has this been more true than on health care. Critics of the Affordable Care Act seem locked into the belief that it will bring about America’s demise–despite little evidence to support them. Too often they have been unable or unwilling to grapple with the reality of those whose lives the law has forever changed for the better.

Now, on the other side of the aisle, we–mostly Democrats–have often shied away from acknowledging some of the law’s weaknesses. I know many of my colleagues have been eager and have offered fixes to the law. But without willing Republican partners, we have not made enough progress.

As I have spent time in my home State of Delaware in recent months listening to families and other folks who have been affected by the law–for better or for worse–it has become clear to me that this stalemate is unsustainable. On many days, I have met Delawareans who love the Affordable Care Act, whose lives have literally been saved by it. But in between those encounters, I have also met many, small business owners in particular, who want to offer health insurance to their workers and are struggling to afford it.

This much has become clear to me: No conversation about the Affordable Care Act and how to improve it can be complete without reconciling the reality of the millions of Americans it has helped and the many others for whom it falls short.

Michelle Reed is the Delawarean whom I have come to know and admire with breast cancer and who contacted me first about this issue last fall. She is an example of why the Affordable Care Act is so important. Michelle was first diagnosed with cancer back in 2008 and went through month after painful month of chemo and radiation therapy as well as surgery.

Over the next few years since her cancer nightmare began she faced problems that were sadly typical of how our health insurance system used to work. At the time she was first diagnosed, she and her husband received health insurance through her husband’s employer. Her husband is an auto mechanic and worked for a small auto body shop. But though the insurance he got through his work was helpful for routine minor health care needs, it was a barebones insurance policy, as she explained it to me.

It left her and her husband with extremely high copays, straining their family budget. Naturally her husband began looking for a new job to provide better health insurance. But this ended up being much more difficult than it seemed, because transitioning to a new job often required accepting a large 3-month gap in coverage, a gap Michelle just could not afford, as insurance companies would then deny her care considering her cancer a preexisting condition.

At one point during Michelle’s years of treatment, her husband’s employer switched health care plans and in the process missed one premium payment. Suddenly, after months of having had steady, positive progress in her care, without any warning or notification, Michelle started getting bills–not just small bills but huge bills, a bill for $23,000 for radiation.

It took her months of going back and forth between employer and insurance company, all the while as she is also trying to overcome her disease, before Michelle and her husband got a straight answer about why they were suddenly facing these huge costs.

Now, let’s step back for a second. Just imagine where she was. Michelle has cancer. She is shuttling from chemo to radiation. Her husband is working constantly to try to cover the high premiums, trying to get all of the overtime he can. During this, they are also going back and forth between employer and insurance company, trying to figure out where this new high charge they cannot afford had come from.

Meanwhile, Michelle’s husband was out looking for a new job with better insurance, struggling to find one because Michelle would face discrimination and could not get coverage. The emotional strain on a family and a loved one battling cancer is enormous, almost unimaginable. But if you add to that the financial and the emotional stress caused by our relic of a health care insurance system of that time, that is unimaginable.

Yet this is the reality that Michelle and her family faced. Unfortunately, it is the reality that millions of Americans used to face before the Affordable Care Act. These problems all changed last year when the ACA exchanges came on line. As Michelle wrote to me: The ACA open enrollment began and we could not get signed up quick enough, although it did take her a little while because the administration’s Web site had some problems. She persevered. As she said to me in her note: We have no problems now. We have what we need, and we need what we have.

People like Michelle are why Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in the first place. It is because of the law that millions of Americans now have access to quality and affordable health insurance that was once desperately out of reach for them.

But the story is not complete, unless we are clear-eyed about where this law also falls short. As the President and many have recognized, any significant reform such as the Affordable Care Act is going to have weaknesses and unintended consequences that only become apparent after the law is being implemented. This has been true throughout our history with every major event, and health care reform is no different.

In Delaware, among the many whom the law has helped, I have also seen how some of those reforms in the costs they have incurred have hurt small business. To the small business owners with whom I have sat down and listened to, their employees are not labor costs or rows on a balance sheet. They are family. They have worked together for years and owners provide health insurance because they believe it is the right thing to do for the workers who help their business grow.

Many of the folks I have sat down and visited with are not required to provide insurance because they have fewer than 50 full-time workers. They still want to do so because it is the right thing to do. It helps them incentivize and support their best employees. Many, though, are struggling today because of higher costs and the challenges that come with navigating a changed insurance market.

This year the biggest issue they face is how higher quality standards have also caused premiums to increase–often to unaffordable levels. This has been especially true for a small State such as like Delaware, where there is not a lot of competition in the provision of health care or in our insurance market. Unfortunately, some of the increases are also due to insurance companies using the health care law as an excuse to charge more.

Some of this is simply the result of plans that now cover more are costing more. For the most part, that is not a bad thing. But the Affordable Care Act was designed to compensate for increased quality with financial assistance to those who cannot afford it. In Michelle Reed’s case, this increased quality was great–almost literally life saving. For people such as her, those insurance plans now need to meet certain standards, and in particular, that they can no longer discriminate against preexisting conditions.

But we have also seen that even though there is assistance to many, some individuals and some small businesses have fallen into gaps where they have to deal with higher costs and they are not getting the help they deserve.

Here is where we are. The Affordable Care Act has helped millions of Americans. It also can be improved to help many more. When we talk about health care, it is simply dishonest to leave one side out when talking about others.

In this new Congress, I know many of my Republican colleagues are eager to continue the efforts of their colleagues in the House. In their majority, I know many will seek an opportunity to vote on repealing or dismantling the Affordable Care Act. But I ask them for an answer to Michelle Reed and to the many Americans such as her who have had their lives changed or even saved by this law.

I know many of my Democratic colleagues are as well eager to work together to improve our health care system, to ensure small businesses do the right thing and can be successful and to ensure that no American gets left behind. We know this is possible. There is no reason to believe that we as a body lack the creativity, the drive, and the ability to work together across the aisle on these important issues.

Surely there is much we can do to reduce the costs through more competition, to develop new and more efficient delivery systems and innovative payment models. The Affordable Care Act took critical steps to move forward in each of these areas. Millions more have health insurance and costs across our health care system have actually increased at the slowest rate in decades. For most, costs have been manageable or even decreasing. But critical work remains. We now have the opportunity, to take the next step to build a health care system that works for every American. It is my sincere hope that we can come together and seize that opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges support for Omnibus appropriations bill

Mr. President, I rise to speak tonight in support of the omnibus appropriations package that Senator Mikulski, the Chair of our Appropriations Committee, has spoken at great length about, and that Senator Cochran has also dedicated so much of his time and effort and energy to, and that so many Members of this Chamber have contributed to. 

There are questions on the minds of my constituents from the home State of Delaware and questions on the minds of colleagues of mine who have spoken earlier this evening about this very large package — this $1.014 trillion spending bill — appropriations package. There have been questions raised about some specific provisions — an issue here about pensions, an issue there about Dodd-Frank and swaps, an issue about an environmental concern. There are a few issues that have Members — particularly of my caucus — who are very concerned. I have messages coming in to me in my office from social media and email saying: Why on Earth would you support this? My Senator, Chris Coons from Delaware, why would you support this?  We are going into the holiday season and I want us to take a few minutes and look at what is actually in this package, to unwrap it a little bit and to better understand why on Earth I would stand on this floor and speak in favor of this package.  

You have heard of the hard work of our Appropriations Committee Chair. What you don’t know is the tireless and determined and dedicated work of all of the Appropriations Committee members and staff who, across 12 different subcommittees, held more than 60 different hearings to hammer out provision after provision, department after department, and it is difficult sometimes to know what that means.

Let me put this in some context.   

First, in terms of bad avoided and good invested. In terms of bad avoided, the version of this that came over from the House — 11 full appropriations bills out of 12 that had within it all sorts of provisions. We call them riders because they are provisions that ride on top of the underlying appropriations bill.  You have heard about some of these riders that have been defeated and beaten back. It is not one or two or three. They cover all the same areas where concerns have been raised by colleagues in my caucus — the environment, protections for organized labor and labor concerns, protections for the safety of our communities related to firearms, protections for the safety and soundness and transparency of our financial system through preserving the Dodd-Frank act, preserving a woman’s right to choose and protecting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Dozens and dozens of riders came over in the bill from the House, which our committee Chair and her dedicated staff worked tirelessly to remove from this bill, and you have heard about some of them in the speech just concluded by Chair Mikulski.  There was everything from fish and wildlife rules to fiduciary rulemaking, from issues around union elections to concerns about the strength and ability of the ATF to keep our community safe, strengthening and supporting the CFPB and SEC and their ability to enforce Dodd-Frank or ensuring a woman’s right to choose. The actions of our committee Chair ensure that these dozens and dozens of bad — from our perspective — riders were removed from the bill.

Now we stand here on the verge of the end of the authority of the government to continue to function, and we have a package in front of us, and we have two choices. The choices are simple and clear.

If we do not pass this omnibus, we will continue government by crisis, government by continuing resolution, government by chip shot down the lane, and we will fund the government for a temporary three-month extension, and then this entire package will be put back together, not by a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, but by Republicans on both sides of this Capitol. We won’t have one or two or three riders from the perspective of my caucus to be concerned about, we will have dozens and dozens. All of this that has been removed and taken out of the package by the hard work of our committee Chair and her staff will be right back in the mix.  If we turn away from enacting this package, we will do two things: We will fail to give the certainty and clarity and predictability to our government agencies and entities that they will have authorization and funding through next September, and we will face a package toxic — far more difficult for us to accept. It will have dozens and dozens of problems riddled throughout it, and frankly, everyone in my caucus, I expect, will vote against it and perhaps the President will even veto it. We cannot let the perfect or the ideal be the enemy of the good.  

I will take a few minutes and talk about what there is in this package that is good because you only heard speeches tonight that have highlighted concerns and focused in on the three or four provisions that cause great alarm or concern to all of us who are on my side of the aisle. I don’t think there has been quite as much exposition as there should be about what there is in this package that I hope to unwrap for you that is actually good.  

Why would I be standing here, as the Senator from Delaware, defending this hard-crafted, hard-wrought, hard-won package if it were not full of things that are important for the working families of Delaware, for our community and our country, and that didn’t advance our core values?  

Well, I will take a few minutes and touch on a couple of things that I think bear your consideration.  Infrastructure. The bridges, the roads, the rails, the ports that from the very founding of our Nation have been the work of the Federal Government and that are woefully behind to the point where we are not competitive globally and where we could put people to work right away by infusing more responsible investment and upgrading our infrastructure.   

As far as rebuilding American infrastructure, this package includes $54 billion for transportation and housing programs that communities and States such as Delaware care deeply about. It is $1.8 billion more than what passed in the House package.  This covers things from the TIGER grants program that encourages and incentivizes and leverages cutting-edge investments in infrastructure to funding for Amtrak. For the east coast of the United States, Amtrak is such a vital means of transportation. It also includes funds for harbor maintenance and dredging, which are so vital to our maritime industries. This is just one of dozens of areas we could talk about this evening.  

It will put Americans back to work, it will make our country more competitive, and it will give us more resources in these areas than we would ever get from renegotiating this package from the ground up.  

Second, there was an unfortunate story about my hometown of Wilmington in the past week that drew real alarms about the murder rate and violent crime rate. This is a pressing issue in my hometown of Wilmington. There is real concern because we have a record murder rate and a record gun violence rate in my town.  This omnibus package includes financial resources that will help communities large and small all over this country keep themselves safe with these sorts of targeted and wise Federal investments in State and local law enforcement that we have come to rely on and that we need. There is something called the Byrne Justice Assistance grant. 

When I was a county executive, my county police department relied on that critical program. There is $2.3 billion, which is $55 million more than last year, for the Byrne Justice Assistance grants and will affect States and localities all over the country.  Something that I fought hard for on this floor and I care about — the bulletproof vest program that has saved the lives of law enforcement officers in the small towns of Delaware and in our biggest cities. That grant made it possible to fund for state-of-the-art vests that are correct and appropriate and current and save officers’ lives.  

There is a regional information system called RISK that provides current intelligence and data so that law enforcement can be more effective regionally.  There is the implementation of Violence Against Women Act programs — all of these are at least sustained or increased over previous years and make the sort of investments that are vital for our communities and their safety.  There is $1.1 billion in this omnibus package to help the ATF, FBI, and DOJ fight gun violence, and that matters to my hometown. That matters to the families who wonder whether what we are doing here is relevant to them. 

To turn back from this omnibus and turn away from those investments in keeping our community safe, I think is unwise.  There is more money for criminal enforcement by the ATF to fund straw gun purchases and their investigation and their prosecution, to fund keeping guns away from traffickers and criminals, to improve interstate background checks, to train law enforcement for the responsible carrying out of their public responsibility, to intervene and stop active shooter situations in schools or in public facilities, and, last, the sort of resources we need for the victims of crime.  There is $2.3 billion in this omnibus for helping the victims of violent crime and their families to get access to badly needed services. I could go on, but in the area of law enforcement and criminal justice, there are investments that matter to me and that matter to my hometown as we work together to fight violent crime.  

Let me lastly take on two other areas. 

No. 1, I am on the Foreign Relations Committee. I am concerned that if we turn away from this package, the vital investment in our central ally, Israel, and in the Iron Dome program, which has been shown to keep Israel safe, will not be made; and the multibillion dollar investment in fighting the scourge of Ebola in West Africa, at this moment when the tide is turning and we have a chance to heal three nations and contain this plague, which otherwise may get out, get loose, and become a global pandemic, will not be made. We need to make these investments. To not do so now is to put our children’s future at risk. Imagine if we could go back in time to where HIV/AIDS was just beginning to spread around the globe and for a modest investment, with an international effort, we could have contained it to just two or three countries, instead of the hundreds — the thousands of communities across dozens of countries that have suffered through HIV/AIDS now for nearly 25 years. If we fail to invest in turning the tide in the fight against Ebola now, we put at risk the future public safety of not just a continent, but the world.  

We also have to be mindful of what this omnibus makes possible for our health and our safety and our future. Entities most Americans don’t think about or haven’t heard of that perform basic science research or advanced research, from the National Science Foundation to the National Institutes of Health — institutions that are doing cutting-edge, world- class science and developing the cures and the treatments for everything from Alzheimer’s to cancer — we continue to sustain and support investment with billions of dollars in these areas in this bill.

Again, to walk away from this package means to wrap back up and put away the potential for enormous progress. 

There is $172 million more for basic science research programs in this bill over last year. It raises up to $7.3 billion the level of NSF funding. That may sound abstract and disconnected from our lives at home, but in my State of Delaware, that funds education, training, and research at the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, and in public schools across our State. At a time when we need science education and when we need the outcomes, the fruits of our labors and research more than ever, I think that is vital funding. 

Last, there is an area that I have spoken about on this floor many times in this Congress and that I am passionate about because it is how I came up. I spent years in the manufacturing sector. As a young man working in the private sector for a family manufacturing business, I saw its power to create good, high-wage, high-skill jobs. Manufacturing is an area where most of the research and development in this country that is privately funded is done, and manufacturing is an area that many mistakenly think we have lost our edge in and can never regain.

But the truth is quite different.

Over the last 3 years, we have grown more than 750,000 new manufacturing jobs in this economy, and those are great jobs — jobs people can raise their families on, jobs that provide a renewed growth back to the middle class. If we fail to invest in the things that will make manufacturing grow in this country, we miss a vital opportunity. 

There is an entity called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. In the scope of all of this, it is a tiny little program. But for the dozens of small and medium manufacturers in Delaware that I have visited and that the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership has helped, it makes an amazing difference. It helps them understand how to compete internationally. It helps them with upgrading the skills of their workforce. It helps them with deciding what capital equipment to buy.

I have stood on manufacturing floors from Bridgeville to Lewes, from Dover to Claymont, and heard stories of companies transformed by this powerful investment of Federal services — a public-private partnership that really, genuinely makes a difference.  

Lastly, in this provision of the bill, there isn’t just renewed funding for the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, or NIST — a provision that includes the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Program — there is also renewed opportunity for the funding and sustainment of manufacturing hubs, a strategy that our competitor, Germany, has used very well and very wisely to have doubled their GDP in manufacturing — a strategy that this administration has led on and that we hope to emulate, and where I think the investments made in this bill are wise and lay the foundation for middle-class job growth and prosperity.   

There are a dozen other areas I could speak to this evening, where throughout this bill the investments made have been cut in some areas that needed to be reduced and increased in others that are wise for our States and our communities. 

Some from my home State, watching the speeches on this floor earlier this evening, have contacted me and said, Why on Earth would you vote for a bill with this or this or this provision that concerns me? It is a fair question. I hope in these few minutes I have helped my people hear that our choice is not between a perfect bill from the perspective of Democrats in the Senate or the country and a terrible bill, but a choice between a great bill and no bill at all — a choice between returning to regular order and ending what has been a nearly four-year pattern of government by crisis, by short-term extension, by chip shot, and by near default, and instead respect and honor the very hard work of the dozen subcommittees of this great Appropriations Committee, and move forward a package that strengthens our country, that honors our veterans, that invests in our future, that lifts manufacturing, that makes us safer and healthier, and that does the job of bringing America into the future.  

That is why I will be voting for this package, and that is why I hope all of my colleagues will consider doing the same.   

Thank you, Mr. President.  With that, I yield the floor.