Floor Speech: Senator Coons speaks about reasons for economic optimism, opportunities ahead

Mr. President, as we come to the close of the 113th Congress I’d like to speak for a few minutes about why I think we should be optimistic about the future and what we can and must do to take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead.

Mr. President, despite economic slowdowns throughout much of the world – among developing and developed nations alike – America’s economy continues to steadily grow. Just last Friday we got great news that our economy created more than 300,000 jobs in the month of November. That marks 57 straight months – or nearly five years – of positive job growth numbers, and for the first time since Bill Clinton was president of this nation, we’ve averaged more than 200,000 jobs, new jobs per month for 10 straight months.

Particularly in the economy is an area of growth and opportunity that I focused on in my time before coming into public service and in my four years here and that’s American manufacturing. An industry about which I’ve spoken at length here on the Senate floor and worked with my colleagues to craft and assemble a group of bipartisan bills that can help move American manufacturing forward.

And the news this last month was good as it has been for months, for years now, about American manufacturing, which continues to grow as well. There were 28,000 new American manufacturing jobs last month, which continued this sector’s steady climb. It’s now created more than 750,000 new jobs over the last four years.

Manufacturing jobs are great jobs. They typically are higher wage and higher skill and have higher benefits than jobs in any other sector. They’re good middle-class jobs you can raise a family on and they deal with one of the biggest ongoing remnants of the Great Recession, which is the lack of real wage growth in our economy. So I’m excited to see that manufacturing jobs continue to grow in our economy and to talk about the things we can and should do to help sustain this growth in manufacturing. 

We have reasons then to be optimistic but we cannot be complacent. As much as we’ve built momentum over the last year since the recession and especially this year there is, of course, no natural law, no economic fundamental principle that says it won’t turn back around. We need to sustain our positive direction, particularly in this sector, particularly as we move towards the 114th congress.

I’m proud that congress last year passed a two-year budget to create some stability and some certainty for our country and economy. We’ve gotten out of the way and allowed our businesses and workers to do what they do best, to move our economy forward. And in the next few days we’ll have chances to do the same when we vote on a number of bills, one of them most importantly that will keep our government running, not for a few days or weeks or months but the overwhelming majority of this government will be authorized and funded through next September. 

The funding bills that are included in this omnibus continue investments in innovation and continue to move our country forward. There’s a whole raft of bills that I’ve been interested in and engaged in as a member of the Appropriations Committee that are valuable programs that will strengthen manufacturing. For example, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which has done amazing work on the ground in Delaware, helping small and medium manufacturers to be competitive, to train their work force in current skills, to grow into the spaces of the world economy where we have real opportunities. This bill will help sustain the funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership nationally.

There are several other programs related to innovation in the Department of Energy. For example, sustained funding for ARPA-E, for an innovative model that helps fund cutting edge, category redefining research and development in energy and in clean energy manufacturing and in technology deployment. 

There’re also opportunities for us to continue to put Americans to work through investments in infrastructure. As someone who lives on Amtrak 16 hours a week I’m thrilled with the outcomes for both the Amtrak budget and for TIGER grant programs, a tool used by the Department of Transportation to help incentivize innovative transportation projects that break through bottlenecks and help put Americans back to work.

There are so many different ways that the work of this bipartisan committee, the Appropriations Committee, helps move our economy forward that at times aren’t focused on here on the floor or in the general press coverage of such a large and comprehensive bill as the omnibus, but I wanted to take a moment and to highlight a few ways in which the omnibus invests in innovation, in competitiveness, and in moving our economy forward.

I’m also grateful, in some ways most importantly, that it includes emergency funding to respond to Ebola both at home and abroad, which will be critical to helping stamp out this deadly virus at its origin in West Africa and in protecting Americans here at home and others around the world.

The appropriations bills that were shepherded through the dozen subcommittees give us reason to be optimistic about the future because the Chair, Senator Mikulski, and the Vice Chair, Senator Shelby, have done a laudable job of listening to each other, of working together, and of crafting a bipartisan bill here in the Senate, which I hope that the members of this body will study, will consider, and will move forward, and adopt.

Now, as we move to complete the business of funding the government, we’d be remiss if we didn’t also take stock of the opportunities in front of us we haven’t yet grasped.

There is unfinished work to be done. 

This week we’ll also almost certainly pass a one-year tax extenders bill which will carry forward certain temporary tax credits and deductions, but for just one year. Although an extension for many businesses and many sectors is better than nothing, it signifies a missed opportunity on our part. Much of what has made me optimistic over the last year is how much our economy has begun to thrive in a stable fiscal environment, in a more predictable regulatory environment, yet this one-year extension doesn’t do much to give businesses the certainty they need to predict and plan for the future.

I’ve worked hard with Democrats and Republicans alike to expand and make permanent the Research and Development Tax Credit, which is particularly relevant to manufacturing because manufacturing is the most R&D intensive sector of the American economy and manufacturers invest more in R&D than any other part of the American landscape.

This one-year extension misses an opportunity to either make the R&D Tax Credit permanent or to make it more accessible. I was excited to have the opportunity early on here to team up with two Republican senators, Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, to find ways to make the R&D Tax Credit more accessible to early stage and start-up companies, companies with high growth potential but because the way the R&D Tax Credit has been structured and used for decades don’t have the opportunity to access it. 

The Start-up Innovation Credit Act, which I introduced with Senator Enzi, would have further expanded the access to the R&D credit for start-ups, and the bipartisan Innovators Job Creation Act, which I introduced with Senator Roberts, would have expanded the credit to innovative small businesses as well. Both of those bills passed on a bipartisan basis out of the Finance Committee and were part of the package being advanced here in the Senate, but will not be part of the ultimate one-year extender considered later this week.

So I just wanted to highlight that as we look forward, there are opportunities still in front of us for us to tackle the challenges and to seize the opportunities, to take things that are important to manufacturing and to move them forward. There are lots of other bills in the mix that will be adopted this week either by unanimous consent or as part of larger packages, and a number of them relate to manufacturing. I am optimistic that we will adopt a national manufacturing strategy bill that I’ve worked hard on with Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. I’m optimistic that a bipartisan manufacturing hubs bill that Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Roy Blunt of Missouri have worked hard together to craft and to hone and to get to a place where it’s ready to be passed, that they will make it across the finish line and to the President’s desk.

But just this past week I stood on this floor with Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and we spoke about a bill that is not yet ready for adoption, but we will take up again next year, the Manufacturing Skills Act, which helps to focus and prioritize the investments in manufacturing skills training at the state and municipal level all over this country in partnership with the Federal Government. 

Mr. President, what I wanted to do today was to simply highlight a few perhaps underappreciated, under-recognized areas of legislative action on a bipartisan basis in this chamber that help put some lift under the steady forward progress of the manufacturing sector in our country and to express my hope that we can find ways to continue to work together on a bipartisan basis to keep our economic momentum going in the year and the congress ahead.

Now Mr. President, as I close, I’d also like to thank those of our colleagues who will be leaving the Senate after the New Year. It is an incredible privilege to work in this chamber and to represent the people of Delaware, and every day I’m awed by the dedication and the talent of many of our colleagues, public servants who come to work and to fight for their states and their values. To those who are ending their service here in the Senate, know that I value your friendship and partnership. It has been an honor to work with you and I thank you for all you’ve done for our nation.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons pays tribute to Matt Haley

Madam President, I come to the floor today my heart heavy with a challenging task, which is to convey to you the remarkable, the special, and the powerful spirit of a friend who passed just three weeks ago in a tragic accident in India. Matt Haley was a remarkable Delawarean. Matt Haley was a gifted and accomplished chef and entrepreneur. Matt Haley was someone who touched so many lives in my home state of Delaware. 

In 2012, Matt won the Delaware Restaurant Association’s Cornerstone Award, a lifetime achievement award recognizing restaurateurs who dedicate their lives to humanitarian efforts. Matt owned eight different restaurants all across the beach region so well-known to folks here in Washington. Matt owned restaurants in Rehoboth Beach, Lewes, Ocean View, Bethany Beach, Fenwick Island and was involved in dozens of other enterprises in other states of the region. And in 2014, Matt had the best year he’d ever had in terms of the reach and scope of his potential and his vision and his recognition by his profession. 

He won the National Restaurant Association Cornerstone Humanitarian Award, and I was thrilled to be able to join in that celebration here in Washington. He won the International Association of Culinary Professionals Humanitarian of the Year Award. He won the James Beard Humanitarian Award in a remarkable celebration in New York. He won all three major recognitions, major awards from the restaurant and culinary industry, the Triple Crown, as it were. 

Having never met him, you might think that this man, having been so successful as an entrepreneur and a businessman and so recognized and celebrated in all these different ways, would have been puffed up and filled with himself and with pride and with a sense of accomplishment and success. Matt did have a sense of accomplishment and success but it came from a very different place, and his spirit, his personality was profoundly different than that brief resume might suggest. Because Matt, you see, was someone who had had a second and a third chance at life. And so he embraced it with a passion and an open-heartedness I have never seen anywhere else. 

Matt was 53 years old and had been sober for 24 years. And Matt, not many years before this remarkable year of success he had this year, had been riding the bus to work as a minimum-wage dishwasher as he was reinventing himself. Matt spent four years in prison on a 13-year prison sentence. And Matt, as he memorably remarks in a TED Talk he gave just days before he left on this trip to India, had had just life-altering, terrible experiences as a child. Matt had managed to grow up in an environment and circumstances and have experiences that would mar, that would cripple any human person, any spirit, and had become someone who was violent and was addicted and inevitably as a consequence of a lot of his actions ended up in jail. He was exactly the sort of person that so many would be willing to write off. 

Yet Matt found an opportunity through the culinary arts, through the simple and powerful skill of cooking for others, he found a pathway back and a roadway up. Matt was someone who cooked not just well but was gifted at pulling together completely unrelated items and making something simple and tasty and powerful. And Matt understood what a remarkable pathway towards success and independence restaurants can be for those who start working at the very lowest end of the scale in our country in terms of pay and skill and yet can steadily grow up to be successful managers or even restaurant owners.  

Matt was someone who also had just gotten a positive diagnosis after struggling with a nearly life-ending bout with cancer. Matt had nearly died to this world once as a young man in prison and then had nearly died to us a second time through cancer. And I was blessed to have gotten to know him just in the last few years and to have been touched by the power of his energy. 

Matt had a hunger to connect with and touch and help love others in the world that hadn’t yet seen the possibilities of this world. Matt would go anywhere any time to help someone in need in Delaware. And the stories are legend of what Matt did, spontaneously and powerfully, to reach out and touch folks in our home state and around the world who needed his special gift. Not just his resources but his energy and his kindness. Matt’s business partner, Scott, shared with me a story I think well-known in Delaware that he was literally driving down the road and came across a van from the Delaware Adolescent Program, from DAPI, a van for a program that helps young moms both complete school and be healthy and successful mothers. Their van was broken down by the side of the road. And learning more about the program and its impact and its importance and seeing their dilapidated and outdated van, he literally bought them a new one on the spot. 

Matt was someone who, having never traveled before in his life until recent years when he became successful, first found himself challenged and enlivened and then aflame with passion for traveling around the world and hearing from and with connecting with young people and their needs. And he tells much more powerfully than I can the story of his becoming connected to young women, to girls in Nepal, victims of trafficking, victims of sexual abuse, who were hungry and lonely and who he was able to help provide food and shelter and hope. He later also connected with a whole community in Central America and he traveled regularly to India and Nepal and to Central America as well as up and down my state. He volunteered in our prisons. He worked with our food bank. He spent time and gave resources in India and Nepal and in Central America.

Literally the last time I spoke to Matt, I had just had an opportunity to meet a young woman who was truly struggling to find opportunity in our home state. She was a recovering drug addict and came up to me at an event in Dover and, frankly, said she never believed that someone in my position would care and would work and take any risk to help someone like her find employment. She was interested in possibly working in a restaurant. And as we talked at greater length, I told her Matt’s story. I told her how this young man, full of anger and of abuse and of difficulty in his young life, had ended up an addict and in prison, and yet through his own determination and through the kindness and partnership of others, had managed to go on and be an incredible success, an employer to hundreds, even thousands, and a contributor and a leader to groups like La Esperanza and the Food Bank and to support public school teachers and to support folks coming out of prison. And I asked if she’d be interesting in hearing from him. 

My last conversation with Matt, a man incredibly busy as he was finishing up several business projects and about to get on a plane and go to India to meet a long commitment to a group of girls in need, said, absolutely, I’d love to talk to her, get her on the phone with me. He made time the very next day to meet with her, to encourage her and to invite her to come with him to the Food Bank presentation he was making.  

Matt, to his very last breath, was passionate about touching and changing the lives of others. His very last initiative was to fund teachers in schools in southern Delaware and help provide supplies for them in their classrooms. 

And his very last day was spent riding a motorcycle on one of the highest and most dangerous roads in the world in the Himalayas to personally deliver supplies and engagement and support to girls in a remote village, in a difficult and distant part of the world. Matt Haley’s compassion, his spirit, and his energy touched me and so many others deeply. His determination to do everything he could with every day he had and to make every difference he could in the world should inspire and challenge all of us. And he has left a significant amount of his accumulated resources to his Global Delaware Fund, which will continue his great work in these many places.  

It is my hope, my prayer that all of us whose lives have been touched by Matt and by his unique and infectious humor and spirit will continue his remarkable lifetime of work. And that all of us will remember that in this nation every person has value and every person has potential, no matter where they’re from or where they are today, their path forward can be lifted if we just continue to carry forward the remarkable passion and spirit of Matt Haley. 

Floor Speech: Senator Coons speaks about the President’s strategy for stopping ISIS

I’ve come to the floor this morning to speak about our military’s critical mission to defeat and degrade the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a terrorist organization that threatens the stability and security of tens of thousands across these two nations.

Mr. President, as we consider more deeply involving the United States military into a new combat mission, I’m reminded of the brave young men and women who will carry out that mission with unparalleled courage and professionalism. This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to join hundreds of fellow Delawareans to welcome home and celebrate 70 men and women of the third battalion of the 238^th Army National Guard Aviation regiment, who were returning from a year of service in Kuwait.

Many of them were returning not just from one tour of duty, but from what was their second or third deployment, having previously served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet these volunteer citizen soldiers were and remain willing to continue serving. I have the honor of knowing several current and former members of this unit and my heart was heavy this weekend thinking about how many more units like these, how many soldiers and airmen and their families will be asked to continue serving in combat or in distant and difficult places supporting combat missions in the years ahead.

After more than a decade of conflict in the exactly 13 years since September 11, 2001, I know Americans are tired of war. I know we are weary of war. And as the President spoke last night, it was clear that he is as well, as am I. But I would challenge today my colleagues and my friends as I challenge myself that though we are weary we cannot ignore the very real threats that we face today. We cannot ignore the brutal events that have taken place in northwestern Iraq and in eastern Syria. And we cannot ignore the threat that brutality poses to America and our allies. ISIS is a brutal terrorist organization. It has killed innocent Americans like the two brave journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff whom they beheaded.

Thousands of innocent Iraqis and Syrians have perished at their hands and it will continue to do so unless the world comes together to stop them. Let us not forget one of the biggest reasons we first acted against ISIS militarily in Iraq this summer was to prevent the imminent genocide of a religious minority, the Yazidi people in Iraq. Images of tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians who were hounded, threatened, and persecuted by ISIS, and ultimately retreated to the top of a mountain, I think transfixed the American people this August.

The action that our President took and that our military executed to allow them to safely flee encouraged all of us to know there are places when American military might can and should be used for good. Just as the ISIS terrorists threatened the Yazidis, they threatened the Kurds and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and the region. Last night with my Republic Colleague, Senator Kirk, I co-chaired the first meeting of the new Senate Human Rights Caucus. We heard from representatives from Iraq’s minority communities in a conversation that focused on ISIS’s atrocities against innocent civilians simply because of who they are or how they worship. As we expand our campaign against ISIS we must continue to engage with the people of Iraq and Syria and the region to learn from the past and continue to prevent massacres of innocent men, women, and children. ISIS is a group bent on the destruction of all people of whatever background or religion who do not subscribe to their hateful ideology.

Our president is right. What makes the United States a global force for good is that we are still willing to do what is hard because we know it is right. That’s the responsibility that comes from being a nation uniquely founded on principles of freedom, of liberty, and of justice, and of having built up one of the most capable and powerful militaries in the world. Of being a nation and a people borne of immigrants who came from all over this world and who remain connected to it and touched by the things that happen in the far reaches of our globe. 

Last night, President Obama addressed our nation to make the case for expanding military action against ISIS. Already sadly today there are critics of his strategy just as there have been over the past few weeks. In fact, in the four years I’ve served here I’ve rarely seen a day in this Senate when the President isn’t challenged, criticized, blocked and harried by his opponents. There is always some way he could have acted more quickly or with more strength or critics claim we’d be better served by a sterner tone or a more eager finger on the trigger.

I must say I was struck when Vice President – former Vice President – Cheney this past week criticized President Obama’s restraint as he has throughout President Obama’s tenure. I would remind my friends we could do better than to listen to the voices of those who misled this country into war in Iraq a decade ago. Especially when it’s clear they have learned none of the lessons of that tragic strategic blunder. Surely, as we consider carefully taking expanded military action now we should applaud our President for proceeding with caution and humility.

Mr. President, critical to our current strategy and what sets it apart from some past actions is this fact — we are not going alone. Seeking to lead a multilateral coalition is not leading from behind, it is not weakness. Muscular multilateralism is recognizing we are an indispensable nation that we are a leading nation, but we are not the only nation that should take on and tackle the challenge that ISIS presents. Much of the allure of ISIS is the illusion they’ve created that the Muslim world is at war with the West, when the truth is that ISIS does not reflect or represent Islam and that ISIS has killed more Muslims than any other people. The President’s strategy of building a broad coalition of support including across the Arab and Muslim world is crucial to our success.

This is not just an American problem, it is a regional and global problem and it will not be solved without the hard work of those living in communities and countries most at risk, most affected, most harmed by ISIS.

We cannot and should not do this alone. That is the only way this works. It is a critical reason why I support the president’s strategy for expanded action.

Central to this strategy’s success is our military action, as well as diplomatic resources and pressure. Let’s remember one of the reasons this has even happened is because of the abject failure of Prime Minister Maliki and his Iraqi government to act in a pluralistic, inclusive way as he pledged he would, and instead has acted as a Shia warlord over the last few years, sewing the seeds of descent and of disconnection with his Sunni citizens that created the vacuum into which ISIS has charged. That’s why this Administration’s diplomatic efforts to build an inclusive Iraqi government, to demand an inclusive Iraqi government have been so important. We cannot defeat ISIS without Iraqis working hand in hand on the ground. That requires a united Iraq whose future every Iraqi has a stake in preserving.

Now, as we deepen our involvement it is also necessary that we broaden our strategy. The fact of the matter is we cannot defeat ISIS by attacking it in Iraq alone. As we hit ISIS from the air, we also need to be cognizant of the fact most of its strength and support is in Syria, and the boundary line dividing Iraq from Syria is today on the ground largely a fiction. So we need in Syria a strong and a moderate, and an armed and trained opposition, ready, willing, and able to fight ISIS on the ground.

The President referred last night to our successful counterterrorism strategy in several places in the world, and let me as the Co-Chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee briefly mention ways in which this strategy in Syria is similar to what our strategy has been in Somalia, in combating Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate which has governed much of Somalia over the past decade. There, there has been a similar strategy to the one articulated last night where the United States has combined training, equipment, logistics, and tactical support with an A.U. authorized African ground force drawn from Uganda, from Kenya, from Ethiopia, from Burundi where those troops have done the hard work of retaking and holding territory while the Somali government and security forces get reestablished. In the case of Syria, Saudi Arabia has just stepped up and agreed to provide the funding and space to train and equip Syrian coalition fighters.

In Congress, we must act swiftly and responsibly to support that training and equipping mission that the President has asked us to support by granting our President the authority and funding he needs. Airstrikes could happen soon, and we cannot make the mistake of taking out ISIS while giving Bashar al-Assad, the dictator who still terrorizes Syria, the opportunity to rush into the absence. By helping build a cohesive, trained, and equipped moderate Syrian opposition, we can help prevent the expansion of ISIS and the Assad regime.

In the long run, in Syria as in Iraq, it is Syrians, moderate Syrians who must retake their country from ISIS and undertake the very difficult and daunting challenge of rebuilding a stable and inclusive, and hopefully someday peaceful society, after decades of dictatorship and more than three years of a withering civil war. The United States and Syria’s neighbors and the entire international community needs to be invested and engaged to help them along this difficult path.

Now, we need to be direct with the American people. This is not going to be easy and it is not going to be swift. We must ensure our military has the resources it needs to carry out this mission. As President Obama said last night, the lives of brave American pilots and service members will be put at risk. But we must also be clear, in their courage and service, they will be part of an important effort to eradicate from this earth one of the greatest threats currently walking upon it. 

Last night, President Obama asked for the support of the American people as our armed forces and our partners begin in combination to carry out this mission.

Let me say, he has mine.

I am committed to working with my colleagues, as later today all Senators attend a classified briefing and an update on ISIS and as next week committees in this Senate hear testimony from Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel. I am committed to working with my colleagues and with Chairman Menendez on the Foreign Relations Committee to review, consider, draft, and approve an Authorization for the Use of Military Force when submitted to us by the President that gives Congress an appropriate role in oversight and the President the authorization he needs.

Mr. President, we need to do everything we can together to ensure that ISIS will be stopped. It has already shown itself, demonstrated its capability to commit unspeakable crimes, and if left unchecked, these terrorists will spread their reach beyond our abilities to stop them.

We cannot let that happen.

As my colleagues discuss and debate this mission, I only ask that we leave the politics of the moment out of it. With an election soon upon us, the temptation is strong to use every opportunity to achieve any short-term partisan advantage, but this is too important and too much is at stake. While today all over this country we call to mind and honor the sacrifices of Americans who’ve served and those who lost their lives 13 years ago today, we must consider this new mission with the utmost gravity, humility, and caution.

I am eager, then, to work with my colleagues here in the Senate and with the Administration in a bipartisan way as we move forward to take on the difficult task of defeating ISIS and strengthening the forces of inclusion and moderation in Iraq and Syria. I urge my colleagues to support this mission every step of the way. 

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for U.S. to do more on Ebola crisis

Mr. President, this is an uneasy time in our world. There is no shortage of crises that demand our attention and our action. The President called on us last night to step up to the very real challenge posed by the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and in Syria. Russian aggression against Ukraine also demands our attention. A fragile cease-fire continues between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. There is the Central American exodus to our southern border that riveted the attention of many this summer, and continuing negotiations to seek an end to Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program.

But behind all of this, there is another and equally important challenge that I wanted to draw this body’s attention to for a few minutes today – the spread of a quiet and vicious virus throughout West Africa.

While the nation’s attention today for good reason is on remembering the tragic events of 9/11 and the President’s strategy for combating ISIS today, I’d like to speak on another urgent challenge to our country and our world. That’s the need for us to dramatically increase our support as communities across West Africa struggle to confront and combat Ebola.

I’ve met and spoken with Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf – Nobel Prize winner, an impressive leader, a woman who has brought her country back from a terrible civil war and was making huge progress toward the development of Liberia – who I’ve have had the honor of meeting with here and visiting there. In my role as the chairman of the African Affairs Subcommittee, I have met few others that have impressed me as much as President Johnson-Sirleaf. Leaders throughout this region are doing everything they can to staunch the spread of this virus and save lives, but in my most recent communications with President Johnson-Sirleaf, it is clear that Ebola is rapidly getting beyond the capacity, the ability of these communities and countries to contain it and to recover from it.

They need our action. Individuals on the ground from groups like Doctors without Borders and Samaritan’s Purse have done remarkable, heroic, extraordinary work, putting their own lives on the line to help others, and they have borne the overwhelming majority of the risk, and the service, and the sacrifice so far. And news has just been announced that the Gates Foundation will contribute $50 million to this fight – critical, as public funds alone aren’t going to be enough to end this crisis.

Mr. President, our own people through the United States government can and must do more. It need not be the role of the United States alone to resolve this problem, but it is our responsibility to stand side by side with those working tirelessly to stop it. It is our responsibility to not just lend a hand, but to help lead in ways that only we can, to use our unique capabilities to address this crisis.

Mr. President, if Ebola’s spread reveals one thing, it’s that we are more interconnected today than we have ever been in our human history, and the disease truly knows and respects no borders. We need to continue to act, not only because we are morally compelled to help the tens of thousands who are facing immediate threat, but also because we have a direct stake in the resolution of this crisis. This is a manageable public health crisis that we know how to solve, but doing so requires our focus, our attention, our resolve and our resources, tools that only the United States has.

Let me briefly outline five specific steps I believe we should take now. First, I think it’s critical the United States has one leadership point – that the White House designates a coordinator to oversee the U.S. whole of government emergency response.

There are many ways the U.S. is currently helping across many agencies from the Department of Defense, to the Centers for Disease Control, to the State Department and USAID. Those agencies are doing great work as part of the disaster assistance response team on the ground. But at a time when the U.S. government is also facing and addressing crises in Iraq and Ukraine and elsewhere, I think we need one organizer, one coordinator, one responsible figure addressing this crisis who is appointed by the white house to coordinate all of our resources and all of the people necessary from the U.S. government for this growing effort.

President Obama should designate an official to manage our country’s response, both overseas and here in the U.S., including preparing us for the remote chance this virus might reach American soil. Our ambassadors on the ground in the three most affected countries are playing the primary role in coordination right now and they are doing remarkable work, but let me remind us in this body that in Sierra Leone, there is no currently confirmed U.S. ambassador.

The nominee, John Hoover, has been waiting almost eight months to be confirmed. Just one painful reminder that the dysfunction of this body has prevented us from confirming nominated ambassadors to dozens of countries around the world. To be effective, we need to coordinate our U.S.-based and our field-based efforts through ambassadors on the ground.

Second, we must begin to deploy U.S. military support to the maximum extent possible. Let me be clear – I don’t mean combat capabilities. I mean the unique logistical capabilities of the United States military, their ability to deploy through their logistical capabilities resources that no other country can bring to bear as quickly and as successfully as we can.

I was encouraged to hear an announcement this past week from the Administration that they plan to use our military to establish a new hospital facility in Liberia, to distribute equipment, to provide infrastructure and transportation support, but I will admit I’m concerned it will take weeks to deploy.

On my visit to Liberia last August, I was struck at just how desperately poor and underdeveloped this nation of brave and inspiring people currently is, how paved roads and the ability to move at any speed rapidly ends just a few miles from the capital, and how strained the infrastructure and the public health systems are by this rapidly growing crisis.

This is not everything we can and should be doing. We need to build more field hospitals for civilians in Liberia and beyond so there are facilities for health workers and civilians fighting the disease. We also can and should provide airlift of supplies from private donors. I’ve heard from organizations that have worked to transport donated supplies and can fill cargo plane after cargo plane but are having difficulty getting it from here to West Africa.

We need to deepen our coordination with foreign militaries. Other nations possess similar advanced capabilities as we do and we will be able to combat this crisis more effectively if we all work together. I very much appreciate, for example, Ghana’s efforts and partnership is that it allows us to use some of their facilities as an air bridge for logistics. As more air resources are poured into this fight against Ebola, we need other countries in the region t to lend a similarly open hand.

My third point is directed to our private sector, to international organizations, to the American people and to citizens of other developed nations. We need your support and your generosity and we need it now. This is a letter that Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf sent to president Obama this week. I want to read from it briefly.

“Mr. President, as you know, the outbreak has overwhelmed the containment and treatment measures we have attempted thus far. Our already limited resources have been stretched to the breaking point, and up to now, only private charity has responded robustly in all the affected countries, but they, too, have finally reached their limit.”

My friend President Sirleaf is right. It is time for the rest of us to step up. The World Health Organization has issued an Ebola response road map that calls for 10,000 additional health workers and $490 million, and we are far short of reaching these goals today. The U.S. government has contributed so far more than $100 million and has announced a commitment of another $88 million that we in this body will hopefully approve before we end this session.

The Gates Foundation, as I mentioned, has also made an impressive and incredibly generous addition of another $50 million, but the fact remains we need more. I have heard from many in my state and elsewhere across this country eager to offer support. If you have the means, I would urge you to go to usaid.gov/Ebola for links to some of the impressive nongovernmental organizations that are doing what they can on the ground to stem this humanitarian crisis.

As much as this crisis needs money and equipment and supplies, it most importantly needs nurses and doctors and paramedics and other medical professionals, thousands of them literally. The health systems of these countries – which were already among the weakest of the world – are overwhelmed, and so I’m asking today for your help. We’re asking for you to save lives. If you are a trained medical professional and you’re willing to help, I urge you to please go to usaid.gov/Ebola and consider how you might serve to help in this crisis.

Fourth, we need to develop and deploy a treatment and vaccine as rapidly as possible. Here’s where, in some way, America’s talents and strengths in terms of the development and discovery of new treatments and of a new vaccine is a unique contribution we can make. American scientists are making progress on both fronts, but the reality is it will be hard to confront and end this disease in the long term without either. Much of the $88 million President Obama has requested from Congress will go towards this most important goal. It’s critical we support that funding in this chamber on a bipartisan basis and prepare for the reality that this is only the first investment we will need to make to quickly develop and deploy these life saving drugs and these critically preventive vaccines.

Lastly, Mr. President, we need to invest in the governing and economic institutions in the countries that have been so devastated by this disease. It’s not a coincidence that this outbreak has emerged in countries with some of the weakest health systems on earth. Countries that face severe shortages of health care workers, labs essential for testing and diagnosis, clinics and hospitals required for treatment, and the medical supplies and protective gear, such as latex gloves and face masks, that are commonly available in the United States, but are now completely exhausted in the countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia.

We know how to combat this disease with isolation, good public health and burial practices, case investigation, and contact training. But all these things, all these things require trained personnel and many more resources than are currently available.

In the short term, we absolutely can fill many gaps with the additional resources I’ve outlined, but we need to act quickly and in the long term think more deeply about why investing in local health systems and institutions in the developing world is so critical. Why a little preventive investment can go a long way to making a country more resilient in the face of a crisis like this.

As we do now to stop Ebola, we need to consider the actions we can and should take together to prevent the next public health crisis. To that end, yesterday, I introduced a resolution here in the Senate with my colleagues Senators Menendez and Flake, Durbin and Corker outlining some of these very steps and recognizing the severe and real threat that the Ebola outbreak poses to West Africa – and if not properly contained – to other regions across the globe.

Mr. President, here is the bottom line – we have what it takes to halt the spread of Ebola in West Africa and to save tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. Unlike other foreign interventions, doing so will take neither bullets nor bombs, but rather, our willingness, our compassion, our generosity and our determination to act. The lives of thousands and the stability of entire countries is at stake. It is my hope and prayer that we will rise to this occasion with everything we have.

Floor Speech: Previewing goals for U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

Mr. President, I have never been more optimistic about Africa, and about the potential for the United States’ partnership with Africa, than I am today. Every year I host a conference in my home state of Delaware called Opportunity: Africa that brings together Delawareans and Africans, leaders from across our country, and from the continent, interested in building and strengthening new ties.

Every year it’s grown in the participation, in the scope of issues we looked at, and in the number of Delaware businesses interested in the opportunities in this continent of 54 countries. And at this past March’s conference, President Clinton delivered the keynote.

The hunger to build new relationships between business, government, the faith community, and those in the African diaspora is undeniable. What’s required of us is to think anew and dedicate ourselves to building partnerships of mutuality and that last. In this chamber, that will mean passing a reauthorized African Growth and Opportunity Act that does more to encourage and facilitate real two-way trade than the current law, and to take up and pass the bipartisan Power Africa law that will strengthen investment in infrastructure in electricity across the continent. And next week it means coming together with Africa’s government, and business leaders, to forge new relationships built on mutual respect and the opportunities we share.

I urge my colleagues and my friends throughout the business community to seize this opportunity and focus on the bright future it could create. An Africa that trades with us, that can defend itself, that can secure itself, and that empowers its citizens; this is the Africa we seek. That’s an Africa that we in the United States are uniquely suited to help its people build. We’ve already built a powerful foundation for partnership through our investments in public health and education, clean water, democracy, and good governance. 

After 50 years of the Peace Corps, and more than a decade of PEPFAR, President Bush’s groundbreaking commitment to combating HIV and AIDS, we are better regarded in Africa than anywhere else in the world. From our universities to our businesses, to our military training and partnerships to the vibrant African diaspora community spread throughout this land, we have tools no other nation has. The opportunity for progress is extraordinary. And by helping to build a broad and sustainable middle class across this continent, American workers and businesses will have more people to sell their products to and more markets in which to invest.

The more we partner with African businesses, the stronger they will become. Genuine partnerships like this must be the foundation for our relationships with Africa going forward, and we have a lot to gain as well. As many have commented, in the last decade, six out of 10 of the fastest-growing economies in the world have been in Africa and that number will only rise. Other countries have noticed the opportunity. China’s exports to Africa, for instance, have outgrown ours 3-1 since 2000, and five years ago, China eclipsed us as Africa’s largest trading partner. So it’s no surprise that since 2000, China’s hosted five summits with African heads of state. Let’s be clear, the Chinese, in seeking opportunity for this century, will not miss the “next China.” So we have a lot of ground to make up.

It’s also critical we recognize that we shouldn’t just mimic the ways in which the Chinese are seeking opportunity in Africa. They bring a policy of nonintervention in domestic affairs. We bring American values, a focus on democracy, on governance, on human rights, as well as the attractiveness of our technology, our resources, and the relationship with our diaspora community. 

Mr. President, this week we’ve had remarkable opportunities for our President, our Secretary of State, several of us from this chamber to meet with young African leaders as part of a program that brought 500 inspiring young African leaders to Washington. Next week, we will welcome more than 40 heads of state from across the continent, a summit that I hope signals the next big step in building strong and sustainable partnerships throughout the continent. President Obama, leaders from this chamber, leaders from the cabinet and from across America’s corporate community will join together for three days to allow us to refocus our efforts on the continent, to seize this moment, and to move forward.

It’s my hope that this chamber, that this Congress, will take advantage of the opportunity to enact the African Growth and Opportunity Act on a longer reauthorization and to open it to bipartisan, to truly balanced trade and to pass the bipartisan Power Africa Act, to significantly improve our investment in infrastructure. The opportunities are limitless.

Mr. President, it is my hope that we will but seize them. Thank you.

Floor Speech: Unveiling bill to designate “Manufacturing Universities”

Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about jobs, about manufacturing jobs in particular.

As we in the Senate get ready to leave Washington and return home to our States for August, it has become popular in the media to say our legislative work is done; that it is mostly about campaigning from here on out, for the weeks, the months remaining until the election in November. After all, we hear reported this is a body so divided, so riven by gridlock and partisanship that we haven’t gotten a lot done, and the prospect for getting more done is even less.

Although I have certainly been frustrated by the pace of progress at times, this story not only gets a lot of things wrong, it is counterproductive and at times even self-fulfilling.

Let me start with the fact that we can, and we have, gotten important things done for manufacturing and for our economy and for our states as a whole.

Last year 26 of my Democratic colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, joined an initiative called Manufacturing Jobs for America, or MJA. The goal of Manufacturing Jobs for America has been simple: put together a collection of our best ideas – our best ideas – to spur manufacturing job creation, to work with Republicans to find common ground, and to get these bills passed. 

We are focusing on manufacturing as a group of Senators because it is the foundation of our economy. It is the foundation of the pathway toward a middle class. Manufacturing jobs pay more in benefits and contribute more to the local economy than any other sector, fueling growth in other sectors. Manufacturing is also incredibly innovative. Manufacturers invest the most in research and development of any industrial sector.

We have focused on four different broad areas in the MJA initiative: training a 21st century workforce; expanding access to capital for businesses looking to expand and invest in growth; leveling the global trade playing field and opening markets abroad; and focusing our government behind a national manufacturing strategy.

These are the four main areas of focus for Manufacturing Jobs for America, and together we have introduced over 30 bills, nearly half of which are bipartisan bills, with Republicans joining us in advancing these ideas.

Together, we have made real progress in moving the ball forward. 

Already, five of these bills have passed out of committee. Three of them would take further steps to give startups and small businesses access to the research and development tax credit, which came out of the Finance Committee. Two others passed as part of a single package to create a national manufacturing strategy and improve STEM education in our high schools and colleges that came out of the Commerce Committee. There is no reason that, working together, we can’t get these bipartisan bills passed through the full Senate before the end of this Congress. 

This isn’t just wishful thinking. We have already seen seven provisions from Manufacturing Jobs for America bills enacted into law as well. In last year’s Defense Authorization Act we included an MJA amendment that streamlines regulations and makes it easier for small businesses to do work with the Federal Government. Recently, as a result of our work to ensure innovative small businesses and startups can access the research and development tax credit, the Administration took executive action to implement another MJA provision, and just last week the House and Senate came together to pass the broad bipartisan Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to reform and streamline our nation’s job training programs – a bill that ultimately included five separate MJA provisions within it, and a bill that has now been signed into law by our President. 

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act was years in the making, and its success is in no small part due to the relentless efforts of my colleagues Senators Murray and Isakson – Democrat and Republican – as well as Senators Harkin and Alexander, who have worked for years to get this over the finish line. Their success in crafting this bill and in building bipartisan support for it is a lesson for all of us, and it is a large example of what we have tried to do, bit by bit, for other manufacturing bills. 

To me, it is really about determination. We have shown it is possible to get things done if we relentlessly seek common ground, if we engage outside groups, if we strengthen the quality of the ideas, and if we build bipartisan paths toward success. 

One of our country’s biggest challenges is the rapid pace of change in our globally interconnected economy. The middle-class jobs of today and tomorrow require higher skill levels than ever before as the economy continues to evolve. America needs a system that emphasizes lifelong learning, learning on the job, and constant adjustment.

This is a challenge that Members of both parties are well aware of and are dedicated to stepping up and meeting. That is what the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is all about.

To put it in some context, by 2022 we are projected to have 11 million fewer workers with postsecondary education than our economy will need. But by consolidating 15 outdated or redundant federal job training programs, by creating new across-the-board accountability standards, and by giving cities and states the flexibility to meet their economies’ unique local needs, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act will help us make up that shortfall.

I was at the bill signing last week at the White House, along with the Senators whom I cited who led the charge on this, and it was uplifting to see the positive impact that came out of uniting in such a broadly bipartisan way on such an important issue as job skills for the modern manufacturing workforce for America.

On a week when Congress came together to improve our investment in America’s workers, Vice President Biden also released a critical report that had great contributions from the Secretaries of Commerce, Education, and Labor – a critical report that details a number of other steps the administration is taking as a complement to that new law, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, to equip our workers for the 21st century economy.

As we get ready this week to return to our home states and to hear from our constituents in August, there is no reason to stop legislating this week and when we return in September. That is why I am introducing another bill as part of Manufacturing Jobs for America, a bill called the Manufacturing Universities Act of 2014. 

This bill will take on a simple but important challenge. Because today’s manufacturing jobs require higher skill levels than ever – higher skill levels than yesterday’s assembly line jobs, our schools and in particular universities need to be equipping students with those skills. Since innovation and research and development keep leading to new materials and new technologies that are critical to keeping American manufacturing at the cutting edge of the global economy, we also need to connect our universities with our manufacturers.

The manufacturing universities bill would create a competitive grant program that would ultimately designate 25 American universities as manufacturing universities. The competition would incentivize schools to build engineering programs that are targeted, that are focused on 21st century manufacturing and the skills our workers need to thrive. This would allow the cycle of innovation that can begin in the laboratory, that can mature in a factory, and that can produce more competitive products of the market to be fully harnessed around the challenge of meeting the demands of the 21st century manufacturing environment. That would build on important work that is already being done to link universities all the way to the shop floor, but where we are not doing as much as we can and should with Federal grant funds that go to universities for research, to make them relevant and to make them current and to make them competitive.

For example, in my home state of Delaware, this bill, if enacted into law, could help the University of Delaware bolster its work with the private sector, focus its work with the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership, focus the partnership between Delaware Technical and Community College, Delaware State University, and our manufacturing community in Delaware, to ensure that manufacturing becomes a larger part of the University of Delaware’s engineering curriculum and the training and research and outreach conducted by Del State and Del Tech.

The competitive challenges of the 21st century are big, but we have every reason to be united around meeting them. Manufacturing Jobs for America, like the Manufacturing Universities Act, takes simple steps to invest in America’s workers so they can drive our innovation and growth today and tomorrow, and takes simple steps to make sure we are being as competitive as possible, that we are growing the best jobs possible for our home states and for our whole country.

Let’s come together in a bipartisan way. Let’s build on the success we have already seen across the different skills initiatives I have discussed. Just because elections are coming up this fall doesn’t mean we can’t continue to get behind great ideas – whether Democrat or Republican, whether from the House or the Senate – to move our nation forward, and to create great jobs for all our States and all our communities.

Floor Speech: Calling on Congress to confront child refugee crisis at the border

Madam President, as you do now, I have just recently had the honor of presiding over this chamber. And I’ve had the opportunity in the hour that I’ve just finished presiding to listen to our colleagues and to listen as they come to this floor, as you just have, Madam President, and speak to the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the southern border of our country. 

And, sadly, I think truly sadly, I’ve listened to a whole series of our Republican colleagues use this opportunity to line up on the floor and to wail upon our president and complain that this humanitarian crisis is his fault – that it is solely the fault of the President – that there are tens of thousands of children coming to the American border unaccompanied, seeking refuge in this country – that it is solely his fault. 

It’s tough to even know where to begin, Madam President, in responding to these suggestions, but let me try. Let me start from my perspective as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It’s important first to remember that this is no ordinary issue of border security or of immigration enforcement, this is a humanitarian and a refugee crisis. 

The tens of thousands of children, young children, presenting themselves alone at the border of the United States are not dangerous criminals who threaten our national safety. They are, so often, children who’ve traveled thousands of miles from their home countries at enormous risk and expense and they have come not because our border is wide open, not because it’s unsecure. In fact, virtually all of them are being interdicted at the border by our effective border security. The challenge is that these children are being sent on these incredibly long and expensive and dangerous and difficult trips in the first place.  

Our Republican colleagues have suggested this is solely caused by our president’s lawlessness. That somehow either a law that was proposed and passed here in the Senate in the comprehensive immigration reform bill or the President’s deferred action program with regards to those who are so-called “dreamers,” that that’s what’s causing this flood of child refugees to this country. 

Well, as has been said by other of our colleagues just in the last hour, neither of those two things – neither the comprehensive immigration bill passed on a bipartisan basis by this chamber nor the deferred action program of the Administration – would create any relief, any legal opportunity for these child refugees to stay in the United States. Neither of them apply. In order to get access to the benefit of the opportunity to be in the United States under those two provisions you’d have to have been here years ago. 

The problem is really instability, violence, tragic collapse of governance and safety in three Central American countries. If the magnet drawing thousands of refugees to this country were the actions or inactions of the President, wouldn’t we see a huge surge in refugees from elsewhere in Central America, from Panama or from Belize or from Costa Rica or, even closer to us, from Mexico as well? But we haven’t. 

In the last five years, child migrants from Mexico have stayed relatively flat while children from the three countries that are the focus of current violence – El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – have surged out of control. In 2009, child migrants from those three countries made up just 17 percent of all the children trying to come across the American border. This year, three-quarters are coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. 

Why are they coming from these three countries? Why these three countries? Well, if you ask them, they’ll tell you. The United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees surveyed last year 400 child refugees and said ”Why have you made this long and dangerous and difficult trip to the American border?” Only nine of 404 surveyed said because they believed the U.S. would treat them well. More than half said they came out of fear, because they were forcibly displaced. They are refugees, not criminals. And we need to deal with the source of the problem in these three countries, not make this a partisan game on the floor of this chamber. 

The evidence, I think, is clear that these children are being sent on this difficult, long, and expensive trip by their parents in desperation because they have no other choice. If they stay in their home countries, the levels of violence, of gang activity, of murder have skyrocketed off the charts. They’re fleeing not just to America but to Mexico, to Nicaragua, to Costa Rica as well. 

Children are fleeing the violence in these three countries in every direction, not because they’re drawn by the magnet of some failure of immigration policy here, but because they are driven by the centrifugal force of violence in these three countries. In fact, asylum applications by children are up more than 700 percent in the countries of Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize, the countries immediately around these three that are the very center of the violence. 

And it is my hope, that with the emergency supplemental requests submitted by the President, as we consider it and debate it in a hearing in the Appropriations Committee tomorrow, and as we debate it here on the floor, that we will see more and more ways in which the emergency supplemental provides resources needed to ensure that these children are given the fair hearing that they’re entitled to under the law – a law signed by President Bush, and passed unanimously by this chamber – that we will honor our international commitments and allow these children their day in court. And if they have no legitimate claim to refugee status, that they will be deported. But if they have a legitimate claim, that they are treated fairly.  

Families and children are fleeing these Central American countries because conditions have become unbearable. Gangs, narcotic groups, and corrupt officials have weakened security situations and created an environment where innocent civilians are targeted by gangs. In Honduras, for example, as has been mentioned earlier today, in the city of San Pedro Sula, the murder rate is four times higher – the chance of dying through murder is four times higher – than faced by American troops in the highest years of combat deaths in Iraq. It has one of the highest murder rates on the planet. 

In Guatemala, a weak government lacks the capacity to address insecurity and poverty and these forces continue to drive Guatemalans to flee and to send their children to seek some peace outside their country. In El Salvador, after a failed truce, gangs have divided territory up and are challenging control of the state while bringing violence into every neighborhood. Despite these significant issues, we can and we should contribute and invest more in partnership with these three countries to hold them accountable for delivering on stability for their citizens. 

Visits by the Vice President, by the Secretary of State, meetings with the leaders of these three countries, have laid out a path forward and a plan, and funding in this emergency supplemental will help contribute to prosecution of the coyotes and the criminal gangs that are profiting off of trafficking in these children, to increasing the capacity of these countries to receive back those children and adults who are being repatriated, and to lead a media campaign to make sure that parents understand that children sent to the United States are not automatically entitled to stay in the United States. 

We have to strengthen our efforts to counter corruption, to hold these governments accountable, and to assist in building stronger security, judicial, and governing institutions in these three Central American countries. 

Now, I’m also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee and from those seats I know how important it is that we make sure resources are available to our badly overstretched immigration enforcement system. And this provides additional resources for immigration judges, for the legal orientation program, and for counsel for minors. 

As has been mentioned earlier today on this floor, we have an international obligation when children fleeing violence present legitimate claims for refugee status, to make sure they have their day in court before either repatriating them to their country of origin or allowing them refugee status here. This emergency supplemental would increase the funding so that there wouldn’t be such an enormous backlog of cases, so that there would be a legal orientation program, which has a proven record of success. 

While it doesn’t provide personal counsel to everyone awaiting trial, it gives out basic information so that legitimate claims can be made, and illegitimate claims don’t waste the time of our immigration courts. Last, providing counsel to minor children – it’s a small portion of this total supplemental – but if you’ve got a child who is a victim of child trafficking, who has a valid asylum claim, they have to be given the opportunity to present a valid claim. 

We already know funding in these areas are insufficient to meet this surge in refugee minors seeking the relief of the American country and court system, and I think we have to do both. Invest in ensuring stability in the three countries in Central America from which tens of thousands of children are fleeing, and invest in ensuring that our border security, our immigration courts, and the reasonable and appropriate process for separating out those who are legitimate refugees from those who are seeking access to our country illegally is done in a fair and appropriate way. 

A refugee crisis is not the time for us to abandon our laws or our values. It’s the time for us to enforce and abide by those laws fairly and efficiently. And to do so I think, frankly, our best solution would be to have the House take up, consider, and pass the comprehensive immigration bill, the bipartisan immigration bill that was taken up and passed by this chamber over a year ago. 

Frankly, Madam President, I think this crisis is in no small part because of a critical opportunity that we missed a year ago to legislate in a responsible, bicameral and bipartisan way, to invest more on the border, to invest more in stabilizing the region, and to invest more in ensuring that we have the resources in our courts to deliver justice in this country appropriately. 

Floor Speech: Calling on colleagues to restore voting rights protections

Mr. President, last Friday was Juneteenth, which marks four of the most important days in our nation’s long and continuing march towards racial justice and civil rights in this country.

First, on June 19 in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in all U.S. Territories.

Then three years later, a month after the end of our civil war, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to free the last of our nation’s slaves.

Nearly a century later, on June 19, 1963, with Jim Crow laws still a stain on the moral fabric of our country, President John F. Kennedy sent his Civil Rights Act of 1963 to Congress.

And the following year, as the nation mourned its loss, President J.F.K., President Johnson shepherded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to final passage.

As we mark these days in our nation’s history – from the end of our darkest period to some of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation passed – we know we still have further to go. It’s appropriate that we do so this year especially, that we mark June 19 and these four moments across our nation’s history because as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision last year, the Shelby County case, a key piece of President Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965 stands in bad need of repair and revision. In fact, the Voting Rights Act itself is at risk of becoming a dead letter in the future of voting in our country.

Now, just two years ago, I had the opportunity to join many of my colleagues here in the Congress from the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats in returning to Selma, to the site of Bloody Sunday, to the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Many of us, members of Congress, got a chance to hear again from Congressman Lewis about the events of that day, that day that was etched into the consciousness of this country and mobilized millions to speak out to their Representatives and Senators and moved this Congress finally to enact legislation that would unlock the keys to the ballot box across the country.

I was so proud earlier this year to join with Chairman Leahy, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and with Senator Dick Durbin, Congressman John Lewis, an icon and leader in the American civil rights movement, Congressman John Conyers and Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner to introduce a bill that would restore the core protections made possible in the original Voting Rights Act.

The bill we introduced doesn’t look at discrimination through the lens of the past. It focuses on modern day violations, not the things that happened 50 years ago. It takes up the challenge laid down by the Supreme Court and comes up with a new formula and a new approach that makes voting rights and elections more transparent and has been carefully crafted to be both effective and to pass in this Congress.

It is, Mr. President, a voting rights bill that is modern to confront modern voting rights challenges. 

As a country, we have come a long way since 1965, but we are not where we need to be yet. As much as we may at times not want to admit it or confront it, racial discrimination in voting is not a relic of the past, but a tragic reality of today.

Just yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on what to do to address the loss of a key part of the Voting Rights Act that’s known as preclearance. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, a bill that each and every senate republican voted for in 2006. Let me be clear about that again. In 2006, this body unanimously reauthorized the Voting Rights Act. And yet in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down an essential provision of that very act.

Mr. President, the Voting Rights Act and leadership to address the challenges of civil rights in this country have long been bipartisan in nature. My own family and friends who are Republicans are justifiably proud of their Party’s leadership role in addressing the darkest days and the biggest challenges of civil rights in the last century in this country. 

But today we are struggling in this body to find a single Republican cosponsor for this important and necessary bill. And I ask my friends, is this because there’s nothing that remains to be done? Is that 2006 law unanimously passed by this body so obsolete that there is no legislative response necessary to Shelby?

I think a response is necessary.

Just a month after the Supreme Court’s decision, North Carolina passed a restrictive – a deeply restrictive voting law that in addition to a strict photo ID requirement reduces early voting and forbids local jurisdictions flexibility in setting hours for early voting, among other restrictions.

After the Shelby County decision in Pasadena, Texas, that city’s voters adopted a plan to reduce the number of single member districts from eight to six, adding two at-large representatives, a change nearly certain to reduce Latino representation on their City Council. 

And just hours after the decision, the State of Texas announced plans to implement its photo ID law that had long been blocked under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Again and again, Mr. President, shortly following the Shelby County decision, jurisdictions moved to implement discriminatory voting changes that had previously been blocked under Section 5.

Something needs to be done. 

I’d suggest to my colleagues, if you don’t like this proposal, please come forward with something you can support, with something that looks forward, not back, that has a formula that protects voting as the most sacred and foundational right of our republic and that allows us to come together.

History will not look kindly on our inaction.

Mr. President, just two days ago, we honored the memory of Dr. King and Coretta Scott King with the Congressional Gold Medal. What better way to honor their legacy than to come together in a bipartisan way and strengthen the rights they fought so hard to secure for every American.

Voting is fundamental and ensuring that every American really has the right to vote is at the core of what makes our democracy vibrant.

So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and to find a way forward for us to put voting rights first and to restore the important legacy of June 19 from across so many incidents and so many years and to move us forward on a positive path.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons touts bipartisan progress on manufacturing workforce training

Madam President, something important, something unusual, something worth noting happened this week, happened yesterday in this chamber that I don’t want to let pass without a few moments of comment.

Yesterday a broad bipartisan majority of this Senate came together to pass the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. And first I’d like to congratulate Senators Murray and Isakson, Harkin and Alexander, who led so capably on this bill. Senators Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Isakson, Republican of Georgia, spent years working through the details of policy and of language and months making sure that they got this bill to a point where the Senate and the House in a bipartisan, bicameral way could adopt legislation. 

What’s this about? It’s about something simple, important, and powerful – investing in America’s workers so we can compete with anyone around the world in the 21st century. This is an area that I’ve focused on a lot here in the Senate, that I believe is critical to our nation, our competitiveness, to strengthening our middle class and growing good jobs.

In manufacturing, it’s a core challenge for us to ensure that our workers have the training that employers are looking for and that our manufacturing companies are globally competitive. Manufacturing is important to America, to our future, to our middle class, to our communities and to our families because it pays well, it drives innovation, it contributes greatly to other sectors in our economy and in communities.

And that’s why just a few months ago I launched the Manufacturing Jobs for America initiative that has brought together dozens of senators. We initially pulled together Democrats from across my caucus to introduce 34 bills, some of the best and broadest ideas we could bring to the table about how to accelerate America’s recovery of employment and steady growth in manufacturing. And roughly half of these bills are bipartisan. Part of the goal of this Manufacturing Jobs for America initiative was to put good ideas out on the floor and get them in the mix as we debate things going forward.

So I just wanted to take a moment today and celebrate that the ideas of many of our partners in this campaign, ideas drawn from many of the bills that are part of this initiative, ended up being important parts of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that was passed this week. 

Let me briefly touch on the five most important – the contributed ideas that were embedded in this bill that passed.

First, the Adult Education and Economic Growth Act which was sponsored by Senators Reed and Brown. In our rapidly changing economy ensuring we can train Americans of all ages for all jobs is critical. Senator Reed’s bill takes an important step in that direction by investing in adult education, expanding access to technology and digital literacy skills, and improving the coordination of state and local programs.

Another, a bill endorsed by the National Association of Manufacturers, is the America Works Act sponsored by Senators Hagan and Heller. Another challenge we face is ensuring employers can quickly recognize whether a worker has the skills they really need. So Senator Hagan’s bill helps solve this by ensuring we prioritize programs that invest in training that has portable, national and industry recognized credentials. This encourages job-training programs to match the skills of workers with the needs of local employers, training individuals for the jobs currently available in their communities right now.

A third bill that contributed importantly to this bill that was enacted here yesterday, adopted by the Senate yesterday, was the Community College to Career Fund Act sponsored by Senator Franken and Senator Begich. Senator Franken came to the floor yesterday and gave another passionate, important floor speech in support of these ideas. It’s something that as I’ve presided and as I have been with him in caucus I have heard Senator Franken speak to many times. It is about equipping workers with the skills they need by investing in partnerships between our community colleges and our employers. Senator Franken, Senator Begich, myself, and others have seen this work in our home communities. We have seen community colleges learn from manufacturers what are the actual today relevant modern manufacturing skills they need and then deliver customized training courses that make a difference in the skills, in the lives, in the college affordability and access of those who seek to join today’s manufacturing workforce.

A fourth bill, the On-The-Job Training Act cosponsored by Senators Shaheen and Cochran contributed the idea that we need to invest in on-the-job training. Because of Senator Shaheen’s leadership on this bill, it will now make new and important investments so that workers learn what they need to know in the job that needs to be filled. Rather than an academic setting and then search for a job that might match the skills they learn, on-the-job training in this bill sponsored by Shaheen and Cochran is an important contribution to modernizing America’s workplace skills.

The last, the SECTORS Act cosponsored by Senators Brown and Collins, is a provision that helps meet the fundamental challenge of connecting our schools with our businesses, by requiring state and local workforce investment boards to establish sector-based partnerships.

Madam President, with all of these bills, there is an important and common theme. In the 21st century, rapid economic change is a given. In order to compete, in order to grow our economy and grow employment, in order to be productive and to have a successful and growing workforce, we need to be able to adapt as quickly as our economy does and we need to invest in modernizing the skills of American workers. 

With the passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act yesterday, we have made a strong statement that in a bipartisan way, we’re willing to invest in America’s workers, for the jobs of today and the jobs of tomorrow. This is just one of many encouraging moments here in the Senate that sometimes go without note or commentary in our communities at home, but I thought it was important to bring to the floor today this range of five different bills, three of them bipartisan, all of them strong, whose ideas were part of the package adopted here on the floor yesterday and that I am confident will be adopted by the House and signed into law by our President. This Senate can, will, should continue to make bipartisan progress in investing in American manufacturing.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues to confirm ambassadors to African nations

Mr. President, when we send American ambassadors to nearly every country around the world, we are able to strengthen democracy and protect our national security. Ambassadors are voices for American values and the interests we share with other nations. Simply put, they are critical to promoting our foreign policy, our economic and security interests, and our leadership in the world.

Yet when – because of partisan politics and gridlock at home – we fail to confirm ambassadors, we send a dangerous message about our lack of interest in the world and our lack of interest in diplomacy.

I have the privilege of chairing the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Through my work as Chair, as well as time I spent earlier in my life in Africa, I have seen up close both the incredible opportunities in the continent of Africa as well as the stark challenges.

For instance, today, this decade, seven of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa. Yet right now one in five American embassies of the 54 countries on that continent lacks a confirmed ambassador.

Africa faces serious security challenges. Boko Haram in Nigeria, which has recently kidnapped hundreds of girls and burned down churches and schools, is just one example. Yet as the countries bordering that troubled area of Nigeria try to coordinate a response to ensure that conflict doesn’t spill over borders, we lack confirmed ambassadors in the adjacent nations of Niger and Cameroon. 

In Namibia, where we also don’t have a confirmed ambassador, the United States is dedicating $50 million to combat HIV and AIDS. We need an ambassador to oversee those funds and make sure they are appropriately used.

I will briefly review some of the numbers and facts. Our nominees to the countries of Namibia, Cameroon, and Niger have waited for a vote for 330 days – almost a year. Our nominee to Sierra Leone has waited 352 days, our nominee to Mauritania has waited 289 days, and our nominee to Gabon has waited 287 days.

In the long absence of ambassadors, professional career Foreign Service Officers, capable and competent Deputy Chiefs of Mission assume this role on an interim basis. I am deeply concerned that with the August turnover for Foreign Service Officers quickly approaching, many of our embassies will also be left without a DCM at the helm.

This is inexcusable. It hurts our economy, our national security, and our leadership to leave these posts unfilled and the ambassadorial nominees unconfirmed for so long.

I have great hope for Africa’s future. Across the continent there are emerging democracies, growing economies, and although there are some security challenges, I am optimistic we can meet them in partnership with Africa’s leaders.

When we fail to send career public servants to serve as our ambassadors, we send the message that we are not serious about these challenges and are not willing to invest in these partnerships.

I urge my colleagues to work together across the aisle to devote ourselves to getting our ambassadorial nominees to Africa confirmed. This transcends partisanship, and it is a task we should turn to promptly.