A simple majority will be needed for that. And now to live coverage of the u. S. Senate here on cspan2. The president pro tempore the senate will come to order. The chaplain, dr. Barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Eternal lord god, the giver of every good and perfect gift, thank you for this fresh opportunity to do your will on earth. Guide our lawmakers. Give them consciences void of offense toward you and humanity and honesty of conduct. May they bring you their daily challenges, casting their cares on you. Lord, help them to draw more fully from your inexhaustible resources, claiming your promise to provide for all their needs. Use them to bring peace, justice, and prosperity to our nation. And lord, bless the members of the i will lust of the fall 2017 page class as they prepare it to leave us. We pray in your loving name. Amen. The president pro tempore please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President. The presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell this week the senate has moved past a partisan paralysis and checked off several important items for the American People. On monday we passed the bipartisan measure that funds the government through february 8, but that bill didnt only end the shutdown. It also extended the state Childrens HealthInsurance Program for six years, thats longterm security for millions of Vulnerable Children and peace of mind for their families. And the bill delayed three onerous taxes that obamacare would otherwise have imposed on the American People. Yesterday i filed cloture on commonsense legislation to protect unborn children who can feel pain. There are only seven countries left just seven that still permit elective abortion after 20 weeks, including us, unfortunately, china, and north korea. On issues of human dignity, this is not the company we ought to keep. I look forward to voting to advance this bill next week. We also made important headway in another vital area, the personnel business. We confirmed three of President Trumps highly qualified nominees for important posts. We have a new chairman of the federal reserve, mr. Powell. We have a new secretary of health and human services, mr. Azar. And we have a new ambassadoratlarge for International Religious freedom, our former colleague, sam brownback. Here in the senate mr. Brownback championed legislation to combat Human Trafficking and worked to facilitate International Cooperation on issues facing Vulnerable Children. As the voices of religious minorities are being suppressed around the world, im glad theyll have ambassador brownback to speak up for them. Of course a great deal of work lies ahead of us. In the near future we need to make bipartisan progress on areas such as immigration, Border Security, disaster relief, health care and securing Adequate Funding for our armed forces. It is my strong preference that senators reach bipartisan agreement on these issues in advance, in advance of the february 8 deadline. Fortunately with the Government Shutdown behind us, serious discussions has resumed on all these matters. A bipartisan, bicameral group, including senators cornyn and durbin, is hard at work on immigration. Well also hear from the white house on monday, and i look forward to the framework they will present. Im optimistic these ongoing negotiations will lead to results. But nonetheless, i came to the floor on sunday night and again on monday to restate a possibility i previously discussed with members with diverse views on immigration policy. I restated that if the february 8 deadline for the current funding bill passes and a longterm agreement still eludes us, as long as the government remains open the senate will proceed to a variety of priorities on the subject of immigration. Including Border Security, the daca issue, around other and other aspects of immigration policy. The bill i choose to introduce for debate will have an amendment process that will ensure a level Playing Field at the outset. The amendment process will be fair to all sides, allowing members to offer their own legislation for consideration and votes. While i obviously cannot guarantee any outcomes, let alone supermajority support, i can ensure the process is fair to all sides. Im glad that my restating this simple position helped my democratic colleagues persuade their leader to abandon his filibuster and permit the government to reopen. But the American People are waiting for us to act as soon as possible. So i hope that hard work and honest discussions will yield agreements before february 8. Now, mr. President , on another matter, on tuesday President Trump will deliver his first state of the union address. Hell have good news to deliver on a variety of fronts. Im particularly looking forward to his remarks on our economy. Consumer confidence is up. Unemployment is down. Markets are breaking records from Small Businesses to our largest job creators. Pay raises, bonuses and plans for new investments are all in season. Of course the engine of american prosperity is the American People. But smart policy can help by getting the government out of the way. Last december republicans in the house and the senate joined the president to deliver onceina generation tax reform. Every day more evidence piles up that tax reform is already working for the American People. The headlines are full, full of major employers announcing pay raises and bonuses for workers as well as new investments. For example, brown forman, a Global Spirits company headquartered in my hometown of louisville that employs more than 1,000 kentuckians, announced yesterday that tax reform will help the company to start a new Charitable Foundation for Community Investment and commit 120 million to Fund Employee pensions. Soon, thafrpgz thanks to tax reform a main street Small Business owner will be able to realize her dream to expand into the vacant shop next door. Of course that will mean hiring more help. Soon thanks to tax reform a father and son manufacturing plant will be able to afford the new equipment they have been eyeing and give their workers new skills in the process. Stories like these may not make waves here in washington, but believe me, theyll be frontpage news in communities all across our country. From coast to coast americans lives will improve as main street businesses operate for the first time under a 21st century tax code. This is not just a tax law for the big guys. Now even the smallest businesses will be able to take a significant deduction on their business income, giving them more money to buy new equipment, hire new employees or provide Health Coverage for their team. So much focus has been on bonuses, pay raises and 401 k matches and for good reason. But we should not forget all the jobs that will be created when businesses decide to invest more because they can immediately deduct their capital expenditures. Im already hearing from Small Business owners this law was designed to help. Before tax reform, one franchise Restaurant Owner in kentucky wrote me to say that, quote, the current high tax rate, the current high tax rate that i pay as a passthrough entity reduces the amount of earnings i can reinvest into my business, employees and community. She went on to say, quote, im very encouraged that tax reform is underway in congress, and i hope that it can be accomplished in a timely manner. Well, mr. President , republican majorities in congress and the president did just that. In nicholsville, kentucky, another constituent of mine operates a rent business for event equipment. He recently explained, quote, the relief that will be provided by the new tax bill gives Companies Like mine the capital to purchase new inventory as well as hire additional employees. So summing it up, American Enterprise is thriving. Tax reform helped make it happen. The presiding officer under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. Morning business is closed. Under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. The clerk nomination, department of defense, r. D. James of missouri to be assistant secretary of the army. Mr. Mcconnell i suggest the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Quorum call quorum call mr. Schumer mr. President. The presiding officer the democratic leader. Mr. Schumer i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Schumer okay. Mr. President , there are now only 13 days remaining until the continuing resolution expires on february 8. In that short amount of time, we must seek a budget deal, an agreement on health care legislation, and a bipartisan bill to protect the dreamers and provide for Border Security. All these items are important. All of them are urgent, and we are working hard to get them all done. On the issue of immigration, the Bipartisan Group of moderate senators should continue trying to find a consensus. I think thats an excellent idea. The white house, unfortunately, has proven to be wildly unpredictable. Within a course of hours, they say different things. Every time the president moves forward on one thing, his staff pulls him back and undoes what he says. We should find a narrow deal on daca and Border Security. As we found time and again, when we open up the negotiations to discussions of broad immigration reform, there is no end to what each party says could be on the table. Republicans want vast curtailment of legal immigration. Democrats want to discuss a pathway to citizenship for 11 million. Thats a recipe for delay when we cant afford one. Some on the other side are insisting expanding this beyond the daca and Border Security issues. That will just delay. That will just make sure that things dont work. My republican colleagues, particularly the leader and his more moderate members, should feel the pressure to get this done or else this administration will start separating families, taking kids out of school, Service Members out of our military, workers out of our companies. They will rip them from the American Fabric in which they are embedded. What a tragedy that would be. So the clock is ticking on dreamers and we dont have time for extraneous issues that some on the right or the left, might want to add that have to do with daca or Border Security. The clock is also ticking for petitioners, victims of opioid treatment seeking treatment. We have other issues, rural infrastructure, child care, things that democrats want to get done in this deal. We have to get a budget deal and a daca deal that can get 60 votes. 13 days before dreamers get a lot closer to deportation, 13 days to help our economy, our communities, the middle class who has been waiting for over a year for this congress to do something for them instead of just helping business interests. Now, mr. President , i want to focus on one more thing that really should disturb every american, certainly disturbs me, recent events concerning the bureau of investigation. For decades the f. B. I. Has been our nations premier Law Enforcement agency and admired from one end of the country to another. Tv shows, movies all talked about how good the f. B. I. Was. We know because we trust them with protecting our country against manyfaced threats, terrorism, drug trafficking, white collar crime. In 2016, the f. B. I. , not politically, to keep us vigilant in our security, the f. B. I. Has tasked with another great importance, investigating russias interference in our elections. As that investigation progressed, it found that members of the Trump Campaign had concerning associationings with the russians in the leadup to the election. That was Law Enforcement. That wasnt some political direction. Now that investigation led by special counsel mueller has resulted in two guilty pleas and two more indictments of Trump Campaign officials, there seems to be a fervor on the other side to discredit it. What the special counsels investigation has already revealed should give serious pause to democrats, republicans, all americans. A foreign power, probably the one that is most most in our face, russia interfering in our elections. I dont care if it is democrat or republican or national or local elections. When a foreign power interferes in our elections that naws at the well spring of our democracy. All of us all of us should be giving the f. B. I. Space and encouragement to finish their investigation without delay or interference. Instead, ever since special counsel mueller was appointed, too many republicans and too many in the rightwing media have been desperate desperate to distract the nation from his investigation. First they waged an aggressive and coordinated, id say shameful, attack on the special counsel. I was in the gym and spoke to one of my senior republican colleagues who said he knew mueller and what a fine man he was. He was a model public servant. He was known as somebody who was a registered republican through my years in washington. He wasnt regarded as a partisan figure, as somebody who would have vendettas, political or otherwise. No. It got so out of hand, i couldnt believe this, that a Republican Congressman suggested special counsel muellers investigation was a coup on the floor of the house. He ought to go back and read his history books. Rule of law is not a coup. I would say to that Republican Congress member that no person, not even a member of congress, is above the law. This has now spiraled into a delusional attack on the f. B. I. Itself. The republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee has, according to representative schiff, manufactured a secret memo of partisan talking points, full of innuendo, glaring omissions intended to spread corruption in the department of the f. B. I. Very, very serious allegations if they had any truth or backing. Adding to the impropriety, some of the republicans are trying to release this slanderous memo to the public. Since this investigation has started, our nation has had to endure conspiracy after conspiracy from the right wing, Republican Congressmen, senators, and, of course, the rightwing press which acts in total ka hoots cahoots. Conspiracies about unmasking requests, phone taps at trump tower, uranium one, who paid for the socalled steel dossier. Today it is this memo. On and on and on, conspiracy theories with virtually no fact. Paranoia, delusion. Why . Are they afraid of the truth of the Mueller Investigation . It seems so. Meanwhile, republican members of this body, i am ashamed to say, picked up on casual texts sent between f. B. I. Agents to say that there is a secret society at the Department Department of, without a shred of evidence. I saw the senator propagating in this morning on propagating this on television this morning. It looked delusional. It looked paranoid. What began as an attempt to discredit the investigator has now devolved into delusional, selfserving paranoia. The Republican Party which used to hold itself up as a law and order party, seems intent on destroying the credibility of the law and order agency and the hardworking men and women who serve there all to assist the president who cares and knows very little about the boundaries of the rule of law. Imagine, the f. B. I. , which for decades the Republican Party upheld. I remember lots of political debates here, and now they are discrediting them for a temporary political purpose with very virtually no basis and fact. Guess who has joined the Republican Campaign to attack the f. B. I. The Republican Campaign to join the f. B. I. Has been joined by the same forces that we saw in the past, wikileaks, julia asawn. Now they are joining them, wittingly or unwittingly. Can you imagine the outrage on the right if president obamas message was leaked by wikileaks. Within hours of fox news calling for the release of the memo, they began to push the narrative, release the memo, russian bots, hash tag, release the memo, just a few hours after some of our republican friends start this push. Use of the hash tag spiked was used 100 times more than any other hashtag by kremlinlinked accounts. We are witnessing an effort by the republican by the russian government to intervene and influence our democratic process in real time. Every single american should be concerned about this, particularly when their elected officials are willing to work, wittingly or unwittingly, alongside russia to manipulate our