medicaid. the goal is simple -- improving maternal and infant health outcomes. it's amazing we don't have uniform quality standards right now throughout the country. the quality care for moms and babies act will help make sure that every mom gets the best pregnancy care possible and every baby gets a healthy start. that's what we should be passing. today in america, that's unfortunately not the case. our maternal mortality rate is climbing. african american women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than other american women. and our infant mortality rate ranks a shameful 32 among the world's 35 wealthiest nations. 32 out of 35 in our great country. we need to change this. for many moms and -- so many moms and their children will enjoy a happy mother's day. moms like rachel shouldn't be spending their mother's day worrying about what will happen to their children if republicans succeed in undoing the affordable care act. thinking back on alice's diagnosis, rachel said this -- i cannot express how stressful and gut-wrenching a time this was for my family. i am thankful every day to the affordable care act. moms deserve more than flowers and a card. they deserve the peace of mind that comes from knowing that their children are born as healthy as possible and will have the health care coverage that they need. our moms gave us life. this mother's day, let's pay it forward. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: i ask unanimous consent that one of my staff, sidney venture, a member of my staff, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the -- oh, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. tillis: thank you, mr. president, again. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that sidney venture, a member of my staff, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 116th congress. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. tillis: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come here with a heavy heart. on april 30, at 4:40 p.m., a shooting occurred just outside the kennedy building -- or in the kennedy building on the campus of the university of north carolina at charlotte. it's a college campus that's only about 15 minutes from my house. the shooting occurred on the last day of classes when a lot of family members and friends were thinking about graduation, thinking about what they were going to do in the summer, their life was shattered. i'm here to celebrate the lives of two of the victims, but before i do that, i also want to thank all of the first responders and the people on campus who did an extraordinary job. first among them would be chancellor dubois, but so many first responders. what makes this particularly difficult for me is the loss of life of two young men. one 19, ellis reed pollier, and riley howell, 21 years old. these kids were in charter school, one enrolled in 2017. he loved video games. he wanted to be a video game developer. he was a volunteer. he actually tutored middle schoolers on computer programming. and his professor described him as independent and motivated. another young man who has an extraordinary story in this horrible act enrolled in u.n.c. charlotte in 2018. he went to a.b. tech before that. he was in environmental studies. he loved the outdoors. he loved "star wars." he loved pizza, playing soccer. just a normal kid going to college. he was also enrolled in the rotc at u.n.c.-charlotte. what makes his story extraordinary are the accounts of police officers. when the shooting started, -- and if you understand this building, the kennedy building, there are a lot of people around, a lot of classrooms, a lot of potential victims. this young man actually charged the gunman, and most police credit him, although he lost his own life, with saving the lives of so many more. so on this sad day, and a day on april 30 that we will never forget, i wanted to come before this body and let them know and their family know we're praying for them. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. lankford: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: mr. president, typically when we talk about federal employees or federal agency, the story starts something like this. there was a mix-up in paperwork for our constituent who has social security retirement benefits. she ended up not having part b medicare coverage until later and there was a lapse in coverage. everyone gets frustrated over the mix-up, the dropped paperwork, the problem, and they never hear the story of amber craft, who works in the tulsa social security office. she chased the whole issue down. she did everything possible with the payment center to get input switched on the medicare application. ended up getting the constituent's coverage to begin with in the desired month to be able to get them taken care of. they were taken care of on their medical bills because a federal employee saw the gap, ran to the need, and helped somebody in our state. this is public service recognition week, and i want to take a little bit of time because this body, like many people in the nation, we catch ourselves at times complaining more than we praise. there are a lot of people that are scattered around the nation right now serving their neighbors as federal employees. we have a lot of those in oklahoma, and there are some pretty remarkable people that are my neighbors that i get the opportunity to neat w over 93,000 federal employees both active and retired, both federal and on the postal side -- 93,000 just in my state in oklahoma, and that doesn't include the many teachers and firefighters, first responders, other folks that work with public agencies on the city, state, county level as well. we're grateful to those folks because they make an incredible difference. they're folks like march that gibson who works in the v.a. center in muskogee, taking care of trying to get benefits to our veterans when there are problems. and there have been problems at times. martha works incredibly well with our team. as we get a call from a constituent and try to chase down the issue to be able to help -- figure out how we l. we can resolve it, martha is typically the one we call in the muskogee office. and martha pretty well gets it solved, not just helping us but helping other oklahomans. alexandria hyatt with the f.a.a. in oklahoma city. she is an exceptional example of a federal employee that not only works incredibly hard for f.a.a. but for other agencies that f.a.a. serves through the enterprise center. but she is one of those folks that we're glad is our neighbor. she is a federal employee but she also in just the last year, in 2018, gave 850 hoursway away of her volunteer time of serving with volunteer agencies, working on weekends. she is a licensed journeyman with hvac. she finds places that she can use that skill to be able to serve other people, including putting in ductwork and insulation and mold remediation, first aid and teaching. after hurricane katrina, she spent three weeks roofing and providing mold remediation from hurricane katrina. in 2015 she spent six weeks in new york city insulating and inspecting is hvac supply vanns. she spent two weeks repairing roofs. she is a federal employee. she gives away her time not just in her day job but in serving people on nights and weekends and taking her own vacation on this. don o'connor spent 50 years as a civil servant. also served active duty in the air force and the air national guard for 30 years. a pretty remarkable servant. brian whittle is another f.a.a. employee and an oklahoma national guardsman. he served faithfully for both the national guard and the f.a.a. but it was last year he's walked into a restaurant in oklahoma city and heard and saw a gunman that was opening fire in a restaurant. brian was one of them that actually ran towards the shots and in an heroic act stopped a shooting at a restaurant in oklahoma city because this federal employee and guardsman actually engaged to be able to serve. lieutenant way l.a.n. cuban, from the oklahoma city police d he has a program that he works with called family awareness and community teachwork program. he spends a lot of time working with students frying to help engage people with -- trying to help engage people with police officers. a lot of times kids grow up in communities where they don't hear positive things about their police department. he's active in mentoring programs. this statement was written about him. on any give week, cuban and fellow officers will work with up to 100 children. once a week they hold a character-building night in north oklahoma city. they host the same program in south oklahoma city. fact also hosts a youth leadership academy once a month he is a police officer. he's also a mentor and an activist to be help to help the next generation of people. folks like casecy, a leader engineer on the b-2. we don't think about the b-2 other than we're grateful we have the b-2. but here's what's interesting. mr. far regard was responsible for saving the united states air force, therefore the united states taxpayer, $63 million in 2018. he's worked on several projects including replacement of electrical cables on the rotary launcher system as well as upgrades that improves the b-2's capabilities way into the future and will make an incredible difference and save the taxpayer a lot of money. at times we hear about things that actually waste dollars and we lose track of folks like this, an engine that just saved the taxpayers $63 million. another very influence shall firefighter. he is one of those folks that's actually helping protect his neighbors. by working with the emergency management. he's got folks working alongside of him driving up the roads like trooper austin ellis. he was on a routine patrol but was shot last august. just another day for him. he was able to withstand the bullets and recover despite a fractured rib. and the, by the way, as he was want me to say to you, they got the guy. tommy nickles works for the uscis, customs immigration system. he makes case determinations, provides technical administrative advice, assigns work based on responsibilities. she's worked for them for two decades and is always ready to assist. she's helped in situations where an individual with a pending immigration case also needs travel or needs to be with an ailing relative overseas when someone who needs urgent proof of status to work for their family, she's the one at that stapes and goes above and beyond to help take care of folks with immigration issues and needs. you see, again, folks at times will be able to push back on people dealing with immigration issues and they forget there are great folks out there serving their neighbors all the time. jim lowe began his tenure with the community service counsel in 1980 has a helpline director and became associate director in 1991. he created the first 211 call center, which allowed oklahoma to be the first to achieve national accreditation helping 211 to become the statewide service. that's the community service council, his leadership in the creation of tulsa's heat emergency action plan and tulsa weather program has contributed significantly to the health and well-being of many tull advance. he is another one of those folks serving every single day 689 and we can't forget our teachers out there constantly helping the kids in the next generation. ms. annette king teaches at spring creek element terrorism on the second day of school this past school year, on the second day of school she saw one of her students struggling to read. she quickly connected with the reading specialist principal and parents to discuss how to help them. her concern was, he might need to go back to first grade or might be behind in second grade and was just going to need some additional help in reading. but that little -- that little second grader is now caught up, now has the most improved reading award. good for them, but good for annette cane, who saw the problem, who responded to the needs of that child. reminds me of the stories that day after day after day of folks like that in elgin, action, like don meyers and all the crew doing special education and so much work to be able to help kids with the greatest amount of need in elgin. just like in other programs around the state where those teachers work with the parents, work with other educators, work with that child to help a child way behind get caught up or to be able to help them in their own development. i am grateful that this week we get to honor public service because there are millions of public servants doing amazing work to help their neighbors all around the country. and of all states and of all places, i remind this body often that oklahomans pause every april 19 and remember a domestic terrorist that parked a truck bomb next to the federal building and killed 168 people out of his hatred for public servants in the federal government. we in oklahoma remember that public servants get up and go to work every day to be able to serve their neighbors. and we as individuals still push back against those that just blindly hate government and blindly hate people that serve in government and serve each other. we don't blindly hate. we deeply appreciate. and we're grateful to what they do. and we as a state will never forget the 168 lives that were lost 24 years ago. public servants taking care of their neighbors. we're grateful. and if you are a public servant and you hear this, please accept my thank you. well done, i'm proud to be your neighbor. mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent if i could speak a second time and have it separate in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lankford: mr. president, we have three extremely well-qualified people come before this body this week for a nomination for the ex-im bank, the export-import bank. it's an entity that most individuals across the country don't even know who they are and don't even know what the ex-im bank does but it gets caught up in a lot of politics here. these extremely well-qualified people passed and they're now on their way to be able to serve our nation in that area. but i had to vote against them not because of them and who they are and their qualifications -- they are clearly qualified -- but because of my own frustration that this body has not been willing to take on the most basic element in the ex-im bank of basic reform. the charter of the ex-im bank requires the bank, and this is the quote, to seek to reach international agreement to reduce government subsidized export financing. that's in their charter. the problem is that's not being fulfilled and there's been a push for awhile it to try to reform the ex-im bank. that push to reform them has failed so far. my encouragement to the new quorum that is the leadership now of

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