[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 198 (Monday, December 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7639-S7648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SAVE OUR SEAS ACT OF 2017
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of the House message to accompany S. 756, which
the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
House message to accompany S. 756, a bill to reauthorize
and amend the Marine Debris Act to promote international
action to reduce marine debris, and for other purposes.
Pending:
McConnell motion to concur in the amendment of the House to
the bill, with McConnell (for Grassley) amendment No. 4108,
to provide for programs to help reduce the risk that
prisoners will recidivate upon release from prison.
Division I of McConnell (for Kennedy/Cotton) amendment No.
4109 (to amendment No. 4108), to require the Director of the
Bureau of Prisons to notify each victim of the offense for
which the prisoner is imprisoned the date on which the
prisoner will be released.
Division II of McConnell (for Kennedy/Cotton) amendment No.
4109 (to amendment No. 4108), to require the Director of the
Bureau of Prisons to notify each victim of the offense for
which the prisoner is imprisoned the date on which the
prisoner will be released.
Division III of McConnell (for Kennedy/Cotton) amendment
No. 4109 (to amendment No. 4108), to require the Director of
the Bureau of Prisons to notify each victim of the offense
for which the prisoner is imprisoned the date on which the
prisoner will be released.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
Tribute to Lynn Jenkins
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor this afternoon to honor a
friend, a colleague, and the senior Representative from Kansas,
Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins, who has gracefully and honorably served
Kansas for two decades in both our State and here in the Federal
Government.
While I am going to talk a little bit about Lynn's history and past,
none of this should be taken just as something that is being read in
her honor. She is a very special person who has served Kansas so well,
and she brings such tremendous attributes to public service. We will
miss her greatly, and Kansans will have benefited from her service, but
she will also remain a role model for many who look for ways to make
America and to make our State more prosperous, with a brighter future.
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Congresswoman Jenkins grew up on a farm outside of Holton, KS--a
small town just about 100 miles away from Kansas City, just north of
Topeka, where she learned the value of hard work and perseverance. You
cannot meet somebody who grew up working on a dairy farm without
determining that they have those attributes, and Lynn has exemplified
that in every endeavor.
She was taught that what needed to be done was something she would
do. When you do it, you do it right, and every day you need to step up
and do your job to make certain things get done. That is a dairy
farmer, and that is Lynn Jenkins as a Member of the U.S. Congress.
Before becoming a Member of Congress and before being elected in
Kansas, Lynn was a CPA--a certified public accountant. She recognized a
real need for financial reform as a result of that experience, and she
used her skills as a CPA to benefit Kansas.
In 2003, Lynn was elected the 37th Kansas State treasurer. Lynn then
took that same tax and financial experience to Washington, DC, where
she was elected the Congresswoman from the Second District of our
State.
After her election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Lynn quickly
rose to become one of the highest ranking Members of Congress, serving
today as the vice chair of the House Republican caucus; she served in
that capacity for 4 years. She is a senior member of the House Ways and
Means Committee.
It goes without saying that in addition to her background as a CPA,
her intellect, and her service-oriented mindset, Lynn is one of the
most beloved Kansans we have. We meet with many of the same groups here
in Kansas and in Washington, DC, and I know that visiting with Lynn is,
without a doubt, one of the highlights for Kansans who come to
Washington, DC.
Lynn also understands that while it may seem that this environment is
a loud and boisterous one and that making your appearances on national
TV is an effective way of serving as a Member of Congress, she knows
you can really serve your country, and especially Kansas, by rolling up
your sleeves and just getting to work. It has been a privilege to
witness this firsthand and to work on a number of issues with Lynn over
the years. Together we jointly introduced the fair tax legislation, we
worked together to protect rural healthcare in Kansas, we made certain
our veterans received the benefits they deserve, and we are both chairs
of our respective Hunger Caucuses. We are both lucky to have Bob Dole
as a mentor, and we have made it a priority to carry on his legacy to
end hunger in America and around the globe.
Lynn was also a champion of the Mental Health First Aid Act,
modernizing section 529 college savings plans, and was an integral part
of passing major tax legislation for the first time in 30 years.
Lynn and I often have shared flights back and forth from Kansas to
Washington, DC. She has, like I have, chosen to remain at home in
Kansas, and we are often on the same airplane. I could always count on
Lynn to have the conversation of what was going on in the House and for
her to explain to me what should be going on in the Senate that wasn't.
We were able to take care of our constituents' business by being
together on that flight to Washington, DC, and on the flight home.
It also goes without saying that Lynn will be sorely missed as a
leader and as a sensible voice in Congress and in our Kansas
delegation. Her role will be so difficult to fill, but I know she is
excited about spending more time with her kids, Haley and Hayden, in
that place we so proudly call home, the State of Kansas.
Lynn, I thank you for your many years of service and, on behalf of
all Kansans, I want you to know we appreciate, respect, and admire you.
Lynn, thank you for your friendship, advice, and your realness. I
wish you the best of luck and countless M&Ms in your retirement from
Congress, and in everything that comes next, may you have success and
may you have joy. Please know you will be missed, and we look forward
to spending time together as you tell me, still, what I should be doing
in the U.S. Senate.
Tribute to Kevin Yoder
Madam President, I want to speak this afternoon about another
retirement from Kansas, Congressman Kevin Yoder, who has served the
Third Congressional District of Kansas for four terms. He is a solid
colleague and a good friend.
I met Kevin when he was an intern in our office when I was a Member
of the House of Representatives. I remember his tenacity, his spirit,
and his passion for serving Kansans, which he continued to feel long
after he was an intern in the Moran world.
Kevin went on to serve his fellow students as student body president
at the University of Kansas. He earned a law degree from the University
of Kansas School of Law. He then served the Overland Park community in
the State House of Representatives, and he became chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee.
As a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin also served
as a member of the Appropriations Committee, and there he was, and has
been, a steward of Kansas taxpayers' hard-earned dollars.
As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Kevin has made
biomedical funding a top priority. I have enjoyed working with him as
we advocated for the National Institutes of Health and for the
University of Kansas Cancer Center, which was designated as a National
Cancer Institute in 2012. Kevin served as a real leader in Congress in
advocating for that designation, and it is a point of pride for our
State and the hope of many in our region.
He also serves as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee
on Homeland Security, where he has worked to help protect our borders
and our homeland.
Kevin has been a steady leader in his support for Head Start,
understanding that education uniquely unlocks opportunity, and he has
worked to give underprivileged children a path to success at an early
age--an opportunity they unlikely would have otherwise.
Understanding the complex and outdated nature of our country's
immigration laws, Kevin has championed legislation that could garner
the support of both Republicans and Democrats that would end per-
country caps on employment-based green cards, clearing the backlog of
Indian and Chinese immigrant green card applications, some of which
have been, unfortunately, sitting around untouched on a wait list for
decades.
Kevin also grew up in a small town in Kansas and was a farm kid, and
he also learned the value of hard work and the issue of being
responsible for the consequences of what you do. Kevin will be greatly
missed in our Kansas delegation and here in Washington, DC, and his
shoes will be hard to fill.
Kevin, I hope you are able to spend some well-deserved time with
Brook and your girls. I will miss our flights back and forth between
Kansas in which you were showing me photos on almost every trip of your
children. I wish the very best for Kevin, for Brook, his wife, and his
daughters as they enter this new chapter.
I also pay special tribute to Brook Yoder for her work side-by-side
with her husband. They, together as a team, made a tremendous
difference in Kansas and in Washington, DC.
So on behalf of all Kansans, Kevin, I say thank you for your
dedicated service to our State. Godspeed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The majority whip.
Criminal Justice Reform
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, at 5:30, we will be voting on the first
procedural step to take up criminal justice reform legislation that
started back in 2013 when I introduced a bill we called Federal prison
reform. This legislation is based on prison reform, but it has taken on
some additional attributes relative to how we sentence and how judges
sentence people convicted of various crimes.
Let me explain a little bit about why this should be a priority for
the Senate and for the Congress and for the country. We know the cycle
of crime is all too common. People commit crimes. They serve time in
prison. They get out of prison. They commit another crime. They serve
time again in prison. They are released.
A few years ago, this is what one young man in Houston said when he
was talking about his own experience: He called himself a ``frequent
flyer''--somebody caught in that revolving door of prison and crime.
[[Page S7641]]
In Texas, in 2007, or thereabouts, we had some farsighted visionary
leaders, actually, who decided instead of just being tough on crime,
which Texas has always had a reputation for, we needed to be smart on
crime too. A little more than a decade ago, Texas prisons were bursting
at the seams. We had more people incarcerated in Texas prisons than any
State in the Nation, and tragically we also had high recidivism rates.
So it was obvious we were doing something wrong, and we needed to up
our game.
The Legislative Budget Board in our State estimated that in the next
5 years, Texas would need as many as 17,000 new prison beds to house
the growing inmate population. So two options became clear: build more
costly prisons with the same tragic results or fix the system, and we
chose the latter.
I would say, some of our colleagues and some of the critics of the
underlying bill say: Well, the best way to keep communities safe is to
keep criminals in prison. There are some people, sadly, who will never
take advantage of the opportunity to transform their lives through
faith-based programs, deal with their drug and alcohol addiction, learn
a skill, get a GED; in other words, there are some people,
unfortunately, we can't save, but there are others who understand they
have made a mistake and paid their debt to society and want to turn
their lives around. Those are the type of people this criminal justice
reform bill speaks to.
In the beginning in my State, the decision was largely driven by
cost. The estimated pricetag to build new prisons exceeded $2 billion.
You can imagine what that does to a State's budget, but instead of
leaving taxpayers with the bill and just moving on, a visionary group
of State legislators decided to dive further into the problem to try to
understand it better and propose cost-effective ways to fix it. These
fixes came in a number of forms which, looking back on it now, seem
pretty obvious, pretty intuitive but, at the time, really was
revolutionary.
First were improvements in our parole system, which means that once
people got out of prison, people were then supervised while out of
prison to make sure they met the conditions of their parole. They
didn't get involved with the same bad company that helped them get in
trouble in the first place, and they didn't start using drugs again,
and they kept fully employed.
So this parole supervision targeted 10 percent fewer revocations and
graduated sanctions for small rules violations such as missed meetings.
That is particularly important because one of the first indications
that somebody who is on parole is in trouble is when they don't show up
for their meeting with their parole officer. In the past, that was just
pretty much blown off until those missed meetings began to accumulate,
and then, ultimately, that individual found themselves arrested, back
in jail, and ultimately back in prison. So rather than letting these
small infractions pile up, eventually sending the person back to
prison, each misstep was dealt with swiftly and surely.
In 2005, $55 million was appropriated to Texas probation departments
to make improvements in how we supervise people who had once been in
prison, with most of the funds going toward reducing caseloads. In
other words, parole officers, probation officers, if they have to
handle so many cases, they can't give them the individual attention
they need and that the formerly incarcerated individual will benefit
from. That brought the number of cases down from nearly 150 in some
areas to 110 probationers per officer. This allowed for closer
supervision and constant application of sanctions when called for.
The results were pretty dramatic. In 2005, our State was paroling
21,000 prisoners, 11,000 of whom returned to prison after committing
other crimes. So that means a little more than 50 percent were
eventually going back to prison. A decade later, putting in place these
reforms, the State paroled 28,000 prisoners, and about 4,500 came
back--or only 16 percent. So we went from about half of the people in
prison being paroled without much supervision and much help to only 16
percent because of these reforms.
These reforms, as I said at the outset, may not look so obvious--and
it seems so intuitive that it seems clear to us today--but at the time,
it was pretty groundbreaking.
As we all know, for many politicians, one of their biggest fears when
it comes to their next election is being accused of being soft on
crime, but, again, this is not about being tough on crime or soft on
crime, this is about being smart on crime and getting the best results.
The decline in revocations led to the savings of $119 million for
Texas taxpayers--more than double the initial investment in these
programs.
Second were improvements to prison alternatives for low-level,
nonviolent offenders. Judges and prosecutors and corrections officials
were frustrated by the number of these individuals who kept ending up
right back where they started, with no real change in their trajectory
and certainly no more hope for their future. So the State started to
provide funding to increase access to things like substance abuse
treatment, drug courts, and mental illness treatment.
Again, the reason why people end up in prison often has very little
to do with their desire to live a life of crime; many of them feed
their addiction by theft and other crimes. People who are mentally ill
who go to jail or prison, without a diagnosis in treatment, don't get
any better, and when they get let out of jail and prison, they just go
back deteriorating until they become a danger to themselves and others.
In addition, mandatory prerelease programs were expanded to reduce
the backlog of inmates waiting to complete these requirements. In other
words, there were a lot more people who wanted to go through these
programs because they recognized the benefit to themselves and their
families, but they just simply couldn't get into the programs because
there weren't enough slots.
For example, the expansion of a drug treatment plan brought down wait
time from 1 year to 4 months. If you are somebody with a drug problem,
and you are told: ``We don't have room for you. Come back in a year,''
that can be, obviously, discouraging and not result in getting them the
help they need.
Moving the wait time for drug treatment down from 1 year to 4 months
moved two-thirds of the waitlist into treatment, after which they were
released, only to see a more hopeful and better outcome.
In Texas, the model worked. Not only did we avoid building new
prisons, we have actually closed eight prisons in Texas. Again, this
sounds a little shocking if you are from other parts of the country
where you hear about our tough-on-crime reputation, but because of
these reforms, we were actually able to close eight prisons because
they were no longer needed. We quickly saw a reduction in both
incarceration and crime rates by double digits at the same time.
To me, this is the essence of criminal justice reform. There are some
who say: We need to do criminal justice reform because, well, we simply
imprison too many people. There are others who say: Well, we imprison
people for offenses that are disproportionate to what they have done.
To me, the essence of criminal justice reform is reducing the crime
rate--in other words, increasing and improving public safety.
Other States took notice of what was happening and started to do the
same. Georgia, Rhode Island, and North Carolina quickly followed suit,
and we have seen several other States across the United States adopt
similar reforms.
When I say we saw a reduction in both incarceration and crime rates,
let me give a couple of numbers.
From 2005 to 2016, Texas's FBI index crime plummeted by more than 34
percent. In the same period, the incarceration rate dropped 23 percent.
Those are pretty shocking and surprising numbers. The crime rate went
down 34 percent, and the incarcerate rate dropped 23 percent. You would
think the opposite would be true--that with incarceration rates going
down, the crime rate would go up--but because of these visionary
programs and reforms, they simply worked in tandem to both reduce the
incarceration rate and improve public safety at the same time.
It is clear now, based on experience, that these reforms and outcomes
are real. I have been working with my colleagues in the Senate
Judiciary Committee since 2013 to try to bring these
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reforms now to the national level. The FIRST STEP Act is our
opportunity to do just that this week in the Senate.
Thanks to the primary sponsors of the FIRST STEP Act--the Senator
from Illinois, who has joined us here in the Chamber, the chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, Senator Grassley, Mike Lee, Pat Leahy, and
others who have worked on this bill. Sheldon Whitehouse and I worked
primarily on the prison reform bill.
The current bill has undergone some major improvements over the last
few weeks, which I am very proud of. The previous version of this
legislation had a number of very positive attributes. In fact, more
than three-quarters of the bill was based on the CORRECTIONS Act that
Senator Whitehouse and I introduced in 2014, which is the prison reform
component of the legislation. But the remainder--the sentencing
elements in the bill--was more controversial, and many of my concerns
were shared by members of the law enforcement community.
As I was gauging where Members stood on the bill, it was clear that
many could not support the old version of the bill and needed the
primary sponsors of the bill--whom I mentioned a moment ago--to work
with them to try to make it more acceptable to law enforcement, which
was going to send a signal to many other Senators about whether they
should get behind the bill.
We have all learned how to get things done here in the Senate, and
that is not to just point out the problems with legislation but to
listen and work together to find solutions, and that is exactly what we
did. We spent a lot of time talking to national law enforcement
organizations and those in Texas. I know we all value the input of our
sheriffs, police chiefs, and other law enforcement professionals, and
we tried to work with them to figure out how we could make this bill
stronger. I listened to feedback from our Nation's police officers and
sheriffs, and we all got to work. We had meetings, we negotiated, and
we compromised with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, as well as
friends across the Capitol in the House.
We also worked with the White House, whom we have all stayed in
constant contact with on this issue since the Trump administration took
office nearly 2 years ago. Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law,
has been relentless in his pursuit of getting this criminal justice
reform bill done, and I know each of us who has been involved in this
legislation has talked to him almost on a daily basis, sometimes many
times in a given day.
This bill is the product of those negotiations and those changes, and
I am not the only one who is happy with the result. Since these
improvements have been made, the bill has been endorsed by a number of
important groups, including the National Association of Counties, the
Texas Municipal Police Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, and
the Council of State Governments. I appreciate the dedication and hard
work of our colleagues who worked on this to get the bill to where it
is today.
Before tonight's cloture vote, I want to correct some misconceptions
floating around about what this bill will and will not do.
There are some who, for example, say that this legislation will put
violent criminals and sex offenders back on the streets, which is
completely false. Let me say that again because I think it bears
repeating. This bill will not allow dangerous, violent criminals to be
released early. That is pure fiction.
Not everyone is eligible to earn the credits that lead to early
release based on their participation in these programs which I talked
about a moment ago. This bill specifically lists 48 offenses that
disqualify offenders from earning time credits, including crimes such
as murder, specified assault, carjacking that results in injury or
death, and unlawful possession or use of a firearm by violent criminals
and drug traffickers.
Simply put, we use the most modern social science evaluation tools to
find out who is at low risk of reoffending. They are the ones who get
the benefit of these programs because we think these are the ones who
are most likely to have a good outcome and not end up back in prison.
We have disqualified violent offenders, including anybody who either
used or displayed or happened to be carrying a firearm during the
course of committing their offense.
Those who have not committed one of those crimes aren't automatically
eligible. In fact, nobody is automatically eligible for the benefits of
this program. As I said, they have to be evaluated to be at minimum or
low recidivism risk. That decision isn't made by Congress; it is made
by the experienced law enforcement professionals and wardens in the
Federal Bureau of Prisons who work with these men and women every day.
It is important that we look at people who are at low risk of
recidivism and low risk to public safety in the community because what
we can do is use the resources not to keep people like that behind bars
unnecessarily but to focus on the truly violent criminals who are not
likely to be rehabilitated because, frankly, they don't want to be
rehabilitated. Focusing on the most dangerous criminals and keeping
them behind bars, while providing relief to those who earned that time
credit, just makes common sense.
Some people are falsely claiming that the FIRST STEP Act will
retroactively release illegal immigrants and top-level drug traffickers
by increasing the good time credit by 7 days a year. Again, that is
simply not true. All the bill does is clarify Congress's original
intent when it comes to good time credit.
Good time credit is different from the earned credit for
participating in these various programs. But you can imagine how
important this is to the safety of the jailers, wardens, and public law
enforcement officials in the prisons because it gives inmates hope that
if they lead exemplary lives while in prison, they have greater hope of
earning good time credit and getting out earlier.
All this does is clarifies Congress's original intent that 54 days of
good time credit be available rather than the 47 days that the Bureau
of Prisons had interpreted under previous law that was more ambiguous.
So that is not a change to what Congress intended but merely a
clarification of preexisting congressional intent.
In addition, some of the bill's detractors are claiming it will allow
gang members and high-risk inmates to be transferred to lower security
prisons in order to be closer to their homes. This, too, is false. Gang
members and high-risk inmates will not be transferred to lower security
prisons under this bill. While the bill does call for inmates to be
transferred to a prison within 500 miles of their release residence,
that only applies if there are no security concerns and is subject to
availability of beds and other conditions.
For example, a member of the dangerous MS-13 gang is held in maximum
security over 500 miles from their release residence. There happens to
be a minimum-security prison within 500 miles of their release
residence. They would not be transferred. We simply don't transfer
violent criminals to medium-security prisons because they happen to be
within 500 miles of their residence.
There has been a lot of mythology, misunderstanding, and
misrepresentation of what is in the bill. The goal of this bill is not
to release broad swaths of criminals--in fact, it is just the opposite.
This legislation allows prisons to help criminals transform their
lives, if they are willing to take the steps and responsibility to do
so, so that we are not perpetuating the cycle of crime that continues
to plague communities across the country and to drain taxpayer dollars
in the process and damage public safety.
I thank all of our colleagues who have worked so hard on this
legislation. I think one of the most important attributes of a
legislator--certainly of a Senator--is to listen to our constituents,
listen to the feedback from our Members, and help build a better bill
that will garner significantly more support than it otherwise would
have had. I am confident that the Senate will pass this bill, and we
can soon send it to the President's desk for his signature.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
Recognition Of The Minority Leader
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.
Government Shutdown
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on another subject, we are 5 days away
from a lapse in appropriations, and President Trump still doesn't have
a
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plan to keep the government open. In fact, the only indication he has
given is that he wants a government shutdown.
At the moment, the situation should be clear to everyone: President
Trump does not have the votes for his wall. He certainly doesn't have
the votes in the Senate, and it doesn't seem he has the votes even in
the House, where he needs only Republican votes.
Tellingly, the House is on recess until Wednesday night--just 2 days
before the Trump shutdown would start. It is because the House
leadership has no idea what to do, where the votes are, or where the
people are. Many of them don't want to come back. Everyone knows the
situation. Even with a Republican Congress, no threat or temper tantrum
will get the President his wall.
On the other hand, Democrats are all together. We have given a
proposal to President Trump. We have given two alternatives to
President Trump that could easily pass both the House and the Senate.
We could pass the six bipartisan appropriations bills and a 1-year CR
on homeland security, or we could pass a 1-year CR for all of the
remaining Agencies. President Trump should support one of these options
and spare innocent, hard-working Americans the pain of an unnecessary
Trump shutdown. His temper tantrum will get him a shutdown but will not
get him a wall. It is futile.
Unfortunately, since our meeting last Tuesday, Leader Pelosi and I
have still not heard from the White House whether they will accept
either of these two options, nor have we even heard from our Republican
colleagues in the Senate or House about what they might support to
avoid a shutdown--not a peep. They are nowhere to be found.
A reporter told me that Republicans said: What is the Democrats'
plan? We gave them two. The real question is, What is the Republicans'
plan? They don't have one. They don't know what to do. In the
scuttlebutt, where we talk to one another, Senate Republican leadership
has no idea what President Trump wants. Neither does House Republican
leadership. And they don't have the courage, the strength, in my
judgment, or the wisdom to tell the President he is wrong on this, and
let's move forward. That amazes me more in the House than anywhere
else. House Republicans lost 40 seats by just clinging to President
Trump even when they knew he was wrong.
Are they continuing this pattern of behavior, and are our Senate
colleagues going to do the same? It makes no sense. My friends on the
other side of the aisle know the President's wall is wrong,
ineffective, and it cannot pass. The President's daily Twitter
outbursts can't alter reality.
My Republican friends need to step up and convince the President to
pick one of the two sensible offers we have made. Right now, nobody
seems to know what Republicans want or plan to do. It is shocking that
Republicans haven't engaged yet in this process, considering they
control the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. What a symbol, what
evidence of disarray.
Once again, I remind my Republican colleagues that going along with a
Trump shutdown is a futile act. When Democrats take control of the
House on January 3, they will pass one of our two options to fund the
government, and then leader McConnell and Senate Republicans will be
left holding the bag for a Trump shutdown. The onus for reopening the
government will wind up on their lap. That is not what they should
want. I don't think they do want it. They are just so fearful of
departing from President Trump. I remind them, when the President
wasn't mixing in, we did two good budget seasons. We did two good
appropriations bills, which got large majorities of Democrats and
Republicans in the House and Senate. You can't let the President
interfere, particularly when he does it in a pound-table, tantrum-like
way, without any plan or knowledge of how to get things done.
If President Trump decides to shut down the government, there is no
endgame in which President Trump gets the wall. There is no endgame for
Republicans in which they can avoid their share of responsibility--
overwhelming share--for a shutdown. The time to solve this problem is
now.
Healthcare
Madam President, on healthcare, on Friday, in response to a suit
brought by Republican attorneys general, a district court judge in
Texas issued a bizarre and dreadful ruling that the Affordable Care Act
was unconstitutional because of changes to the law made by
congressional Republicans. If the ruling is ultimately upheld, the
consequences would be disastrous for the American people. It would
jeopardize health insurance for more than 20 million Americans who
gained insurance on the exchanges or through expanded Medicaid. It
would end protections for the 133 million Americans living with
preexisting conditions. Can you imagine a mom and dad who have a
daughter or a son with cancer, and we now allow the insurance companies
to cut them off by not giving them new insurance as they watch their
child suffer? That is not America. That is not the situation now
because of what we all did in 2009 with the ACA. Are our Republican
colleagues going to let that happen?
Americans under the age of 26 could no longer stay on their parents'
health insurance. That has been a sigh of relief a breath of fresh air
for millions who get out of college and want to get a job but can't
take the job they want because there is not adequate health insurance.
It would reopen the prescription drug doughnut hole in Medicare. That
would mean that seniors on Medicare--tens of millions--would pay more
for prescription drugs, and essential health benefits would be gone.
These are not just trivial things. They include guaranteed access to
maternity care, free preventive cancer screenings, treatment for opioid
addiction--crucial things that Americans need that allow them to go
away.
You can see the extent of the disaster if this court case prevails.
Hundreds of millions of Americans would be hurt. Our healthcare system
would be thrown into chaos, including for families who get health
insurance from their employer.
We Democrats believe the ruling is based on such faulty premises that
it will not be upheld by a higher court once it is appealed, but given
the potential consequences of their ruling, we cannot twiddle our
thumbs and hope for the right result.
The court, I would remind my colleagues, based a good portion of its
decision on what Congress intended. We can clear that up in a minute--
in a minute. My friend, Senator Manchin, has a resolution which every
Democrat in this body has signed onto, to petition the Senate legal
counsel to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the Affordable Care Act
on behalf of the Senate because the Trump administration refuses to
defend the law and is in favor of it being overturned.
President Trump was almost gleeful when this court case came out. Is
he going to be gleeful to those parents with cancer, to that college
graduate who needs healthcare, to a family who has a father on opioids
and needs help? Is he going to be gleeful if they don't get it? I don't
get him sometimes, much of the time.
I hope our Republican colleagues will join us in this petition
because if a majority of the House and a majority of the Senate tell
the appeals courts our intention was not to overthrow healthcare, it
will have a great deal of weight. Some say: Well, let's do legislation.
We have all been through that before, with both Democrats and
Republicans in charge, a very hard, long time--it takes a long time to
get healthcare.
By the way, the President and a lot of my Republican friends want to
cut back on healthcare. That is their goal. They will never come to
agreement with us--Democrats in the Senate or the House, which will be
democratically controlled in a few weeks--if they stick with that.
Legislation is not the best and first way to go; court intervention
is. We will be watching. The American people will be watching,
particularly so many of my colleagues who said: I am for preexisting
conditions.
We are going to let them know this idea of ``let's do legislation''
will not work. Where are they on the petition? That will determine
whether they are hypocrites, saying they want to protect preexisting
conditions but not doing the best thing for it or whether they really
care about the people who will lose health insurance.
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The American people spoke loudly and clearly in the midterms: They
want their healthcare protections, and they don't want Republicans to
take them away. I believe Republicans will have no choice but
eventually to join us. To not do so would be to jeopardize healthcare
for hundreds of millions of Americans and risk a complete disaster for
Republicans in future elections.
Tribute to Lamar Alexander
Madam President, on Lamar Alexander, my dear friend, we received sad
news today--sad for us, happy for him--that our friend, the senior
Senator from Tennessee will not be running for reelection in 2020.
There will be time to reflect on his life and career at a later date,
but upon hearing the news this afternoon, as I was taking the Amtrak
down from New York, I felt a pang of sadness. Lamar and I have been
dear friends, and we worked so hard on many things together.
I want to say a few words now. When Senator Alexander eventually does
leave this body, the Senate will lose an incredibly capable legislator
and statesman. He cares so much about legislating. He reminded me, when
I talked to him this afternoon, that he will still be around for 2
years and wants to work together to get things done--an
``Alexanderian'' statement, if there ever was one.
Senator Alexander has been in the midst of so many things for his 16
years in the Senate, and that is not because he is some ideologue who
stood all alone in his own corner and made a lot of speeches and didn't
get things done. No. Senator Alexander seeks compromise almost
reflexively, and he gets things done--the recent higher education bill
and legislation dealing with opioids, which he was so passionate about,
and he talked to me about it every day for about a month. He gets
things done because of his passion, his intelligence as a legislator,
and his persistence.
Both sides of the aisle respect and trust Lamar. I do. We have worked
together so many times in my years here, and hopefully, as he said on
the phone, there will be a few more opportunities in the next 2 years,
his last 2 years in the Senate, to work together successfully,
hopefully, and God willing again.
Even though he is not here at the moment, I salute my friend from
Tennessee and look forward to seeing him in the gym tomorrow morning--
we always see each other in the gym--where I can convey these
sentiments personally.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. DURBIN. Let me start by joining my colleague, the Democratic
leader, in his words about Lamar Alexander--a great Senator and a
personal friend, someone I am sorry is going to bring his Senate career
to an end in 2 years because he has done so many good things. I could
spell out many of those things, but one comes to mind immediately. A
few years ago when I was deciding whether to run for reelection myself,
I thought one of my goals would be to increase the Federal investment
in medical research. That is right in the wheelhouse of the committee
jurisdiction of Lamar Alexander. I went to him and his counterpart on
the Democratic side, Senator Patty Murray of Washington, and Roy Blunt
of Missouri, and we put together an informal team pushing for increases
in medical research. We have had amazing success. It has been
bipartisan, and it has been an enthusiastic effort all around. We
couldn't have done it without Lamar's wholehearted participation. He
was committed to medical research, and as a result, we have had more
than a 5-percent increase each year for the last 4 years in the budget
and appropriations for the National Institutes of Health. That is going
to end up creating more opportunities to spare people suffering and to
cure disease and to save lives than we can possibly imagine. That is
the kind of thing people expect of us, don't they, in the Senate?
The Democrats and Republicans will find a common goal and work
together to achieve it. Lamar Alexander was part of that successful
effort. I am going to hold him to it for the next 2 years, as I am sure
he will hold me to the same goal. I look forward to working with him
but certainly with some pain in my heart, as the Democratic leader
said, with the knowledge his career is coming to an end. He has been an
extraordinary public servant as a Governor, as a Presidential
candidate, as a Cabinet member, and as a Member of the U.S. Senate. I
am sorry for his decision, but I certainly understand why he would make
that on a personal and family basis.
First Step Act
Madam President, I wish to say a few words about the legislation
currently pending before the U.S. Senate. Every once in a while--it
doesn't happen very often--the stars line up and the Democrats and
Republicans and the conservatives and the progressives and the
President and the Congress agree on something. I am not talking about
Flag Day or apple pie or whether Lassie was a collie dog. It really
comes down, occasionally, to something that is meaningful. We are in
the midst now of a debate on the floor of the Senate, which will
culminate probably tomorrow in some historic votes on the whole
question of criminal justice reform.
How important is this issue? It is so important that we rarely take
it up more than once a decade; that we sit down and look at criminal
justice standards and laws in America and decide whether we can make
them better and more effective.
Just a few minutes ago, my colleague from Texas, Senator Cornyn, a
conservative Republican, came to the floor and explained how the State
of Texas engaged in prison reform and found out they could not only
reduce the prison population but reduce the incidence of crime at the
same time. That is what we are setting out to do at the Federal level
as well.
Senator Cornyn's prison reform measure, which he introduced with
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, has been a central part of
our conversation on criminal justice reform.
I had another part of criminal justice reform that I have been
working on for a long time. Three decades ago, Congress responded to
our Nation's drug epidemic by creating the harshest mandatory minimum
sentences in our history. Consider what happened next as we made the
penalties for drug use and sales higher than ever in our history. What
happened next was the use of illegal drugs in the United States of
America actually increased, just the opposite of what we were trying to
achieve. The availability of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine
increased, despite harsh criminal penalties. Crime rates for Federal
drug offenders did not go down. In other words, longer prison terms did
not deter drug use or drug crime, but they did lead to an explosion in
our Federal prisons.
Since 1980, the Federal prison population has grown by over 700
percent. Federal prison spending has increased by nearly 600 percent in
that period of time. Today, the United States of America holds more
prisoners, by far, in prison than any country in the world. America has
5 percent of the world's population, 25 percent of the world's
prisoners--more than Russia or China. Our overcrowded Federal prisons
consume one-quarter of the Justice Department's discretionary budget.
This undermines other important priorities, like preventing crime in
our neighborhoods and treating drug addiction.
The largest increase in the Federal prison population is for
nonviolent drug offenders. This is largely because of the inflexible
mandatory minimum sentences. These mandatory penalties don't allow
judges to distinguish between drug kingpins, who should be our focus
when it comes to criminal penalties, and lower level offenders. That
isn't fair. It isn't smart. It isn't an effective way to keep us safe.
We also have to consider the racially disparate impact of these laws.
Listen, the majority of illegal drug users and dealers in America are
White, but three-quarters of the people serving time in prison for drug
offenses are African American or Latino. The majority of the users and
dealers are White, and three-fourths of those who go to prison for drug
crimes are African American and Latino, and the large majority of those
subject to Federal mandatory minimum penalties fall into that same
group of African Americans and Latinos.
As a result of mandatory minimums, the families of nonviolent
offenders are separated for years on end. Most of
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these families are people of color. This has a destructive impact on
their communities and erodes faith among them in our criminal justice
system.
Most Senators don't come to the floor and say what I am about to say,
but let me tell you the worst vote I ever cast. I was a Member of the
House of Representatives, and it was about 25 or 26 years ago when I
voted for a law that established what became known as the crack powder
sentencing disparity. That jumble of words means that under this law,
it took 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger the
same minimum sentence--100 times. This came to be known as the 100-to-1
crack-to-powder disparity. Under this law 80 percent of the people
sentenced for crack cocaine offenses were African American.
In 2010 I worked with an unlikely ally, then-Senator Jeff Sessions
from Alabama. He was a Republican Senator and a member of the Judiciary
Committee, and he felt strongly about this issue.
I said to him: Senator Sessions, 100 to 1 isn't fair--that for a tiny
handful of crack and a handful of powder cocaine, the handful of crack
would get 100 times the sentence as the cocaine doesn't make any sense.
We debated back and forth. I thought it should be one to one in the
sentencing. He didn't agree, but the day finally came when we had to
make a decision. We actually bargained in the Senate gym. I know the
Democratic leader referred to that gym earlier. We get a lot of
business done there. We were bargaining in the gym on the day of the
committee markup--back and forth and back and forth. Finally, the two
of us agreed that it would go from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1. I can't tell
you why 18, but it was a compromise. It dramatically reduced the
disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine.
That Fair Sentencing Act passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
Senate, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House, and it was signed
into law in a very private ceremony by President Obama, which Senator
Sessions and I attended.
For the last 5 years, I have been working on the next step--a
bipartisan coalition of Republican and Democratic Senators to take the
next step on reforming our Federal drug sentencing laws. Five years ago
I joined up with another unlikely ally--Mike Lee, a very, very
conservative Republican from Utah--to introduce a bill called the
Smarter Sentencing Act. We had a problem. There was a Republican
Senator who didn't like the bill at all. His name? Chuck Grassley, from
Iowa, a conservative Republican. Coincidentally, he is chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee.
After a while, I said to Senator Lee: We are going nowhere without
Grassley. We have to get him on board if we are going to change the
law.
It took a year, which is just a few minutes in Senate time. It took a
year of negotiating for us to finally reach an agreement that Chuck
Grassley and Mike Lee and I all signed on to for sentencing reform.
We were joined by Senator Cory Booker in the last year or two, a
Democrat from New Jersey. After more than a year of negotiations, we
introduced the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, legislation
approved by the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 16 to 5 earlier this
year.
Around the same time, the House of Representatives passed bipartisan
legislation to reform the Federal prison system. This bill was
supported--listen to this--by President Donald Trump, cosponsored by
Republican Congressman Doug Collins, Democratic Congressman Hakeem
Jeffries of New York, and Republican House Judiciary Committee chairman
Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.
I didn't like the original version of this bill because I thought we
could do better and we should add criminal sentencing to prison reform.
Then we did something that is rare. We sat down, Democrats and
Republicans, and worked it out. We believed that we could come up with
a common bipartisan bill by combining the two.
The result is the most extraordinary political coalition I have ever
witnessed in the time I have been in Washington. The so-called FIRST
STEP Act--the revised FIRST STEP Act--is a bipartisan sentencing and
prison reform bill that is sponsored by 34 Senators--17 Republicans and
17 Democrats. It is supported by President Trump and a broad spectrum
of stakeholders.
Listen to who is supporting this bill on criminal sentencing reform
and prison reform: the Fraternal Order of Police. That is a good
starting point. It is the largest police group in America. There is the
National District Attorneys Association, the largest group of
prosecutors in America. So we have the police and the prosecutors, and
we also have the American Civil Liberties Union. Go figure that a bill
we put together could bring these folks together in common purpose to
pass it.
Our bill would reduce Federal mandatory minimum sentences in a
targeted way. We don't repeal any mandatory minimum sentences, and we
don't lower any maximum sentences. We would simply allow Federal judges
to determine in certain low-level cases, on a case-by-case basis, when
the harshest penalties should apply.
The bill also puts in place a recidivism reduction program and prison
reform that will facilitate the successful rehabilitation and reentry
of prisoners, which Senator Cornyn addressed just a few minutes
earlier.
Let me tell you a story about this man here. His name is Alton Mills.
In the year 1994, at the age of 24, Alton Mills was given a mandatory
life sentence without parole for a low-level nonviolent drug offense.
When Alton Mills stepped into that Federal prison cell with a life
sentence, he was stepping into a jail cell for the first time in his
life, and he was bound to stay there for the rest of his life.
I ended up being contacted by his public defender. She has this
wonderful name. She is from Chicago. Her name is MiAngel Cody. MiAngel
Cody contacted me and told me Alton Mills' story--how this kid growing
up in Chicago, a decent kid in high school, made a bad turn, got mixed
up with a drug gang, was a sales runner on the street, which is just
the lowest possible level, and on a third offense got a life sentence
to spend the rest of his life in prison.
I asked President Obama to take a look at this and consider
commutation. In December of 2015, after serving 22 years in prison,
Alton Mills came home to Chicago.
What has he done since then? He has become a mechanic at the Chicago
Transit Authority. He got married. He is contributing to society. He
has a granddaughter. He is working as a community college student
pursuing an associate's degree. If he hadn't received a pardon, Alton
Mills was destined to die in prison because of the Federal sentencing
laws that we are setting out to change.
The FIRST STEP Act would eliminate this mandatory life sentence for
nonviolent drug offenders like Alton Mills, and the bill would also
give a chance to thousands of people still serving sentences for
nonviolent offenses involving crack cocaine under the 100-to-1 standard
I mentioned earlier.
I am going to have more to say about the pending amendments, which
will be brought up tomorrow. The Senator from Arkansas is going to
offer three amendments that I consider to be poison pills.
After 6 years of hard work putting these bills together--Democrats
and Republicans, police, prosecutors, the ACLU, and President Trump and
Senator Durbin together on a bill--now comes the Senator from Arkansas,
who has introduced three amendments which I think are very destructive
to this bill. I am going to oppose all three of them, and I hope he
will think twice about them.
We have an opportunity to do something significant, historic, and
bipartisan here for the good of this Nation. We could end up reducing
the crime rate in our country and do it in a smarter way with
sentencing and prison reform. The amendments that he will propose
tomorrow--the Senator from Arkansas--have been opposed by groups across
the board--left and right, conservative, progressive, Republican, and
Democrat. They all oppose his amendments.
I am not going to get into a specific discussion about them until
later, but I wanted to let the Senator from Arkansas know that we are
hopeful that he will take a more constructive approach. If he goes with
the amendments that we have seen, we are going to have to do our best
to oppose him.
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Some are going to suggest that the underlying bill doesn't go far
enough to unwind the harsh mandatory sentencing that I mentioned
earlier. I agree. But that is the nature of legislation. It is the
nature of compromise. It is what the Senate is all about. A Republican-
controlled Senate is considering a bill supported by Senators from both
sides of the aisle, and we have a chance to do something. Congress
should make this bipartisan legislation a fitting ending to this year.
For all of the cynicism and skepticism about what Congress can achieve,
we can prove as soon as tomorrow, with one of the most historic changes
in criminal justice legislation in our history, that we can work
together for the good of this Nation. Our people who send us to this
job expect no less.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. JONES. Madam President, I rise today to talk on two issues.
First, I would like to talk about the criminal justice reform act
that Senator Durbin just spoke of. Rather than repeating all that has
been said and all of the positive things--and Senator Durbin did an
outstanding job outlining all of the issues and how important this bill
is for the criminal justice system and for the American public--I would
like to take a moment just to commend my colleagues--particularly
Senator Durbin and Senator Grassley, Senator Lee, Senator Booker,
colleagues in the House of Representatives, and those at the White
House who worked so tirelessly over the years to achieve this result.
This is a remarkable achievement for the people of this country.
I have worked, as most people in this body know, for a number of
years as both a prosecutor and as a defense lawyer. In that capacity, I
have seen firsthand the problems in a system of justice that seems to
have gotten out of whack and that has incarcerated so many people--more
than just about any civilized country in the world--and yields very
little results.
So what I see is an effort of Republicans and Democrats coming
together. When I ran for this office last year, I talked consistently
about a country and the State of Alabama that had more in common than
we have to divide us. I talked more about reaching across the aisle and
having dialogues, instead of monologues. This bill is the perfect
example of that, and I hope the people of America see what this bill
does and see how this body and the House of Representatives and the
administration came together to pass this historic legislation.
This is a historic moment, Madam President. This is one for the ages,
there is no question. Sometimes it is so disappointing to go back home
to Alabama and hear people say: ``All I want you to do is work
together.''
All they see are dueling press conferences among the leaders and
dueling talk shows on Sunday mornings and on CNN and MSNBC and FOX
News, and they think that all we do is stand here and fight each other.
That is not the case. We have done some great things in the Senate
since I have been here on January 3. Our appropriations process has
been rolling on a bipartisan level. We passed the opioid crisis bill.
We also have the farm bill done. Now, with criminal justice--it is the
crowning achievement on what has been, over the years, one of the most
contentious issues in America. Every year, I used to say that the
system of justice in America that was damaged the most in election was
our criminal justice system because it seemed that everybody wanted to
demagogue it today. That is no longer the case in what has been done in
this body, the House, and with the support of the White House.
I want to commend all of those who have been involved in this over
the years before I got here, both in and out of government. I worked
for a number of years with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU--
particularly the law enforcement leaders--to reduce crime and
incarceration. We put in countless hours, and this is the culmination
of a number of years of work. They should be commended for all they
did.
(Mr. MORAN assumed the Chair.)
Remembering Giles Perkins
Mr. President, I want to talk about a matter that is a lot more
personal. The last couple of weeks have been somewhat difficult for me
on a very personal level. Not only have I been saddened that several of
my colleagues whom I admire so much will be leaving this body, but 2
weeks ago, I lost a dear friend and trusted adviser, Giles Perkins of
Birmingham, AL.
I so appreciate the fact that the day after his death, when I just
could not hold up and hold it together to do so myself, Senator Schumer
noted his passing in floor remarks. Giles' family appreciates those
remarks as well, but because he meant so much to his adopted State of
Alabama and the Birmingham community and the fact that he is the one
who guided the effort to elect me to this office, it is only fitting
that I honor his memory on the floor of the Senate.
Giles was a former director of the Alabama Democratic Party and
someone who worked for the last two Alabama Democratic Governors.
Originally from Texas, he came to Alabama after marrying the love of
his life, Hillery Head, in the early 1990s. Together, they have three
children: Barton, Hugh, and Beverly. For all that he did in life and
all that he accomplished, which was quite a lot, Giles was first and
foremost a husband and father, a family man whose greatest love and
source of pride were his wife and children.
When he arrived in Alabama, he immediately began to get involved in
the community and in politics. He got involved in the Folsom campaign
for Governor, telling people that he simply wanted to make a
difference. Over the next 25 years, he did just that. What a difference
he made.
While Giles was actively involved in numerous civic groups and
projects, his greatest accomplishment was turning a few blighted blocks
of real estate in the heart of the city of Birmingham into a stunning
outdoor recreational area known as Railroad Park, which has not only
provided a space for family enjoyment but spurred economic development
and became a catalyst for revitalization in downtown Birmingham.
Giles was an outstanding lawyer and community organizer, but he had
politics in his blood, and he learned the ins and outs of the shark
infested waters of Alabama politics like no other.
It was Giles whom I first approached about running for a statewide
office because I knew he shared my frustration with the state of
politics and government in the State of Alabama. It was Giles and Doug
Turner who sat me down to explain about running for the U.S. Senate--
where my heart has always been, having worked here just out of law
school--why it was important to run for that office; why, given my
background as a U.S. attorney and as a lawyer known for civil rights
work, the special election would be so important. It was also Giles who
brought in Joe Trippi, everyone else on my campaign team, and helped me
staff my Senate office.
But rather than calling him a political mentor, which just doesn't
seem to capture all that he was, I often referred to him as ``Yoda,'' a
political Jedi master, because of his vision and intuition for politics
and how politics should translate into public service. He was certainly
a master in teaching those around him how they could be wise in the
ways of the force of politics. His strategy for my campaign and my
Senate office and tenure was molded out of a vision of how Alabama and
the South can move beyond the issues that have divided us and how we
can lead the Nation in coming together and healing the partisan divide.
Many think that my election was his greatest political achievement,
but knowing him as I did, he would more likely say that it was not the
election per se but the reaction that the election gave to so many
people in Alabama and around the country who simply said that it gave
them hope. That hope for a better Alabama, for a better South, and for
a better America was his No. 1 priority.
He was brilliant, philosophical, tenacious, stubborn, funny, and so
straightforward that you thought he was sometimes just a little bit
mean--a trait you often have to have in order to have a successful
campaign.
The absolutely remarkable thing about Giles, though, was that he
managed my campaign on a daily basis--all of the calls, emails, and all
of the meetings knowing he was living on borrowed time. At the time we
began the campaign, he was a 2 year survivor of
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pancreatic cancer, an aggressive form of cancer that takes no
prisoners. Through it all, he suffered through a number of treatments,
often texting or emailing orders or streams of consciousness while
being hooked up to chemotherapy.
When asked why he was doing all of this under the strain and pain of
his cancer and his treatments, he matter of factly said: ``Because I
want to show my children what is important and how to live.'' I am
confident that his children got that, as did I and everyone else
associated with our campaign.
Giles lost his battle on December 2, having survived for 3\1/2\ years
after being told he only had 1 month to live. In the world of
pancreatic cancer, a 3\1/2\-year survivor is remarkable in itself, but
Giles Perkins was a remarkable human who made such a positive impact on
all who knew him.
As a friend recently wrote me, ``It is because of unsung heroes such
as Giles that democracy is sustained in America'' and that we are
``grateful for his commitment and life's work to maintaining integrity
in government.''
I know this: When the history of Alabama and the politics of my State
and the region are written, it will be Giles Perkins who will be
credited for beginning a political change that will be felt for a long,
long time.
On a personal level, he will never leave my heart and soul.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remarks I made at
Giles' memorial last Friday be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Giles Perkins, Railroad Park Memorial, December 14, 2018
It is, I believe, a rare occasion when someone stands
before a grieving crowd in an effort to memorialize more than
a relative or close friend but someone who was the driving
force behind making a lifelong dream come true. That folks is
the challenge I have faced the last twelve days-Giles was my
dear friend but as you all know he was also the person
primarily responsible for making my lifelong dream of being a
United States Senator become a reality.
I have also faced the double challenge of not having Giles
around to help with my remarks. For the last 18 months or so
he helped me craft so many of my speeches, from the campaign
stump speeches to my maiden speech on the floor of the
Senate, to a broad speech about the South and our place in
history that could be adopted in a number of contexts. He was
always thinking of a bigger picture than most of us were
thinking of and regardless of who the messenger was going to
be, Giles wanted to control the message to the extent that he
could. He had the confidence and self assurance, and let's
face a little bit of arrogance--to craft the message that he
believed should be delivered. Giles knew he his fate several
weeks ago and was able to help plan this day, but when he
really started to go down, he went down rather fast. So that
is why I am convinced that he is looking down on us today and
somewhat cringing with anxiety of not really knowing what any
of us are going to say. For me in particular, knowing how he
has helped manage me the last 18 months my guess is that when
Hillery and the kids start going through his papers or his
notes on his IPad there will be something titled ``Notes for
Jones to say at my memorial.''
Well my friend, I guess I will have to give it a shot
without you.
One of the people in history that Giles admired most was
Robert Kennedy and in many ways his life mirrored that of
Bobby's.
Giles was as tough as nails, who had as firm a grip on life
and people as anyone I have ever known. Louise often called
him a gunslinger who could quickly shoot you down with simply
an expression or comment. But he also had a very soft and
gentle side, especially with his family. Above all else Giles
was a family many totally devoted to Hillery and his children
Barton, Hugh and Beverly. He adored them all and no matter
what challenges he took on, from being a lawyer, a community
activist, a political candidate, a campaign strategist or a
warrior against cancer, Giles always made time for his
family. He not only loved them but he believed in them. For
all the successes he had in life, including the election of a
mayor, a Governor and a US Senator, his wife and children
were his greatest source of pride.
Giles was also a visionary. One of Bobby Kennedy's more
famous quotes was ``Some men see things as they are and say
why, I dream things that never were and say why not?''
Whether he did it consciously or subconsciously Giles was the
embodiment of that spirit. You only have to look around you
today and this magnificent park that has done so much for the
City of Birmingham and understand what I mean. Few could have
stood at the corner of an abandoned, almost blighted part of
town and see a vision of an outdoor park where people from
all walks of life can come and enjoy the outdoors, that would
be a safe gathering spot for fun and creativity, that could
attract the kind of development that allows a city to thrive.
But Giles did, simply seeing that vision and saying why not.
You can see it in the zoo, where he and others saw the
potential of having a world class attraction free from the
constraints of being owned by the city. But Giles, did and he
said why not. And today the zoo is on the verge of a
renaissance like it has never experienced. And I am standing
before you today as a Unites States Senator because along
with his political partners of many years, Doug Turner and
Joe Trippi, Giles saw an opening for a new Alabama, an
Alabama that puts aside the divisions of the past and
embraces our diversity and sense of respect and civility for
all people. An Alabama who could lead the South. When all of
the pundits looked at a Senate race in Alabama and dismissed
the idea saying that it was not possible for a Democrat to
win, saying why would anyone even try, Giles Perkins saw an
opening, with someone who shared his vision for a better
Alabama and a better South who could lead the nation out of
our divisiveness and he said why not.
Giles got into politics for the right reasons. Not for ego
or power but to do good things. He got that from his mother,
who was a progressive member of the Texas state board of
education. When he first moved to Alabama after marrying
Hillery he approached the Folsom campaign about getting
involved. He told Peck Fox that he was from Texas but was
settling in Alabama and that he wanted to get involved in the
campaign because he wanted to make a difference. And for the
next 25 years what a difference he did make. Electing Don
Siegelman Governor. Re-electing Richard Arrington as Mayor.
Being Executive Director of the Alabama Democratic Party,
being a candidate for Attorney General and electing a US
Senator. But you can do all of those things when you are
in politics for the right reason, to make a positive
difference in people's lives. Giles believed that all
people, regardless of race or religion or gender of sexual
orientation or status in life should be treated equally
and with respect and he had no tolerance for those that
did not.
That drive to make Alabama and the South a better place is
what drove him to know and understand all things that could
bring about political success. I called him Yoda for a
reason. He taught me and so many others the ways of the Force
in politics, to stay in our lane and to focus on that which
was truly important. That was especially tough for me as I
also had that type A personality and was constantly veering
off course because I had become so concerned about minutiae.
So even though my calling him Yoda was a term of affection
and respect he called me Chicken Little as a reminder of just
how much I did not know.
He was a tough task master when it came to politics. His
firm grip on life and people became like a vise when he was
engaged in politics. He was smart, confident, efficient and
forgiving, at least to a point. He gave so many young folks a
chance but they had to perform and live up to his
expectations. They loved him and they feared him. Again, he
modeled himself after Bobby Kennedy who said about being the
campaign manager for JFK in 1960: ``I'm not running a
popularity contest. It doesn't matter if people like me or
not. Jack can be nice to them. I don't try to antagonize
people, but somebody has to be able to say no. If people are
not getting off their behinds, how do you say that nicely?''
I am told that when Giles began hiring young talent to run
the Alabama Democratic Party that the kids began to notice
that Fridays were often the days where Giles would politely
but pointedly explain to someone that they were just not
working out and should hit the road. Instead buckling down to
make sure they weren't next they just quit coming in on
Fridays. As you might imagine with Giles at the helm that was
relatively short lived and the party prospered because of his
leadership.
The same was true in our campaign last year. Because Giles
knew that we had to run a different campaign than any
Democrat had run in the last 20 years he did not rely on
those who had been in campaigns in the past, but a new
generation, one who understood social media and today's world
but yet could be taught the ways of the Force when it came to
old school politics. The kids we brought on had virtually no
real political experience but immediately set out to teach
them, bringing in books about RFK and Lyndon Johnson and the
modern political system. By his example of being engaged
everyday, whether in the campaign office or by phone or by e-
mail or text, while also battling cancer and chemotherapy
treatments he taught them, and all of us, lessons of both
politics and life. But make no mistake, while they loved and
admired him they were also scared to death of him. One of our
young men said that every time Giles walked into the room his
male body parts seemed to retreat into his gut. Believe me, I
get that. While Yoda could be a gentle teacher we also have
scars from his light saber that came in the form of his e-
mails or text messages or biting retorts if you were out of
line. I am quite sure that as word spread of Giles decision
to not seek further treatments for his cancer all of those
who worked with him or for him at any point in any of his
political endeavors were reminded of the words of Winston
Churchill who famously said: ``I am prepared to meet my
Maker. Whether my
[[Page S7648]]
Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is
another matter.''
But it was that same young staffer who also said that as
our campaign folks called to check on each other after Giles'
death each call ended with ``Love `ya'' and it was clear that
Giles built more than a campaign, he built a family that
would long outlive him.
Over the last couple of years I came to love Giles like a
brother and came to know and appreciate him as a remarkable
human being who did so much for so many in his short time on
this planet. He died among the privileged but never, ever
forgot those less fortunate, constantly striving for a better
world for all. The words of Barack Obama at the funeral for
Ted Kennedy seem to have been written in advance for Giles
Perkins:
We cannot know for certain how long we have here.
We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test
us along the way.
We cannot know what God's plan is for us.
What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with
purpose, and with love, and with joy.
We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how
much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness
and respect that we wish for ourselves.
We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures.
And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so
that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back
on our time here, we know that we spent it well; that we made
a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact
on the lives of others.
This is how Giles Perkins lived. This world is better for
having pass here. We are better people because we knew him.
This is his legacy.
So my friend, may you find new challenges to meet and new
visions to share, to see things not as they are but how they
can be. May God bless you and may you Rest In Peace.
And for all eternity, May the Force be with you. Mr. JONES.
I thank the Senate for this personal moment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
____________________