Later this afternoon senators will also vote on fda commissioner nominee, steven hahn. Now to live coverage. U. S. Senate here on cspan2. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The chaplain, dr. Barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. God of grace and glory, on your people, shower your blessings. Be for us a shield and sure defense. Lord, as we live in this tangled world, give us the wisdom to keep our eyes on you. Bless our senators. Crown their deliberations with your wisdom, so that your purposes will prevail. Quicken in our lawmakers noble impulses, as you sanctify their efforts with your mercy and might. Be merciful to us, forgive our faults and remember that we are but dust, like a wind that blows by and is gone. Lord, keep us from stumbling or slipping. We pray in your gracious name. Amen. The presiding officer please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the 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. The presiding officer the clerk will read a communication to the senate. The clerk washington, d. C. , december 12, 2019. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable cindy hydesmith, a senator from the state of mississippi, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed chuck grassley, president pro tempore. Ploosm under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. Morning business is closed. Under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report. The clerk nomination, department of interior, arelia skipwith, of indiana, to be director of the United States fishing and wildlife service. Mr. Mcconnell madam president. The presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell ive spoken at length about the serious impact that democrats impeachment obsession has had on months worth of important legislative priorities. For months republicans have been calling for Bipartisan Solutions to the ndaa, to the appropriations process, and more. But only in the last couple of days here in middecember, have our democratic colleagues gotten sufficiently serious about these mustpass bills. In the meantime, while weve waited on House Democrats to act, the senate has made good use of our floor time to complete the American Peoples business with respect to nominations. Last week alone the Senate Confirmed two executive Branch Nominations and put eight impressive justerrists on Federal District courts. This week we considered yet another splait of president s wellqualified nominees. Today the senate will consider john to serve as ambassador to the russian federation, stephen hahn to serve as commissioner of the food and drug administration, and Aurelia Skipwith of indiana to be director of the fish and wildlife service. We have nominated patrick j. Bumatay. Mr. Patrick j. Bumatay is a graduate of yale, practiced in the private sector and served in a variety of roles with the department of justice. Mr. Van dyke graduated from Montana State university and harvard law school. His career included a clerkship with the d. C. Circuit, spent time as a solicitor general and service as Deputy Assistant attorney general at the department of justice. Each is well qualified, each has widespread respect from legal peers and now they are the 49th and 50th circuit judges nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the senate in the last three years. As ive said before, these kinds of milestones are emphatically not partisan achievements. It is not one party or the other that benefits when our federal courts consist of men and women who understand that a judges job is to follow the law, not to make the law. The entire country benefits from that. Our constitutional system benefits from that as well. If judges applying our laws and our constitution, as they are written, strikes anybody as a threat to their particular agenda, its their agenda that needs to change, not the judiciary the framers intended. Now on another matter. As i said, the democrats fixation with impeachment has pushed governing priorities into the eleventh hour. After months of delays and hostage taking, House Democrats finally finally approved an ndaa conference report. Next week the senate will pass it and send us over send the legislation to President Trump. Of course, we need to follow up Defense Authorization with defense appropriations so we actually supply the funding that our Service Members need to carry out their missions and our commanders need to plan for the future. And its not just defense funding thats been hampered by democrats impeachment obsession and reluctance to do anything bipartisan. All federal funding has been jeopardized by the houses procrastination, that includes critical domestic programs with implications for every one of our colleagues and all of our constituents. Yet, even today even today at this late date democratic leadership continuing to delay a bipartisan agreement on appropriations. Even now at the eleventh hour, they are still threatening to potentially attack the whole process and force another continuing resolution. So, look, madam president , the story is the same as its been for months. Partisan policy demands, poison pills, exactly the playbook that the speaker of the house and the democratic leader had explicitly promised months ago in writing that they would not use to sabotage appropriations. So let me say that again. The speaker of the house, the Senate Democratic leader explicitly promised last summer in writing that they would not use poison pills or changes to president ial transfer authorities to sabotage the appropriations process. And, yet, even in middecember, they are still using those tactics to jeopardize all of our progress. It doesnt have to end this way. I know ernest discussions are still under way as our colleagues in both chambers fix this. I would urge the democratic leadership to let the committees do their work. Let the congress do its work, and let us pass legislation on a bipartisan basis next week. Now, on a related matter. While we hold out hope for a breakthrough in appropriations, we also know theres been one major casualty of Speaker Pelosis impeachment obsession, congresss ability to pass the president s usmca this year. It was more than a year ago that President Trump first signed the Draft Agreement with the leaders of canada and mexico. More than 12 months ago. Thats how long House Democrats dragged their heels on the usmca and kept 176,000 new american jobs on ice. Now, at the eleventh hour, Speaker Pelosi has finally realized it would be too cynical and too nakedly partisan to allow her conference impeachment obsession to kill the usmca entirely. So after a year of obstruction she finally gave in of gave in to republican pressure and struck a notional deal with the white house. But actions have consequences. That entire calendar year that House Democrats wasted has consequences. The speakers action was so belated that the administration is still, still in the process of writing the actual bill. We dont have a bill yet. Once a bill is produced, the house has to take it up first. And then under trade Promotion Authority that exists to protect the deals that president s negotiate, after house passage, the bill spends up to 15 session days in the Senate Finance committee, and then, and then after that, theres up to 15 session days for the senate to vote on the floor. So unfortunately the speakers 12 months of delay have made it literally impossible for the senate to take up the agreement this year, and if House Democrats send us impeachment articles, those have to come first in january. So the usmca will get pushed back yet again. Like i said, madam president , actions have consequences. There is just no way the senate can make up for 12 months of House Democratic delays in just a couple of days. Governing is a question of priorities. Speaker pelosi failed to make this trade deal a priority for the entire year, and were now bound by the time requirements of t. P. P. To protect of t. P. A. To protect the agreement here in the senate. Now, one final matter, speaking of priorities, listen to what the House Democrats are prioritizing. Listen to what theyre doing today while all of this crucial legislation goes unfinished. More Judiciary Committee hearings about impeaching the president , and on the floor, a vote on yet another farleft messaging bill with literally no chance of becoming law. Theyre spending floor time on their socialist scheme to micromanage americas prescription drugs and put the federal government in charge of the medicines so many people rely on. The speaker wants to take us down the road of nationalizing an entire industry and imposing washingtons stifling influence on the Life Sciences sector that produces lifesaving cures. Never mind, never find the fact that this farleft messaging bill has zero chance of passing the senate and that President Trump has already threatened to veto it. We know by now that political Performance Art takes precedence over Bipartisan Legislation where this Democratic House has been concerned. So, madam president , i hope these stunts, stunts come to an end soon. I hope the house finds time to finish negotiating the things we actually have to pass, the funding of the government, i hope we can do that in good faith. I hope our democratic colleagues join republicans at the table, and lets get the American Peoples business that must be done accomplished. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Quorum call mrs. Blackelburn madam president. The presiding officer the senator from tennessee. The senate is in a quorum call. Mrs. Blackburn i ask that we suspend the quorum call. This past sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of hong kong to remind beijing that totalitarianism will no longer go unchallenged. I was reading a New York Times article about this protest when i came across a particularly striking quote. When asked why she had taken to the streets, a 24yearold biology researcher named alice said and im quoting we want hong kong to continue being hong kong. We dont want to become like china. End quote. Madam president , i ask unanimous consent to include this article as well as the front page of the d. C. 9 New York Times in the record. What a beautiful picture of what people will do for the cause of freedom. The presiding officer without objection. Mrs. Blackburn alices statement is loaded with Historical Context and directly implies what were seeing now is the combination of a slow but sure violation of the laws and norms that once defined hong kongs semi autonomous relationship with mainland china. These protests erupted after what beijing argued was a simple proposed change to existing extradition laws. But the people saw it for what it was. A thinly veiled threat to hong kongs relative autonomy. It wasnt a takeover. It was just that foot in the door. And china is nearly unparalleled in its ability to turn a foot in the door into a permanent existing condition. Sometimes their power plays are very obvious. Sometimes theyre not. On my recent trip to gentleman beauty, i saw firsthand the influence of chinas debt trap diplomacy. Now, here is what debt trap diplomacy is. It is a fancy way of saying that china has increased its influence around the world by offering to struggling nations that theyre going to hold their debt in exchange for preferential treatment on trade or maybe a physical presence like a port or other sweetheart deals. In jabuti city, i saw this tactic run wild. Now, china would say that what theyve done is to help the gentleman butte jabutans create a smart city and they have done this in the horn of africa. But in reality they negotiated their way into creating a full blown surveillance state, cameras, cameras are everywhere on every corner, every street. 24 7 footage. Guess where that footage lands. Beijing. They even tried to point one of those cameras at our military base right at the entrance to camp lemonai. Debt trap diplomacy if thats all you see of china, its easy to assume that all of their tactics are that bold and obvious. As i said, theyll go after you in obvious and also in areas that are not as obvious, even domestically. Chinas surveillance state is notoriously the opposite of covert. Their domestic Smart City Program has outpaced that of every other country on the face of the earth. And the majority of their 70 billionplus budget for that project has been spent not on intelligent power grids or Traffic Management systems or on clean air or clean water but it is being spent on surveilling their own citizens. The greatest danger china has created by engaging and at times absurd surveillance oppression, is that it has created a false sense of security here in the west. When we dont see the evidence of what theyre doing. In the u. S. Were not particularly vulnerable to their debt trap but we are vulnerable to less obvious attempts to get that foot in the door. In some form or another, most americans have allowed big tech to take hold of a portion of their life. Smartphones and Cloud Storage once were very novel but now we assume that even simple transactions come predicated by an additional condition. Everything is free as long as the app or the service has access to guess what . Your data. They want to own your virtual you. Popular apps like tick to be whose ticktock whose Parents Company is based in china have left me with more questions than answers about the platforms business practice, privacy protection, and ideological loyalty to the communist party, considering that the u. S. Army has barred soldiers from using ticktock and Everybody Needs to understand this. The u. S. Army has said you cannot use ticktock. And this very body has expressed our concerns on a bipartisan basis with the platform censorship and datahandling practices. Its no wonder that ticktocks chief executive officer canceled this weeks scheduled meetings here in d. C. With members of this body. The fact that millions of americans, especially our American Children continue to offer their personal data to ticktock is beyond disturbing but we will not be able to roll back the creeping surveillance state without setting our own standards for what is acceptable from both foreign and domestic countries. When i introduced the browser act earlier this year, i did so not only to give big tech solid guidelines regarding data privacy and content but to set a new standard for what consumers expect from big tech. Our problem here in this country is pretty much awareness and of understanding that the exact same philosophy that drives chinas covert surveillance programs and their less obvious recognition for your data and your information and theyre trying to monitor our lives, this is all part of their scheme. Their surveillancestate scheme. Chinas communist party is about more than just ad revenue and more complete data sets. Their goal as the same with those hong kong protesters, as theyve put it, is to trick other countries in becoming more like china. Not tilting toward freedom. Tilting away from freedom and toward china. My goal with the browser act and with my focus on what has become the surveillance state is to do the exact opposite, to enable freedom, to encourage freedom not only here but around the globe. To make certain that consumers here decide how much of their data they want to be able to share and to make certain that we continue to support the cause of freedom wherever human beings show up to protect the freedoms that they have. I yield the floor. Mr. Schumer madam president . The presiding officer the democratic leader. Mr. Schumer were not in a quorum, are we . The presiding officer were not. Mr. Schumer we learned yesterday that two i learned yesterday that two of the innocent victims in the shooting in jersey city earlier this week are from my hometown, my home burrow. And that the kosher deli where they were killed in all likelihood was targeted as part of a hate crime. This morning i stand in solidarity with the jewish communities of new jersey and new york. As they confront the antisemitic poison. And i stand in sorrow at the loss of innocent lives from my community. May their memory be a blessing and salutes to the brave Police Officer as well who fell in the line of duty. Trying to apprehend these brutal thugs. Now on impeachment. The house Judiciary Committee will continue today its markup of articles of impeachment against donald trump. The articles charge that President Trump abused the office of the presidency by soliciting the interference of a foreign power in our elections to benefit himself personally. The articles also charge the president with obstruction of congress in the investigation into those matters. Those articles were drafted after a months long investigation into the president s dealings with ukraine which included scores