Senator Alexander: (4:18 PM)

• Spoke in tribute to a fallen Tennessee police officer, Kenny Moats.
  • "Last Tuesday, I attended a funeral for officer Kenny Moats, a Maryville, Tennessee, police officer who was killed in the line of duty responding to a domestic disturbance call. Kenny Moats was a young man. He has three young children. His wife Brittany and he are in their early 30's. Nothing has so touched our community that I can remember in a long, long time. Maryville, Tennessee, is a small town. Blount County is our county. Things like this are not supposed to happen where we live. An officer gets a call. He goes to deal with a domestic disturbance, and he's ambushed from the house where he's called by a person who is now in prison. There was a huge outpouring of support from our community not just for Kenny Moats, but also for the men and women in blue in the police department of Maryville and of the Blount County deputies who were there as well."

 

Senator Leahy: (4:27 PM)

• Spoke on U.S. assistance to Laos.
  • "I have always thought the United States should do more. So I'm very pleased that President Obama, who was the first American president to visit Laos, announced earlier today the U.S. will increase its support for UXO programs in Laos. The president pledged $90 million over the next three years to continue clearance and victims assistance, risk education programs, at the fiscal 2015 level of $15 million annually. The balance of the $45 million is going to be used to support a national UXO survey. The survey is extremely important. As I said, the land area is about the size of Utah. But this will establish a baseline for contaminated land. That land remains to be cleared."
• Spoke on the Supreme Court vacancy.
  • "I can assure you that Americans, certainly Vermonters, have not forgotten. They have not forgotten the fact that Senate Republicans have refused to hold a hearing for Chief Judge Garland, and they have not forgotten that this unprecedented - unprecedented -- step in not allowing a hearing, this means the Supreme Court continues to be hindered by the lack of a full bench of justices. Chief Judge Garland's nomination has been blocked by Republicans in the Senate for 174 days. No time in the history of our country has something like this been done."

 

Senator Nelson: (4:49 PM)

• Spoke on the MilCon-VA/Zika appropriations bill.
  • "It ought to be common sense and how many times have folks like me and the senator from Maryland come and pled with our colleagues, let's stop this monkey business. Let's stop these political games. Let's stop these political riders. Let's do what the Senate did three months ago when it passed bipartisan by 69 votes $1.1 billion in emergency funding and send it down to the House and tell the House to stop playing these games. And so seems to me we're going to go through another exercise now having multiple times. We're going to vote this down at 5:30. What's going to happen next? I hope reasonable heads will prevail."