Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, yesterday, I took the floor to talk about the events in Baltimore over the last 10 days, 2 weeks, and I spoke about how Baltimore is coming together and recognized that in order to move forward, there are two pillars we need to work on, and one of those is public safety and justice. I talked about some initiatives we are looking at, including legislation that I filed that will eliminate profiling by police and how we need to deal with the restoration of voting rights and other issues that deal with accountability of police.

I also talked about rebuilding and dealing with the core issues of our urban centers. I just want to supplement those remarks with a conversation we had with CVS Health. I mention that because it was the CVS pharmacy that was destroyed a week ago Monday night in Baltimore. I think that was seen not only in this country but around the world. It was one of the major assets in a community that for too long a period of time did not have access to a pharmacy. It was tragic to see that it was destroyed during the events in Baltimore.

I wish to bring to my colleagues' attention that CVS has spoken about that episode, and they have made a commitment to restore the two pharmacy locations, which will be rebuilt in the same communities in which they were destroyed. They are committed to return to the community as quickly as possible with those services which are critically important to those communities.

I just want to point that out that they have gone further than that. Previously, I said we need the Federal Government's help in rebuilding and dealing with the core problems, we need State and local governments, and we need the private sector to step up and help us. CVS has listened to that.

First, one of the things they are doing is providing a $100,000 donation to the United Way of Central Maryland's Maryland Unites Fund and the Baltimore Community Foundation. These are funds that will be used to help rebuild Baltimore.

This is a quote from the CVS release:

These funds will help provide immediate and longer-term support to people in hard-hit areas and give those communities much-needed resources.

I also wish to point out what CVS did, and I think this is very important.

This is also a quote.

To help minimize the financial impact of the store closing for its Baltimore employees, CVS/pharmacy paid them their regularly scheduled hours the week of the protests, whether or not they were able to work. All displaced employees who want to work in other CVS/pharmacy locations will able to do so.

To me, that is part of rebuilding and dealing with the problems in our community; that those employees, through no fault of their own, could have been at a tremendous disadvantage and will get their full paychecks. They have a job to return to, and we are going to have those pharmacies relocated in the communities which desperately need that.

That is the private sector helping us in rebuilding and dealing with the problems in our city. I just wanted my colleagues to know about the work of CVS Health.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, after 2 weeks on the floor, in a few moments we will have a chance to advance the Iran bill to passage and then vote on passage. I urge my colleagues to support the cloture motion and to support final passage.

First, I thank Senator Corker. Senator Corker has been an incredible partner, and the two of us have worked in the best interests not only of the Senate but in the best interests of our country. We recognize this Nation is stronger when in foreign policy we are united and speak with one voice. That is exactly what we were able to do in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 19 to 0.

This is an extremely controversial area. We understand that. But we reached a position where we could get a 19-to-0 vote in the committee. We were able to bring that forward and were able to get the administration to work with us on this. So the bill will be signed by the President of the United States.

I just want to thank Senator Corker for his incredible leadership through these very difficult times so that we could reach this point.

It gives us the best chance to accomplish our goal. Our goal is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state--pure and simple. We will be in a stronger position to achieve that objective with the passage of this legislation.

We understand what that means. We understand that it has to be an agreement that prevents Iran from a breakout capacity to have a nuclear weapon in a period of time where we would be compromised, because we know we have to be able to inspect, we have to be able to see what they are doing, and we have to be able to react if they cheat. This bill allows us to have that type of an oversight over such an agreement.

It spells out the proper role for Congress. It was in the 1990s that Congress started to impose sanctions against Iran for its nuclear weapons program. Only Congress can remove those sanctions or permanently change them. So it is in our interests to be able to have an orderly way to review an agreement. And it is an orderly review because it requires the President to submit the agreement to us so we have opportunities for open hearings and for closed hearings, to do what we need to in order to make our judgment as to how to proceed. There is no required action, but we could take the appropriate action, and we have the time to take the appropriate action.

Congress would then have oversight of the agreement. The administration would be required to report to us on a quarterly basis that Iran is in compliance with the agreement. If there is a material breach, there are expedited procedures for us to be able to take action to reimpose and strengthen the sanctions regime that is in place.

So it really gives us the opportunity not only to have oversight on a potential agreement if one is reached but then to monitor to make sure that the agreement is complied with.

But we go beyond that. I have heard a lot of my colleagues talk about Iran and what it is doing on its sponsoring of terrorism, what it is doing on human rights violations, their ballistic missile programs. We understand that. We require reports from the administration as to their activities in each of these areas. It is very clear, as the President made in his summary of the April 2 framework, that nothing in this agreement affects the other sanctions that are imposed against Iran because of ballistic missiles, because of terrorism or because of human rights issues.

So I think we have found the right balance.

Lastly, let me say we have also made it very clear in this agreement that the security of Israel is critically important, and we have spelled that out in our legislation.

So for all those reasons, I think the fact that we were able to reach this type of an agreement--we had a couple votes. The votes were pretty decisive as to how they came out on the floor. I thank all our colleagues for the way they cooperated with us on being able to reach this moment.

Mr. President, I yield the remainder of the time to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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