[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 139 (Wednesday, September 14, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5682-S5685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         GETTING OUR WORK DONE

  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, once upon a time, there were elections 
and the people of this country, in their wisdom, decided to send a 
different party to the U.S. Senate as a majority. At that time, to much 
fanfare, the leader of the Republican Party announced that it was going 
to be a new day, that there was going to be regular order, that there 
was going to be a budget. There would be no filling the tree. We would 
do individual appropriations bills. Most notably, the leader said we 
were going to put in a full day's work. In fact, my colleagues can 
correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he even talked about working on 
Fridays in Washington.
  Now, let me hasten to add that I know every Member of this body, when 
they go back to their homes in their States, they work. We have a lot 
of meetings to go to and people to see, so I don't mean to say that 
when we are not in session we are not working. But the American people 
were told that we would be putting in more work in Washington.
  By the way, it is not as if we don't have work to do. I remember 
month after month after month, all FOX News talked about was where was 
the budget. We had no budget. The law says you have to pass a budget. 
The Republicans over and over and over again, on this floor, on 
television: Where is the budget? Where is the budget?
  Well, I ask that question now. Where is the budget? It hasn't been 
mentioned by my colleagues across the aisle lately. My colleagues can 
correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the budget is required by 
law to be done in the spring, not during football season and certainly 
not at Christmas time.
  The individual appropriations bills haven't worked out so well, 
either. The only ones they have been interested in doing are the ones 
that don't tackle the tough problem of balance; that is, the balance 
between our homeland security needs and our defense needs, the balance 
between the needs of educating our kids and making sure that our 
soldiers are well equipped.
  But probably the thing that is most amazing is that in light of no 
hearing on Merrick Garland, in light of no budget, in light of no 
spending bills--in light of all of these things--we are working fewer 
days in Washington than we have in 60 years.
  I showed this calendar to people at home, and they thought I was 
kidding. This is the calendar of our work schedule.
  Now, let me also point out that we have heard this week that the 
leader of the Republican Party doesn't even want us to work these three 
days--October 4, 5, and 6--so mark a line through those, and the entire 
month of October is black. That means nothing is happening on the 
budget, nothing is happening on the Supreme Court vacancy, nothing is 
happening on oversight hearings, nothing is happening on 
appropriations, nothing is happening on Zika. Nothing is happening in 
Washington. I am just going to pause for a minute so anyone who has the 
C-SPAN bug can just look at this calendar. All the blacked-out days are 
days that we are not in Washington. A full week plus in January, a full 
week plus in February, almost two weeks in March, another two weeks in 
May, another almost week in June, almost 2\1/2\ weeks in July, the 
entire month of August. We didn't even work the full month of 
September. Now we are told we may not work any days in October. The 
calendar shows just a handful of days in November. There is a lot of 
business that has to be done by the end of the year, and obviously it 
looks like there are only a few days in December that we are working.
  I think there are like 240 work days that most Americans work every 
year. By my estimate, I think we are working about 110 of those. No 
wonder the American people are angry. No wonder the American people 
don't get it. It is very simple. Not only is the Republican Senate not 
doing its job in terms of setting a history of not having even an up-
or-down vote on the Supreme Court

[[Page S5683]]

nominee, the Republican Senate simply doesn't work.
  I yield the floor to my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. I say thank you to Senator McCaskill.
  The Senator from Missouri is right. Folks in this country are sick 
and tired of Congress not doing its job.
  I was just on the radio a few minutes ago and the radio announcer 
said: You know you guys have been out for several weeks. What do you 
anticipate you are going to get done over the next four weeks? I said: 
I wish we were in session during the next four weeks because the truth 
is there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but people are 
talking about getting out at the end of this week or the end of next 
week, and then that is it. That will be it until the lameduck, if we 
have one.
  It seems as though this body runs based on the next election, not 
based on the policies that need to be passed to make this country do 
its job. We play political games after political games, worrying about 
the next election rather than worrying about the next generation.
  The Senator from Missouri is right. This Republican-led Senate has 
not done its job.
  Does a hard-working nurse wait until the next election day to insert 
the IV? No, she goes to work. You wouldn't hire that nurse if that 
happened.
  Does the teacher walk into the classroom and say: You know, it is the 
middle of September, election day is November 8, so you guys don't have 
to come back to school until after the election? No. I served on a 
school board for a good number of years, and that teacher wouldn't have 
been working, wouldn't have been getting paid.
  I will also tell my colleagues that I know firsthand a farmer would 
not wait for the polls to close to harvest his or her crop. If he or 
she did, they would be out of business.
  We wonder why people are so upset with us. The American people have 
to do their job day in and day out, no matter what, and they expect the 
same from the people they elect to this body.
  So what is the problem? The Republicans control the Senate. They 
control the House. Why can't we get anything done? I think it is 
because there is a total lack of leadership. We need to look no further 
than Zika and the current impasse and the political games that are 
being played with that. This is a horrible disease. I have talked with 
the researchers. They don't know all the impacts. We need to do the 
research to find that out. We do know that it impacts the unborn and it 
can be sexually transmitted. We don't know if there are long-term 
impacts to people who may get it now who don't see any symptoms but 
could see symptoms later.
  We passed a bipartisan bill with 89 votes. We addressed this crisis 
head-on. But the Senate and the House leadership got together, they 
shut the doors, they smoked a few cigars, probably ate a few steaks, 
and said: We are going to make this into a political football. And that 
is exactly what they did. They inserted partisan politics into a 
solution. Right now we have no bill passed that deals with the Zika 
crisis, and it is a health crisis in this country.
  But that is not the only one. When I go back to Montana, whose 
population is fully 10 percent veterans, they talk about the needs of 
veterans. We have a bill, under the leadership of Dick Blumenthal and 
Johnny Isakson, that takes care of our veterans. It helps fix the 
veterans' problems in this country. It helps fix leadership vacancies. 
It helps fix the shortage of doctors. It helps veterans get access to 
the VA. It passed out of committee unanimously. It is called the 
Veterans First Act. It passed out of committee last May, 125 days ago. 
The Senate will not take the bill up. It is a step in the right 
direction to take care of our veterans, yet we will not take it up 
because we have to go home.
  My colleague from Missouri showed us the map. People would think 
Congress would do their job on behalf of veterans, but they would be 
wrong.
  Then we have the Supreme Court. The Constitution--which people in 
this body cite a lot, and should--is very clear that the Senate has a 
duty to advise and consent to the President's Supreme Court nominees. I 
just heard the Republican leader the other day say that there will be 
no Supreme Court nominee taken up this year. That is great. Now the 
Supreme Court is just as dysfunctional as Congress. We see it with the 
decisions that come out on tally votes. Don't even give Judge Garland a 
meeting, much less a hearing.
  I think the American people deserve better. They need an opportunity 
to see the nominee in action. My colleagues here in the Senate sit on 
their hands. It will be probably 15 months before the Supreme Court 
gets another nominee, and maybe not then either, because who knows what 
kind of antics are in store.
  And there is more. We have not only Zika, the VA, and the Supreme 
Court but also the appropriations bills. Instead, we are going to pass 
a short-term resolution.
  We have campaign finance. It is expected that more than $1.4 billion 
will be spent in this Presidential race. Congress has done nothing to 
ensure that ideas and voters, not money, decide elections. We need 
campaign finance reform. Everybody in this body knows it. But, instead, 
we continue to ignore the problem that faces this country with campaign 
finance.
  Wildfire disaster funding: The way we fight wildfires is broken. If 
you live in the West, you know that. We are not going to deal with 
that.
  We need to permanently fund and reauthorize the Land and Water 
Conservation Fund. No, it is not going to happen.
  We have the Restoring Rural Residencies Act that takes care of the 
doctor shortages we have in this country. No, it is not going to 
happen. We don't have time. We do have time; we just choose not to 
tackle any of these issues.
  Year-round Pell grants: We have students who are coming out of 
college with a mountain of debt. We are not going to deal with that.
  We have a bill to give regulatory relief to community banks and 
credit unions. We are not going to debate that on the floor. No, it is 
not going to happen.
  We have the Secure Rural Schools initiative and Payment in Lieu of 
Taxes. Both need our attention. Earlier this year, Senator Crapo and I 
called on leadership to find a path forward so these counties can have 
some certainty. Neither is going to happen.
  Over the past few years we have seen our national security 
compromised with faulty background checks. We have a solution. We 
produced legislation that will help prevent inside attacks. It is not 
going to happen. Do you notice a pattern? Well, the whole country is 
waiting. We are waiting for Congress to do their job.
  I just turned 60 years old on August 21. In my lifetime, we have 
never worked less days in the Senate than we have this year. It is 
unbelievable. We are leaving everyday Americans hung out to dry. We are 
leaving without doing our job. We are leaving because of the next 
election, and this is criminal.
  There are solutions. This is supposed to be the greatest deliberative 
body in the world. The only problem is that we are not in session to 
deliberate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, there is an explanation for why we have 
worked the shortest number of days in the last 60 years. Everything 
must be fine. Everybody must be just great. Everybody must be working. 
Everybody must be able to afford college. The streets have to be safe. 
That would be a good reason not to work, if everything was just going 
great for the people of this country. But it is not. In poll after 
poll, people tell us that they are not happy with the direction of this 
country. Conversation after conversation we have with our 
constituents--as I did during our very, very long summer break--
educates us as to the simple reality that people are struggling more 
today than ever before. People, families, and businesses are hurting 
out there. There are massive problems in this country, as Senator 
Tester said, many of which have bipartisan solutions, and still we are 
not working. If everything were great, if there were no problems to be 
solved, then maybe that schedule would make sense. But that is not what 
people think in this country. They know the system is rigged against 
them. They know their lives can be

[[Page S5684]]

better, and they are furious, as Senator McCaskill pointed out, when 
they see that we are not even trying, that we are not even attempting 
to solve their problems because Republicans would rather be home than 
be working here in Washington.
  Ask the family of Stef'an Strawder if everything is OK. Stef'an was 
one of the best basketball players in the State of Florida. He was a 
star basketball player on his high school team. His coach said 
everybody wanted to be like Stef. His 19-year-old sister said no matter 
where he went, everyone invited him into their home as if he was their 
own. Everybody loved him.
  Stef'an was killed this summer, while we were on break, in another 
mass shooting. This time it was in Florida at a teen party, when a 
bunch of kids left a teen party and kids from 12 years old to 17 years 
old were shot. Seventeen kids were shot. Stef'an lost his life.
  How about the 13 people who were shot in Bridgeport, CT, at the end 
of August? You haven't even heard about this. Thirteen people were shot 
at a party. None of them were killed, but 13 people's lives are 
permanently altered because of that mass shooting.
  How about what happened this summer in Chicago? Four hundred people 
were shot in Chicago in the month of August alone. Think about that. 
That is the worst month of shootings in Chicago's history in the last 
two decades. People lost their lives. People like Arshell Dennis, who 
was coming home to surprise his mom on her birthday before he went back 
to take up his junior year at St. John's University, where he was 
majoring in journalism. He was shot while he was sitting on his front 
porch with a friend. He was a member of Upward Bound, a college prep 
program. He spent the previous summer as an ambassador mentoring other 
students. He wanted to help kids, he said, because ``a lot of people 
where I'm from don't make it out.''
  There were 4,000 people killed in this country by guns while we were 
gone for the longest break in recent memory. There were 400 killed in 1 
month in Chicago.
  Here is what makes me so mad. I get it that this year we are not 
going to pass a bill increasing background checks or stopping 
terrorists from getting guns. We seem to have hit an end point there, 
but I listen to my Republican colleagues tell me all the time that the 
real problem, when it comes to gun violence, is mental health. I don't 
actually agree that this is the panacea for what ails this country when 
it comes to gun violence, but if we want to work on mental health, then 
we can. We have a bipartisan, comprehensive mental health bill that, 
like the veterans bill that Senator Tester referenced, passed through 
the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee unanimously. 
Conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats supported it. It 
passed the House of Representatives and is sitting pending on the floor 
of the Senate. What we are told is that we can't do a mental health 
reform bill not because we don't have consensus but because we don't 
have time--bull. We have time. We had all of July and all of August. We 
can stay here through September and October to pass a mental health 
reform bill that would probably pass unanimously in the Chamber and 
would bring new mental health resources to millions of people all 
across the country.
  I am not going to tell you that I think that is what will solve the 
epidemic of mass shootings in this country, but it is just one of many 
pieces of legislation that will make people's lives better, that has 
broad bipartisan consensus, and that we aren't doing simply because we 
aren't working.
  I thank Senator McCaskill for putting the chart out, tweeting it out, 
and letting the American people know that, for all of the lecturing we 
got from Republicans when we were in charge about not passing a budget 
or not moving forward on legislation that they supported, nothing is 
getting done right now simply because Republicans have made a choice to 
stop doing their job.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am joining with the others who are 
here on the floor today who have called on the majority leader of the 
Senate to stay here and to take action on matters of critical 
importance to the American people.
  On the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court will begin its new 
term, and it will do so with a vacancy that has remained unfilled for 
the last 6 months. Regrettably, the President's nominee to the Court, 
Judge Merrick Garland, has not even been given the courtesy of a 
nomination hearing. This is the first time in the history of this 
country--in the history of the country--that the majority party in 
leadership has refused to have a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee. It 
is unconscionable. No wonder the people of America are frustrated with 
the Congress.
  Likewise, the Senate has failed to act with urgency to address the 
Zika outbreak. I will have more to say about this shortly.
  First and foremost, I wanted to come to the floor today to discuss 
the Senate's failure to provide appropriate emergency funding to 
address the heroin and opioid epidemic. This epidemic is raging in all 
50 States. It is an uncontrolled public health epidemic of the first 
order. In 2014, some 47,000 people in this country died from drug 
overdoses--far more than we lose in motor vehicle accidents. Yet 
despite the staggering death toll, the majority in the Senate has 
failed to pass legislation to provide emergency funding to first 
responders, to treatment providers, to law enforcement, and to those 
who are on the frontlines in this crisis.
  In July, Congress passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery 
Act, or CARA. It is a good bipartisan bill. It is a bill I cosponsored 
and I voted for. But as we all know here, if we are being honest with 
the public, CARA is an authorizing bill. It is not an appropriations 
bill. It doesn't provide one penny to fight the opioid epidemic. Even 
if Congress approves the funding necessary for CARA, it will be about 2 
years before New Hampshire and other States see that additional 
funding.
  In New Hampshire we have the highest percentage of overdose deaths in 
the country. Everywhere I go in the State, I hear that what people need 
is the resources to address this crisis. That is why early this year I 
introduced an emergency funding bill to provide an additional $600 
million for policing, prevention, treatment, and recovery. I offered 
this legislation as an amendment to the CARA bill, but it was defeated 
with only five of our Republican colleagues voting for it. Again, this 
is unconscionable. Our Nation has addressed other public health crises 
with emergency funding bills far larger than the one proposed to 
address the heroin and opioid epidemic.
  Last year, about a year and a half ago, Congress passed nearly $5.4 
billion in emergency funding to combat the Ebola outbreak in West 
Africa. The Ebola outbreak killed one person in America. He wasn't an 
American. The heroin and opioid epidemic is killing more than 128 
people every single day. We know that treatment is the only effective 
answer to the opioid addiction and that people are being turned away 
from treatment due to lack of resources. Nationwide in 2013, nearly 9 
out of 10 people needing drug treatment didn't receive it. It is the 
same story on the law enforcement side of the equation. There is a 
chronic lack of resources.
  Heroin traffickers expressly target rural States and counties where 
law enforcement is spread too thin and lacks resources to respond 
effectively--places such as northern New Hampshire and northern New 
England. My legislation would provide $200 million in emergency funding 
for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, which 
is the flagship crimefighting program that has been cut year after year 
in a process that has been penny-wise and pound-foolish. It is 
budgeting at its very worst.
  Meanwhile, as Congress fails to act, as Senator McCaskill has shown 
so well, as we have not been here to work, the opioid epidemic is on 
the verge of expanding dramatically.
  Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid that is used to tranquilize 
elephants. It is now available on the streets and is blamed for a 
record surge in drug overdoses in the Midwest. Carfentanil is 100 times 
more potent than fentanyl. Fentanyl is an additive that we have

[[Page S5685]]

seen turning up in New Hampshire and in so many other places that makes 
heroin 50 times more deadly. Until recently, Hamilton County, OH, had 
four or five overdoses a day. Now, because of carfentanil, the county 
is reporting 20, 30, or sometimes even 50 overdoses a day, completely 
overwhelming first responders.
  Some public health officials say that the United States has reached a 
disastrous inflection point in the opioid epidemic. Going forward, we 
may be seeing more and more synthetic opioids in the market that are 
cheaper, more potent, more addictive, and even more deadly. This is 
just one more wake-up call.
  The hour is late, and as I travel across New Hampshire and talk to 
Senate colleagues from across the country, again and again I hear about 
the lack of resources to marshal an effective, well-coordinated 
response. As the new and more dangerous synthetic opioids hit the 
streets, the crisis is becoming exponentially worse, and Congress's 
failure to act, the fact that we are, again, going home very soon means 
that more people will die before we take action.
  If Congress can spend billions to fight an Ebola outbreak in a 
distant continent, surely we can allocate $600 million to combat a 
raging epidemic back home if we stayed here and if we worked together 
to get this done.
  I also want to raise the issue of the Zika outbreak, as my colleagues 
have--again, this is one more area--because, while the Senate has been 
out of session, while Congress has been out of session, while we have 
been at a standstill, Zika has been on the move with tragic 
consequences.
  Local transmission of Zika is now taking place in the State of 
Florida. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention, more than 1,750 pregnant women in the United 
States and Puerto Rico have tested positive for the Zika virus, and 
that means their babies are at risk. We are not even sure exactly what 
all their babies might be at risk for because we are still trying to 
get the research to determine what all of the impacts of Zika are.
  We know microcephaly is one of the birth defects that results from 
the Zika virus. Since January, I have joined with other Senators in 
calling for a robust response to the Zika outbreak because we need 
Congress to act. In fact, the Senate did act. We acted before we went 
out in August with a bipartisan vote of 89 people, but then we saw the 
House----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrats' time has expired.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Now it is time to put politics aside and work together, 
to stay here and do what the American people need.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from North 
Dakota would like 2 or 3 minutes to speak. I will be glad to yield to 
her.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I thank my great friend the senior 
Senator from Tennessee, always the statesman and always willing to 
engage in wonderful debate, a great Member of this body.
  I thank my colleague from Missouri for shining a bright light on this 
issue. The Senate work Calendar she displayed is honestly breathtaking. 
In fact, we are on track to work the fewest number of days in 60 years. 
That doesn't look like a work schedule anyone from North Dakota has--
not that they would not want that but that they have. It should not be 
a work schedule for the important work that is being done in the 
Senate.
  We are out more than we are in. We were elected to a job, but the 
Senate is refusing to do that job. In the meantime, the opioid crisis, 
as my great friend the Senator from New Hampshire has outlined, is 
destroying families across this country and certainly in North Dakota. 
When I held discussions throughout my State, mothers and fathers who 
had lost children to this crisis pleaded for resources to save other 
families from losing their children.
  Their stories brought police chiefs to tears. One even watched his 
own son serve as a pallbearer for his 19-year-old best friend who had 
succumbed to addiction. Another man I spoke to became addicted after he 
dislocated his shoulder when he was just 14. Soon he began dislocating 
his own shoulder to obtain prescription drugs that washed away the pain 
of social situations.
  This Congress has failed to provide the funding we need to take on 
the opioid crisis. Now we are headed for the door. Senator Manchin, 
along with a number of us, has introduced a bill that would add just a 
small cost to prescription drugs, opioids that are prescribed--1 cent 
per milligram--and put it in a fund.
  Shockingly, 1 cent per milligram actually raises over $1 billion. It 
tells you how rampant prescriptions for opioids are. So we need to have 
a debate on that bill. We can't say we are concerned about the opioid 
crisis unless we come for resources to treat addiction and help our 
communities get well. I think my police chief in Fargo said it best. He 
can't protect a community until he heals a community. We have a role in 
making that happen.
  Last month, I also met with 100 North Dakota retirees who stand to 
lose as much as half of their pensions, sometimes more, after 
dedicating years of their lives to backbreaking labor, all to support a 
secure future for their family, and they saw it all disappear in the 
blink of an eye. That is why we have been calling on Congress to step 
in and come up with a bipartisan solution to protect the workers and 
their families who paid into the Central States Pension Plan.
  While working to make the fund solvent across the country, nearly 
one-half million hard-working retirees face cuts through no fault of 
their own. As one retiree who drove a truck for 30 years put it, ``If 
you cut my pension 50 percent, I am no longer in the middle class.''
  Are you going to kick 400,000 people out of the middle class? Is that 
what Congress is prepared to do, even when Members of this body have 
the power and actually the responsibility and duty to do something 
about it? We are headed for the exits, but American families are 
dealing with the heartbreaking loss of children, they have lost their 
savings that they worked their entire lives to earn, lost their 
retirement security.
  The Senate--instead of dealing with these issues, we simply are not 
doing our job. What are Members of this Congress going to tell American 
families--dealing with tough decisions on how to move forward--when 
they return home for our recess? How are they going to look them in the 
eyes and explain the possibility of this scheduling getting truncated 
even more?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Instead of working until October 7, the majority is 
wrapping up in the next week. So I just ask that we stay here, that we 
do our job, that we restore the faith the American public has in our 
democracy, and that we are addressing the issues we are responsible to 
address.
  I thank my friend from Tennessee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

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