[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 175 (Tuesday, December 6, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6729-S6730]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    TSUNAMI WARNING, EDUCATION, AND RESEARCH ACT OF 2015--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Vermont is 
recognized.


                             Voting Rights

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Presiding 
Officer, the Senator from Kansas.
  An editorial this morning in the New York Times is entitled: ``Why 
Does Donald Trump Lie About Voting Fraud?'' This is the editorial of 
which I speak. That is a question that many of us who have been 
fighting for the right to vote have been asking for decades. In a 
bipartisan fashion, this Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act 10 
years ago. During the course of many, many, many Senate and House 
Judiciary Committee hearings, we fought against the false narrative 
that in-person voting fraud was at all common in our country. The 
evidence clearly and irrefutably shows that it is not, but, of course, 
the evidence does not stop those who are determined to make it harder 
for Americans to cast their votes.
  Right after five Justices on the Supreme Court gutted the core 
protection of the bipartisan Voting Rights Act, several States led by 
Republican majorities enacted voting restrictions that made it harder 
for many Americans to vote.
  It is most troubling that our President-elect has decided to make an 
unfounded charge of widespread voting fraud. I can imagine that he is 
disappointed in the fact that he got 2.5 million less votes than his 
opponent and did not win the support of a majority of Americans who 
voted last month. We should all hope that when our next President is 
presented with unfavorable realities, he will not resort to spreading 
information that has no basis in fact. That cannot and should never be 
the standard of American leadership.
  In an article published in the Valley News of West Lebanon, NH, and 
reprinted this morning in VTDigger, researchers at Dartmouth explored 
President-Elect Trump's allegation of widespread voting fraud, and they 
found nothing to support his claim, noting ``voter fraud concerns 
fomented and espoused by the Trump campaign are not grounded in any 
observable features of the 2016 Presidential election.'' Many other 
analyses have also made this crystal clear.
  In a report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office 
concluded that ``no apparent cases of in-person voter impersonation 
[were] charged by DOJ's Criminal Division or by U.S. Attorney's offices 
anywhere in the United States from 2004 through July 3, 2014.'' That is 
the reality. The President-elect should not continue to peddle lies 
about voter fraud.
  I say that because this year we have seen a dangerous uptick in what 
some call ``fake news.'' These articles have no basis of reality or 
factual evidence, but they are broadly circulated because they affirm a 
particular ideology or because they are a proven way to make a quick 
buck by drawing the attention of unsuspecting online readers. Fake news 
stories get attention and clicks. We saw what happened when a man walks 
into a pizza place in the District of Columbia where children often 
congregate and fires a rifle because of one of these fake news stories 
he had read.
  Some consider this despicable propaganda to be harmless, but it is 
certainly not without its victims. We know that the spread of lies 
through fake news can have real-world consequences, even for the 
public's faith in the Republic itself. There is no doubt that this is 
the way Russia sees it.
  In conclusion, it should not be too much to ask our elected officials 
to operate on facts and reality. We will have many debates over policy 
in the years to come, as we should, but Americans deserve leaders who 
refuse to peddle in lies for political gain.
  I call on leaders from both sides of the political aisle to no longer 
defend the indefensible.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the New York Times 
editorial be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Dec. 5, 2016]

              Why Does Donald Trump Lie About Voter Fraud?

                        (By the Editorial Board)

       The long-running Republican war against the right to vote 
     has now gone national at the instigation of President-elect 
     Donald Trump, who has promoted the lie that millions of 
     illegal votes were cast in the presidential election.
       There is not a scintilla of evidence for this claim, and 
     Mr. Trump's own lawyers have admitted as much, stating in a 
     court filing opposing a recount in Michigan that ``all 
     available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election 
     was not tainted by fraud or mistake.''
       Yet one after the next, leading Republicans are spreading 
     this slander of American democracy, smoothing the way to 
     restrict voting rights across the country.
       On Sunday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence told ABC's 
     George Stephanopoulos that it was Mr. Trump's ``right to 
     express his opinion as president-elect.'' When pushed to 
     admit that the illegal-voting claim was not true, Mr. Pence 
     shifted the burden of proof away from Mr. Trump, even though 
     Mr. Trump has accused millions of Americans of committing a 
     crime. ``Look,'' Mr. Pence said, ``I don't know that that's a 
     false statement, George, and neither do you.''
       Paul Ryan, speaker of the House, told CBS's ``60 Minutes,'' 
     ``I have no knowledge of such things,'' before defending Mr. 
     Trump's claims as ``giving voice to a lot of people who have 
     felt that they were voiceless.'' (As recently as October, Mr. 
     Ryan's spokeswoman noted that ``our democracy relies on 
     confidence in election results'' and that Mr. Ryan was 
     ``fully confident the states will carry out this election 
     with integrity.'')
       Reince Priebus, currently the chairman of the Republican 
     National Committee and Mr. Trump's pick for chief of staff, 
     told CBS's John Dickerson that ``no one really knows'' if 
     millions of people voted illegally. ``It's possible.'' It's 
     equally true that no one really knows for sure that Reince 
     Priebus wasn't snatched away and replaced with a doppelgonger 
     hatched by aliens--it's possible, isn't it?
       This is how voter suppression efforts start. First come the 
     unverified tales of fraud; then come the urgent calls to 
     tighten voter registration rules and increase ``ballot 
     security,'' which translate into laws that disenfranchise 
     tens or hundreds of thousands of qualified voters.
       That's already happened in Wisconsin and North Carolina, in 
     Ohio and Texas, where Republican lawmakers pushed through 
     bills requiring voter IDs or proof of citizenship; 
     eliminating early-voting days and same-day registration; and 
     imposing other measures. Virtually all these laws aimed at 
     making voting harder for citizens who happen to be members of 
     groups that tend to support Democrats.
       While federal courts have struck down some of these laws, 
     more keep popping up. In Michigan, lawmakers are pushing to 
     fast-track a voter-ID requirement even though there was no 
     evidence of voter impersonation there. In New Hampshire, the 
     incoming governor, Chris Sununu, wants to do away with same-
     day registration, also despite the lack of any evidence that 
     it resulted in fraud.
       Reality is beside the point. Dallas Woodhouse, the 
     executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, 
     recently told The New Republic, ``Whether there's widespread 
     voter fraud or not, the people believe there is.'' It doesn't 
     seem to matter to G.O.P. leaders that election officials 
     around the country of both parties have confirmed that there 
     was no fraud on Election Day. What matters to them, as 
     strategists have long known, is that Republicans do better 
     when fewer people vote.
       Under a Trump administration, anti-voter efforts could 
     become national in scope--through congressional legislation, 
     a hostile Justice Department or a Supreme Court nominee with 
     little regard for voting rights.
       Undermining the integrity of the electoral process and 
     making it harder to vote is threatening to all Americans, 
     regardless of party. The cynical Republicans now in power 
     figure that all they have to do is fool the public long 
     enough to win the next election. It's outrageous, but it's 
     hard to see why they would stop when lying has gotten them 
     this far.

  Mr. LEAHY. I yield the floor and thank my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Portman). The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I have some good news. Today we have 
before us a legislative package that reflects 2 years of work for the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
  When we first embarked on this process, the goal was to find ways to 
spur innovation and reduce the time it takes for new therapies and 
treatments to get from the research bench to the bedside for patients. 
The bill is the 21st

[[Page S6730]]

Century Cures Act, which includes--I am going to repeat this several 
times--true bipartisan victories for patients in our health care 
system.
  Throughout my time in Congress, I have been a consistent supporter of 
funding for the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, to fulfill our 
commitment to prioritizing biomedical research and innovation. NIH 
research returns priceless benefits, giving health care providers new 
tools and drugs to heal and give hope to individuals. The benefits of 
this research investment to Kansans back home have been direct and 
personal. Back in 2012, the University of Kansas Cancer Center received 
a National Cancer Institute designation, or an NCI designation. These 
centers are major players in research and development for cancer 
treatment and prevention.
  The legislation we will be voting on today or tomorrow--or at the 
very least next week--does commit an additional $1.8 billion for Vice 
President Biden's Cancer Moonshot. This will not only help the 
University of Kansas as they continue to push toward a comprehensive 
cancer center designation, but it will help all Americans who stand to 
benefit as we work to end the fight against cancer.
  In addition to research funding, this bill includes some provisions I 
authored along with Senator Klobuchar to improve and increase 
transparency in the review and approval of processes for medical 
devices. Specifically, the bill does this. It encourages the FDA, or 
the Food and Drug Administration, to accept international consensus 
standards to provide more predictability for innovators. Second, it 
makes improvements to the advisory committee selection process in an 
effort to provide more transparency. It provides a technical correction 
to establish a process by which the Food and Drug Administration may 
remove certain products from the class I device reserve list if they 
think a premarket review is no longer necessary to prove reasonable 
assurances of safety and effectiveness. Senators Isakson, Casey, and 
Roberts' priorities seek to provide more certainty for FDA review of 
combination products and therapies that do not fit neatly into simply a 
drug or device.
  The legislation also includes important reforms to our mental health 
system based largely on a bill the HELP Committee passed earlier this 
year. With this section of the bill, we seek to clarify and improve our 
mental health parity laws. We reauthorized the substance abuse and 
mental health block grants. We promote evidence-based practices to 
ensure we are utilizing our scarce resources on programs that work and 
not continuing to fund what doesn't work. We reauthorized the Garrett 
Lee Smith Memorial Act for suicide prevention and intervention and the 
National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative.
  There is a lot more work to be done, obviously, to address the 
deficiencies in our current system, but this bipartisan bill is 
certainly a good step in the right direction toward improving access to 
mental health services and eliminating the stigma of seeking treatment.
  Finally, the 21st Century Cures Act includes numerous priorities that 
my colleagues on the Finance Committee and I have been working on for 
several years. One provision I was proud to support in committee 
extends the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program for another 
5 years. As our rural hospitals continue to try and make ends meet, 
this program helps what we call ``tweener'' hospitals survive. 
Hospitals that do not qualify as critical access hospitals would not 
survive under the current Medicare payment system. It is a critical 
program that benefits Kansans in Junction City, Ulysses, and Fort Scott 
by keeping their hospital and access care open.
  There is more rural relief. Senators Thune, Crapo, and I have 
championed a provision to protect rural access to durable medical 
equipment under the Competitive Bidding Program. We would have liked to 
have seen a more permanent solution. However, this bill delays applying 
competitively bid prices of rural areas and requires the Department of 
Health and Human Services to take into account stakeholder input as 
well as average travel distance, volume of items, services furnished, 
and the number of suppliers in these areas when determining adjustments 
in setting bid prices.
  I have the privilege of being the cochairman of the Senate Rural 
Health Caucus. I know how critically important these and other pieces 
of the package are for our beleaguered rural health care system. There 
is no question that we have many challenges ahead. While this package 
may not be a silver bullet to ensure cures for all that ails us, it 
sets priorities in research, cancer, cancer precision medicine, 
regenerative medicine, and heartbreaking diseases like Alzheimer's 
through the BRAIN Initiative. We all know someone affected by these 
dreaded diseases. It also makes significant changes in how these new 
therapies are evaluated, hopefully approved, and delivered to patients, 
providing more tools in the medicine cabinet that will improve many 
lives. Advances in medical research benefit us all, and this bill does 
just that.
  I wish to make a comment with regard to previous discussions of this 
bill on the floor of the Senate. Unfortunately, a very small minority 
of my colleagues want to criticize and even villainize this legislation 
and those who worked so hard on it, which is terribly disappointing to 
me. With the passage of this bill, both Republicans and Democrats can 
take pride in putting together and working toward a bipartisan bill 
that lives up to its name--the 21st Century Cures Act. I regret the 
tone of the debate that took place with regard to this bill and the 
personal comments that were made.
  I will remind my colleagues that there is a rule XIX that the 
distinguished Presiding Officer can invoke at any time and any Senator 
can ask that a Senator's words be taken down under rule XIX. I only say 
it so that we can look upon a bipartisan bill like this and say: Look 
at what we have done. Let's be proud of it and certainly not get into 
the mud with regard to any personal comments.
  I urge my colleagues to advance research, advance the development 
treatments, and support this bill. It is a good bill. It is a 
bipartisan bill that we should all be proud of.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield back.

                          ____________________