[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 16 (Tuesday, January 31, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S513-S515]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               Nominations of Jeff Sessions and Tom Price

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate the current 
Presiding Officer for his ascension to the

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chair of the Indian Affairs Committee in the U.S. Senate. It is a 
committee with a great history of bipartisan efforts working together. 
It is a committee on which I was privileged to serve and still serve 
and of which I have been the chairman in the past. I am looking forward 
to the distinguished Senator from North Dakota taking over the mantle 
of responsibility, and I know he will continue to work hard, as he has 
since joining the Senate, in the efforts on behalf of so many 
Americans.
  I also come to the floor about what is going on in the Senate with 
regard to confirming nominations in a Cabinet that I believe is truly 
an all-star Cabinet--truly an all-star Cabinet. I think it gets better 
as we keep confirming one nominee after another. Last week I spoke on 
the floor about what a great job I believe Scott Pruitt is going to do 
as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Today I wish to talk 
about two more examples.
  First, there is the nomination of our friend and colleague, Senator 
Jeff Sessions from Alabama, to be Attorney General. Those of us who 
have served with Senator Sessions over the years know he is a man of 
uncommon decency, of fairness, and of integrity. We know his dedication 
to the law is absolute.
  In 1999, Senator Sessions came to the floor to speak in support of 
awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Rosa Parks. In that speech, he 
said: ``Equal treatment under the law is a fundamental pillar upon 
which our republic rests.'' We saw Senator Sessions' devotion to this 
idea again and again and again. He introduced legislation to reduce the 
differences in the kinds of sentences that could be handed out to 
people convicted of similar drug crimes. He teamed up with Senator Ted 
Kennedy to pass legislation protecting prisoners from sexual assault 
behind bars.
  The job of Attorney General is to be America's top law enforcement 
officer and attorney. Jeff Sessions has shown himself to be an 
outstanding attorney. He worked as a frontline prosecutor. He spent 12 
years as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. He was 
attorney general of the State of Alabama, and he has spent 20 years 
here as a U.S. Senator.
  If confirmed as Attorney General, he will be one of the most 
qualified people ever to hold this job. These qualifications include an 
exceptional knowledge of how the Justice Department works and the 
priorities of the people who work there.

  The Attorney General oversees the work of more than 100,000 people. 
Most of them are law enforcement, working for agencies like the FBI and 
the Drug Enforcement Administration. I think these men and women are 
going to find that Jeff Sessions is their greatest champion, and I 
think they are going to greet his arrival at the Justice Department 
with a wonderful ovation. National law enforcement groups have already 
endorsed his nomination, and so have groups representing Federal and 
local prosecutors. He is going to enforce the laws passed by Congress 
in a fair and impartial manner. That is exactly what America needs in 
its Attorney General.
  The second person I want to talk about is Congressman Tom Price. Tom 
has been nominated to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 
Just as Jeff Sessions has devoted his life to the law, Tom Price has 
devoted his life to caring for the health of patients and the American 
people.
  Dr. Price practiced medicine for 20 years. He was medical director of 
the orthopedic clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Grady 
Memorial Hospital is a public safety-net hospital in Atlanta, and many, 
many of its patients are low income. Dr. Price saw each and every day 
the challenges that people faced in America's broken health care 
system, both the patients and the people who are trying to provide the 
care. That is why he has taken health care reform so seriously as a 
Member of Congress. He did as well when he was in the Georgia State 
legislature. He understands and he understood immediately why so many 
parts of ObamaCare simply would not work when they were passed and 
signed into law some 6 years ago. Like a lot of us, he warned the 
health care law would actually make things worse for millions of 
Americans--and Tom Price has proven right.
  It is time for the Department of Health and Human Services to have 
leadership that understands that patients should not become a political 
tool. Congressman Price is actually the first medical doctor to be 
nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services since 
1989. That kind of knowledge and the background he has is essential for 
dealing with the challenges the Department faces today.
  The wheels are falling off of America's health care system. We need 
leaders--leaders who are more than just professional bureaucrats, which 
is what we have had. We need someone who understands health care 
deeply, and who cares about putting patients first, not politics.
  Tom Price has shown he can reach across the aisle to get things done. 
It is what he did in the State legislature in Georgia, and it is what 
he has done in the House of Representatives here in Washington. Tom 
worked with Democrats to make sure that Medicare patients could 
continue to get access to medical equipment like blood sugar monitors 
and oxygen tanks. He did the same thing when he introduced a bipartisan 
measure to stop burdensome new regulations affecting patients who need 
a new hip or a new knee joint. As Secretary of Health and Human 
Services, he is going to listen--listen to the best arguments of both 
sides, and then he is going to do what is right for the health of the 
American people.
  ObamaCare has to go. It has failed miserably. We all know that. Even 
Democrats in Congress who wrote the law realize how flawed it really 
is. It is time for us now to focus on what can be done to replace 
ObamaCare and make American health care work once again.
  I have seen media reports that Democrats want to obstruct the 
nomination of Tom Price as well as that of Jeff Sessions. I expect 
Democrats will plan to grandstand for political purposes because they 
have no real objections to either person's qualifications or 
credentials.
  Democrats' complaint is that they lost the Presidential election. 
Well, the President deserves to have his Cabinet in place. That is why 
Republicans didn't object to President Obama getting seven of his 
Cabinet members on his very first day in office in 2009. By this point 
in time, President Obama had a significant number of his Cabinet--over 
20 members--confirmed in 2009, and we look at where we are today, with 
President Trump's Cabinet and the obstruction of the Democrats. It is 
unfortunate that Democrats have decided not to follow the example of 
Republicans when Barack Obama came to the White House.
  Political spite isn't a good enough reason for delay. Democrats need 
to get over it and get on with it. Attorney General of the United 
States and Secretary of Health and Human Services are big jobs. They 
are important jobs, and they are necessary jobs. It is time for the 
Senate to move as soon as possible to confirm both Jeff Sessions and 
Tom Price to the Cabinet.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant minority leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the Senator from Wyoming from the other 
side of the aisle is my friend. We spend time in the gym together; I go 
there regularly--for no apparent reason. But we are friends, and we 
disagree on some political issues. I just wish to clarify one or two 
things.
  When it comes to Congressman Price, I don't know him personally. He 
has been chosen by President Trump to head up the Department of Health 
and Human Services, one of the biggest and most important. He has 
stated, as a Member of Congress from Georgia, that he believes we 
should change the Social Security system as well as the Medicare system 
and privatize Medicare. That is a worrisome suggestion for 50 million 
or more Americans who count on Medicare and do not exactly look forward 
to being placed in the loving arms of an insurance company at some 
point late in their lives. So there are questions there.
  But the question at hand was brought to the attention of the American 
public today, not in some liberal newspaper, but in the Wall Street 
Journal. It turns out that Congressman Price has been engaged in the 
purchase of stock that

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has a direct impact on the medical profession. Whether he properly 
filed disclosures in buying that stock or whether he did something 
improper is still to be resolved.
  Part of the reason the nominees for President Trump are taking longer 
than others is that many, like Congressman Price, have extensive 
financial holdings. We found that when a billionaire from Chicago--
Penny Pritzker--was nominated for Secretary of Commerce under President 
Obama, it took literally 6 months for us to gather all the financial 
information about her and to divest her of any potential conflicts of 
interest. It turns out that many of these nominees did not have their 
ethics filings on file in time to be considered in a timely fashion, 
and, in some cases, information about them was found to be in conflict 
with reality, and now there is a further investigation necessary. It 
isn't just a matter of spite; it is a matter of doing our due 
diligence, as required by the Constitution and required in the U.S. 
Senate.