[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 23 (Thursday, February 9, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1048-S1068]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Venezuelan Passports

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I wanted to take a few moments today. I 
know we are in the middle of this debate about the health care law, 
about the nomination. On a topic I have been working on for a while, I 
was compelled to come to the floor at this late hour because it has now 
broken in the press. It is important to kind of give some clarity.
  As my colleagues know, I have spent a significant amount of time over 
the last few years discussing the issues in the nation of Venezuela, 
which has a direct impact on my home State of Florida but ultimately on 
the country. It is a nation that faces some very significant 
challenges, primarily because its political leadership is a disaster. 
It is no longer truly a democracy. It is now a government run by a 
tyrant who has basically ignored the Constitution. They have taken over 
the courts. The members of the judiciary in Venezuela are now basically 
under the complete control of their so-called President, Nicolas 
Maduro, and before that, Chavez. They control the press. They have a 
national assembly that actually is controlled by the minority party or 
the opposition party to the government. But it is pretty shocking. My 
colleagues would be shocked by this. We all travel abroad often. 
Imagine if you lived in a country where the President denied you the 
ability to travel abroad. Well, that is what has happened.
  One of the members of the National Assembly in the opposition, Luis 
Florido was trying to go to Peru to travel and was denied the ability 
to

[[Page S1049]]

leave the country. Imagine that. Imagine that one of our Democratic 
colleagues here in the Senate decided they wanted to take a trip next 
week overseas in the conduct of their office and were told that the 
President was not allowing them to travel abroad. That happened in 
Venezuela. Another one, Williams Davila, had his passport taken away by 
the President of Venezuela. So the country is a disaster because of 
their leadership. It is actually headed into a cataclysm.
  In April of this year, Venezuela has to make a $6 billion payment on 
their debt. They will not be able to make that payment. The Government 
of Venezuela knows that. It is a terrible situation.
  But in the midst of all of that, I have argued that the national 
security interests of the United States is at stake in what is 
happening in Venezuela. This is not just about the issue of democracy; 
it is also about the threat it potentially poses to the United States. 
That is what I come to the floor to speak about tonight.
  My office has been engaged with a number of people over the last few 
months and year who have been coming to us with information. We have 
been working on some of this. Some of that has now broken into the 
press tonight in a CNN report that I am about to describe in a moment, 
but first, let me lay out the scene.
  There have been about 8.5 million names added to Venezuela's 
immigration system since it was last independently audited in the year 
2003. OK. So 8.5 million people were added to their immigration system, 
the new names that have come about. Of the 8.5 million names that were 
added, 221,000 of those--over 221,000 of those are foreign nationals, 
and at least 173 of those 221,000 foreign nationals are from the 
following countries: Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. So 173 
people from these countries were provided government passports and 
national IDs between the year 2008 and 2012, which leads me to this: In 
November of 2015, a Venezuelan attache by the name of Misael Lopez 
Soto, who was assigned to the country's Embassy in Baghdad, became a 
whistleblower, and he began to reveal the identities of several of 
these 173 names.
  Understand that this is important because there has been a 168-
percent jump in U.S. asylum applications from Venezuela since October 
of 2015, now the third highest nation of origin for asylum applicants 
to the United States. The overwhelming majority of them are legitimate 
people fleeing all this craziness that is happening. But I lay the 
groundwork to understand the connection between Venezuela and the 
United States.
  I now want to go into the story of Mr. Soto, who, as I said, used to 
work at the Embassy.
  Mr. Soto was assigned to work at the Embassy of Venezuela in Iraq. As 
he began to work there, he noticed some irregularities, so he began to 
report what he says was a scheme to sell passports and visas for 
thousands of dollars out of that Embassy. He was offered all kinds of 
money to do this, to get a cut of those thousands of dollars. He says 
he declined it.
  CNN and CNN en Espanol have over the last year teamed up on a joint 
investigation, relying on much of the same information that I have had 
access to, looking into all of these allegations and what they 
uncovered. In the story that posted tonight was evidence of serious 
irregularities in the issuing of Venezuela passports and visas, 
including passports that were given to people with ties to terrorism.
  According to CNN, one confidential intelligence document obtained by 
CNN--intelligence documents from nations in the Western Hemisphere, not 
from the United States--actually directly links Venezuela's now new 
Vice President, who is in line to potentially become the President when 
the current dictator is going to have to give up power here soon 
because of this cataclysm that they are facing--the name of that Vice 
President is Tareck El Aissami. There are now links, according to CNN, 
to the current Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, and the 173 
Venezuelan passports and IDs that were issued to individuals from the 
Middle East, including people connected to the terrorist group 
Hezbollah.
  It is important to understand--and the CNN article appropriately 
outlines this--if you have a passport from Venezuela, you are allowed 
to enter over 130 countries on this planet without a visa. That 
includes the 26 countries in the European Union. So a Venezuelan 
passport is a valuable commodity for someone who is trying to travel 
around the world under an assumed name with a valid government 
document. That is why it is important.
  Mr. Lopez, the whistleblower who once worked at the Embassy, is a 
lawyer. He used to be a police officer in Venezuela. He said, according 
to the article, that he thought that becoming a diplomat was a great 
career opportunity that would allow him to serve his country, so he 
moved to Baghdad and started his new life at the Embassy.
  He remembers what he calls an unwelcome surprise on his first day in 
July of 2013. His new boss was Venezuelan Ambassador Jonathan Velasco. 
The Ambassador handed him a special envelope, he said.

       ``He gave me an envelope full of visas and passports,'' 
     Lopez recalled. ``He told me, `Get this, this is one million 
     U.S. dollars.' I thought it was like a joke. Then he told me 
     here people pay a lot of money to get a visa or a passport to 
     leave this country.''

  Meaning Iraq.
  About a month later, Lopez said he realized it was no joke.
  An Iraqi employee of the Embassy who was hired to be an interpreter 
told him that she, the interpreter, had made thousands of dollars 
selling Venezuelan passports and visas and that he could make a lot of 
money too. He says he told her it was wrong and he refused. The 
employee pressed the issue, telling him that there were thousands of 
dollars to be made, even discussing an offer to sell visas to 13 
Syrians for $10,000 each.
  Lopez said that he was stunned when he found the document inside the 
Embassy. It was a list of 21 Arabic names with corresponding Venezuelan 
passport numbers and Venezuelan identification numbers. A Venezuelan 
immigration official told CNN that a crosscheck of the passport numbers 
indicated that the passports are valid and that those passports, given 
to these people with the 21 Arabic names--when he ran the crosscheck, 
they actually matched the names on the list Lopez found, meaning the 
people on the list could be able to travel using those Venezuelan 
passports.
  But here is what is incredible: A publicly available database in 
Venezuela examined by CNN shows that 20 of the 21 identification 
numbers of the people with the Arabic names that match the passports 
are actually registered to people with Hispanic names, not the Arabic 
names listed on the passports.
  So basically CNN has uncovered evidence that at least on 21 
occasions, the Venezuelan Government--the Venezuelan Embassy has sold 
passports to someone from the Middle East but assigned them a Hispanic 
surname or a Hispanic name. People are traveling under assumed 
identities from the Middle East. We have a couple of those names we are 
going to share with you in a moment.
  In April 2014, only 9 months after he started the job, he emailed a 
report about all this to the Ambassador. He said the Ambassador did 
nothing, and, in fact, the Ambassador, Velasco, threatened to fire him.
  By 2015, he was so frustrated that no one would investigate it that 
he took what he found to Delcy Rodriguez, who was Venezuela's Foreign 
Minister. He emailed the report and said that there was fraudulent 
issuing of visas, birth certificates, and Venezuelan documents. He said 
nothing happened. With nowhere else to turn, Mr. Lopez said he 
contacted an FBI official at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid.
  By the end of 2015, the Venezuelan Government accused him of 
abandoning his post and removed him. A police official showed up at his 
home in Venezuela with a document that said he was under investigation 
for revealing confidential documents or secrets.
  Now, this is not the first time this Congress hears about this. U.S. 
lawmakers heard reports about Venezuela's passport fraud during 
congressional hearings as far back as 2006. In fact, a congressional 
report warned that ``Venezuela is providing support, including identity 
documents that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups.''

[[Page S1050]]

  A State Department report at that time concluded that ``Venezuelan 
travel and identification documents are extremely easy to obtain by 
persons not entitled to them.''
  Roger Noriega, the former U.S. Ambassador to the OAS, a former 
Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, said in 
prepared remarks before Congress in 2012 that ``Venezuela has provided 
thousands of phony IDs, passports and visas to persons of Middle 
Eastern origin.''
  In 2013, confidential intelligence reports from a group of Latin 
American countries obtained by CNN said that from 2008 to 2012--I 
already outlined this earlier--173 individuals from the Middle East 
were issued Venezuelan passports and IDs. Among them were people 
connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah. The official who ordered 
the issuing of those passports, the report said, is Tareck El Aissami, 
who just a few months ago was appointed and is now the Vice President 
of Venezuela. Back then, he was the Minister in charge of immigration, 
as well as a Governor. He personally took charge of issuing granting 
visas and nationalizing citizens from different countries, especially 
Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Iranians, and Iraqis, the report said.
  So what we have now is an unbelievable situation in which a country 
in this hemisphere, according to both the whistleblower, independent 
reports, and now CNN's own investigation--Venezuela--has been providing 
passports to people from the Middle East under false pretenses, 
basically fraudulent documents that allow them to travel all over the 
world.
  Among them, Hakim Mohamed Ali Diab Fattah, a Palestinian and 
suspected Hezbollah member, was given national ID No. 16.105.824, 
issued on July 12, 2012. He was deported from the United States in 2002 
for his possible connection to the 9/11 hijackers via aviation school 
in the United States. He was detained and arrested by Jordanian 
authorities on May 3, 2015, for suspicion of financing terror. This 
individual has that national ID number from Venezuela and a passport 
that was allowing him to travel.
  Here is another one: Ahmad Adnan Ali, an Iraqi, another suspected 
Hezbollah member. He is a convicted trafficker facing charges in France 
and Denmark, and he has documents under two aliases: Ahmed El Timmy 
Villalobos, with the number 29.645.898. That is the number on the ID 
that was issued on January 16, 2014. He has another alias and another 
document: Ahmad El Timmy Gomez. His name is neither Villalobos nor 
Gomez, but he has these documents.
  By the way, all of this, according to CNN, is no surprise to General 
Marco Ferreira, who was in charge of the immigration office in 
Venezuela in 2002. He now lives in Miami. He was granted political 
asylum. ``He told CNN that he personally witnessed corrupt senior 
officials ordering passports for people who were not citizens when he 
was running the department.'' He said it was ``very easy'' to assume 
someone else's identity. It was ``very, very easy to go and be a 
Venezuelan or pretend being born in Venezuela.''
  I bring this up in the midst of all these other things because we now 
understand that what we are facing in Venezuela is not just a corrupt 
government and a tyranny but a nation that is under the corrupt 
leadership of its now Vice President and, of course, its President, a 
nation that is trafficking in selling passports and travel documents to 
individuals with links to terrorism. That poses a direct threat to the 
national security of the United States. I hope in the days to come, 
with this new information and with this report, that we can work with 
the Justice Department and the State Department to take appropriate 
measures to protect our Nation and the world from what is occurring at 
the hands of the Venezuelan Government under the tyrant Maduro and 
under its Vice President, who personally ran the department that was 
undertaking these corrupt activities.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, tonight I am here to speak in opposition 
to the nomination of Tom Price to be the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services, and I am standing here this evening in solidarity with 
millions of Americans across this country who, thanks to the Affordable 
Care Act, have health insurance, some for the very first time in their 
lives--not just access to coverage but actual health insurance for 
themselves and for their families, coverage that provides preventive 
care without copays, coverage despite preexisting conditions, coverage 
supported by subsidies for those who need it to help make health 
insurance affordable for their families.
  Tom Price's position on health care is contrary to everything those 
millions of Americans rely upon, and it is against everything that my 
State of Massachusetts stands for.
  So let's take a look at Tom Price's formula for health care for 
America. First, Congressman Price wants to repeal the Affordable Care 
Act. He wants to bring back discrimination against those with 
preexisting conditions. He wants to kick 32 million Americans off their 
health coverage. He wants to deprive women of reproductive health 
choices, and all of this, ultimately, is going to raise prices of 
insurance, of health care coverage for everyone who has insurance right 
now, which is 80 percent of America who gets their private coverage.
  Second, Tom Price wants to end Medicare as we know it. He would 
increase the Medicare eligibility age and create a voucher system that 
pushes the cost of the program directly onto seniors. Finally, he wants 
to slash Medicaid, which provides health care to disabled and poor 
families across this country.
  So that is his plan. This is the Tom Price health care plan for 
America in the 21st century: No. 1, repeal the Affordable Care Act; No. 
2, end Medicare as we know it; and, No. 3, gut Medicaid and raise 
premiums for everyone else in our country. No one with any sense 
believes this is a winning formula.
  Voting for the Affordable Care Act was the best vote of my entire 
political career, and that is because I agreed with Senator Ted Kennedy 
that health care is a right and not a privilege and that everyone in 
our country is entitled to health care coverage and that that health 
care is the solid foundation for our entire country to build their 
lives on.
  Ralph Waldo Emerson said: ``The first wealth is health.'' Without 
health, you have nothing. That is what the Affordable Care Act is all 
about--to give every American the first wealth, the most important one, 
the access to the health care which they need. That is the promise that 
all Americans were made with the Affordable Care Act, and it is a 
promise that we still must keep.
  Before Tom Price and his Republican allies came up with their 
blueprint to dismantle the ACA and put their big health insurance 
companies back in charge of your health, there was a Massachusetts 
blueprint that helped to create that historic health care law. Many of 
those core fundamentals were from Massachusetts and were then just 
built right into the Affordable Care Act: creating a marketplace so 
that insurance companies compete for customers, expanding Medicare to 
cover more low-income residents in our State, helping lower and middle-
income people buy insurance with tax subsidies, encouraging people and 
businesses to buy in so we are all splitting the cost and sharing the 
benefits, and a employer-responsibility requirement for all large 
employers to offer coverage to their workers.
  In Massachusetts, we call this RomneyCare, a good Republican program 
from my Republican Governor--RomneyCare. Then on a national level, they 
called it ObamaCare. In Massachusetts, we just called it successful. It 
worked. It is a good plan.
  Right now in Massachusetts, 98 percent of all adults have health care 
insurance; 99 percent of all children have health insurance. The 
Massachusetts unemployment rate is 2.8 percent. We are No. 1 in math, 
verbal, and science at the fourth, eighth, and tenth grades out of all 
50 States. We have the cleanest environment in the United States. We 
have health care for all children and all adults, and our unemployment 
rate, again, is 2.8 percent.
  It is not a choice. In fact, it is a business plan for the State. It 
works--the healthiest families, the most educated children in the 
Nation, the lowest unemployment rate. It all comes together. It is a 
plan.

[[Page S1051]]

  Now, to listen to the critics of this idea--that everyone is entitled 
to health care--you would think that it would destroy our economy, and 
they are still waiting for it to happen, as our unemployment rate 
continues to go down and down and down.
  What is up? I will tell you what is up. Cancer screenings are up. 
Preventive care visits are up. Diabetes treatments have gone up. Health 
disparities among women and minorities are down. That is who we are. We 
can do this. It is a plan. It is a plan. It actually ensures that every 
child in America, every family in America really doesn't have to worry 
about something happening, some bankruptcy taking place because they 
can't afford the health care that one of their family members needs. 
That is what was happening before the Affordable Care Act passed.
  So what makes Massachusetts one of the healthiest places in the world 
to live is in jeopardy with the nomination of Tom Price. He is coming 
for this plan. He doesn't think it works. He doesn't understand what 
has happened in Massachusetts or across our country.
  In fact, in the State of Kentucky, the Democratic Governor, Governor 
Beshear, has instituted this plan in his red State, and he took the 
total number of people up to 95 percent of total coverage for 
Kentucky--hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people.
  If we did that across the whole country, then we would essentially 
have the Affordable Care Act of Massachusetts in the whole country, but 
there has been strong resistance from States that are ideologically 
opposed to having this kind of a plan be put in place. So they are 
coming for it. That is what Tom Price is doing.
  Let me give you an idea as to what Tom Price's plan does for 
Massachusetts and ultimately for the rest of the country that has 
adopted the plan. In Massachusetts alone, there will be an average per 
person loss of $2,280 in tax credits, and 83,000 seniors and people 
with disabilities may lose $1,000 per year in saved prescription drug 
costs. We could lose an estimated 57,000 jobs just in Massachusetts 
with all these services just being eliminated. We would have the loss 
of $1.85 billion in Medicaid expansion funding and the loss of more 
than $700 million in Federal premium tax credits and cost sharing 
reduction payments for middle-income families.
  We also have to consider the Affordable Care Act's prevention and 
public health fund. Here is what went wrong with our health care system 
in the 20th century: We were running a sick care system, not a health 
care system. So what the Affordable Care Act did was it began to shift 
the emphasis towards prevention. How do you stop people from getting 
sick in the first place? That is the way we should be viewing disease 
in our country. The Affordable Care Act is our government's single 
largest investment in prevention.
  Since enactment of the ACA, the prevention fund has provided more 
than $5 billion to States and communities across the country to support 
community-based prevention programs. Nationally, the prevention fund 
also funneled hundreds of millions into the preventive health services 
block grant. These grants have been critical in Massachusetts, for 
example, helping our communities respond to the heroin, prescription 
drug, and fentanyl crises.
  Unfortunately for all of us, Tom Price's assault on health care 
wouldn't stop there. Congressman Price's march on the Affordable Care 
Act would slash Medicaid--and listen to this number--which pays for $1 
out of every $5 in America for substance use disorder treatment.
  The repeal of Medicaid expansion would rip coverage from 1.6 million 
Americans, newly insured Americans who have substance use disorders. We 
have an opioid crisis in America, a fentanyl crisis, a prescription 
drug crisis. People are dying in record numbers. What Tom Price is 
proposing is going to take 1.6 million of these Americans who are 
receiving treatment right now and just strip them of this health care 
benefit.
  What happens to them? We know what happens if you don't have 
treatment. We know what happens if you don't have prevention when you 
have a drug problem. It leads, inextricably, inevitably, toward a 
conclusion that is now affecting tens of thousands of people in America 
every single year, and that is death. You tell these 1.6 million people 
they no longer have coverage, and you are sentencing them to 
consequences that, I don't think, our country wants to see.
  I have served in Congress for nearly 40 years, and I have never seen 
anything like this opioid epidemic, never.
  In Massachusetts, 2,000 people died last year. We are only 2 percent 
of America's population. If the whole country was dying at our rate, 
that would be 100,000 people a year dying from drug overdoses. That is 
two Vietnam wars every single year.
  What Tom Price is saying is that he is going to rip away the 
Affordable Care Act funding for those who have substance abuse. 
Nationally, opioids have now killed more people than gun violence, auto 
accidents. Many people who have substance use disorders benefit from 
protections under the ACA. It is guaranteed. The funding is there for 
it. So this is for me just one perfect example of many, many examples 
which I can use in order to kind of just give people insight as to the 
horrors that are going to be done to vulnerable families all around the 
country.

  Donald Trump is bragging today that he is going to provide a big 
league tax cut for businesses in America, big league tax breaks for the 
wealthiest people in our country. That is a commitment. The wealthiest 
can get a big tax break, businesses can get a big tax break.
  Where will that money come from? Well, in order to pay for the 
Affordable Care Act, hospitals across the country kicked in about $500 
billion over 10 years in order to help with the costs, but the 
hospitals received something in return. Because of the Medicaid 
subsidies for patients, they would now have insurance, and when they 
showed up at the hospitals, they would actually have insurance 
coverage. So that would help the hospitals have the revenue they need 
in order to take care of business. Since many fewer people were now 
going to arrive at the emergency room, the uncompensated care--that is 
the funding which the hospitals just had to provide for patients who 
just walked into an emergency room--would now be dramatically reduced 
because the patients would have insurance through the Affordable Care 
Act. The $500 billion they had promised to the Federal Government that 
would not be an expenditure, that would be the tradeoff.
  Then you say to yourself, what is the Republican plan now? What they 
are saying is, they are going to kill these subsidies that have reduced 
the number of people who do not have insurance going into emergency 
rooms, and they are going to strip that away. They don't have a plan. 
This is the Tom Price plan--nothing. But they are also saying they are 
not going to give back the money to the hospitals which had been used 
in order to deal with the uncompensated care. So it is a con job. The 
President says you have a big tax break to the wealthiest in our 
country, big tax break to the businesses in our country. Where is the 
money coming from? Where is the piggy bank? Here is the piggy bank. The 
piggy bank is the money that was being used to give insurance for 
people to go to hospitals with their families. That is being taken 
away, and they will use it to give tax breaks to the businesses. You 
are taking it from the people who need it the most, for health care, 
preventive services, and families and you give it to the people who 
need it the least, the wealthiest and the businesses in the country. It 
is a con job--take the money and hand it over to the largest 
constituency in the Republican Party. And who is the architect? Tom 
Price.
  Is that why he would destroy this health care system? Is that why you 
would cut back Medicare? Is that why you would gut Medicaid? You do it 
so you can give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest in our society? That 
is an unacceptable plan, and it makes him an unacceptable candidate to 
be the Secretary of Health and Human Services in our country.
  We have a raging epidemic of opioids. We have all kinds of problems 
that can be dealt with if people had the insurance coverage and they 
knew they could go in order to get the help they need.
  Now let's focus on the Medicare Program because they want to save 
money there too. How are they going to accomplish that? Well, there 
were doom-

[[Page S1052]]

and-gloom prospects about the Medicare programs that came from the 
Republicans, Tom Price himself, but just the opposite happened. The 
Medicare Program since the Affordable Care Act went into place has 
resulted in the lowest per member rate of spending growth in its 50-
year history for Medicare. Premiums paid by enrollees in Medicare Part 
B and Part D have gone down against all the predictions of its 
opponents, and perhaps more importantly, the savings have helped 
America's seniors by ensuring that Medicare will continue to be there 
for them.
  Here is a big number for you. Medicare had previously faced a 
projected insolvency that could have occurred this year--this year. 
Medicare insolvent. However, because of the Affordable Care Act, it 
extended the insolvency date of the Medicare trust by 12 years. Good 
news for seniors. Repealing the law jeopardizes Medicare for a 
generation of Americans.
  But Tom Price doesn't just want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 
the second part of the health care assault is to transform Medicare 
into a voucher program and increase the Medicare eligibility age. After 
a lifetime of hard work, Congressman Price would make seniors wait 
longer for the benefits they earned.
  My father was a milkman for the Hood Milk Company. His arms were the 
size of my legs. Milk men work hard. Blue-collar people work hard 
across our country. Working-class people work hard. Should they have to 
wait until they are 66, 67, 68, 69 to receive a Medicare benefit? They 
work hard. That makes no sense whatsoever. That is Tom Price. How do 
you increase the age when people can receive Medicare coverage for 
their health when they are old in order to save money--for what 
purpose? To then have a tax break for the wealthiest who already have 
the money they need in order to take care of the health care of their 
families. That is one thing you never have to worry about. The wealthy 
in America have all the money they need for their families.
  Do you want to know another thing? The higher your income, the more 
likely you are going to live longer than people who don't have money. 
You don't have to worry about wealthy people. They are fine. Their 
health is fine. Their children are fine. Any problems in their family 
are fine.
  Well, how about other families in our country? That is what this plan 
does. They want to lose that plan in order to give more money to the 
people who already have enough for the rest of their lives. So that 
would wind up increasing premiums for grandma and grandpa by hundreds 
of dollars, making them pay more out-of-pocket for less care. What Tom 
Price essentially wants to do is get us into the Wayback Machine and 
return us to a time when corporate insurance companies were calling the 
shots in our country, back to a time when a person could go bankrupt 
because of medical bills, back in time to when Americans had to choose 
between paying for the rent or paying for a lifesaving medical 
treatment.

  The Affordable Care Act moved our country from being a sick care 
system to a health care system, but Congressman Price wants to undo all 
of that progress and get rid of all of those protections.
  Here is Tom Price's bottom line: repeal the Affordable Care Act, 
which results in fewer insured patients, and that means more patients 
in the emergency room and higher premiums for everyone else. That 
formula is as bogus as a degree from Trump University. It doesn't add 
up.
  The people who have to pay for it are everyone else's insurance 
policies that are going to go up. Because you better believe the 
hospitals and insurance companies, when that money is not there in the 
Affordable Care Act, insurance policies for those people, and you don't 
get back the $300 to $500 billion that the hospitals have now committed 
back to the Federal Government, somebody is going to have to pay. 
Somebody is going to pay, and you don't have to be Dick Tracy to figure 
this out. The people who are going to pay will be every other American 
who has an insurance policy. It will just go up 5, 10, 15 percent, 
everybody else's insurance policies. The hospitals are getting their 
dough; the insurance companies are getting their dough.
  When people go to an emergency room, they are not going to be turned 
away. Somebody is going to have to pay. Where is the payment going to 
come from? Everybody else's insurance policies, which are going up, and 
the money that had been saved is going to the Federal Government for 
tax breaks to the Trump administration. He said today big league tax 
breaks for the wealthy, big league tax breaks for businesses. Great. 
This is the plan that if you kicked it in the heart you would break 
your toe. What about ordinary people? What about the people who need 
help?
  Martin Luther King, Jr., said: Of all forms of inequality, injustice 
in health care is the most shocking. You cannot work if you are ill, 
you cannot learn if you are sick, you cannot be secure if you are 
constantly worried that medical bills can wipe out your entire savings. 
These clearly are not concerns for Tom Price, who has a legislative 
history that has repeatedly favored wealthy individuals and 
corporations over the health of the majority of Americans.
  Congressman Tom Price championed legislation that would eliminate 
young adults' ability to stay on their parents plan until age 26. 
Congressman Price trumpeted a plan that would let insurance reinstate 
lifetime and annual limits on coverage and charge women more because of 
their gender.
  Tom Price would rip away the Affordable Care Act income-based 
subsidies and instead offer inadequate tax credits that can be given to 
a billionaire, not the middle-class, working-class, blue-collar 
American.
  If Tom Price had his way, he would implement a plan that would cause 
health care premiums in individual markets to skyrocket, increasing 
premiums for average Americans by 25 percent immediately and doubling 
over the next 10 years. He wants to strip Planned Parenthood of all its 
resources, and 2.5 million people would lose access to care in those 
community clinics. If that happens, fewer mammograms, fewer prenatal 
exams, fewer cancer screenings, and loss of all those vital services 
would hit women of color and low-income women hardest. It would 
increase health inequity and health disparity in our communities of 
color.
  Tom Price's assault on women's health doesn't end there. He has 
proposed legislation that would allow health insurance companies to 
charge women more than men. He has repeatedly cut and limited access to 
family planning services. He does not believe that women should get 
birth control with no out-of-pocket costs. He is an outspoken and 
virulent opponent of reproductive health and would push women's 
reproductive rights back to the 18th century. Good physical health and 
reproductive freedom are critical to supporting women as productive 
members of their households and our economy. We cannot allow Tom Price 
to turn back the clock.
  So this is the challenge. We have an administration committed to 
increasing defense spending big time, increasing tax breaks to the 
wealthiest and to corporations big time, and then promising to cut the 
Federal budget by $10 trillion over the next 10 years. Well, where is 
the money going to come from?
  We know what they are targeting. They are targeting all these 
programs that help those who need the help the most in our society. So 
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination of Congressman 
Price. He is the wrong man at the wrong time for the wrong job. It just 
doesn't match up, not with a 21st century strategy that we need to have 
the healthiest population in the world to compete against our economic 
rivals across the planet, and if for no other reason, just the moral 
obligation we have to make sure families are not desperate when their 
loved ones are hurting.
  I thank you for giving me the opportunity to come out here at this 
time, and I urge my colleagues to vote no on Congressman Price's 
nomination.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. KING. Mr. President, I am a former Governor, and as such, I have 
an inclination to support the Executive's nominees for their Cabinet--
for their Secretaries or Commissioners in my case, in Maine. I think 
that is an

[[Page S1053]]

important principle, and it is how I start when I approach the analysis 
of any nominee to any position put forward by the Executive, whether 
the Executive is Donald Trump or Barack Obama or anybody else. That is 
a kind of starting point, and that is how I started this January. And, 
indeed, thus far, as we have voted here on the floor, I have supported 
five of the seven nominees who have come before us, plus I supported 
two additional nominees in committee which have not yet come to the 
floor, but whom I will support on the floor.

  So I am not in total opposition: Don't vote for any nominees. I don't 
think that is the way our system works, and it is certainly not the way 
I intend to approach these issues. I have approached them one at a 
time, looking at the position of the nominees, their policies, their 
views, their hearings. I have tried to follow the hearings as closely 
as possible, including their answers to questions. Again, I start with 
a bias toward approval, perhaps because of my experience as a chief 
executive myself.
  But I can't support nominees who are fundamentally opposed to the 
mission of the agency they have been asked to lead. To me, that just 
doesn't make sense. That is why I voted against Betsy DeVos 2 days ago 
because I didn't believe that she had the best interests of American 
education--particularly public education--at heart. Her whole career 
has been about attacking and undermining public education by trying to, 
in effect, voucherize it, provide vouchers to people to use in other 
schools which, by the way, in a rural State like Maine, simply wouldn't 
work as a practical matter. So I could not support her because I felt 
she was hostile to the very premise of the agency that she was being 
asked to lead.
  Today, I come to the floor to talk about Dr. Price. I think he falls 
into the same category. I understand policy differences, and I 
understand the election took place, and I understand elections have 
results and that there are going to be different policies, but his 
policies on the fundamental mission of the Department of Health and 
Human Services are just inimical to what that Department was 
established to do for the American people. The title is Health and 
Human Services, and that is the role that Department has played and 
should play and will play in the future of America.
  Now, my problems with Dr. Price and his positions--and there is no 
doubt about his positions on various issues. He has a long record in 
the House of Representatives writing and legislating and advocating, so 
there is not much argument about where he stands, and there are really 
three areas that I want to touch on tonight. One is Medicare, one is 
Medicaid, and one is the Affordable Care Act. I want to try to put 
these all in the context of my home State of Maine.
  Health care in Maine is an enormous part of our economy. It is 
somewhat higher, actually, as a percentage of our GDP than it is 
nationally. We are at about 20 percent of GDP. One-fifth of our economy 
is health care. In part, that is because we have a great number of 
seniors who, of course, require more health care expenditures, but it 
is a very important part of our economy, which I will touch on a little 
bit later. But let's talk about Medicare.
  First, Medicare in Maine: 306,000 people in Maine are Medicare 
beneficiaries. The expenditure in Maine by Medicare is $2 billion. Now, 
when we are talking about cutting or changing Medicare, of course we 
focus, as we should, on those 306,000 people--and I will talk about 
them--but we also need to talk about that $2 billion. If we are talking 
about savings--savings don't just evaporate, they occur in real life, 
and those are funds that don't go to support medical care for seniors 
in Maine and don't go to our hospitals and don't go to our 
practitioners. So $2 billion is a very significant part of our GDP, and 
that is just what Medicare spends in Maine, 306,000 people.
  Now, I want to touch on an aspect of this that I don't think has been 
discussed much in these debates; that is, the burden of anxiety about 
health care and the cost of health care that was lifted from 
generations of seniors in this country by the passage of Medicare, now 
some 50-plus years ago. As you get older, there is anxiety about 
retirement, there is anxiety about income, there is anxiety about your 
health, but there is also anxiety about the cost of health care. The 
miracle of that Medicare was that it lifted that burden of anxiety from 
our seniors. It was one thing they didn't have to worry about. ``I have 
Medicare'' have been the words that have comforted thousands and 
millions of people in this country since 1965.
  To change the fundamental premise of Medicare, which is what Dr. 
Price has advocated for vigorously and continuously, from the current 
system, which is, if you get sick, if you have hospitalization, if you 
need medical care and you qualify for Medicare, it is paid for. To 
change that to a system which is essentially a voucher, which is capped 
at some level of inflation but not the health care level of inflation, 
is a cruel trick on our seniors. What it will do is, through 
compounding of interest, if inflation is 2 percent a year, and medical 
inflation--the cost of medical treatment--increases at 4 or 5 or 6 
percent a year, which is typical of what has happened in the last 15 or 
20 years; there have been ups and downs, but 4, 5, 6 percent is about 
where medical inflation has been. So if inflation is at 2 percent, and 
that is what your voucher is going to increase to, and medical costs 
increase at 6 percent, that gap is going to grow to the point where we 
are back where we were in 1964, before the passage of Medicare. Then, 
seniors suddenly have to worry about how they are going to pay for 
their health care. They are going to have an added burden of anxiety, 
and they are going to have an added burden of money, of finance, of 
cost.
  You can call it all kinds of highfalutin things. You can call it a 
voucher program, whether or not it is privatization. There are all 
kinds of ways to paper it over, but what it really is, is shift and 
shaft. It is shifting the cost from Medicare to seniors, and over time 
that shift and shaft is only going to increase. I think that is 
unconscionable, and there is no reason for it.
  Yes, the cost of Medicare is going up as a percentage of our budget. 
That is because we are getting older. That is because we have a 
demographic bulge going through our society for people who were born in 
the 1940s and 1950s--the baby boom generation--but that is anticipated, 
that is understood. There are things we can do to deal with that issue 
without the radical solution of essentially shifting the cost over to 
the seniors. It makes the Federal books look good, but it is not going 
to make the household books in Maine look good.
  That is what really bothers me about this policy. We are trying to 
improve our miserable budget situation by shifting a great deal of 
these costs off to individuals. That is just wrong. Medicare is too 
important financially, emotionally, psychologically. It is too 
important as an essential part of the promise that we have made to each 
generation of Americans for the past 50 years. And to fundamentally 
change that and realize, I believe cynically, that as the gap increases 
over time, the percentage of the premiums that is being shifted onto 
seniors is going to grow over time, until at some point--and you can do 
the arithmetic--it is going to eat the whole thing. And the Federal 
share, yes, will be capped--or capped at some lower level, and the 
share that is paid by the individual, by the family, by your mom, by 
your dad is only going to be greater. That is wrong. That is a breaking 
of the promise that we made to our seniors.
  The second piece where Dr. Price, I believe, is fundamentally at odds 
with the premise, with the mission of the agency, is in Medicaid. He 
has talked about various programs. First, let's get rid of the 
expansion of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and then let's block-
grant Medicaid and send it to the States. It is the same principle: It 
is shift and shaft, only this time you are shafting the States. You are 
taking a program which now says, if you have medical expenses and you 
are qualified, they are paid for, and you are saying, OK, in the 
future, we will give you a fixed amount of money, but if the medical 
expenses go up, it is on you, Mr. State; it is on you, State of Maine 
or Michigan or California or Georgia or Florida, or anywhere in this 
country.

[[Page S1054]]

  It is simply, again, repairing the miserable books of the Federal 
Government because we are not facing up to our responsibility to pass 
reasonable budgets. It is fixing those books at the expense of somebody 
else. Those moneys they are talking about: a $2 trillion cut in 
Medicaid. Great, Medicaid is going to look a lot better, but that $2 
trillion doesn't evaporate and doesn't go anywhere. It is not like 
everybody is going to say: Well, they are cutting Medicaid so we are 
going to charge less for our hip or for our surgery or for our 
treatment of drug abuse. It is going to have consequences. It is going 
to come out of treatment. It is going to come out of health.
  There is something about Medicaid that often isn't observed. I 
learned this as Governor. People think of Medicaid as a kind of welfare 
program, and there are these people who are taking advantage of it, and 
perhaps there are. There are always people who take advantage of 
programs.
  The truth is, the majority of the funds for Medicaid go to people in 
nursing homes--your parents, your uncle, your aunt. Nursing home 
expenditures for the elderly are a significant cost for Medicaid. 
Medicare doesn't pay nursing home expenses except for a limited period 
of time, but a great deal of Medicaid expenses go to nursing homes. You 
are going to cut Medicaid? You are going to have people who aren't 
going to be able to afford to stay in nursing homes. That is going to 
shift that cost back on to the family.
  The other majority of people on Medicaid are children. They are 
children who are covered who wouldn't have coverage otherwise.
  One of the best things in this country is the combination of Medicaid 
and CHIP, which has resulted in an enormous increase in the covered 
health coverage of children. And it is so important because health 
problems in children that can be dealt with when they are young, when 
they are children, when it is covered by insurance, can save us 
enormous costs later on.
  So, again, what does Dr. Price want to do? Cap, eliminate ACA 
expansion of Medicaid, and block-grant it.
  Let's not kid ourselves. Block-granting is shifting and shafting to 
those elderly people who would lose coverage for nursing homes, to the 
children who need the coverage, but most especially, to the States. As 
a former Governor, I can see the impact of this on my State of Maine. 
It is a difficult issue, and if we limit it, the only option will be to 
limit coverage or to cut back.
  Of course, Medicaid is one of the places we are covering the 
treatment of opioid addiction. The greatest public health crisis in 
this country in my lifetime is the opioid crisis. We are losing 1 
person a day in the State of Maine to overdose deaths--1 person every 
day. I met a young man at Christmastime at a treatment center. I went 
to the Christmas party and met his family and he was hopeful and he was 
under treatment. I learned this week that he is gone. He is gone, taken 
by the scourge of drugs.
  These are real people. These are real people. These aren't just 
numbers and statistics. In the next hour, as we are here debating this 
nomination, four people in America are going to die of overdoses--four 
people an hour. And when you think of how we mobilized this country and 
the money we spent to deal with Ebola where one person died--one person 
in the whole country--and yet we have this horrible disease and scourge 
that is just decimating our societies and we are talking about cutting 
back one of the basic props for providing treatment. We have cases 
where we--there is a huge backlog of treatment beds.
  I have been working on this problem in Maine for a long time. One of 
the things I have learned is that once a person who is addicted reaches 
a stage where they are willing to ask for help, we have to be there--
then. To say to that person there will be an opening in 3 weeks or 3 
months is akin to a death sentence because they might not be able to 
make it 3 weeks or 3 months; yet that is the situation in much of the 
country today. That is the situation, and we are talking about knocking 
one of the props out from under our ability to deal with this horrible 
public health crisis that is devastating this country in every State, 
but particularly in rural States. It is taking people out of the 
workforce that we need, it is tearing families apart, and it is 
affecting everybody. It is not just certain people in certain places. 
It is everybody. It is middle-class families. It is people of all ages.
  To blithely talk about we are going to block-grant Medicaid and fix 
the amount--it is the same as what I said about Medicare; the iron law 
of the percentage changes. If you fix it today and inflation continues, 
then ultimately it withers away, and it is not going to meet the needs 
of our people. Yet that is what the nominee for the Department of 
Health and Human Services wants to do. I don't get it.
  Finally, there is the Affordable Care Act. I have talked on this 
floor before about the Affordable Care Act and why I feel so 
passionately about it, how having insurance when I was a young man 
saved my life, how not having insurance costs lives.
  The mathematics is pretty clear. There have been a number of studies: 
For every million people who don't have insurance, there are a thousand 
people who die prematurely. The Affordable Care Act now covers 
something in the neighborhood of 22 million people, so here is the 
arithmetic: 22,000 premature deaths a year. This isn't ideology. These 
are people. To ignore that and say we want free markets and free 
choice--free choice means death for a lot of people. It meant death for 
a young man who had what I had 40 years ago and didn't have insurance, 
didn't get a checkup, didn't have surgery, and he is gone and I am 
here, and that is not fair. That is not fair.
  I have said since I got here that the Affordable Care Act isn't 
perfect. It can be changed; it can be fixed. I hear every now and then 
that my colleagues are saying: Let's repair it. I am all for it. Let's 
repair it. Let's get over this talk about repeal. But Dr. Price has 
been one of the leading voices, if not the leading voice, in the 
Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I don't know his exact 
voting record, but I suspect he voted for every one of those repeals in 
the House 60, 70 times over the last couple of years: Repeal, repeal. 
Well, you are repealing people's health care.
  He doesn't want to have the patient protections in the Affordable 
Care Act, the ones that keep it so that you can't discriminate against 
women in health insurance because they are women. And there have to be 
preventive services. Preexisting conditions--he says: They have to 
insure; they have to keep you on for the preexisting condition. But if 
you lose your health insurance for a few months, sorry. The clock 
stops, and you can't get it again because of a preexisting condition. 
That is one of the most important and fundamental promises of the 
Affordable Care Act, yet he wants to get rid of it.
  Here is the reality in Maine. We are a rural State. We have a lot of 
rural hospitals. I urge every Member of this body to talk to their 
hospitals. I have done it. I have gone to the hospitals and sat down 
with them. I did it as recently as 2 weeks ago with a small rural 
hospital, the Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln, ME. They told me 
the repeal of the Affordable Care Act would cost them $1 million a 
year, and they can't afford it. I have been to the Bridgton Hospital. I 
have talked to people from--not all, but many of our small hospitals, 
and 50 to 60 percent of our rural hospitals are running in the red 
right now. The Affordable Care Act has provided insurance coverage to 
people who are the customers of those hospitals, and the estimates are 
that repeal of the Affordable Care Act without a reasonable replacement 
would reduce their revenues anywhere from 5 to 8 to 10 percent. These 
hospitals can't stand that kind of cut, and they have told me there are 
only two choices: One is to shrink their services to their communities, 
and the other is to close their doors.
  In Maine, in our rural State, we have only 16 counties. In 8 of our 
16 counties, the hospital is the largest employer in that county. I am 
sure that is true in all of the States in our country that have these 
small rural hospitals; the hospital is the major employer. So again, 
when we are talking about cutting the Affordable Care Act and all these 
policy things and ideological things, what we are doing is cutting jobs 
in small towns that can't afford to lose them, and they are good jobs. 
If that is what you want to do, fine. But fess up and understand that 
is the consequence of policies that are espoused

[[Page S1055]]

enthusiastically by this nominee for the Department of Health and Human 
Services. It doesn't make sense to be putting someone in charge of an 
agency that is supposed to be looking out for the welfare and the 
health of our citizens who is diametrically opposed to maintaining the 
health and welfare of our citizens.
  In Maine, we have 75,000 people on the Affordable Care Act. I know 
people who have it who couldn't have coverage otherwise without those 
subsidies. But he is not going to allow those subsidies anymore. It is 
every man for himself. Every man for himself means a lot of people fall 
by the wayside, and that is wrong. That is wrong in Maine, and I can't 
vote for somebody who is going to put a dagger in the heart of these 
citizens of Maine. I cannot do it. My conscience will not let me.
  So on Medicare, shift and shaft to the seniors. On Medicaid, shift 
and shaft to the States. On the Affordable Care Act, shift and shaft to 
those people who need health insurance and the hospitals in 
our communities, the hospitals in those communities. If you take paying 
customers away, it is a double whammy: You lose the revenues from the 
customers, and then you have to treat them as charity care. It makes 
the bottom line in these hospitals even worse. As I said, they have 
told me in my State--and I suspect this is true practically 
everywhere--50 to 60 percent of our hospitals are skating on the edge. 
They are in negative territory. They are in the red, and we are going 
to cut their revenues by 8, 10 percent? It is unconscionable. It is 
truly unconscionable. That is a word used around here sometimes, but 
this is it.

  All in the name of some kind of ideology, we want to go back to the 
health care--I can't believe we are debating Medicare, a program that 
has been so successful and so important to seniors throughout the last 
three to four generations. We are now debating it? It doesn't make any 
sense. To put somebody in charge of the Department of Health and Human 
Services that is inimical to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable 
Care Act--this guy is a wrecking ball. He is not a Secretary. He is 
going into this agency to destroy it. He wants to undercut and diminish 
and, in some cases, literally destroy some of the major underpinnings 
of providing health care to people in this country.
  If we were sitting in this body and somebody walked by me and was 
stricken by a heart attack and fell on the floor, I would help him. 
Every one of us would help him. I suspect Dr. Price would help him. He 
would be the first one there. But by these changes, what we are doing 
is having people fall by our side and ignoring them in large scale 
across the country. It is just as real as if it is happening right 
before our eyes. Twenty-two thousand people will die if health 
insurance is lost prematurely. Seniors will take on a burden of anxiety 
and fiscal drain that they can't afford that they have avoided for 50 
years.
  The final point is that this man's policies are at odds with those of 
his boss. Through the campaign, President Trump issued pretty much 
ironclad guarantees to seniors that he was going to maintain Medicare, 
maintain Social Security, but then he appoints a guy whose whole 
professional career has been aimed at undermining Medicare. I think 
they had better get on the same page. I don't always agree with 
President Trump, but in this case I think he is right. I wish he would 
whisper into the ear of his nominee: You can't have it both ways. You 
are either for it or you want to gut it. That is what we are facing in 
this vote.
  This is a vote of conscience for me. It is also a vote about my 
State. I love those people. I know them. I started out as a legal 
services attorney in a small town in Maine. My first boy was born in 
that town, in a little, rural hospital that is struggling. I can't 
stand by and see someone take over this Department who is going to do 
harm. That is the medical creed, isn't it? Do no harm; that is the 
oath. But we are talking about harm to seniors, to children, to people 
with insurance who will not have it. We are talking about real harm.
  That is why I come to the floor tonight to urge my colleagues to 
reject this nominee. If the President wants to put somebody forward who 
is conservative and has ways of fixing some of these things and thinks 
some improvements should be made--and we don't have to do everything 
the way we have always done it. I'm not arguing that. But goodness, 
gracious, don't give us a nominee whose whole career has been spent 
aimed at undermining and diminishing and gutting the very programs that 
have meant so much to the people of America.
  I am voting no on this nominee. I believe my colleagues should do so 
as well.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before Senator King leaves the floor, let 
me just say, as one who ran the legal services for the elderly program 
in Oregon, that the Senator makes all of us in legal services proud 
tonight. Senator King has really put a face on what is at stake here in 
the way he has focused on the opioid scourge that is hammering areas 
from coast to coast. Rural health care--without rural health care, we 
can't have rural life. It is just that simple. Certainly when we get to 
the closing here in perhaps an hour and a half or so, we are going to 
get to the bottom line, as the Senator did. I think these changes take 
America back to the day where health care was for the healthy and 
wealthy.
  So I thank the Senator for his passion and his commitment to his 
citizens, but also to the people of this country. Anybody in legal 
services tonight will be very proud, as I am, because what it is all 
about is standing up for people, and the Senator has said it very well.
  Mr. President, we will be having our closing remarks here in perhaps 
an hour and a half or thereabouts. We have several Members of the 
Senate who are on their way for their remarks, and several Members of 
the Senate have discussed various elements of the serious and 
unanswered ethics questions surrounding Congressman Price's nomination. 
It is my view that these are issues that have set off loud ethical 
alarm bells.
  I want to take a little bit more time to lay out the full story here.
  The stock trades Congressman Price made while working on health care 
policy do, in fact, raise serious ethical and legal questions. None of 
Congressman Price's stock trades raise more questions than the hundreds 
of thousands of shares he bought in the obscure Australian biotech 
company known as Innate. His stock in this company is by far his 
largest of holdings, both in terms of the hundreds of thousands of 
shares he owns and the value of those shares, and that exceeds a 
quarter of a million dollars.
  Congressman Price told the Finance Committee that he did not get a 
special deal. He told the Health, Education, Labor Committee that he 
did not get a special deal. But the fact is, Congressman Price paid 
bargain-basement prices for Innate stock in a private sale last August. 
The private stock sale was limited to a small group of well-connected 
American investors.
  Congressman Price's participation has been described as a 
``sweetheart deal'' by Kaiser Health News and a ``privileged, 
discounted offer'' by the Wall Street Journal.
  As I said during his nomination hearing, Congressman Price's 
participation in the private stock sale showed bad judgment at best. At 
worst, it raised serious questions about whether he violated the STOCK 
Act or other security laws. I will take a minute to read section 3 of 
the STOCK Act. It says: ``Members of Congress . . . may not use 
nonpublic information derived from such person's position . . . or 
gained from the performance of such person's official responsibilities 
as a means for making a private profit.''
  It is well known that Congressman Price learned about Innate from a 
House colleague, Congressman Chris Collins of New York. Collins is not 
just a casual reader of the Australian business pages; he is actually a 
member of the company's board and its largest shareholder.
  This raises additional questions: Did Congressman Price have access 
to nonpublic information about Innate or its private stock because of 
his position as a Member of Congress? Did he get special access to the 
discounted private sale because of his position? Does he stand to 
profit because of the information or access he may have received?

[[Page S1056]]

Finally, did Congressman Price tell the Finance Committee the truth 
about how he learned about the private stock sales and the ability of 
typical investors to participate?
  Congressman Price would have us believe that he decided to make these 
investments based on his own research into the company. That is what he 
told the Finance Committee.
  Let me quote from the Wall Street Journal's article published January 
30:

       Mr. Price wasn't in line to buy shares in the last private 
     placement because he hadn't previously participated in 
     private fundraising rounds. . . . Mr. Price first invested in 
     the company a year ago, buying shares through the open market 
     on the Australian exchange. He learned about the company from 
     Mr. Collins, who holds a 17 percent stake in it. Mr. Collins 
     said Mr. Price is ``one of my friends'' and that he sits 
     ``next to him'' on the House floor. . . . Mr. Price got it on 
     the discounted sale after Mr. Collins filled him in on the 
     company's drug trial, according to Mr. Collins.

  The fact is, you don't just get in on a private stock offering by 
accident. As the Wall Street Journal explained, Congressman Price 
didn't originally even meet the criteria for participating in the 2016 
private offering because he hadn't participated in any previous 
offerings. Yet he was able to buy over 400,000 shares of stock with 
Congressman Collins' help.
  My view and the view of my Democratic colleagues is that Congressman 
Price failed to come clean with the Senate Finance Committee on the 
details of the special discounted deal. He has assured the committee he 
followed the law, but straightforward questions have been met with 
dodging, weaving, and obfuscation. Details of his purchase continue to 
emerge, and the public's understanding of his involvement continues to 
evolve.
  Meanwhile, as scrutiny of the deal continues to mount, Innate's top 
executives are defending Congressman Price at the behest of his 
colleague Congressman Collins, who sits on the company's board of 
directors.
  After the Wall Street Journal story was published, the company and 
Congressman Price went into spin control. The public knows this only 
because Congressman Collins made a mistake that everybody who uses 
email for work has seen made at least once: He mistakenly hit ``reply 
all'' when responding to an email from the company's CEO, Simon 
Wilkinson. Instead of a private note to Mr. Wilkinson, the note wound 
up going to a CNN reporter covering the story.
  In the email, Congressman Collins, the company's top shareholder, 
said the Wall Street Journal was ``yellow journalism,'' and he thanked 
Innate's chief executive, Mr. Wilkinson, for defending Congressman 
Price and the company. According to CNN, Congressman Collins 
acknowledged the email to be authentic.
  The Finance Committee's own experience with Innate only adds to the 
sense that there is a coverup as Republicans seek to race Congressman 
Price across the confirmation finish line.
  The day after the Wall Street Journal story ran, I wrote my own 
letter to Innate's CEO, Mr. Wilkinson. I asked the company to respond 
to the article and the inconsistencies in Mr. Price's explanations and 
for documentation of details of the private stock sales. The company 
refused to answer my letter.
  This looks to me like a coverup, and it ought to shake this body's 
confidence in Congressman Price's nomination. This situation, in my 
view, demands that further questions be asked and answered. Instead of 
taking time to explore these issues, Republicans took the unprecedented 
step of suspending the Finance Committee's rules to rush this 
nomination to the floor before any more questions could be asked, let 
alone answered.
  In years past, as with the nominations of Senator Daschle, Secretary 
Geithner, and Ambassador Kirk, the Finance Committee left no stone 
unturned in the vetting process. Not this time. The majority party, in 
my view, is on its way to an ethical double standard to cut off the 
vetting process. That leaves me with a question for Congressman Price 
and my Republican colleagues in the Senate: What is there to hide?
  Mr. President, before I continue, I ask unanimous consent to have 
printed in the Record the letter that I sent to Simon Wilkinson, chief 
executive of Innate, on January 31, 2017.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                             United States Senate,


                                         Committee on Finance,

                                 Washington, DC, January 31, 2017.
     Mr. Simon Wilkinson,
     Chief Executive Officer,
     Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited,
     Sydney, Australia.
       Dear Mr. Wilkinson: As part of the U.S. Senate's 
     constitutional duty to confirm presidential appointments, I 
     have been reviewing the record of U.S. Representative Thomas 
     Edmunds Price, who has been nominated to be the Secretary of 
     the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
       To that end, I am writing to you seeking prompt assistance 
     in providing information and documents related to Congressman 
     Price's investment in Innate. Please provide the requested 
     information and documents:
       1. The New York Times reported that ``Mr. Wilkinson and 
     Michael Quinn, Innate's chairman, said they had never heard 
     of many of the company's more prominent investors, and said 
     they first learned that Mr. Price had invested in the company 
     from an article in The Wall Street Journal [published online 
     December 22, 2016], which first reported his investment.''
       In written response to questions from the Committee, 
     Congressman Price said ``I communicated with Representative 
     Collins, who is a director of Innate. As noted above, I 
     learned about Innate through a general conversation with him 
     in the fall of 2014. I also communicated with Simon Wilkinson 
     of Innate regarding my interest in participating in the 2016 
     private placement of company stock.'' In addition, the Wall 
     Street Journal reported that ``Mr. Collins said he told Mr. 
     Price of the additional private placement. He said Mr. Price 
     asked if he could participate in it. `Could you have someone 
     send me the documents?' Mr. Collins recalled Mr. Price asking 
     him.''
       a. Please identify any meeting or communication between 
     you, the company, its officers, employees, directors, 
     consultants or affiliated personnel, and Congressman Price. 
     In so doing, please include the person or persons involved in 
     such communication or meeting, the date, method, location of 
     the communication, and the subject of the communication.
       b. Please provide any e-mail or other written 
     communications between you, the company, its officers, 
     employees, directors, consultants or other affiliated 
     personnel, and Congressman Price. In addition, please provide 
     any documents transmitted by Innate to Congressman Price, and 
     any document Congressman Price transmitted to the company.
       2. Regarding the August 2016 private stock placements 
     reference in the company's Notice of Annual General Meeting 
     and Explanatory (``Notice'') on July 25, 2016:
       a. Please describe how Innate found and solicited potential 
     buyers for the private stock sale in August 2016. In so 
     doing, please provide all dates that solicitations or other 
     communications regarding the stock sale was sent to 
     investors. Please also note any differences between how U.S. 
     and non-U.S. investors were solicited. Please provide the 
     number of U.S. investors at the time of the solicitation, the 
     number of U.S. investors who were solicited, the number who 
     agreed to participate, and the number who were considered 
     accredited, ``friends and family,'' or met some other 
     classification or category. Please provide any and all 
     solicitation materials, offering documents, or other 
     information related to the sale that were sent to 
     participants in the placement.
       b. Please describe the criteria by which the company 
     determined who could participate in the sale both within the 
     U.S. and outside the U.S. Please provide supporting 
     documentation regarding the company's criteria for 
     participants in the sale, if the not contained in the 
     offering documents described in Question 2(a).
       c. It has been reported that these private offerings were 
     made available--in the U.S.--only to shareholders who had 
     previously participated in private stock placements. Is it 
     correct that shareholders had to have previously participated 
     in Innate's private stock placements?
       i. Please provide any documents that describe eligibility 
     for the August 2016 private placements, if not already 
     provided in response to Questions 2(a) or 2(b).
       ii. Did Congressman Price participate in any private stock 
     placements prior to the August 2016 private placement?
       d. Based on interviews with you and Congressman Collins, 
     the Wall Street Journal reported that Congressman Price 
     qualified for the August 2016 private placements in the U.S. 
     as one of six ``friends and family'' solicited for the sale.
       i. Was Congressman Price one the ``friends and family'' 
     participants described by the Wall Street Journal?
       ii. What were the requirements for ``friends and family'' 
     participation?
       iii. Please provide any and all offering documents that 
     were provided to this class of participants for the August 
     2016 sale. Please provide any and all documents that show the 
     company's eligibility criteria for determining this class of 
     participant in the August 2016 sale. Please provide any and 
     all documents that describe eligibility for this class of 
     participant in the August 2016 private placements.
       e. Did the names of individual participants or criteria for 
     participation in the August

[[Page S1057]]

     2016 sale come before Innate's officers or its board of 
     directors for consideration, including Congressman Price? If 
     so, please describe what actions or consideration officers or 
     directors took. Please provide any supporting documentation 
     of the selection decisions.
       f. Did the company use an investment banker or other agent 
     for the August 2016 private placements? If so, please provide 
     the name of the bank or agent and its employees who were 
     involved in the sale.
       g. What role did Congressman Collins--a director and 
     Innate's largest stockholder--play in the U.S. 2016 private 
     placements?
       Please provide the requested information and documents via 
     email on a rolling basis as they become available. Please 
     contact my staff at +1 (202) 224-4515. Thank you to your 
     prompt attention to this matter and your timely response.
           Sincerely,
                                                        Ron Wyden,
                                                   Ranking Member.

  Mr. WYDEN. I would also refer my colleagues to the following news 
articles: ``Trump's HHS Nominee Got A Sweetheart Deal from A Foreign 
Biotech Firm,'' a story published by Kaiser Health News on January 13, 
2017; ``Representative Tom Price Got Privileged, Discounted Offer on 
Biomedical Stock, Company Says,'' a story published by the Wall Street 
Journal on January 30, 2017; and ``In accidental `reply all' to 
reporter, Collins thanks CEO for defending HHS nominee,'' a story 
published by CNN on January 31, 2017.
  Mr. President, I wish to now discuss what is known about the facts 
and timing of Congressman Price's investment in Innate. This is a 
timeline that is based on public documents, press reports, and 
information the nominee provided the Finance Committee.
  If you have never heard of Innate until the last few weeks, you would 
be forgiven. The New York Times described it as a ``tiny pharmaceutical 
company from Australia that has no approved drugs and no backing from 
flashy venture capital firms.'' Innate has fewer than a dozen full-time 
employees. The company's stock was first listed on the Australian Stock 
Exchange in 2013, and until recently its market capitalization was well 
below $100 million. Innate has never generated revenue from drug sales. 
It has repeatedly teetered on the brink of running out of cash. It has 
just 2,500 shareholders. By way of comparison, a major American 
pharmaceutical company could have hundreds of thousands of 
shareholders.
  Innate is planning to submit an investigational drug application to 
the Food and Drug Administration, and its ultimate goal is to one day 
sell itself to a large pharmaceutical manufacturer, which would take 
its early-stage experimental therapy to market.
  What I am describing is, this company is the poster child for obscure 
companies. It is so small and so obscure, it doesn't even have a 
Wikipedia page. So the question is, How did Congressman Price come to 
learn about this company, and how did he decide to make it the single 
largest investment in his sprawling portfolio of health care stocks? 
The answer is, the Congressman learned about Innate in 2014 during a 
conversation with his colleague, Congressman Collins of New York. As I 
indicated, Congressman Collins sits on Innate's board of directors. 
Congressman Collins is also the company's largest shareholder, holding 
38 million shares. Congressman Collins' adult children, his chief of 
staff, and many of his political backers are also heavily invested in 
the company. I am going to touch on those issues in a few minutes.
  According to disclosures with the House Ethics Committee, Congressman 
Price bought some 61,000 shares of Innate stock in 3 separate purchases 
during January of 2015. At the time, the stock was trading at roughly 
10 cents a share. Congressman Price testified to the Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions Committee that he directed his broker to make the 
January 2015 purchases.
  Fast-forward to August 2016. Congressman Price bought another 400,000 
shares of Innate as part of a private stock sale for U.S. investors. 
When the private sale took place, Innate's shares were trading on the 
Australian Stock Exchange for the equivalent of 31 American cents. 
Participants in the private sale got the shares at a deep discount.
  In written testimony to the Finance Committee, Congressman Price said 
he paid 84,000 American dollars to buy the 400,000 shares. He bought 
250,000 of those shares for 18 American cents per share in one private 
stock placement. He bought another 150,000 shares for 26 American cents 
each in a second private stock placement. Congressman Price's House 
Ethics Committee disclosures showed that he acquired the stock on 
August 31. On that day, Innate's stock was trading for the U.S. 
equivalent of 31 cents a share on the Australian Stock Exchange. In my 
book, that is a special deal.
  The bottom line is that Congressman Price bought these shares for 
$40,000 less than an average investor would have paid to buy the same 
amount of stock off the open market. That is nearly 33 percent off the 
price on the Australian Stock Exchange at the time. Since that time, 
Innate's stock has more than doubled. These facts are not in dispute.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
Congressman Price's written testimony in response to my questions for 
the record as part of his nomination hearings.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                        Questions for the Record


``the honorable thomas e. price nomination hearing for hhs secretary'' 
                     hearing date: january 24, 2017

         questions for the record from ranking member ron wyden

                  Innate Immunotherapeutics purchases

       5. The nominee owns 461,238 shares of Innate 
     Immunotherapeutics Ltd. (``Innate''), a small Australian 
     biopharmaceutical firm developing a multiple sclerosis 
     therapy. The nominee acquired the stock in four separate 
     purchases on January 8, 9 and 23 of 2015 (``2015 tranche''), 
     and in a pair of private stock placements on August 31, 2016 
     (``2016 tranche''). Regarding Innate:
       a. Question: Please describe how and when the nominee first 
     learned about Innate.
       Answer: I previously answered this question for the SFC. I 
     learned about Innate during the course of a conversation in 
     the fall of 2014 with Representative Chris Collins regarding 
     their respective personal backgrounds. I cannot recall the 
     specific date of that conversation. During that exchange, 
     Representative Collins told me that he sat on a number of 
     public company boards including Innate, which was developing 
     a treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS),
       b. Question: Did the nominee or his staff ever meet or 
     otherwise communicate with current or former employees, 
     directors, consultants or other officials affiliated with 
     Innate. If so, please describe the communication, including 
     who it involved, the date, subject, place and form (e.g. in 
     person, by phone of communication.
       Answer: I previously answered this question for the SFC.
       I communicated with Representative Collins, who is a 
     director of Innate. As noted above, I learned about Innate 
     through a general conversation with him in the fall of 2014. 
     I also communicated with Simon Wilkinson of Innate regarding 
     my interest in participating in the 2016 private placement of 
     company stock. According to Innate's website, Mr. Wilkinson 
     is currently the Managing Director and CEO of Innate.
       My Congressional staff has not met or otherwise 
     communicated with current or former employees, directors, 
     consultants or other officials affiliated with Innate.
       c. Question: Please describe any communication between the 
     nominee and Congressman Collins regarding Innate 
     Immunotherapy, including the date, subject, place and form.
       Answer: I previously answered this question for the SFC.
       I had a conversation with Representative Collins in the 
     fall of 2014 that brought Innate, as a company, to my 
     attention. The nature of that conversation did not, however, 
     influence my decision to invest in the company in either 2015 
     or 2016.
       I believe I had subsequent general communications with 
     Representative Collins regarding Innate. I do not have a 
     specific recollection of when those conversations occurred or 
     their substance. Any such communications did not impact my 
     investment decisions, however, because my purchases of Innate 
     stock were based solely on my own research.
       d. Question: The nominee bought 400,316 shares in the 2016 
     tranche in a private stock sale that included two placements 
     at two prices. Please provide the number of shares bought in 
     each placement, and the price at which the shares were 
     bought.
       Answer: I previously answered this question for the SFC. I 
     purchased 250,000 shares of Innate in Private Placement 1 at 
     US$0.18/share--the same price offered all participants in 
     this private placement. I purchased 150,613 shares of Innate 
     in Private Placement

[[Page S1058]]

     2 at US$0.26/share--the same price offered all participants 
     in this private placement.

  Mr. WYDEN. I also refer my colleagues to the following news articles 
and documents: ``Australian Drug Maker has Low Profile but Powerful 
Backers in Washington,'' printed in the New York Times on January 13 of 
this year; ``Aussie shareholding puts heat on President's Ally,'' 
published in the Australian on February 6 of this year; the 2016 Annual 
Report to Shareholders of Innate; a periodic transaction report that 
Congressman Price filed with the House Ethics Committee on September 
12, 2016; a list of the 20 largest investors in Innate dated January 
17, 2017; and a stock price history of Innate.
  I wish to turn to the issue of misleading testimony. What remains 
unresolved are major inconsistencies between Congressman Price's 
testimony to the Finance Committee, statements by Congressman Collins, 
and statements by Innate's CEO Simon Wilkinson published last week in 
the Wall Street Journal.
  Simply put, Innate's chief executive and Congressman Collins, the 
company's top shareholder, provided one version of events to one of the 
world's most respected newspapers. Congressman Price provided a 
different version of events to the Finance Committee and the Health 
committee. These inconsistencies are among the reasons that Democrats 
boycotted last week's Finance Committee markup. The Senate has an 
obligation to know the truth about these transactions in order to 
protect the integrity of this body and its constitutional duty to 
consider executive branch nominees.
  Now, with respect to exclusivity of the sale, Congressman Price told 
the Finance Committee that the August sale was available to all Innate 
shareholders, which contradicts what Innate's management told the Wall 
Street Journal. Congressman Price was definitive in his response to my 
question during the hearing.
  Reading back the transcript, I said: ``Well, you purchased stock in 
an Australian company through private offerings at discounts not 
available to the public.''
  Here is Congressman Price's response: ``Well, if I may, those--they 
were available to every single individual that was an investor at the 
time.''
  That is not what Innate executives told the Wall Street Journal. Here 
is an extended passage from the Wall Street Journal:

       Rep. Tom Price got a privileged offer to buy a biomedical 
     stock at a discount, the company's officials said, contrary 
     to his congressional testimony this month. . . .
       The cabinet nominee is one of fewer than 20 U.S. investors 
     who were invited last year to buy discounted shares of the 
     company--an opportunity that, for Mr. Price, arose from an 
     invitation from a company director and fellow Congressman. . 
     . .
       At Mr. Collins' invitation, Mr. Price in June ordered 
     shares discounted in the private placement at 18 cents 
     apiece, and then more in July at 26 cents a share, Mr. 
     Collins said in an interview. Those orders went through in 
     August, after board approval. Mr. Price invested between 
     $50,000 and $100,000 according to his disclosure form. . . .
       Mr. Wilkinson said investors who had bought in a previous 
     private placement were called to ``make friends and family 
     aware of the opportunity. . . . We are always looking to 
     increase our shareholder base. But those new parties have to 
     meet the definition of sophisticated financial investor.'' 
     Only six U.S. investors, including Mr. Price, fell into the 
     friends-and-family category, Mr. Collins said. About 10 more 
     U.S. investors were offered discounted shares by the company 
     because they previously had been invited to partake in 
     private placement offerings.

  In other words, Congressman Price not only got a deal that wasn't 
publicly available, he was in a special group of six investors in a 
special category called ``friends-and-family,'' whereas other American 
investors got in on the private deal because they previously 
participated in the company's private placements. Congressman Price 
bypassed that requirement. He got in as what could only be called a 
special guest--a ``friends-and-family'' guest of his House colleague, 
Congressman Collins.
  As I mentioned earlier, when I asked the company how Congressman 
Price was able to get this special status, the company refused to 
provide an explanation. The Wall Street Journal also reported a key 
distinction between U.S. investors and the company's shareholders in 
Australia and New Zealand. The paper reported:

       The discounted stock offered in Innate Immuno, as the 
     company is known, was made to all shareholders in Australia 
     and New Zealand--but not in the United States, according to 
     Mr. Collins and confirmed in a separate interview with Innate 
     Immuno CEO Simon Wilkinson.

  The Wall Street Journal's account is supported by company documents, 
specifically a ``Rights Issue Booklet'' that Innate published on June 
10, 2016. The booklet noted that the shareholders would buy one new 
share for every nine shares they already own. The booklet noted that 
the shareholders would have ``the option to pay for their new shares in 
either Australian dollars or New Zealand dollars.'' The booklet goes on 
to describe the private stock sale in which Congressman Price 
participated. I will read briefly from the book:

       In conjunction with this rights issue, Innate announced 
     that it also completed a private placement at an issue price 
     of U.S. 18 cents, raising U.S. $1.8 million.

  The booklet states clearly that the private placement was announced 
on the June 10, 2016, the same day Innate announced the rights issue 
for investors in Australia and in New Zealand.
  Our staff has reviewed all of the company's publicly available 
documents and found no similar advertisements for the private placement 
to American investors. So this paper trail pokes more holes in 
Congressman Price's argument that the private stock sale was open to 
all the company investors.
  First off, the company didn't announce the existence of the private 
sale until after it already had been completed. So unless an investor 
was on the company's short list of go-to people, they were just 
excluded.
  Second, the company's documents clearly show that Congressman Price 
and other participants in the private stock sale were able to buy far 
more discounted shares than the company's typical investors. Innate 
documents showed that the company restricted the number of shares the 
typical investor could buy in the rights issue to just one new share 
for every nine they already owned. No such limit appears to have been 
imposed on Congressman Price and the other American participants in the 
private stock sale. In fact, Congressman Price owned just over 60,000 
shares at the time of the sale. His participation in the private stock 
sales allowed Congressman Price to buy 400,000 more shares. If 
Congressman Price had been held to the same rules as everyday 
investors, he would have been restricted to buying less than 7,000 
shares.
  The bottom line to me is what Congressman Price said was untrue. The 
deal Congressman Price got was not open to every other shareholder. And 
again, when I sent a letter last week to the Innate CEO, asking him to 
explain all of this, he declined. He told my staff that as an 
Australian firm, the company had no obligation to cooperate.
  So to recap, Congressman Price told the Finance Committee and the 
Health Committee that the stock sales he participated in were open to 
all shareholders. That is not true. The private sale does not appear to 
have been widely marketed to American investors and was certainly not 
advertised in the company's public documents. The private sale 
reportedly included less than 20 American investors. Congressman Price 
was part of an even smaller subgroup known as friends and family, 
invited by other investors--in this case, by his House colleague, 
Congressman Collins. How many people were eligible to be in the friends 
and family group? Just six.
  That brings me to the next issue, which is, How did Congressman Price 
learn about the special sale in the first place? Congressman Price told 
the Finance Committee his conversations with Congressman Collins had no 
influence on his investment decisions.
  I am going to again quote from his written response to questions for 
the record asking Congressman Price to describe the communications with 
Congressman Collins regarding Innate. Congressman Price said:

       I had a conversation with Representative Collins in the 
     fall of 2014 that brought Innate as a company to my 
     attention. The nature of the conversation did not, however, 
     influence my decision to invest in the company in either 2015 
     or 2016. I believe I had subsequent general communications 
     with Representative Collins regarding Innate. I do not have a 
     specific recollection of when those conversations occurred or 
     their substance. Any such communications did not impact my 
     investment decisions, however, because my

[[Page S1059]]

     purchases of Innate were based solely on my own research.

  I am going to quote again from the Wall Street Journal:

       Mr. Price got in on the discounted sale after Mr. Collins 
     filled him in on the company's drug trial, according to Mr. 
     Collins. Mr. Collins said he told Mr. Price of the additional 
     private placement. He said Mr. Price asked if he could 
     participate in it. ``Could you have someone send me the 
     documents,'' Mr. Collins recalled Mr. Price asking him. 
     Congressman Price wants us to believe that Congressman 
     Collins had no influence on the decision to buy Innate stock. 
     But Congressman Price would not have known about the company 
     in the first place if he hadn't talked to Congressman 
     Collins, and he wouldn't have known about the private 
     placements without hearing about them from Congressman 
     Collins.

  Congressman Price characterizes his conversation with Congressman 
Collins in 2015 and 2016 as being general in nature. But again, 
according to the Wall Street Journal, Congressman Collins, one, told 
Congressman Price about the upcoming drug trial; two, alerted him to 
the private stock sale; and three, arranged to ensure that he could 
participate. To me, this seems like more than ``subsequent general 
communications with Congressman Collins regarding Innate'' as 
Congressman Price put it in his written response to the committee.
  With respect to reporting to the committee and the Office of 
Government Ethics, I would just say that I think I described issues--
ethical issues--that are serious enough on their own. However, it took 
no small amount of effort to unravel Congressman Price's holdings in 
the company because he failed to fully disclose them to Federal ethics 
officials, the American people, and the Finance Committee. I don't 
believe this issue would have ever come to light if it were not for the 
work of the committee's minority investigations team.
  On February 7, 2 days ago, Congressman Price sent a letter to the 
independent Federal ethics officials at the Office of Government Ethics 
that amended his original public ethics disclosure. This letter 
confirmed the suspicions of Finance Committee Democrats that 
Congressman Price's original ethics disclosure to the public 
understated the value of his Innate stock holding by roughly a quarter 
of a million dollars. Put another way, his stake in Innate was more 
than five times the figure initially reported to the American people.
  Congressman Price's original disclosure reported that he owned less 
than $50,000 in Innate stock. At the time the disclosure was filed, by 
my calculation, his shares had a value of more than $250,000. Today his 
stake is valued at more than $300,000. Quite simply, it appears the 
shares he bought in the private stock sale in 2016 were excluded 
entirely from the Congressman's financial disclosure to the Office of 
Government Ethics. And because it is the Office of Government Ethics 
disclosure that is posted on a public Web site so the public can see 
the investment ties and investments the President's nominees hold, the 
American people, too, were kept in the dark about how much stock 
Congressman Price held in this company.
  In addition, the Congressman was also less than forthcoming in his 
disclosure of the value of Innate holdings to the Finance Committee. In 
his response to the committee questionnaire, Congressman Price valued 
Innate stock he bought in the private sale between $50,000 to $100,000. 
However, that amount was based on the $84,000 discounted price the 
Congressman paid to buy his stocks in the August private stock sale. It 
was not based on the actual value of the stock on the Australian stock 
exchange--the true value of his holdings.
  By December, when he made his disclosure to the Finance Committee, 
the stock price had nearly tripled and the shares he bought in those 
private sales were worth nearly $230,000. In other words, he told the 
committee that his private purchases were less than half the value they 
really were.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following items be 
printed in the Record: a memo from Finance Committee Staff to the 
Finance Committee, dated January 23 of this year, and a letter from 
Congressman Price to the Office of Government Ethics dated February 7, 
2017, amending his public ethics disclosure.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                Memorandum for Finance Committee Members

     From: Senate Finance Committee Staff
     Date: January 23, 2017
     Re: Nomination of Dr. Thomas E. Price

       This memo describes the Senate Finance Committee staff 
     review of the 2013, 2014, and 2015 tax returns, and other 
     documentation of Dr. Thomas E. Price in connection with his 
     nomination to be the Secretary of the Department of Health 
     and Human Services (HHS).


                               Background

       Finance Committee staff conducted a review of Dr. Price's 
     Senate Finance Committee (Committee) Questionnaire, tax 
     returns for 2013, 2014, and 2015, and financial disclosure 
     statements. As part of this review, a due diligence meeting 
     was held with the nominee and his legal representation on 
     January 16, 2017. His accountant participated via telephone. 
     In addition to the due diligence meeting, staff submitted 
     multiple rounds of written questions to the nominee.
       At the conclusion of this process, three issues have been 
     identified that have been deemed appropriate to bring to the 
     attention of Committee Members.


 Senate Finance Committee Questionnaire--Ethics Investigation and Late 
                     Property Tax Payments Omitted

       All nominees referred to the Committee are required to 
     submit the Senate Finance Committee Statement of Information 
     Requested of Nominee (``Questionnaire'').
       Part D. Legal and Other Matters, Question 1, asks nominees: 
     ``Have you ever been the subject of a complaint or been 
     investigated, disciplined, or otherwise cited for a breach of 
     ethics for unprofessional conduct before any court, 
     administrative agency, professional association, disciplinary 
     committee, or other professional group?''
       In his response, submitted December 21, 2017, Dr. Price 
     responded, ``No.'' However, in 2010, the Office of 
     Congressional Ethics (OCE), an independent office of the 
     House of Representatives, conducted an investigation into Dr. 
     Price's 2009 fundraising activities. OCE voted 4-0-1 to refer 
     the case to the House Ethics Committee, which, after 
     conducting a second investigation, ultimately found no 
     wrongdoing in 2011.
       In written questions submitted to Dr. Price on January 6, 
     2017, Committee staff requested an explanation for the 
     omission of the ethics investigation. Dr. Price stated it was 
     an inadvertent omission and that the majority of activities 
     investigated related to his authorized campaign committee, 
     rather than him personally. The information pertaining to 
     this investigation has been and continues to be available on 
     the webpage of the House Ethics Committee.
       Part F. Financial Data, Question 10, asks nominees: ``Have 
     you paid all Federal, State, local, and other taxes when due 
     for each of the past 10 years?'' Dr. Price responded, 
     ``Yes.'' However, upon examining Washington, D.C. and 
     Nashville, Tennessee real estate tax records, Committee staff 
     determined late tax payments had been made in relation to 
     rental properties owned by Dr. Price, totaling $1,583.45 for 
     late payments made over the past seven years.
       In written questions submitted to Dr. Price on January 6, 
     2017, Committee staff requested an explanation for the 
     omission of the late tax payments. Dr. Price stated that, 
     regarding the DC property, he believed that ``late fees and 
     penalties derived from not receiving timely property tax 
     notices.'' Regarding the Tennessee property, the nominee 
     noted that ``notices regarding property taxes for this rental 
     property . . . were either not being received or being 
     wrongly mailed to the tenant at the property and not reaching 
     the nominee and his spouse.''


   Depreciation of Land Value and Miscellaneous Employment Deductions

       Committee staff received 2013, 2014, and 2015 tax returns 
     from Dr. Price on December 21, 2016. In addition to the 
     written questions submitted on December 28, 2016 and January 
     6, 2017, Committee staff spoke with Dr. Price's accountant on 
     January 9, 2017. Following the due diligence meeting with Dr. 
     Price, Committee staff then submitted an additional round of 
     written questions to the nominee on January 16, 2017.
     Improper Inclusion of Land Value in Depreciation Calculations
       Taxpayers who own rental property are generally allowed to 
     deduct depreciation expenses associated with the wear and 
     tear of those buildings. Taxpayers are not, however, allowed 
     to include the value of land in the depreciable amount.
       Dr. Price owns rental condominiums in Washington, D.C. and 
     Nashville, Tennessee, and claimed depreciation expenses 
     associated with those properties for years 2013, 2014, and 
     2015. It appears these values included depreciation for the 
     value of the land. According to property tax records, the 
     land value of Washington, D.C. condominium was listed as 
     $95,640, and the land value of his Nashville condominium was 
     listed as $30,000.
       Under current tax rules, these values are not allowable for 
     depreciation expenses. Committee staff asked for 
     clarification on this issue in the due diligence meeting with 
     Dr. Price and sent written follow-up questions on January 16, 
     2017.
       In his response to the Committee, received on January 23, 
     2017, Dr. Price's accountant

[[Page S1060]]

     stated he had taken the position that the land had a fair 
     market value of zero. However, given the lack of another 
     valuation besides the property tax assessments, Dr. Price has 
     committed to address the discrepancy by filing a Form 3115 to 
     adjust the depreciation and account for the improper 
     deductions on his 2016 tax returns, though adjustments may be 
     spread out over four years.
     Absence of Documentation of Employment Deductions
       In 2013, 2014, and 2015, Dr. Price claimed miscellaneous 
     employment deductions, totaling $19,034. Dr. Price, and his 
     wife, also a medical doctor, both list their occupations as 
     ``PHYSICIAN'' on the second page of their Form 1040s. Neither 
     Dr. Price nor his wife actively works as a physician, though 
     Dr. Price has noted he has maintained his medical license. 
     Committee staff requested substantiation and further 
     explanation of the deductions in written questions submitted 
     December 28, 2016.
       Committee staff spoke with Dr. Price's accountant on this 
     matter on January 9, 2017, and again during the due diligence 
     meeting on January 16, 2017. In those discussions, Dr. 
     Price's accountant noted that Dr. Price and his wife, 
     Elizabeth, would compile a variety of expenses, including 
     vehicle expenses, and discuss with the accountant what 
     portion of those expenses would be appropriate to deduct as 
     employment expenses, frequently settling on an amount equal 
     to roughly 60 percent. Though the Prices no longer actively 
     work as physicians, their accountant believed that the 
     deductions were appropriate, and were reflective of expenses 
     incurred by Mrs. Price. After the January 16, 2017, due 
     diligence meeting, staff suggested that in the absence of 
     full documentation of the deductions, that the returns be 
     amended.
       In a response, received January 23, 2017, Dr. Price's 
     accountant noted that proper documentation could not be 
     located. Dr. Price's 2013, 2014, and 2015 tax returns will be 
     amended to remove the $19,034 of deductions. Since Dr. Price 
     was subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) in each of 
     those years, the changes will not result in any change to tax 
     liability.


                              Asset Values

       In separate financial disclosure filings to the House of 
     Representatives, to the Committee, and to the public through 
     the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Form 278, the nominee 
     reported ownership of stock in an Australian pharmaceutical 
     company--Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. The nominee purchased 
     these shares in two tranches: one in 2015 valued at $10,000 
     at the time of purchase, but was valued at between $15,000 
     and $50,000 on December 20, 2016, the date of filing. A 
     second tranche was purchased in August 2016 of 400,613 
     shares, through a private placement offering, and was listed 
     on the Committee questionnaire as being valued between 
     $50,000 to $100,000, which was based upon the purchase price. 
     An analysis done by multiplying the number of shares by the 
     market price on December 20, 2016 demonstrates a value higher 
     than that reported by the nominee. The nominee noted that the 
     amounts reported to the Committee were a good faith 
     valuation. The nominee agreed to recalculate the value of the 
     shares based on the market value at the time the Committee 
     Questionnaire was completed. The revised value of the second 
     tranche was between $100,000 and $250,000 when filed.
       The nominee and Committee staff also agreed that the 
     tranche of shares acquired in August 2016 was not accounted 
     for on the OGE Form 278, and the nominee told staff that 
     income attributable to his holding in the company reported on 
     OGE Form 278 was incorrect. The nominee noted that it is 
     unclear how information related to his holding in this stock 
     was misstated on the published form. The nominee agreed to 
     contact OGE to correct the form.
                                  ____

  

                                                 February 7, 2017.
     Ms. Elizabeth J. Fischmann,
     Associate General Counsel for Ethics, Designated Agency 
         Ethics Official,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Ms. Fischmann: The purposes of this letter are to 
     amend the financial disclosure report that I signed on 
     December 15, 2016, and to supplement the ethics agreement 
     that I signed on January 11, 2017.


                     a--financial disclosure report

       To correct inadvertent errors in my December 15, 2016, 
     financial disclosure report, the items identified below are 
     amended, as follows:

                                                                         Part I
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         #            Organization Name        City/State         Organization Type       Position Held               From                    To
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2                   Chattahoochee         Atlanta, Georgia....  General Partnership.  Managing and General                  11/1993  Present
                     Associates.                                                       Partner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


                                                     Part 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        #              Description         EIF              Value              Income Type       Income Amount
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1                  Chattahoochee        no               $100,001-$250,000  ................  None (or less than
                    Associates.                                                                $201)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


                                                     Part 6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        #              Description         EIF              Value              Income Type       Income Amount
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14.55              Amazon Com Inc.....  n/a             None (or less than  Capital Gains     $2,501-$5,000
                                                                   $1,001)
15.1               Innate               n/a                $15,001-$50,000  ................  None (or less than
                    Immunotherapeutics                                                         $201)
                    Ltd. (INNMF).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       To correct an inadvertent error in my December 15, 2016, 
     financial disclosure report, the following item is added to 
     that financial disclosure report:

                                                     Part 6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        #              Description         EIF              Value              Income Type       Income Amount
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
28                 Innate               n/a              $100,001-$250,000  ................  None (or less than
                    Immunotherapeutics                                                         $201)
                    Ltd. (INNMF).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       With regard to the assets disclosed in my December 15, 
     2016, financial disclosure report other than those listed 
     above, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics has asked me to 
     confirm that I disclosed the current value at the time of 
     reporting. By this letter, I am confirming that I used 
     current value with regard to those assets. This letter makes 
     no changes to the value categories disclosed in that 
     financial disclosure report other than those indicated above.


          b--Supplement to January 11, 2017, Ethics Agreement

       The new item listed above (Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd./
     $100,001-$250,000) is covered by the commitment I made in my 
     January 11, 2017, ethics agreement to divest all interests in 
     Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. within 90 days of 
     confirmation. In addition, the following commitments 
     supplement my ethics agreement dated January 11, 2017.
       In February 2017, I resigned from my position as Managing 
     and General Partner of Chattahoochee Associates and 
     transferred my ownership interest to my spouse. I will not 
     participate personally and substantially in any particular 
     matter that to my knowledge has a direct and predictable 
     effect on the financial interests of Chattahoochee 
     Associates, unless I first obtain a written waiver, pursuant 
     to 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(b)(1).
       If I have a managed account or otherwise use the services 
     of an investment professional during my appointment, I will 
     ensure that the account manager or investment professional 
     obtains my prior approval on a case-by-case basis for the 
     purchase of any assets other than cash, cash equivalents, 
     investment funds that qualify for the exemption at 5 C.F.R. 
     Sec. 2640.201(a), obligations of the United States, or 
     municipal bonds.
       I understand that as an appointee I will be required to 
     sign the Ethics Pledge (Exec. Order no. 13770) and that I 
     will be bound by the requirements and restrictions therein in 
     addition to the commitments I made in the ethics agreement I 
     signed on January 11, 2017.
       I have been advised that this supplement to my ethics 
     agreement will be posted publicly, consistent with 5 U.S.C. 
     Sec. 552, on the website of the U.S. Office of Government 
     Ethics with ethics agreements of other Presidential nominees 
     who file public financial disclosure reports. I understand 
     that this letter will also be released as an attachment to my 
     public financial disclosure report.
           Sincerely,
                                             Thomas E. Price, M.D.

  Mr. WYDEN. I also refer my colleagues to the following documents: an 
announcement by Innate on June 10, 2016, entitled ``Private Placements 
and

[[Page S1061]]

Rights Issue to Raise Additional Working Capital,'' and the Public 
Financial Disclosure Report signed by Congressman Price on December 15, 
2016, that was filed with the Office of Government Ethics.
  I want to take a minute to return to the Innate company itself. I 
noted earlier that the company has put on a full court press to defend 
Congressman Price in recent weeks, as details of his special deal have 
come to light.
  I am going to describe why that might be. Innate's executives have 
sought to portray the company as being a small firm from Down Under 
that has been inadvertently caught in political crossfire on the other 
side of the world. But the fact is that Innate has longstanding 
connections to Congressman Collins and his inner circle, a circle that 
includes Congressman Price. As the Australian City Newspaper wrote this 
week, ``Mr. Collins, his children and his `intimate political allies' 
and donors controlled at least 27.25 percent'' of Innate's voting 
shares.
  Then there is the baffling assertion mailed by Mr. Wilkinson, the 
CEO, that he only recently learned of Congressman Price's existence 
through news articles. This is a stretch to believe and flies in the 
face of Congressman Price's own testimony.
  On January 13, the New York Times reported:

       Mr. Wilkinson and Michael Quinn, Innate's chairman, said 
     they had never heard of many of the company's more prominent 
     investors, and said they first learned that Mr. Price had 
     invested in the company from an article in the Wall Street 
     Journal, which first reported his investment.

  On February 5, Mr. Wilkinson, the CEO of Innate, told the Buffalo 
News, ``I think the first time I heard that a gentleman named Tom Price 
had invested was after the U.S. media started reporting it.''
  But Congressman Price was quite clear that he had communicated with 
Wilkinson. In written testimony, responding to questions for the 
record, he said: I also communicated with Simon Wilkinson of Innate 
regarding my interest in participating in the 2016 private placement of 
company stock. According to Innate's Web site, Mr. Wilkinson is 
currently the managing director and CEO of the company.
  Congressman Price's name was also listed twice in the documents of 
the company, which reported the private stock sale participants to the 
Australian stock exchange last summer. Congressman Price also appeared 
to have bought nearly 5 percent of the discounted shares made available 
in the private stock sale. Given all that, it seems difficult to 
believe Mr. Wilkinson's story that he had no idea who Congressman Price 
was.
  Finally, The Australian, the Sydney paper I just mentioned, reported 
on Monday that Innate and Congressman Collins are facing questions 
about possible violations of Australia corporation law with regard to 
his holdings in the company. So why does this matter? It matters 
because a nominee to be a Cabinet Secretary, Congressman Price, was 
brought into this web of questionable stock transactions and 
obfuscations about just how special the special deal he really got was 
by a company insider, his friend, Congressman Collins.
  As I get ready to close, I refer my colleagues to the following 
articles and documents: ``Congressman Collins under fire for 
`suspicious' stock trades,'' published in the Buffalo News on January 
17 of this year; ``Collins shared biotech stock news with big Buffalo 
names,'' again from the Buffalo News on January 19; ``Collins' 
controversial stock venture could be boom or bust,'' from the Buffalo 
News on February 5 of this year; the Notice of Innate's 2016 Annual 
Meeting and Explanatory Statement filed on July 29 of 2016; documents 
filed by Innate on September 12, 2016, and September 26, 2016, 
reporting results of the 2016 private stock placement.
  As we close, I want to return to section 3 of the STOCK Act. It says:

       Members of Congress . . . may not use nonpublic information 
     derived from such person's position . . . or gained from the 
     performance of such person's official responsibilities as a 
     means for making a private profit.

  So did Congressman Price have access to nonpublic information about 
Innate or its private stock sale because of his position as a Member of 
Congress? I believe the answer is yes.
  Did he get special access to the discounted private sale because of 
his position? I believe the answer is yes.
  Does he stand to profit because of the information or access he may 
have received? I believe the answer is yes.
  Finally, did Congressman Price tell the Finance Committee and the 
HELP Committee the truth about how he learned about the private stock 
sale and the ability of average investors to participate? Congressman 
Price told the Finance Committee and the HELP Committee that the 
special stock deal he got in on was open to everyone.
  According to the Wall Street Journal and company documents, that is 
not true. The deal he got was clearly different than what was offered 
to everyday investors. According to the Journal, his previous purchase 
of Innate stock did not qualify him to participate in the private 
placement without being a specially invited friends and family guest. 
This arrangement allowed Congressman Price to buy more shares than 
other investors were allowed to buy.
  Congressman Price told the Finance Committee that his conversations 
with Congressman Collins, again, a director of the company, its largest 
shareholder, had no influence on his investment decisions. According to 
the Journal, this is not true. The Journal report made clear that 
Congressman Collins told him about the upcoming drug trial, alerted him 
to the private stock sale, and arranged to ensure he could participate.
  Now the majority party has shut down the vetting process, allowing 
Congressman Price's nomination to reach the floor before all the facts 
have come into view. I believe the Senate can do better. It needs to do 
better. The American people are owed better.
  I thank my colleagues, particularly Senator Reed, for his patience 
and his courtesy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to President 
Trump's nomination of Congressman Tom Price for the Department of 
Health and Human Services. The Department he has been picked to lead is 
charged with protecting the health of all Americans, from safeguarding 
Medicare and nursing home care for seniors to investing in medical 
research and supporting public health programs, such as lead poisoning 
prevention and youth suicide prevention.
  Unfortunately, Congressman Price has demonstrated over the last 
decade in Congress that he is unwilling or unfit or both to protect 
these critical health programs. In his role as chairman of the House 
Budget Committee, Congressman Price has offered plans to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act and turn Medicare into a privatized voucher 
program. This is the opposite of protecting the safety net programs for 
our most vulnerable citizens.
  Time and again, Congressman Price has proved that he favors corporate 
interests over patients, which has raised ethics concerns. For these 
reasons, I will oppose his nomination.
  First, I would like to talk about the Affordable Care Act. About a 
month ago, I was here talking to my colleagues on the floor about the 
impact of the ACA in my home State of Rhode Island and the consequences 
of repeal. In short, repeal of the ACA would be catastrophic in Rhode 
Island and across the country. Yet Congressman Price has led the 
efforts in the House of Representatives to repeal the ACA without any 
replacement. In fact, he is the architect of legislation to do just 
that.
  The uninsured rate today is at its lowest point in recent history. 
That holds true in my State of Rhode Island. The uninsured rate there 
has fallen from nearly 12 percent to under 4.5 percent. That translates 
to over 100,000 Rhode Islanders who have gained coverage because of the 
ACA.
  While it is not the case in every State, in Rhode Island insurance 
rates have dropped. In fact, consumers in Rhode Island have saved $220 
million since 2012.
  We cannot go back to a system that allows private insurers to deny 
coverage for preexisting conditions or

[[Page S1062]]

charge more to those who need insurance the most. By contrast, 
Congressman Price opposes the preexisting conditions ban, one of the 
most popular provisions of the ACA.
  His plan would allow insurance companies to deny coverage or to 
charge more to those with preexisting conditions, older Americans, and 
women. He has also proposed getting rid of the essential benefits 
package in the ACA. These protections require insurance companies to 
cover things like prescriptions drugs, maternity care, pediatric 
services, and mental health care. These are really things that any 
basic health coverage should include, yet Congressman Price has 
advocated taking away these consumer protections.
  Stop and think about that. Congressman Price does not think that 
health insurance should cover pregnancy, for example. I mean, we are 
not really talking about extravagant services. These are the services 
that a reasonable person would expect their health insurance to cover. 
In fact, Congressman Price's plan, the Republican plan to repeal the 
ACA, would mean that nearly half a million Rhode Islanders with 
preexisting conditions--that is nearly half the population of my 
State--could be denied coverage or charged more. Those who might still 
be able to get coverage would quickly find that it does not cover that 
much.
  These consumer protections that are embedded in the ACA affect 
everyone, not just those who have coverage because of the ACA. Before 
the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans, including coverage 
through your employer, could impose annual or lifetime limits on 
coverage, meaning coverage could end just when you need it most. With 
Congressman Price in charge, if he has his way, we will see a return of 
these limits, even for employer-sponsored health plans.
  The nominee's stance on the Affordable Care Act is not my only worry 
because when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, benefits that Americans 
have worked hard to earn and to fund, Congressman Price's views are far 
outside the mainstream.
  Medicare is one of the great success stories in expanding access to 
care and keeping seniors out of poverty. Since the passage of Medicare 
in 1965, we have seen significant decreases in the numbers of seniors 
living in poverty, and this is largely because of Medicare and, of 
course, Social Security, another critical safety net program for 
seniors. I believe that Medicare is essential for the quality of life 
of Rhode Island's seniors and for seniors across the country.
  In fact, I supported the ACA because it made key improvements to 
Medicare that strengthened its long-time solvency and increased 
benefits, such as closing the prescription doughnut hole and 
eliminating cost sharing for preventive services, such as cancer 
screenings.
  Over 15,000 Rhode Islanders saved $14 million on prescriptions drugs 
in 2015, an average of $912 per beneficiary. In the same year, over 
92,000 Rhode Islanders took advantage of free preventive services, 
representing over 76 percent of beneficiaries. We see these benefits 
because of the Affordable Care Act.
  Repealing the Affordable Care Act, as advocated by the Congressman, 
means repealing these benefits for seniors and shortening the life of 
the Medicare trust fund by over a decade. What is worse is that 
Congressman Price not only wants to repeal the ACA and the Medicare 
benefits that come with it, but he has also advocated for privatizing 
Medicare, turning it into a voucher-based program, as well as raising 
the eligibility age.
  Simply put, this would end Medicare as we know it. Millions of 
Americans, including over 200,000 Rhode Islanders, have paid into the 
system, counting on the benefits that they have earned and worked their 
entire life for. Under Congressman Price's plan, Republicans would 
shift more costs to seniors who have played by the rules and planned 
for retirement with quality Medicare coverage.
  Congressman Price and Congressional Republicans will tell you that 
they are trying to cut costs under the banner of trying to save 
Medicare. If that is the Republican standard, then why do they oppose 
the ACA which actually improved Medicare services, cut costs, and 
extended Medicare solvency? That seems to be a pattern with many on the 
other side: Act very serious and concerned about Medicare's finances, 
but then make every effort to demonize and roll back these 
improvements.
  In fact, Medicare spent $453 billion less from 2009 to 2014 than it 
expected under growth trends prior to the ACA, all while increasing 
benefits like free preventive care and better prescription drug 
coverage and adding over a decade of solvency to the Medicare trust 
fund. The projected cost--the best projections were actually lowered by 
the ACA while benefits were increased. This talk of supposedly saving 
Medicare is really, in my view, a ruse to make draconian cuts to free 
up more Federal funding for things like tax breaks for the wealthy. We 
cannot allow Republicans under Congressman Price's leadership to go 
back on the Medicare guarantee we have made to seniors that we 
represent all across this country.
  Congressman Price has also made a number of troubling statements 
about Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP. 
First, repeal of the ACA would have a disastrous effect on State 
Medicaid programs, kicking 11 million Americans off their health 
insurance, including 70,000 Rhode Islanders.
  However, this is not enough for Congressman Price. He has offered 
legislation to cut Medicaid even further, to the tune of $1 trillion, 
by turning Medicaid into a Block Grant Program.
  I think my colleagues should really consider how this would impact 
their States. Including those newly insured by the ACA, Medicaid covers 
74 million Americans. Who makes up this population? Well, half of the 
Medicaid enrollees are children.
  Medicaid also pays for half the births in this country.
  These are staggering numbers. In Rhode Island, one in four children 
is covered by Medicaid or CHIP, and one in two people with disabilities 
is covered by Medicaid.
  While Medicaid was initially designed to help low-income families, 
seniors now account for approximately half of Medicaid's spending 
nationwide. Nearly 60 percent of nursing home residents are covered by 
Medicaid across the country, and that holds true in my State of Rhode 
Island.
  Many of these people are our neighbors, our friends. They have been 
working all their lives, and they have qualified for this coverage 
because they have been able to move some of their assets out of their 
ownership because our rules don't recognize retirement accounts. So 
these are our neighbors.
  When Congressman Price talks about turning Medicaid into a block 
grant program, every Member of this Chamber has to stop to realize that 
there is no way to cut Medicaid by trillions of dollars without harming 
children and seniors and placing each of our States in a very difficult 
position because they, too, contribute to Medicaid; because they have a 
responsibility to children and seniors for health care; because they do 
also help support nursing home, nursing facilities for seniors and the 
disabled. And they would be in a disastrous situation.
  Now, all of these are, I believe, reason enough to oppose Congressman 
Price's nomination. However--and I alluded to this earlier, and Senator 
Wyden went into great detail--Congressman Price has a history of 
conflicts of interest, such as investments in the very issues and 
companies he worked on, as a Member of Congress.
  Congressman Price traded hundreds of thousands of dollars in health 
care pharmaceutical stocks, all the while advocating for regulation 
legislation that would financially benefit these very companies. Again, 
Senator Wyden has made a very detailed and very persuasive case in this 
regard.
  In fact, as Senator Wyden has pointed out, after receiving 
information from a fellow Congressman and now a member of President 
Trump's transition team, Congressman Price was one of a small group who 
was offered the chance to purchase stock in a biomedical group at a 
discounted price.
  Now, Democrats are not going to have the opportunity to fully examine 
these issues. I find the examples we do have to be deeply concerning. 
The very articulate, eloquent, and detailed--exhaustively detailed--
statement by Senator Wyden adds further credence to this presumption.

[[Page S1063]]

  This is a very disconcerting pattern of behavior. Indeed, I believe 
this pattern of behavior warrants further investigation, but those 
requests have been denied by the Republican majority. These allegations 
are now even more concerning because of the need for further 
investigation, but those requests have been denied by the Republican 
majority. These allegations are even now more concerning because 
Congressman Price is being considered for the top role in this 
administration in charge of protecting the health of all Americans and, 
indeed, affecting the corporate situation of thousands of companies 
throughout this land that he may or may not have a financial interest 
in.
  Now I have heard from hundreds of Rhode Islanders who have expressed 
these concerns to me, from his support for the efforts to repeal the 
ACA and cut Medicaid and Medicare to his questionable investments. I 
agree with them.
  As such, I am unable to support Congressman Price's nomination for 
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and I would 
urge others to look very carefully at the record, carefully at the 
advocacy for the elimination, basically, of Medicare as we know it, of 
block-granting Medicaid, which would harm children and seniors and put 
excruciating financial pressure on every State in this country, and his 
own behavior with respect to personal investments.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in 
opposing Congressman Tom Price's nomination to be the Secretary of the 
Department of Health and Human Services.
  Every American deserves the opportunity to have quality, affordable 
health insurance coverage to help them live healthy and productive 
lives. Having health care is not just critical to the freedom, dignity, 
and well-being of our citizens but also to the strength of our economy.
  As Governor, I worked with Democrats and Republicans in New Hampshire 
to expand health insurance coverage--including coverage for substance 
use disorder and behavioral health services--to tens of thousands of 
Granite Staters.
  We need to bring this same bipartisan approach to the Senate. We know 
that there are serious challenges in our health care system that must 
be fixed, and we need to work across party lines to support commonsense 
improvements to move our Nation's health care system forward, not rip 
health insurance coverage away from millions of Americans.
  This is why I cannot support Congressman Price's nomination. 
Throughout his time in office, Congressman Price has promoted policies 
that would undermine the health care that so many in my State and 
across our Nation depend on. Congressman Price wants to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act, which would strip coverage away from millions of 
Americans. Those who seek to repeal the ACA, including Congressman 
Price, have not come up with a plan to replace it.
  Repealing the ACA without a replacement would send insurance markets 
reeling. It would be devastating for millions of people who have 
coverage because of the law.
  Repealing the ACA would eliminate New Hampshire's bipartisan Medicaid 
expansion plan, harming our State's efforts to combat the heroin, 
fentanyl, and opioid crisis. This crisis is the most pressing public 
health and public safety challenge facing our State, and thousands of 
Granite Staters have accessed substance misuse treatment because of 
Medicaid expansion.
  Just a couple of weeks ago, I met a young man named Noah at Harbor 
Homes in Nashua. Noah is an active participant in the Nashua drug court 
and a former enrollee in our Medicaid expansion program.
  Last month, after 14 years of struggling with addiction, Noah was 
celebrating 1 year sober. Because of legislation that expanded 
Medicaid, passed under bipartisan leadership, Noah received health 
insurance through Medicaid expansion, and he was able to quickly begin 
treatment.
  Noah's recovery process required medication-assisted treatment which 
he would not have been able to afford had it not been covered under 
Medicaid. He is now 5 months off that treatment and hasn't had an 
instance of relapse.
  Noah said the ACA and Medicaid expansion are ``working miracles every 
single day in this recovery community.'' For Noah and so many others, 
we cannot afford to set back our efforts, but that is what the repeal 
of the ACA would do.
  I also oppose Congressman Price because he is determined to turn back 
the clock on women's access to reproductive health care. He has fought 
against the woman's constitutionally protected right to make her own 
health care decisions and control her own destiny. He has voted 10 
times to defund Planned Parenthood, and he has voted against a 
resolution to protect employees from being punished or fired by their 
employers for their reproductive health decisions.
  And I oppose Congressman Price because he has pushed to turn Medicare 
into a voucher program, which will increase costs for seniors. 
Congressman Price's views and priorities are simply at odds and out of 
touch with the views and priorities of many, many Granite Staters.
  Additionally, Mr. President, serious issues have been raised 
throughout this nomination process regarding Congressman Price's 
conflicts of interest and his potential violation of the STOCK Act, 
including recent reports suggesting that he received a private discount 
to purchase a health company stock while engaged in legislative efforts 
that would directly affect the company's financial interests. 
Congressman Price's insufficient responses concerning his stock 
purchases raise the question of whether, if confirmed, he will put 
corporate interests ahead of the American people. That is unacceptable. 
I believe we need a health care system that works for every American, 
and that is why I will vote against Congressman Price's confirmation.
  I want to talk a little bit more about what Congressman Price's 
confirmation would do with respect to Medicaid expansion and 
particularly how it would affect the opioid crisis in New Hampshire. In 
New Hampshire, we proved that Democrats and Republicans can come 
together to move our health care system forward when we passed our 
Bipartisan Medicaid Expansion Program. Passing and reauthorizing this 
program included healthy debate, and at times some argument, but what 
matters of course is what we do after our argument, after those 
debates. We were able in New Hampshire to put our differences aside and 
take a critical step forward to continue strengthening our families, 
our businesses, and our economy. This is the approach we need to be 
taking in the United States Senate.
  The benefits of Medicaid expansion are clear, over 50,000 Granite 
Staters are now covered in a population of 1.3 million people. We 
included in Medicaid expansion coverage of substance use disorder and 
behavioral health services. I have heard story after story of Granite 
Staters who are in recovery, thanks to Medicaid expansion. I told 
Noah's story just a few minutes ago.
  At another round table I met a young woman named Ashley at the Farnum 
Center in Manchester, CT. Ashley told of suffering from addiction for 
over 10 years. One day she woke up to discover that her husband had 
died of an overdose. She lost custody of her young daughter, but 
because of Medicaid expansion, Ashley was able to get treatment. She 
has been in recovery now for a little bit over a year--recovery through 
medical treatment made possible by Medicaid expansion. Because she is 
in recovery, she was able to get a job. Because she began working 
again, she actually has now moved off Medicaid expansion onto private 
health insurance. So Medicaid expansion was there when she needed it to 
get healthy. Now she doesn't need it anymore, and she is participating 
in the private health insurance market. By the way, she is beginning to 
reestablish her relationship with her young son. That is the power of 
the Affordable Care Act. That is the power of Medicaid expansion.

[[Page S1064]]

  Representative Price, on the other hand, has advocated for repeal of 
these very programs. Such a repeal would have such harmful impacts, 
pulling the rug out from those who have coverage right now for critical 
medical conditions. At his confirmation hearing, Representative Price 
declined to guarantee that Americans with substance use disorders who 
got on insurance through Medicaid expansion would still be covered for 
these services if the Affordable Care Act is repealed under 
Representative Price's leadership.
  He also would not commit to continuing the requirement under the 
Affordable Care Act that health insurance companies must cover 
essential health benefits, including treatment for substance abuse.
  Representative Price's support for the repeal of the Affordable Care 
Act also requires more discussion. The Affordable Care Act has helped 
families across our Nation access quality, affordable health insurance 
coverage. We need to come together now and find bipartisan areas in 
which we can agree to improve the law, but we should not be repealing 
it. We should not be taking coverage away from millions of people. I 
have joined a number of my colleagues in expressing our willingness to 
work across the aisle with our colleagues to improve the law, but 
unfortunately it seems our colleagues in the Senate are headed down a 
path to repeal the law without a plan to replace it. Repealing the ACA 
without any replacement is a recipe for upheaval and instability, a 
recipe for hurting our families, small businesses, and our economic 
progress. Representative Price and those who seek to repeal this law 
have not agreed on any path forward other than repealing and stripping 
coverage away from millions of Americans. Repealing would have major 
consequences for many Granite State families and small businesses.
  My office has heard from constituents about the impact the Affordable 
Care Act has had on their lives. One resident from Keene, NH, wrote to 
say this law has helped fulfill his goal of starting a small business. 
He wrote:

       I have had health insurance through the exchange under the 
     ACA since late 2015, when I quit my job to start up a 
     business. Before the ACA, I wouldn't have taken the risk to 
     start a business, because I have a preexisting condition and 
     I wouldn't have been able to get an individual 
     health insurance policy.

  He continued:

       Under the ACA, I am able to get good health insurance at an 
     affordable premium. Since I left my job I built up a 
     profitable business and expect to be in a position to hire 
     employees within a year or two. None of this would have been 
     possible without the ACA.

  And he added:

       If the ACA is repealed, I am concerned that I will need to 
     put my business on hold in order to go back to a corporate 
     job that I don't need, only to get the health care benefits. 
     The ACA has flaws, but overall it has allowed me to take an 
     entrepreneurial risk and start a small successful business.

  It is clear that this law has truly made a difference not just for 
the health of our citizens but also for our economy, and we cannot 
undermine the progress we have made.
  I am also deeply concerned about Representative Price's record and 
his statements concerning women's health care. Representative Price has 
consistently opposed women's reproductive freedom. I have always fought 
to protect a woman's right to make her own health care decisions and to 
chart her own course, and I always will. This is not just a matter of 
individual freedom, which of course is a good enough reason in its own 
right to support women's reproductive choice, but it is also a matter 
of economics. When women have to pay more for their health care than 
men do, it puts them at a financial disadvantage.
  As Governor, I restored family planning funds and pushed to restore 
State funding to Planned Parenthood because I know how critical these 
services are for the women and families of my State. It is unacceptable 
that Washington Republicans continue to play games with women's health, 
and Representative Price has been at the forefront of that effort. 
Representative Price does not support a woman's constitutionally 
protected right to a safe and legal abortion. He has cosponsored and 
repeatedly voted for measures that would ban all medically appropriate 
abortions, without exceptions for rape, incest, or to protect a woman's 
health. He has voted to penalize small businesses that choose private 
health plans that include abortion coverage. Additionally, he has voted 
to allow employers to discriminate against employees based on their 
reproductive health decisions. He voted to eliminate the Title X Family 
Planning Program. He voted 10 times to defund Planned Parenthood.
  Defunding Planned Parenthood, a critical health provider, would have 
devastating effects. A recent article in the Washington Post 
highlighted the impact of what can happen when legislatures attempt to 
defund Planned Parenthood.
  This report in the post found:

       In 2011, the Texas legislature cut the two-year budget for 
     funding family planning from $111 million to $38 million in 
     an effort to defund Planned Parenthood. After these cuts, 82 
     Texas family planning clinics, one out of every four in the 
     state--closed or stopped providing family planning services. 
     An unintended consequence of the law was that two-thirds of 
     the clinics that closed were not even Planned Parenthood 
     clinics. Organizations that remained open, many with reduced 
     hours, were often unable to offer the most effective methods 
     of contraception, such as IUDs and contraceptive implants, to 
     women who wanted them. The closings and reduced hours also 
     limited or cut back access to primary care providers for a 
     significant number of women.

  Women and their families deserve better than an HHS Secretary who 
would disregard their constitutional right and roll back their access 
to reproductive health care. They deserve better than an HHS Secretary 
who appears to believe that women are neither capable nor trusted to 
make their own health care decisions. I believe women should be full 
and free citizens in the United States of America and can be trusted to 
make their own health care decisions.
  Representative Price's nomination and his confirmation would be 
harmful to our seniors as well. Seniors deserve a high quality of life, 
high-quality care, and access to the benefits that they have earned 
throughout their life. I believe we must continue to strengthen and 
protect Medicare for years to come, not undermine it. Unfortunately, 
Representative Price has long sought to undermine Medicare and the 
important benefits it provides to seniors. His budget proposals have 
included extreme cuts to the program. He supports turning Medicare into 
a voucher program. In fact, he even said he wants to voucherize 
Medicare within the first 6 to 8 months of the Trump administration. 
This would increase costs for seniors.
  He has also repeatedly opposed allowing Medicare to negotiate drug 
prices for seniors. He has argued that seniors have no drug cost 
problem. Imagine that, a Health and Human Services Secretary who 
believes that drug costs are not an issue for our seniors. He even said 
allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for prescription drugs would be 
``a solution in search of a problem.''
  I can tell Representative Price that there are certainly seniors in 
New Hampshire who have found that the cost of their prescription drugs 
are truly a problem, and as we talk about the need to shore up and 
strengthen the Medicare Program, one of the best ways to stabilize its 
finances would be to allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug 
prices to lower those prices, lower the cost of the program, while 
making the program even more affordable for our seniors.
  That is not something that Representative Price has even expressed a 
willingness to consider because he doesn't even acknowledge there is a 
problem. Representative Price has also supported raising the Medicare 
age from 65 to 67. This amounts to a devastating benefit cut for 
seniors, shifting costs onto them, which is unacceptable.
  Whenever I hear people suggesting raising the retirement age for 
Social Security or the age for Medicare eligibility, I am reminded of 
my father-in-law. My father-in-law was one of the hardest working 
people I ever knew. He worked as a wholesale meat cutter, and for 
anybody who has never seen what that means, it means standing on your 
feet for hours at a time in a cold meat locker as large carcasses come 
through, and with time pressures, the way any production facility has, 
cutting those carcasses into salable product.
  My father-in-law left the house before dark. He often came home, 
having

[[Page S1065]]

been assigned overtime, after dark, having been standing on his feet in 
the cold, doing incredibly hard, physical labor.
  When it came time for him to retire, when he became eligible for 
Medicare, he really couldn't have worked at that job much longer. And 
the fact that he had a dignified retirement after those years of hard 
work was in large part due to Medicare. Before the physical impacts of 
that job slowed him down, it was our great pleasure to watch a man who 
had provided for his family with such hard work know the dignity of 
playing with his grandchildren, sleeping in until 7:30 or 8 in the 
morning, and watching his family grow and strengthen and thrive.
  That is the dignity of Medicare. It is the dignity of Social 
Security. And to have a Health and Human Services Secretary who 
believes we should just be raising that age, as Representative Price 
does, contradicts the very notion of what it means to earn a benefit 
and to know a dignified retirement.
  I am proud of the progress we have made to help ensure that more 
Granite Staters and Americans have the quality health care they need at 
an affordable cost. There is much more work to do to move our health 
care system forward and to combat the heroin opioid and fentanyl crisis 
that has devastated far too many families in New Hampshire and across 
our Nation. I am ready and willing to work with anyone who is serious 
about making improvements to our health care system to improve 
affordability and access to care, but that does not start with pulling 
the rug out for millions of Americans. It does not start with rolling 
back women's access to critical health care services.
  Congressman Price's record demonstrates that he puts a partisan 
agenda and corporate interests before the health and economic well-
being of our families. The American people deserve a Secretary of 
Health and Human Services who will help more Americans receive quality, 
affordable health insurance coverage, not one who supports stripping it 
away by repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement.
  For these reasons, I will be voting no on Congressman Price's 
nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the debate on Congressman Price's 
nomination, in my view, is a referendum on the future of health care in 
America.
  On this side of the aisle, we think it is worth spending 30 hours 
talking about a subject this important to our people. My view is that 
this is about whether the United States is going to go back to the dark 
days when health care worked only for the healthy and the wealthy.
  Based on the public record, Medicare is a program Congressman Price 
does not believe in, and it offers a guarantee of services he doesn't 
believe seniors should have.
  On the Affordable Care Act, he is the architect of repeal and run. He 
wrote the bill himself. He proposed weakening protections for Americans 
with preexisting conditions. He would shred the health care safety 
net--Medicaid--for the least fortunate among us. He would take away 
health care choices for women, particularly the opportunity to go to 
the physician that they trust.
  As we wrap up and get ready to vote, think about the common thread 
among these proposals: They take away coverage from our people, make 
health care coverage more expensive for millions of people, or both. 
That is what Congressman Price stands for when it comes to health care. 
Every Senator who casts a vote for Congressman Price has to stand by 
that agenda.
  Beyond what this means for the future of American health care policy, 
there is the lingering spectre, as I have discussed tonight in detail, 
of serious legal and ethical issues. Congressman Price got special 
access to a special deal on stock in an Australian biomedical company. 
He claimed multiple times before Senate committees that the deal he got 
on discounted company stock was open to all shareholders. All the 
evidence--all the evidence--says that this is untrue.
  First, he had to go through the back door to get access to the 
discounted price. He got a special friends-and-family invite from his 
colleague in the House, Congressman Chris Collins, the company's top 
shareholder and a member of its board.
  Second, rules that apply to other investors didn't apply to 
Congressman Price. Other shareholders were bound by a limit. They were 
able to buy one discounted share for every nine they already owned. 
That would have allowed Congressman Price to buy just 7,000 discounted 
shares. He bought 400,000 discounted shares. In my view, he can't get 
around that. That is the definition of a special stock deal.
  The Congressman introduced legislation that would have lowered the 
tax bills of three major pharmaceutical companies in which he owns 
stock. He invested $15,000 in a medical equipment company and then 
introduced legislation to increase the amount Medicare pays for that 
type of equipment. Parts of his bill went on to become law. He bought 
thousands of dollars' worth of stock in a company called Zimmer Biomet 
less than a week before introducing legislation that had the potential 
to drive up the value of those shares. Now he has argued that he didn't 
purchase the stocks; his broker did. But at the very least, he would 
have known about those deals within days of the purchase when he filed 
the periodic transaction reports in the House. Under his brokerage 
agreement, he could have quickly resold the stock, but he did not. 
Furthermore, he didn't consult with the Ethics Committee regarding any 
of the trades I have spoken about as directed by the House Ethics 
Manual.
  As I wrap up, I want to put a human face on why so many Senators on 
this side of the aisle have come to the Senate floor to speak so 
passionately about their grave concerns with this nomination. Nothing 
sums up our concerns more clearly than a line from an op-ed Congressman 
Price wrote in 2009 that discusses Medicare. His quote speaks volumes 
about his perspective on this program.
  It is a lifeline. I first became acquainted with it back in the days 
when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, ran the legal aid 
program for older people. I saw then that seniors were walking on an 
economic tightrope, balancing their food bill against their fuel bill, 
their fuel bill against the rent bill. They saw Medicare as one of the 
great achievements in American policymaking.
  Here is what the Congressman wrote--his words, not mine: ``Nothing 
has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than 
the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.'' 
When I read that, I was reflecting on my Gray Panther days, and I think 
a lot of other Senators go back working with community organizations. 
We just heard a wonderful presentation from Senator King, who was also 
a legal services advocate.
  Before Medicare, before this program that Congressman Price thinks is 
such a negative intrusion into medicine, a lot of older people were 
warehoused in poor farms. I am absolutely certain that Congressman 
Price doesn't want to go back to those days, but when he speaks about 
the involvement of Medicare in American health care as though a plague 
has descended on the land, we just have to question his commitment to a 
program that has become a lifeline to millions of older people.
  The fact is, Medicare has always been a promise. That is what we said 
back in the early days with the senior citizens. Medicare was a 
promise. It was a promise of guaranteed benefits. Again, based on the 
public record, Medicare is a program Congressman Price doesn't believe 
in, and it offers a guarantee of services he doesn't think seniors 
ought to have.

  He has said he wants to voucherize the program within the first 6 to 
8 months of the administration. What we are talking about when you want 
to do that is you are breaking the promise of Medicare. You are 
breaking the promise of guaranteed benefits, and you are going to sort 
of hand people a piece of paper and say here is your voucher, I

[[Page S1066]]

hope it works for you. If your medical expenses are greater than your 
vouchers, that is the way it goes, tough luck.
  The price budget cut Medicare by nearly $1 million. By the way, that 
is exactly the opposite of the Trump pledge, not to cut Medicare that 
the American people heard on the campaign trail. There is a big gap 
between what President Trump said about Medicare and the bills and 
legislative efforts of Congressman Price in the other body--big gap. 
That is why it sure looks to me like the promise of Medicare is one 
that Congressman Price would break.
  By the way, we all ought to understand that if confirmed, Congressman 
Price would be the captain of the Trump health care team. What he says 
matters, and what he offered--legislatively, his positions and his 
votes. He voted again and again to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
  It really matters what his past record is. If past is prologue, it is 
certainly relevant. It really matters. He was the architect of what 
amounted to repeal and run. He wrote legislation creating loopholes in 
the protection for those with preexisting conditions, and the big 
beneficiary there was clearly the major insurance companies.
  Women would find it much harder to make the health care choices they 
want and see the doctors they trust if the price proposals were lost. 
Medicaid pays 65 percent of the nursing home bill in America. And on 
this side of the aisle, we are going to fight Congressman Price's block 
grant proposals that are going to put seniors at risk.
  I am going to close with this. I always hope I am wrong when I raise 
the prospects of real threats to the welfare of the American people 
because the reason public service was important to me was because of 
those first days with the Gray Panthers. I never thought I would have 
that kind of wonderful opportunity; that I would have had this 
opportunity for public service. For me and so many on this side of the 
aisle--I see my colleagues who have been active in their communities--
this has always been about the welfare of the American people. That is 
what it is about--all those faces we see when we are home, having 
community meetings and getting out with our people.
  The public record in this case indicates that as Secretary of Health 
and Human Services, Congressman Price would, in fact, be an 
extraordinary threat to seniors on Medicare, vulnerable older people 
who need Medicaid for access to nursing homes, millions of kids for 
whom Medicaid is the key to a healthy future, and women across the 
country who have a right to see the doctors they trust.
  I am going to oppose this nomination. I urge my colleagues to join me 
in opposition.
  Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes to address Congressman 
Price's stock purchases. At best, this is behavior that cuts ethical 
corners. At worst it is dangerously close to outright insider trading. 
Congressman Price has a lot of questionable trading activity. He 
introduced legislation that would lower the tax bills of three major 
pharmaceutical companies he owned significant amounts of stock in. He 
invested $15,000 dollars in a medical equipment company then introduced 
legislation to increase the amount Medicare pays for that type of 
equipment. Parts of his bill went on to become law.
  But let's look at one investment in particular, Congressman Price's 
investment in Zimmer Biomet. Zimmer is a medical device company that 
specializes in joint replacements, including knee, hip, shoulder, and 
foot and ankle replacements.
  Hip and knee replacements are high cost procedures, and they are two 
of the most common procedures performed on Medicare patients. According 
to CMS, more than 400,000 hip and knee replacement procedures were 
performed in 2014, costing more than $7 billion for the 
hospitalizations alone. Despite the high frequency of these surgeries, 
costs vary widely across geographic areas, and complications like 
infections or implant failures after surgery can be three times higher 
at some facilities.
  In November 2015, in an attempt to incentivize higher quality 
procedures for Medicare recipients and control the cost of these 
replacements, CMS finalized a new pricing model slated to be 
implemented in April 2016. This new pricing model was a cost-bundling 
payment model; instead of Medicare paying for each individual service, 
Medicare reimburses hospitals with a single lump-sum payment, allowing 
hospitals to coordinate overall care for the patient.
  These changes were designed to incentivize improved care for 
patients, lowering costs and improving quality. However, according to 
independent analysts, medical device companies, especially those who 
specialize in orthopedic implants, could face ``material headwinds'' 
from the new pricing model since hospitals facing reimbursement 
pressures are likely to pass some of that burden onto those device 
companies.
  In September 2015, Congressman Price led an effort to send a letter 
from members of the House of Representatives to CMS challenging many of 
the features of the CMS proposal. A copy of the letter, dated September 
21, 2015, is available on the Congressman's website.
  This is where Zimmer Biomet comes in. Zimmer is a medical device 
manufactrurer with significant exposure to the new pricing model. 
According to analysts, over 60 percent of Zimmer's revenues come from 
hip and knee devices, and the CMS guidelines had the potential to 
significantly affect the company's profits.
  On March 17, 2016, a few weeks before the CMS model was set to go 
into effect, Congressman Price bought thousands of dollars worth of 
Zimmer Biomet stock through his brokerage account. On March 23, 2016, 
less than a week later, Congressman Price introduced H.R. 4848, the 
``HIP Act,'' which would have delayed the implementation of CMS 
regulations for Medicare coverage of joint replacements.
  Let's pause right here. In 2016, Congressman Price had a financial 
stake in one of the companies that stood to benefit most from the 
legislation he was promoting. Those basic facts are not in dispute. 
Congressman Price introduced legislation that had the potential to add 
to his personal fortune.
  Now, various arguments have been made, by Congressman Price and 
others, to defend this activity. First is the argument that there 
wasn't much money at stake, just a few thousand dollars. But the truth 
is a few thousand dollars is a lot of money to a lot of Americans. An 
unexpected medical bill that size could have a serious effect on many 
Americans and the person in charge of our health care system should 
take that amount of money just as seriously.
  Second, there is the argument that he didn't purchase the stock; his 
stockbroker purchased it. I am going to return to that issue in more 
detail in a moment, but one thing is clear. That is the fact that 
Congressman Price knew this stock had been purchased in his name, in 
his account, within a matter of days.
  On April 15, 2016, Congressman Price filed what is called a Periodic 
Transaction Report which Members of Congress are required to do within 
30 days of reportable stock purchase. Not only did Congressman Price 
file a report that he had purchased Zimmer Biomet along with dozens of 
other stocks, he initialed the entry for Zimmer Biomet in order to 
correct a mistake on the document; a correction making it clear that 
the Zimmer Biomet transaction was a stock purchase.
  There is also the question of whether this activity violated House 
Ethics rules. Congressman Price also said, in answer to written 
questions, that ``no conflict existed and no consultation was 
necessary.'' He also said, ``Throughout my time as a Member of the 
[House], I have abided by and adhered to all ethics and conflict of 
interest rules applicable to me.''
  He gave the same answer regarding three other bills that appear to 
conflict with investments he held: H.R. 4185, the Protecting Access 
through Competitive-pricing Transition Act of 2015, the PACT Act; H.R. 
5400, a bill pertaining to tax rates in Puerto Rico, which would have 
likely impacted drug manufacturers he owned Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers 
Squibb, and Amgen; H.R. 5210, the Patient Access to Durable Medical 
Equipment (PADME) Act of 2016.
  Let's go through that in some detail.
  It is true that the House Ethics rules, like the Senate Ethics rules, 
allow a

[[Page S1067]]

member to cast a vote on a matter relating to a company in which he or 
she owns stock. However, that standard only applies to casting votes. 
If you do more, and become an active advocate of a bill that could 
benefit a company that you own stock in, a different standard applies.
  On page 237 of the House Ethics Manual, it says that before 
undertaking active advocacy of legislation that will benefit a company 
in which a member owns stock, such as before introducing a bill, ``the 
Member should first contact the [Ethics] Committee for guidance.''
  The Ethics Manual is crystal clear. If you go beyond voting, and you 
are actively pushing a bill that would benefit a company in which you 
own stock, you should consult with the Ethics Committee.
  Congressman Price did not consult with the Ethics Committee regarding 
any of these trades.
  In a written question, I asked Congressman Price about this. I asked 
whether, in light of the House Ethics Manual's recommendation, he had 
consulted with the Ethics Committee regarding his purchase of Zimmer 
Biomet and other stocks. He did not answer the question. Instead, he 
resorted to the same talking point--that the Zimmer Biomet stock was 
purchased by his broker and that there was not need to consult because 
there was no conflict.
  By my reading, this interpretation is flat wrong. Under the House 
Manual, he should have consulted with the Ethics Committee.
  To be clear, the Ethics Committee might have concluded that it was a 
relatively small purchase, and that Congressman Price's advocacy was 
consistent with his longstanding position, and therefore that it was 
fine for him to go ahead and purchase the stock and then introduce the 
bill. On the other hand, the Ethics Committee might have reached a very 
different conclusion. It might have advised him to refrain from 
purchasing the stock.
  The public will never know, because he didn't ask. Despite the clear 
guidance in the House Ethics Manual, he didn't even ask. And now the 
majority party is carrying his nomination toward the finish line.
  Apart from conforming with House Ethics rules, there is also the 
question of whether Congressman Price's activity violated insider 
trading laws. Lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have a duty of 
public trust. The STOCK Act, which Congressman Price and I both voted 
for in 2012, and longstanding SEC rules denote that Members of Congress 
have a fiduciary duty to the American people. What that means is that 
we will use the public power we've been granted to benefit the 
interests of all Americans. The SEC's Rule 10b5, in particular, 
prohibits the purchase or sale of stock on the basis of material 
nonpublic information.
  As a threshold matter, Congressman Price claims that insider trading 
laws don't apply to him because the Zimmer Biomet stock was purchased 
by his broker without his knowledge. But as I've discussed at length, 
this argument is a red herring because Congressman Price did have 
knowledge of these trades. He submitted signed records of the trades 
shortly after they were made. Furthermore, the laws related to insider 
trading give clear guidance on how to trade through a broker without 
violating insider trading laws. And just as with the House Ethics 
rules, when faced with clear guidance on how to manage conflicts of 
interest, Congressman Price chose not to follow it.
  Whether those stocks were purchased directly or through a broker is 
not, by itself, a defense to insider trading. According to SEC rules, 
Congressman Price and his broker needed to agree to a ``written plan 
for trading securities'' that does not ``permit the person to exercise 
subsequent influence over when, how, or whether to effect purchases or 
sales of securities.'' So, if Congressman Price had, in writing, given 
his broker complete control over his portfolio we wouldn't be 
discussing this issue today. But he did not do so.
  Congressman Price returned to the ``my broker did it'' defense for 
weeks before finally providing the Finance Committee with an excerpt of 
his brokerage agreement.
  Here's what it says:

       In the Portfolio Management (``PM'') program, a Financial 
     Advisor(s) who meets the program certification requirements 
     manages your assets on a discretionary basis. In other words, 
     your Financial Advisor, and not you, has the discretion to 
     decide what securities to buy and sell in your account. This 
     discretion is subject to the parameters described below and 
     your ability to direct a sale of any security for tax or 
     other reasons.

  In the course of our investigation, committee staff spoke with 
experts, and they confirmed what seems obvious from the plain language 
of the text. This agreement does not hand over complete control of 
Congressman Price's portfolio to his broker. His agreement with his 
broker simply does not shield him from insider trading laws, no matter 
how many times he tries to say it does.
  This isn't a question of whether Congressman Price followed the 
technical letter of the law, he didn't follow it in spirit either. 
Congressman Price could direct his broker to make trades when he wanted 
to, and he did. Case in point, when Congressman Price wanted to act on 
a stock tip from Congressman Collins, he called up his broker and had 
her buy shares of an Australian biomedical firm called Innate 
Immunotherapeutics.
  Another question raised by Congressman Price's conflicts of interest 
is whether they go beyond a violation of the public's trust and 
constitute an outright violation of insider trading laws. That question 
cannot be answered today. We have seen that time and time again that 
Congressman Price purchased stocks then turned around and promoted 
legislation that would help those companies, and his investments in 
them. What is not clear is whether the introduction of this legislation 
meets the legal standards of being ``material'' and ``nonpublic.'' 
Neither case history, nor the legislative history of the STOCK Act 
provide clear guidance on when pending legislation is material and 
nonpublic.
  The bottom line is that Congressman Price's activities are in 
uncharted waters. That is why the public and members of this body ought 
to be outraged that the majority party has cut off the vetting process 
and rushed this nomination toward completion.
  In my view, because of how this nomination was handled, the Senate 
Finance Committee has set a double standard. If you look to the recent 
past at the nominations of Senator Tom Daschle, Secretary Tim Geithner 
and Ambassador Ron Kirk at the outset of the Obama administration, the 
vetting process was extremely thorough and bipartisan. The committee 
turned over every stone, peered around every corner and followed every 
lead to its conclusion. Now, when a glaring issue comes up that 
undeniably deserves investigation, the party in power has shut down the 
vetting process. The Finance Committee and the Senate ought to do 
better.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Will the Senate advise and 
consent to the Price nomination?
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. 
McCaskill) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 61 Ex.]

                                YEAS--52

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford

[[Page S1068]]


     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Shelby
     Strange
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--47

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     McCaskill
       
  The nomination was confirmed.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote on the 
nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the motion to reconsider.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to table the motion to reconsider.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
table.
  The motion was agreed to.

                          ____________________