[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 182 (Wednesday, November 8, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7089-S7093]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Healthcare
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I appreciate all of my colleagues from
both sides of the aisle who will be joining us here this afternoon and
thank them for their leadership on our legislation and for taking the
time to speak today.
We are now exactly 1 week into open enrollment, and it has been 3
weeks since Chairman Alexander and I put forward a bipartisan bill to
stabilize our healthcare markets and lower patients' healthcare costs.
So I wanted to come this afternoon to talk for a few minutes about what
it means that so many people nationwide are signing up for coverage and
why there is no good reason for Republican leadership to wait another
minute before bringing up our bill for a vote.
It is still early, but what we are seeing so far is that millions of
people across our country are going to healthcare.gov to shop for
coverage. Some 200,000 signed up on the first day. That is more than
double the amount from last year. The vast majority will get tax
credits to help cover their costs. In fact, some who are struggling the
most will find they can save even more this year because of how our
current healthcare system absorbs cost increases.
But there is no question that premiums are going up in many places
and that fewer coverage options are available and not every consumer is
protected. One woman--Melissa--told the Washington Post this week that
she is ``joining the ranks of the uninsured'' for the first time in her
life as a 51-year-old. She said that she doesn't qualify for subsidies
and that given how much her premiums would increase, her insurance
costs would have been more than her mortgage payments each month.
Melissa is one of the people paying the price for President Trump's
healthcare sabotage and the Republican leadership's--so far--
willingness to cheer him along.
It is unacceptable that patients and families are having to take on
this burden. Let's remember that when someone goes to sign up for
healthcare coverage, they are not doing it as a Republican or a
Democrat, they are doing it as a parent or a caregiver or a business
owner who wants to stay healthy and financially secure.
Here in Washington, DC, healthcare has become bogged down in
politics, but in cities and towns across the country, it is about
taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. That is why so many
people are going online to shop for coverage despite the President's
insistence that healthcare in the United States was going to
``implode,'' regardless of the fact that to make implosion a reality,
President Trump--among his many other efforts at sabotage--shortened
the enrollment period this year and gutted investments in outreach and
advertising and caused premiums for those people to increase by double
digits on the average. Patients and families deserve so much better.
I have said it before: The frustrating thing is that all this could
have been avoided. Way back in September, Chairman Alexander and I were
on the verge of an agreement to stabilize healthcare markets and lower
premiums for the coming year and for 2019. Our agreement would have
provided multiyear certainty on the out-of-pocket cost reduction
subsidies that President Trump decided to stop paying even though the
law says he is required to do so. Had we been able to move faster, our
legislation would have resulted in lower premiums right away for 2018.
But Republican leaders pressed the ``pause'' button on bipartisan
negotiations so they could try one more time to jam partisan repeal
through the Senate, and we lost a lot of precious time.
Our bill, the Lamar Alexander-Patty Murray Senate bill, would do a
lot of good right now and over the next years. If Republican leadership
takes up our legislation now and passes it, families would see rebates
this year and lower healthcare costs next year because our bill is
designed to ensure that the benefit of greater certainty is passed on
to patients and taxpayers, not hoarded by insurance companies.
Our deal would also invest in open enrollment and outreach for 2019,
so more people would be covered. It would allow States more flexibility
to innovate as the Affordable Care Act always intended. It would mark a
critical step away from this harmful partisanship on healthcare and
toward working under regular order on solutions that make healthcare
work better for the people we serve.
Finally, this legislation would send a critical message to patients
and families that when Congress sets aside partisan difference and
focuses on what is best for our country, we can deliver a result, as
Chairman Alexander often says.
More than 200 groups representing doctors, hospitals, State
officials, Governors, and patients have endorsed our bill. The
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it would do exactly what
it was intended to do--stabilize markets and bring down healthcare
costs--while returning $3.8 billion to taxpayers.
Twelve Senate Democrats and 12 Senate Republicans cosponsored it. We
are continuing to build support, and there is no question that it would
pass here with a filibuster-proof majority if it were brought to the
floor. And while the Senate shouldn't need President Trump's signoff to
take a position on ways to fix the Nation's healthcare system, the
President has supported this process moving forward.
So here we are, and right now it is up to Republican leaders. They
can choose to stay in a partisan corner and reject an opportunity to
lower patients' healthcare costs in a bipartisan way, or they can do
what people across the country want them to do and put patients over
politics.
I do want to note that if Republican leaders hadn't gotten the
message, voters made it pretty clear last night that they reject the
deeply harmful partisanship we have seen on healthcare.
It is well past time for Republican leaders to give up the ghost on
TrumpCare, declare it dead, and work with Democrats to get real
solutions. That starts with our bipartisan bill to lower healthcare
costs and stabilize the markets, because if they don't, they can be
sure they will be held accountable.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from
Washington, Senator Murray, and congratulate her and Senator Alexander
on being able to reach agreement to move forward to address the
uncertainty in the marketplace.
Like Senator Murray, I also want to begin with what we are seeing
going on in this open enrollment period. Despite all of the efforts to
undermine the Affordable Care Act, to shorten the time
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period in which people can sign up, to make it more difficult by having
the site closed for part of Sundays, we are seeing a record number of
people enroll in the initial days of open enrollment.
According to news reports, on the first day alone, about 1 million
people visited healthcare.gov and more than 200,000 people selected a
plan for 2018. That is almost double the number who signed up last year
on the first day.
For anybody who is still thinking about it, you have until December
15, so sign up early. As my colleague from New Hampshire, Senator
Hassan, says, it is the best Christmas shopping you can do--take care
of your healthcare. Go to healthcare.gov and shop around, get the best
deal, and enroll during this open enrollment period.
This surge in signups is especially remarkable in light of the widely
publicized efforts by the Trump administration to depress enrollment.
The administration has slashed the advertising and outreach budget by
90 percent, cut the open onrollment period by half, and shut down the
marketplace website for 12 hours on Sundays, taking away valuable
weekend hours when people have free time to explore plans.
I think the healthy volume of enrollments sends two very important
messages.
First, it shows again that ordinary citizens, faith groups, insurance
navigators, and other private organizations have done an amazing job of
filling the outreach void that has been created by this effort by the
administration to cut back on letting people know about the website and
how to enroll. Those folks have spent countless hours getting out the
word that the Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land and that
those who qualify for financial assistance can purchase high-quality,
affordable coverage.
The second message that I think is important from this strong
enrollment is a message that has been echoed in recent public opinion
polls. It is one that we saw in the turnout in the Virginia elections
last night. It is that a clear majority of the American people support
the Affordable Care Act, that they reject efforts to sabotage it and
they want Members of Congress to work together to strengthen it, just
as Senator Murray said.
I am very pleased that we have come together in the Senate to do just
that. We have come together in support of bipartisan efforts led by
Senator Murray and Senator Lamar Alexander, the chair and ranking
member of the HELP Committee. They have come together to stabilize the
Affordable Care Act and the marketplaces and bring down premiums. I am
proud to be one of the 12 Democrats who were original cosponsors with
12 Republicans of this legislation. This balanced agreement, which was
negotiated by Senators Alexander and Murray over many months, is our
best bet for restoring stability to the marketplaces in the short run
and giving us the time we need to negotiate longer term to deal with
other changes to the health law to make it work better.
I am especially pleased that the Alexander-Murray agreement provides
for the continuation of cost-sharing reduction payments, or CSRs, which
are payments that are necessary to keep premiums, deductibles, and
copayments affordable for working families. They are extended for 2
years in this bill. Without these payments, the cost of coverage will
skyrocket, insurers will leave the marketplaces--as we have already
seen, as the Trump administration has said they are going to
discontinue those payments--and millions of people will lose their
health coverage. This is an opportunity for us to keep that from
happening. Both Democrats and Republicans have recognized that these
cost-sharing reduction payments, these CSRs, are an orderly, necessary
subsidy that keeps down the cost of health coverage for everyday
Americans.
In recent months, I have heard from hundreds of people across New
Hampshire about the enormous difference that healthcare reform has made
in their lives. We are a small State--we have just over 1.3 million
people--but nearly 94,000 Granite Staters have gotten individual health
coverage through the Obama marketplace, and nearly 50,000 have gotten
coverage thanks to the Medicaid expansion, which had bipartisan support
in New Hampshire. So that is about a tenth of New Hampshire that is
covered either through the Affordable Care Act or through the expansion
of Medicaid. And for us in New Hampshire, it has been particularly
critical in responding and providing treatment to those people with
substance use disorders.
Patricia Tucker has written to me. She is a substance use disorder
counselor in Northfield, NH, and she talks about how grateful she is
for the Medicaid expansion. She writes:
I am seeing people come for help that were not able to get
help in the past because they couldn't afford it. They are
getting help and remaining abstinent. If one mother gets
clean, this affects so many others.
She goes on to say:
[I treat] one mother who has two children. She now cares
for these children and has a full-time job. In the past, she
lived off the state and did not care for anyone, including
herself. Multiply this by thousands, just in New Hampshire,
and this makes such a big difference.
And think about how across the country we have affected people with
substance use disorders because they can now get treatment.
I agree with Patricia Tucker and so many others who have contacted me
about the Affordable Care Act. We are grateful for the progress, and we
refuse to be taken backward. That is why the bipartisan agreement
hammered out by Senator Alexander and Senator Murray is such an
important breakthrough. This agreement stands on its merits as a good-
faith, win-win compromise. But just as important and maybe even more
important, these two Senators have given us a template for bipartisan
negotiations on other critical matters that lie ahead, including tax
reform, reauthorizing the community health centers and the Children's
Health Insurance Program, and reaching an agreement on the 2018 budget.
The Senate is at its best when we observe regular order, when we
honor the committee process, and when we work across the aisle and make
principled compromises and get big things done for the American people.
In a Senate that is nearly evenly divided between Republicans and
Democrats, bipartisanship is the only productive way forward. This is
how the great majority of Americans want us to conduct the Senate's
business, and this is especially true on matters such as healthcare and
tax reform that impact families in New Hampshire and all across
America.
I am grateful to people across our country who have gotten out the
word about the health insurance open enrollment period that began on
November 1 and continues through December 15. I am heartened by the
surge in enrollments. I am encouraged by bipartisan progress in the
Senate to stabilize the health insurance marketplaces. I certainly hope
the leadership in the Senate allows this bill to come to the floor
because we know we have the votes to pass it.
Instead of partisan efforts to undermine the law and take health
insurance away from people, let's embrace the spirit of the Alexander-
Murray agreement. Let's work together in a good-faith, bipartisan
fashion to build a healthcare system that leaves no American behind.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the importance
of bipartisan action on healthcare, as the Senator from New Hampshire
just did.
Over the past year, I have traveled all around Minnesota to talk with
individuals and families and community leaders about healthcare. I have
heard from mothers and fathers who have been worried about losing the
healthcare their children need to access lifesaving services. I have
heard from daughters who have been panicked about how to pay for their
parents' long-term care and prescription drug costs. I have heard from
hospital executives in rural areas, much like the rural areas in
Arkansas, who have been concerned about how they are going to keep
their doors open.
What is abundantly clear from all of these conversations is that
Minnesotans want Congress to work together to build on the Affordable
Care Act, lower healthcare costs, and support policies that work. That
is why I believe, first, that Congress must act immediately to
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pass bipartisan legislation to stabilize the individual market. Second,
we must do all we can to support strong enrollment in our health
insurance exchanges so that all consumers, regardless of their health
needs, can find high-quality, affordable health insurance coverage.
Third, it is time to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance
Program. Let me take each of those in turn.
When Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed, the
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee got to work and
developed a bipartisan plan to stabilize the individual market. As a
member of that committee, I participated in numerous hearings with
witnesses who spanned the ideological spectrum, solicited input from
State and national leaders, and worked in good faith with all of my
colleagues to develop legislation that is truly a compromise bill.
This legislation, referred to as the Alexander-Murray deal, will
contain healthcare costs for consumers, provide certainty to insurers
participating in these markets, and provide States with the flexibility
they need to develop innovative, local solutions. I am proud of what we
were able to accomplish.
What I am most proud of is that this bill includes a provision that
will reverse a decision by the Trump administration that would
effectively punish Minnesota for pushing forward a bipartisan plan to
stabilize the individual market--a bipartisan plan in our State
legislature.
Last year, after our State experienced dramatic premium rate hikes in
the individual markets, State leaders worked together in a bipartisan
way to pass a reinsurance program to contain these costs, but the
program's enactment was contingent upon approval from the Federal
Government.
After months of foot-dragging, the Federal Government finally
approved the State's reinsurance plan as part of the 1332 waiver
proposal, but the Federal Government simultaneously cut Federal funding
for MinnesotaCare, which is another program in the State that provides
affordable health coverage to working families. Thus, our State had to
choose whether to support a bipartisan proposal to stabilize the
individual market and lower premiums for consumers or swallow hundreds
of millions of dollars in lost Federal funding. It was an impossible
choice that was completely unnecessary. That is why I set to work to
fix it.
After weeks of productive negotiations, I am pleased to report that
the Alexander-Murray deal will prevent the Trump administration from
imposing these cuts on Minnesota. But my State wasn't the only one
threatened by potential funding cuts. The Alexander-Murray bill would
prevent such problems from occurring in any other State as well, and it
would do much more.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this agreement would
reduce the deficit by billions of dollars, lower premiums in 2019, and
preserve coverage options for individuals and families. In short, it is
not only good for Minnesota, it is good for the entire country. This
bill is a bipartisan win-win-win.
Now our job is to pass this legislation into law. At the same time,
we must do everything we can to drive up enrollment in the health
insurance exchanges. Regardless of party, if we want to ensure that
consumers have access to affordable, high-quality health insurance
coverage, we have to get people to sign up for the coverage. More
people equals better risk pools, which equals lower premiums. It is
really that simple.
Look, the Trump administration has done everything in its power to
undermine ObamaCare. It has halved the amount of time that people have
to enroll in coverage, it slashed funding for outreach and enrollment
efforts, and it deliberately misled consumers about the benefits of the
ACA and individual requirements for coverage. But we have the power to
combat these efforts.
Let's get people enrolled. Open enrollment started on November 1 and
will end for most people on December 15. Minnesotans are lucky in that
they have until January 14 to sign up for coverage. But everyone who
doesn't receive coverage from their employer or through Medicare needs
to sign up now, so I urge my colleagues to get their constituents to
visit healthcare.gov and shop around and then enroll in coverage.
Lastly, it is time to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance
Program, community health centers, and the National Health Service
Corps. These have always been bipartisan programs. There is no reason
this should be any different today.
The anxiety that people in Minnesota and across the country feel
about their access to healthcare is not inevitable; it is the result of
political decisions made here in Washington, DC. Let's prove to the
country that we are not here to fight with each other, we are here to
fight for them. Let's show them that we can get something done. Let's
take action to protect healthcare and give our constituents, at long
last, some peace of mind.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to call for bipartisan
action on healthcare.
I think it was interesting to learn that the citizens of Virginia who
voted yesterday listed as their top issue healthcare. There was
obviously an issue there where there had been no Medicaid expansion,
and they were unhappy with the way it had been handled by the
legislature there as well as Republicans who were in charge of the
legislature, and they appeared to be pushing for a change.
We have an opportunity here to make a bipartisan change. I think it
is exactly the kind of message that we got yesterday. In my State, we
have a Republican legislature and a Democratic Governor. They came
together to do something about some of the rates, particularly in our
rural areas. They focused on reinsurance, cost sharing--some of the
things in the bipartisan agreement reached between Senator Alexander
and Senator Murray. We have 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans
cosponsoring that bill. Support includes the American Cancer Society,
the American Diabetes Society, the March of Dimes, and the Arthritis
Foundation--and those are just the A's.
The American people want us to work together to make fixes to the
Affordable Care Act. The day it passed, I said that it was a beginning
and not an end. Unfortunately, we have been stymied in trying to make
those kind of changes, and this is one bipartisan big opportunity to do
it. I think it is a sensible bipartisan approach.
As we all know, both Senator Alexander and Senator Murray held a
series of hearings and discussions on commonsense solutions to bring
down insurance costs with Senators on both sides of the aisle. There
were Governors and insurance experts, and we worked hard to make sure
there was some agreement on this bill. I fought for provisions that
would help States apply for and receive waivers to give them some
flexibility to construct their healthcare system and to bring down the
costs without losing Federal funding. That is something my State did.
As I mentioned, my State, with a Republican-led legislature and a
Democratic Governor, came together to apply for a waiver and a
reinsurance provision.
The bill would also expedite the review of waiver applications for
proposals that have already been approved for other States that are
experiencing certain circumstances--emergency circumstances--where they
need to make changes.
The legislation also shortens the overall time period that States
would have to wait for the Federal Government to decide whether to
approve their waivers.
All of these are good fundamental concepts--this idea that States
should have some flexibility, that they should be able to apply for
waivers, and that they should be able to get their answers as soon as
possible from the Federal Government. That is what this bill is about.
Not only does the bill improve the process for waivers and flexibility
for the States, like we have seen in Minnesota, where already the
projected
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numbers brought the rates down something like 20 percent, but the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the Murray-Alexander bill
would actually cut the deficit by $3.8 billion over the next 10 years.
That is hard to argue with.
It is clear that this legislation could get support from both sides
of the aisle to make healthcare better for Americans. We have a
majority of Senators supporting this bill. So we need to get it done
because the longer we wait, the more the markets don't know what is
going on, the more confusion that is created, and the more the
administration is doing things that sabotages the Affordable Care Act.
We need this stability in the system. Passing the bill would be an
important step forward, but we still must do more to bring down the
costs for middle-class families. A big part of that is addressing the
skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. I have heard from people
across Minnesota who are struggling to afford the medicine they need.
This is about the woman in Duluth who told me that she chose not to
fill her last prescription because that one drug would cost a whole 25
percent of her income. It is about a woman in St. Paul who, even with
Medicare, couldn't afford $663 a month for the medicine she needs. It
is about someone from Crystal, MN, who told me: I am practically going
without food to pay for the prescription. It is heartbreaking that this
is happening in America.
Reducing the cost of prescription drugs has bipartisan support in
Congress, and the President has said he wants to get something done. He
has said: The drug companies are ``getting away with murder.'' Those
are his words. That is what he said.
So what can we do? Republicans and Democrats could come together and
act right now. I have a bill that has 33 cosponsors that lifts the ban
that makes it illegal for Medicare to negotiate prices for prescription
drugs for 41 million seniors. I think 41 million seniors are pretty
good at getting bargains and deals, and they deserve to have someone
negotiating on their behalf; that is, the government negotiating for
Medicare. Except, why don't we negotiate, like we do for the VA, and
like other countries do? We don't negotiate because there is a
provision in law that says that the government is not allowed to
negotiate on behalf of 41 million seniors with the drug companies. They
are just set. Guess what that means. That is a big part of the reason
why our drug prices are double the cost of those in Canada--because we
are just taking it and we are not negotiating.
Another idea, bringing up Canada, is that Senator McCain and I have a
bill that would allow less expensive drugs to be sold in the United
States. To me, that is a way of putting pressure on our own drug
companies to put out better prices if they know there is going to be
competition.
Senator Grassley of Iowa and I have a bill to stop something called
pay-for-delay. That is when big pharmaceutical companies actually pay
off generic companies to keep less expensive products off the market.
This bill would save taxpayers $2.9 billion. Do you know why? Because
right now there is no competition or very little competition, and they
are actually paying their competitors to stay off the market. The
competitors have decided: Well, I get more money to be paid to stay off
the market than if I actually competed.
Think about what a rip-off that is for the American people. We are
allowing this to go on while the consumers are paying the price. How
much? We know the government alone is going to save $2.9 billion if we
stop this practice. Consumers would save most likely around that same
amount because they are paying all the copays. Both the government is
ripped off and the consumers are ripped off, and the only ones making
money off of it are the drug companies.
Another idea is, Senator Lee and I have a bill that would allow
temporary importation of safe drugs that have been on the market in
another country for at least 10 years when there isn't healthy
competition in our own country. Again, if your drug companies that are
messing around, charging high prices and not allowing competition in--
if you know there might be foreign competition coming in, that is an
incentive because you want to then make sure that doesn't happen
because you know that if you keep your prices high and you do things to
disallow competition, you are going to have some major competition. I
don't know how else we bring the prices down without allowing more
competition.
I also have a bipartisan bill with Senators Grassley, Lee, Feinstein,
and Leahy, which is called the CREATES Act, to put a stop to other
pharmaceutical company tactics, such as refusing to provide samples to
generic companies that are supposed to be allowed to compete with them.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this legislation would
save approximately $3.6 billion.
As we hear about tax reform and hear about the debt we might be
seeing expand if something like this goes forward, then we ask
yourselves: What is not in those bills? Why aren't we saving some money
for the American people and reducing the debt by allowing for this
competition, by allowing for the samples, by allowing for more
generics, by stopping this practice of companies paying each other to
keep their competitors off the market?
What this healthcare debate has been about for the last year, where
repeatedly there have been attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act--
it has been about that. The American people made it really clear, they
want to make it about something else. They want to make it about
improvements to the system we have now to make it easier for them. One
way is the Alexander-Murray bill, which I strongly support. I am one of
the cosponsors. It is smart. It works with the States, both Democratic
and Republican States--blue States, red States. We want to see that
kind of flexibility. The other way is to take a stand, be willing to
take on the pharmaceutical industry, and take on some of the cost
issues when it comes to prescription drugs.
Let's come together in the Senate, as an initial move, and pass the
Murray-Alexander bill. We must do that, and we must do it by the end of
the year. Then we can go on from there to actually do something about
the cost of prescription drugs.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, there are a number of matters where we
disagree in the U.S. Senate, and they range from deeply held
foundational beliefs to the smallest details of legislative language.
Despite these disagreements, I believe there is a lot we can all agree
on.
I hope I speak for every Member of Congress in saying that in this
great Nation of ours, hard work should always be rewarded. If you play
by the rules and do the right thing, you should have an opportunity to
earn a good life for yourself and for your family. Our mothers,
fathers, and others before us have worked hard to ensure that we have a
fair shot at the American dream. Unfortunately, it feels like the
fabric of the American dream has started to fray for far too many
families. Even more troubling, we are seeing nominees from this
administration who seem committed to actively unraveling the support
and the protections that help workers get ahead.
Today we are considering the nomination of Peter Robb to be general
counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. Mr. Robb would be
responsible for ensuring safe working conditions and fair compensation
for American workers. He would be tasked with protecting the treasured
right of workers to engage in good-faith negotiations with their
employers.
However, a brief look at Mr. Robb's career reveals a clear track
record of working to undermine our Nation's workers and middle class on
behalf of corporate executives. To Mr. Robb's credit, he is not trying
to hide his record or run away from his record. All you have to do is
visit his firm's website, and you will see the experiences he is proud
to display. I believe it is a preview of how he will approach his
position at the National Labor Relations Board. His self-proclaimed
accomplishments include: advising large corporations on mergers,
acquisitions, and plant closings; securing labor injunctions; and
bringing suits against labor organizations.
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When someone tells you who they are, believe them. While I certainly
believe that every American and corporation is entitled to vigorous
representation by their lawyers, I also believe Senators must evaluate
every nominee's full body of work. Let's be clear about how Mr. Robb
has chosen to spend his professional life: helping management close
plants and cut jobs, suing unions, delaying workers' rights to
collectively bargain, and defending companies that violate workplace
safety and fair pay laws.
At a time when corporate profits and executive compensation have
skyrocketed and worker wages are stagnant, I have no confidence in Mr.
Robb's ability to be a neutral arbiter between labor and management,
let alone advocate for the safety and the well-being of America's
working men and women. Our Nation's workers deserve a nominee who will
protect their right to negotiate for fair pay and safe working
conditions, not someone who has spent his entire career litigating
against workers. I will be voting against Mr. Robb's confirmation, and
I strongly urge my colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today we are voting on the nomination
of Peter Robb for general counsel of the National Labor Relations
Board, NLRB.
As general counsel, Mr. Robb will have the important job of helping
workers who feel their right to organize collectively has been violated
or assisting employers when some of their employees want to form a
union.
Mr. Robb will have an opportunity to help restore the Board to the
role of a neutral umpire in labor disputes.
While partisanship at the Board did not start under the previous
administration, it became far worse.
When the Board is too partisan, it creates instability in our
Nation's workplaces and creates confusion for employers, employees, and
unions.
For example, in 2015, at the previous general counsel's urging, an
NLRB decision dramatically expanded ``joint employer'' liability, and
this increased liability makes it much more likely a company will find
it more practical to own and operate its stores, taking away the
opportunity for a worker to own and run their own franchise.
This decision was the biggest attack on the opportunity for small
business men and women to make their way into the middle class that
anyone has seen in a long time, threatening to destroy the American
Dream for owners of the Nation's 780,000 franchise locations.
Or consider the previous general counsel's aggressive application of
the National Labor Relations Act to protect certain employees'
belligerent, threatening, and discriminatory conduct.
One troubling decision involved an employer that fired a picketing
employee who engaged in racist and offensive conduct on a picket line.
The Board found that the employee's remarks were ``racist, offensive
and reprehensible,'' and violated the company's nondiscrimination
policies and the union's conduct rules; yet the Board still ruled that
the employer's discharge of the employee was unlawful.
This type of Board decision defies common sense and makes it more
difficult for employers to maintain safe workplaces free of
discrimination and harassment.
Mr. Robb is extremely qualified to be general counsel of the NLRB.
He currently works as the director of labor and employment at the law
firm Downs Rachlin and Marin.
He served as chief counsel to NLRB Member Robert Hunter and was a
regional field attorney for the NLRB in Baltimore.
Mr. Robb earned his B.A. in economics from Georgetown University and
his J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law.
His experience and prudence will serve him well at the NLRB.
I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to confirm Peter Robb for
general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.
Mr. PETERS. 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. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.