[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 198 (Monday, December 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7650-S7652]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SAVE OUR SEAS ACT OF 2017--Continued
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
concur in the House amendment to S. 756, a bill to
reauthorize and amend the Marine Debris Act to promote
international action to reduce marine debris, and for other
purposes, with a further amendment numbered SA 4108.
Mitch McConnell, Mike Lee, John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley,
Orrin G. Hatch, Tim Scott, Steve Daines, Jerry Moran,
Todd Young, Susan M. Collins, Pat Roberts, Bill
Cassidy, Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake,
Rob Portman, Joni Ernst.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 756, to reauthorize and
amend the Marine Debris Act to promote international action to reduce
marine debris, and for other purposes, with a further amendment
numbered 4108, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr.
Cassidy), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator
from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and
the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr.
Alexander) would have voted ``yea''.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 82, nays 12, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 267 Leg.]
YEAS--82
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Coons
Corker
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Flake
Gardner
Gillibrand
Grassley
Harris
Hassan
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Isakson
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Lee
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Paul
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Roberts
Rubio
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Shaheen
Shelby
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Thune
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NAYS--12
Barrasso
Burr
Cotton
Enzi
Kennedy
Kyl
Murkowski
Risch
Rounds
Sasse
Sullivan
Toomey
NOT VOTING--6
Alexander
Cassidy
Graham
Heller
Johnson
Tillis
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 82, the nays are
12.
Three-fifths of Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the
affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
recognized for a few moments; that at the conclusion of my remarks, my
colleague from Arkansas, Senator Cotton, be recognized; and that at the
conclusion of his remarks, I be recognized again for a unanimous
consent request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Unanimous Consent Request--S. 379
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, one of the things that marks service
as a U.S. Senator is the chance to meet really remarkable individuals,
and among the remarkable individuals I have had the chance to meet in
my time in the Senate, there are few, if any, who are more impressive
or memorable than those who have been diagnosed with ALS, commonly
known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Competing with them for being impressive and noteworthy are the
friends and family and advocates who become their support system and
their caregivers. It is not just those with the diagnosis, but it is
also the family, friends, and caregivers who face incredible bravery. I
remember someone once saying that a special kind of courage is
maintaining good morale in the face of terrible circumstances, and few
circumstances are more terrible than a diagnosis of ALS amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis.
We know how it ends. We know it is always fatal. There is no
treatment. There is no cure. There is nothing to halt or reverse the
effects of ALS. Those of us who have ALS patients visit us watch the
decline as they move from people who can walk to people who need a
wheelchair, to people who need an increasingly complex wheelchair.
For all this suffering and for all the certainty of how it ends, we
still make ALS patients and their family members wait 5 months before
they can begin to receive the Social Security Disability Insurance
benefits they earned by contributing into Social Security.
The logic, I am told, of this 5-month waiting period is that it
allows temporary conditions to abate, but ALS is not a temporary
condition. It does not abate. It does not reverse. Sadly, some ALS
patients lose their fight with the disease before even receiving
benefits.
I have been working with Senator Cotton to pursue bipartisan
legislation to eliminate this 5-month waiting period for ALS. Chairman
Hatch, in one of his final acts as chairman of the Finance Committee,
expressed his approval of this and his desire to help me bring it
forward, and Ranking Member Wyden on the Finance Committee has helped
get it to the floor so we can have this opportunity to pass it by
unanimous consent.
I hope very much that as a simple act of humanity, we can step aside
from bureaucratic considerations and allow this small population of
Americans who face the extraordinary blow of this diagnosis to move
immediately to the benefits they signed up for by contributing to
Social Security.
With that, I would yield the floor to Senator Cotton of Arkansas.
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for
his work on this important issue. I have had numerous ALS sufferers and
family members of those who suffer from ALS approach me about this bill
early in my time in the Senate, and I have been grateful for the
opportunity to work with the Senator from Rhode Island to try to
address this very sad problem.
ALS is a progressive and disabling disease for which there is no
cure. It is
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fatal in all cases. Unfortunately, like almost every other condition,
ALS sufferers are required to wait for 5 months before they receive the
Social Security Disability Insurance benefits they have earned; that
they earned through a lifetime of paying taxes into Social Security.
I understand the purpose of this 5-month waiting period is to weed
out temporary conditions, but ALS is not a temporary condition--or to
prevent fraudulent claims, but it is hard to imagine anyone making a
fraudulent claim on disability based on an ALS diagnosis. The average
disability beneficiaries expect to receive benefits for about 20 years,
but, unfortunately, those who have been diagnosed with ALS only have a
life expectancy of approximately 3 years. Therefore, the disability
waiting period of 5 months means that those on ALS will lose, on
average, nearly one-seventh of the benefits they have paid a lifetime
for. Of course, some will lose a lot more because of ALS's particularly
degenerative nature. They will lose their fight to the disease before
they ever become eligible for their disability benefits.
This legislation will simply ensure that those patients and their
families can access the benefits they paid into as soon as possible by
waiving that 5-month waiting period for disability benefits in this one
exceptional case.
I understand there is objection about singling out the particular
disease or condition. I would, however, say ALS is itself a singularly
exceptional condition, and any sufferer of ALS deserves our sympathy,
our prayers but also our action on the Senate floor.
I also understand there is objection to the cost of the legislation,
which would be $270 million over 10 years--no doubt a lot of money to
all Americans--but frankly a small rounding error in the Federal
budget. For that matter, it is less than the amount of money for the
piece of legislation that is pending on the floor today--a criminal
leniency bill that would cost $352 million over 10 years.
If we are prepared to allow legislation to go forward that slashes
sentences for serious drug traffickers and let sex offenders out of
prison early, even though it costs $350 million, I would suggest it is
a misplaced priority to object to legislation because it costs $270
million. So I hope, along with the Senator from Rhode Island, that we
can pass this legislation in this week before Christmas and give some
small measure of solace to those who are suffering from ALS and their
families.
I yield back to the Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 379, a
bill to eliminate the 5-month waiting period for disability insurance
benefits under such title for individuals with amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that
the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no
intervening action or debate, as we come into this Christmas season.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I first became
aware of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis when I was in the fifth grade,
and I read a story, a book, and later a series of books about my
childhood hero Lou Gehrig, whose name is often used synonymously with
this terrible ailment. It is a tragedy that his life was ended and
helped bring about the end of his 2,138 consecutive game playing streak
in Major League Baseball.
This is a horrible disease, a progressive neurodegenerative condition
that rapidly attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and
eventually it affects the control of the muscles that are needed to
move, to speak, and even to eat and to breathe. Sadly, it is always
fatal.
The bill now under consideration will grant a waiver from the Social
Security Disability Insurance waiting period to victims of this
terrible disease, no doubt with good, noble intentions, but what we
have to remember is that this is not the only tragic disease Americans
are dying from. Unfortunately, there are many others out there that are
equally debilitating and equally fatal, and the Federal Government
should not pick favorites to legislate from among them.
Indeed, this kind of policy and approach to policymaking poses
several problems. First, it sets the precedent that some diseases or
disabilities deserve preferential treatment and not necessarily with a
distinction that sets them apart from that disparate treatment. It
would undoubtedly open the door for exemption requests for a myriad of
other groups who advocate for worthy causes, including any of the 233
compassionate allowance conditions that are already given expedited
review for SSDI.
I have gone through that list and looked at that list and it contains
a lot of other horrible, debilitating deadly diseases, among them non-
Hodgkin's lymphoma that claimed the life of my father 22 years ago,
along with a whole lot of other diseases that are deadly, that are
painful, that are debilitating, that result in the incapacitation of
their victims.
On top of all that, this approach will set the stage for only those
diseases that have the most recognition and the most political backing
to find bill sponsors, while others sit at a relative disadvantage with
conditions that are more rare and underfunded.
Furthermore, while I am happy to consider working on the waiting
period issue, we cannot do so without taking a larger look at SSDI as a
whole and its sustainability. We cannot ignore the fact that Social
Security is facing long-term insolvency with the DI Trust Fund set to
run out in 2032, even sooner than the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
Trust Fund is set to expire and from which it has to borrow funds.
It is undoubtedly a noble intention to help those with ALS, but we
will never have parity if we legislate disease by disease, especially
among and between diseases that are comparably debilitating. I said it
is incoherent and unjust to pick one favorite group where there are
others that are every bit as deserving.
On that basis, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me go on the record to say how
much I disagree with my colleague's view of this; the notion that we
can't help anyone until we can help everyone is simply not the way the
world works. The notion that we can't help anyone until we have solved
whatever financial problems he sees in Social Security, again, means we
will help no one.
I do believe Lou Gehrig's disease is a sufficiently distinct illness,
with an inevitable fatality, and the slow loss of function for the
individuals involved as the disease takes away, one by one, their
various abilities to stand, to speak, and eat. I think it does set it
apart.
If the Senator has other illnesses he thinks are equally cruel and
equally lethal that he would like to add to the list, then I think we
should consider that. The notion that we can't help fellow Americans
with this disease because we haven't solved other problems is one I
categorically reject.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I respectfully, most vehemently disagree with
the characterization made by my distinguished colleague, the Senator
from Rhode Island.
This is not, with all due respect, an instance of ``we can't help
anyone until we help everyone.'' That is a blatant mischaracterization
of the facts. We have already 233 conditions that qualify for the
compassionate allowance category.
If you look through those, they are full of debilitating, life-
threatening conditions. Those categories already do receive expedited
treatment. They already are in a category where they have to be
reviewed and a decision has to be made within a set period of time--I
believe, within the range of 5 months.
That is a good thing, but it is simply not accurate. In fact, it is
blatantly misleading to suggest that my argument here boils down to the
notion that we cannot help anyone until we help everyone. That is not
true. It is the point here that unless or until we can make a
distinction between this condition and the other 233 conditions that
are on that list, I see no valid
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basis--other than the fact that this one has more political support
and, perhaps, more financial backing--to draw that distinction here. I
think it is unfair to those who benefit from and will need to invoke
the need for Social Security disability insurance to put it in an even
less sustainable posture moving forward.
Yes, in an ideal world we would like to say no waiting period for
anyone. In an ideal world we would like to not have anyone have to wait
for these sorts of things, but we do have, in our government, a
susceptibility to claims that are not substantiated, and we also have
people who have to review them. In the absence of a perfect system, it
may not be possible. It certainly isn't going to be possible for us to
make this program sustainable if we can't put meaningful limits on it.
Again, I am all for finding ways to shorten that waiting period as
much as we possibly can. I have yet to hear an argument that sets this
condition apart from the others in this category of 233 compassionate
allowance conditions.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I simply note that the Senator seems
to be making precisely the argument that he is denying that he has
made.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. In no way, shape, or form am I making the argument that we
cannot help anyone until we help everyone. That is a
mischaracterization of the argument I am making.
I am arguing that if, among and between these 233 categories, we can
make no principle distinction between this condition and the others, we
are mistreating those other people.
Who is going to stand here for them? Today, I am going to.
On that basis, I object.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, at the Senator's desire, he may add
any of those whom he wishes, and we will consider that going forward.
Unless and until he does that, we are in a position that unless we are
helping all of them, we will help none of them.
I yield the floor.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, 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. CRAPO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________