[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 6, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1674-S1678]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Chad A. Readler

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, judges are making decisions around the 
country right now on voting rights, on civil rights, on women's rights, 
on LGBTQ rights, decisions that could limit those rights not just for a 
year or for a decade but for a generation. They make decisions on 
healthcare; they make decisions on sentencing; and they make decisions 
on corporate power. We have seen judge after judge, especially on the 
Supreme Court, put their thumbs on the scales of justice by favoring 
corporations over workers, by favoring Wall Street over consumers, and 
by favoring health insurance companies over patients. That is, 
fundamentally, why we in Ohio cannot afford to have Chad Readler on the 
bench.
  Look at an op-ed he took upon himself to write as a private citizen, 
which reads we should allow the execution of 16-year-olds--kids, 
children who are 16 years old.
  This is at a time when we are taking important, bipartisan steps 
forward on sentencing reform, and this Senate doesn't come together 
very often. This Senate, under Senator McConnell's leadership, actually 
came together in a bipartisan way. After all of the mostly unworkable 
pieces of legislation he has written that always help the rich, the 
President of the United States signed a bill, in this case, in which we 
did the right thing by taking bipartisan steps forward on sentencing 
reform.
  How do you turn around and put someone on the bench for life who 
supports executing children? That is what a 16-year-old is--still a 
teenager, still a child under the law. Yet he thinks it is something we 
should do--execute children who are found guilty.
  During his nomination hearing, it was pretty unbelievable that 
Readler stood by his op-ed and refused to disavow his support for using 
the death penalty on high schoolers and, possibly, on even younger 
children. I guess I give him credit for consistency.
  His record on voting rights is equally despicable. He worked on 
behalf of a far-right group and argued for the elimination of Golden 
Week, something passed by Republicans that had been in effect for more 
than a decade, which means he was limiting the amount of time people 
can vote early, and he defended restrictive voter ID and provisional 
ballot laws. We know exactly whom those laws target--people of color, 
the elderly, young voters. They are the same people, in many cases, who 
face literacy tests and poll taxes. They are the people   John Lewis 
and the foot soldiers of Selma were marching for 54 years ago tomorrow 
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
  It is shameful that, half a century later, we are fighting that same 
fight. Chad Readler again is on the wrong side. We can't afford another 
judge on the bench who works to undo Selma's legacy.
  We can't afford another judge who has made it his mission to take 
away Americans' healthcare. Chad Readler's work threatens the 
healthcare coverage of 20 million Americans who have preexisting 
conditions. Last summer, Readler did what three career attorneys with 
the Department of Justice refused to do. He filed a brief that 
challenged the law that protects Americans with preexisting conditions. 
He filed a brief nobody else was willing to file. They all recused 
themselves. They all refused to do it. They thought it was

[[Page S1675]]

something improper and unconstitutional. One of them, I believe, 
resigned.
  Do you know what happened then? The next day, he was nominated for 
this very judgeship.
  So the message is loud and clear from the administration: If you go 
after preexisting conditions under consumer protections, if you attack 
workers' rights, if you attack voters' rights within any job you hold--
and there is a real incentive to do this from this administration--you 
may get a good, lifetime Federal judgeship. The arguments he made in 
his brief were unprecedented. As I said, three attorneys withdrew from 
the case. One resigned altogether in his objections to the Department 
of Justice's unprecedented actions.
  One of our Republican colleagues, Senator Alexander, who works with 
Senator Murray to run the HELP Committee, called Readler's argument as 
farfetched--Senator Alexander's words, who is a conservative Republican 
from Tennessee--as he had ever seen. Yet, in December, a partisan Texas 
judge decided to go along with Readler's opinion, and he handed down 
the decision that undermines preexisting condition protections for all 
Americans.
  Right now, judges are deciding the future of Americans' healthcare 
every day. We can't afford to put another extremist--and he is way out 
of the mainstream--in my increasingly conservative, Republican State. 
He is way out of the mainstream among lawyers, way out of the 
mainstream among judges, and way out of the mainstream as a citizen. We 
can't afford to put another extreme judge on the court who will not 
defend Americans' right to healthcare.

  We know there have been a number of times this body has refused to 
take away the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. We 
remember the vote late at night when we defeated the repeal of the 
Affordable Care Act. We know that all kinds of Republican candidates 
who were victorious went on television and said they were going to 
defend the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. We heard 
that over and over.
  Why did we hear that? Even though that was not their position a few 
months earlier, in the cases of a lot of them, we heard it because they 
knew how popular it was and how much the public cared about the 
consumer protections for preexisting conditions. In a moment, I am 
going to share some letters from Ohioans who make the point that even 
though, this year, Republican candidates thought it was all OK to say 
we are going to preserve preexisting conditions, a vote for Judge 
Readler is exactly the opposite.
  Don't go home and say you support consumer protections for 
preexisting conditions and then vote for a judge who has a history of 
wanting to take that right away and who will now have a lifetime 
appointment and get another chance to likely take away the protections 
for preexisting conditions.
  Let me share a few letters from people.
  A man from Sandusky wrote to me about how the marketplaces that were 
created by the Affordable Care Act helped him to start his own business 
because he had a way to purchase insurance. He was later diagnosed with 
lung cancer. He wrote: ``I am watching the dismantling of the only 
program available to me with a pre-existing condition that I can 
afford. I am devastated.''
  I don't know what Mr. Readler thinks when he reads something like 
that, but let me give another example.
  A woman from Cleveland writes:

       Protect real health care coverage for all people with pre-
     existing conditions. Real people's lives depend on it. My 
     husband's life depends on it.

  Chad Readler wants to be a judge. Chad Readler did the President's 
bidding and the insurance industry's bidding at the Department of 
Justice. I don't know if he knows these people exist, like the woman 
from Cleveland or the man from Sandusky. I hope Chad Readler would have 
gone out and, as President Lincoln said, gotten his public opinion 
badge by actually listening to how the decisions he makes affect real 
people.
  A woman from Chagrin Falls, which is a fairly wealthy suburb of 
Cleveland, wrote:

       I've been a cancer patient since 2011. If pre-existing 
     conditions are no longer covered, I--along with countless 
     others--will probably be screwed.

  A mother from Waynesville, OH, wrote:

       My family has lived every day worrying about the ACA being 
     dismantled. We have a son who was born with a neurological 
     condition before the ACA.
       We lived in constant fear of medical caps and pre-existing 
     conditions.

  Just putting Chad Readler on the bench increases people's anxiety. Is 
Congress going to take away the Affordable Care Act? Is Congress going 
to wipe away those protections for preexisting conditions? If Congress 
isn't, are judges going to do that? No wonder people are so anxious 
about that.
  A woman from Fairborn writes:

       I previously lost health insurance from a possible 
     preexisting condition and now, being a 2-time cancer 
     survivor, I'm scared of losing coverage again.
       The security of having insurance since the ACA allowed me 
     to sleep at night and focus on my health.

  My editorial comment on her comments is to focus on her health, not 
on whether she loses her coverage.

       It is unimaginable that politicians want to deny so many 
     Americans access to health insurance and quality of life.

  Senator Murray and I sat and watched a bunch of mostly men on the 
other side of the aisle cast their votes--all who had good health 
insurance--to take away insurance for millions of Americans and for 
hundreds of thousands in my State and to take away their consumer 
protections for preexisting conditions.
  A mother from New Albany writes:

       My daughter had two autoimmune diseases by the age of 6--
     SIX. That means her entire life she will be a ``preexisting 
     condition.'' But she isn't just a label. She is a person. 
     Please protect my baby. She already deals with enough.

  I mean, hear the passion in that letter, the strong feelings in that 
letter, the cries for help in that letter. Yet this body may be about 
to put on the Sixth Circuit, in a lifetime appointment, someone who 
clearly doesn't care about people like them.
  Another woman from Hillsboro writes:

       We are a family of pre-existing conditions and survive 
     because we have insurance that we can afford. My husband 
     works long, hard hours and has to work 60 hours a week for us 
     to make it. I'm a teacher. I work about 18 out of 24 hours a 
     day but make $40,000 a year. We can't work any more than we 
     already do.

  Again, these are people who are working hard and who are doing 
everything right. They didn't ask to be sick. They didn't ask for their 
healthcare costs to go up. Are we going to put somebody on the court 
who wants to take away the consumer protections for people like this 
lady from Hillsboro?
  These Americans work hard. They pay their premiums. Many of them deal 
with all that comes with caring for a child or a family member who has 
a chronic condition. How can Members of Congress and how can this 
President--all who have good insurance paid for by the taxpayers--stand 
by and allow activist, partisan judges to dismantle these protections 
that Americans rely on?
  It is bad enough that so many Members of Congress want to take away 
these consumer protections. Now it is unelected judges the American 
public really doesn't know, and this body is about to put one more of 
them on the court, even more extreme and younger than so many other of 
these judges.
  We can't afford another judge on the courts who will vote to take 
away Americans' healthcare, who will vote to take away Americans' 
voting rights, who will vote to take away Americans' civil rights.
  I ask my colleagues to vote no on Chad Readler for the Sixth Circuit.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio for his 
statement and his concerns, and I am here today to join him on the 
floor to oppose Chad Readler's nomination to the Sixth Circuit Court of 
Appeals.
  I call on every Republican who said they were going to fight for 
families' healthcare coverage, protections for people with preexisting 
conditions, to prove they meant it by joining us.
  I have heard my Republican colleagues claim time and again that they 
care about protections for people with preexisting conditions. I have 
heard

[[Page S1676]]

them say they want to tackle those skyrocketing healthcare costs. I 
have heard them say they want to help people get the care they need, 
but when push comes to shove, I have yet to see them join Democrats and 
actually vote to make that happen. In fact, they do have a long track 
record of working to move us in exactly the opposite direction.
  People across the country have not forgotten how they had to speak up 
and stop Republicans from jamming through that awful TrumpCare bill, 
which would have spiked premiums and gutted Medicaid and put families 
back at the mercy of big insurance companies that could jack up prices 
for people with preexisting conditions.
  Those people also will not forget if Republicans decide to ignore 
them again and rally around this judicial nominee, who wants to do the 
same damage.
  Let's be clear. Chad Readler's nomination is the latest test of 
whether Republicans are serious about fighting for people's healthcare, 
and every Republican who supports him is failing yet again.
  Make no mistake--Chad Readler has not only championed some of 
President Trump's most alarming steps, such as his travel ban, his 
family separation policy, his efforts to undermine protections for 
LGBTQ people and more; he has also been President Trump's right-hand 
man when it comes to undermining healthcare for people in this country.
  When the Trump administration decided to abandon protections for 
people with preexisting conditions in court and throw its weight behind 
a lawsuit that would strike them down, Chad Readler signed on to the 
brief defending the decision. It is a brief that three other Justice 
Department officials refused to sign, and one even resigned over it. 
But Chad Readler led the Trump administration's legal argument for 
striking down protections for people with preexisting conditions, which 
will increase costs and throw healthcare for millions of people into 
utter chaos.
  It was an argument one of my Republican colleagues, as you just 
heard, called ``as far-fetched as any I've ever heard.'' I agree. It is 
farfetched, which is why it is also farfetched for any Republican who 
votes to confirm Readler to continue pretending they care about 
protections for people with preexisting conditions or helping families 
get affordable healthcare.
  The choice, to me, is pretty simple and straightforward. You cannot 
be for protections for people with preexisting conditions and for 
making someone who wants to strike them down a circuit judge. You 
cannot fight for families' healthcare and vote to empower the very 
people who have been leading the charge to undermine it. You can't vote 
for Readler and stand with those families.
  People across the country are watching this vote closely. They know, 
despite Republicans' promises to fight for their healthcare, when it 
matters as it does here, when the care they need is truly on the line, 
Republicans have not come through for them.
  I hope that changes today. I hope, instead of breaking their word and 
voting once more for President Trump's agenda of chaos and healthcare 
sabotage, they will live up to the promises and join us and people 
across the country and oppose Readler's nomination.
  Before I wrap up, I want to talk about the larger issue here because 
Readler is not the only alarming judicial nominee from President Trump.
  Just this week, in fact, Republicans jammed through Allison Rushing. 
She is an incredibly inexperienced circuit court nominee who has voiced 
some incredibly alarming ideological views, especially for women and 
the LGBTQ community.
  Later this week we expect a vote on Eric Murphy. He is another 
nominee who has taken extreme positions on women's healthcare, from 
endorsing misinformation by signing on to briefs that cite false--
false--claims about women's health to standing in support of laws that 
were found to unconstitutionally infringe on women's reproductive 
rights and against laws to increase access to contraceptive care.
  People across the country have been absolutely clear that they do not 
want to see our courts lurch to the far right. They know this is a 
threat. It is a threat to women. It is a threat to our workers and our 
families and our environment and so much more.
  So Democrats are here. We are going to keep standing up and fighting 
back every time President Trump and Senate Republican leaders try to 
move us in that direction, and I hope some Republicans will do the 
right thing and stand with us.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. 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, today, the Senate considers the nomination 
of yet another unqualified, far-right nominee--Chad Readler, who is up 
for consideration for a seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
  Let me just say at the outset that any whiff of credibility this 
nominee might have had as a judicial nominee disappears the minute he 
puts his name on the Trump administration's absurd legal argument that 
protections for preexisting conditions are unconstitutional.
  To get a sense of how ridiculous this argument is, you have to look 
at a bit of recent history.
  In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate was a 
tax, that it was constitutional, and that the Affordable Care Act would 
stand. For millions of Americans, particularly the ones who wouldn't 
have to go to bed at night fearing that when they woke up, they could 
get discriminated against for a preexisting condition, just as in the 
old days--under the ACA, they wouldn't have to worry about that 
anymore--it was a joyful day when the court ruled that the Affordable 
Care Act would stand, but it was a tough day for the Republican 
strategists who had been so desperate to bring down the law at any 
cost.
  Next, in the process of jamming the Trump tax law through Congress, 
in late 2017, many Republicans said: Let's bring out our old attacks on 
the Affordable Care Act. They passed an amendment that said there would 
be no penalty for those who failed to sign up for health insurance, 
even though everybody understands that those who have coverage often 
pick up the bills for those who don't.
  Then, in 2018, Republican Governors and attorneys general in 20 
States made what was really the silliest legal challenge to the 
Affordable Care Act yet, and that was in the case of Texas v. United 
States.
  Here, they said they were going to stipulate that the Supreme Court 
upheld the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate only because it was 
a tax. Then they said: We establish that the Trump tax law dialed the 
penalty associated with violating the individual mandate down to zero. 
At least that had a kernel of accuracy.
  Let me describe how they got into the backbreaking legal acrobatics 
next. They argued that because there is no penalty associated with 
violating the individual mandate, it is no longer a tax and somehow it 
has become unconstitutional. Finally, they argued that since the 
individual mandate is unconstitutional, the whole Affordable Care Act 
is unconstitutional and ought to be thrown out the window.
  My own take is that if you were a first-year law student, you would 
get a failing grade for that kind of work on constitutional law, but 
let's stick to the history.
  The Justice Department has an obligation to defend the laws of the 
United States. It is a quaint idea, but that is the role of the Justice 
Department--defending the laws of the United States in court.
  The Trump administration, however, said: Who cares? It doesn't 
matter. And they sided with officials who shared their view.
  In fact, the Trump Justice Department focused this attack 
specifically on the Affordable Care Act protections for preexisting 
conditions. It said that the mandate was inseverable from two key 
protections in the law, which therefore ought to be struck down: the 
rule that bars insurance companies from denying coverage due to 
preexisting conditions and the rule that bars insurance companies from 
jacking

[[Page S1677]]

up premiums based on preexisting conditions.
  Here is a little bit of a recap. A group of officials on the far 
right, who were out of good cases to bring against the Affordable Care 
Act, said: Hey, let's try bringing a bad case. At the President's 
direction, the Trump Justice Department decided not to fight but, 
rather, to take part in this preposterous attack on the law of the 
land.
  To the incredible distress of millions of Americans who walk an 
economic tightrope because they have a preexisting condition, somehow 
the Trump people got a Texas judge to rule in their favor. Fortunately, 
the ACA protections remained in place while the case worked its way 
through the courts.
  There are colleagues here in the Senate, on the other side of the 
aisle, who have objected to what the Justice Department did. Our friend 
Senator Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, who knows a little bit 
about healthcare, said: ``The Justice Department argument in the Texas 
case is as far-fetched as any I've ever heard.''
  Senator Lamar Alexander is a Republican from Tennessee, chair of a 
key committee, and works with us on the Finance Committee. The Justice 
Department's argument, according to Senator Alexander, is just light 
years from a reasonable and rational position.
  Then the Trump administration went ahead and threw out centuries of 
Justice Department tradition--honored by Republicans and Democrats--of 
defending laws as long as there is a nonfrivolous argument in their 
favor. They didn't decide to throw out that vital legal tradition in a 
case involving some obscure, out-of-date statute. In effect, they chose 
to debase the Justice Department and undermine the rule of law in order 
to attack protections for preexisting conditions.
  Chad Readler is the Trump appointee who stepped up and said: Sure, 
you can put my name on that legal brief. So what Chad Readler was 
essentially saying is that it was just fine with him to go back to the 
days in America when healthcare was for the healthy and wealthy. That 
is really what you had if you allowed discrimination against those with 
preexisting conditions again. If you are healthy, there is nothing to 
worry about. If you are wealthy, you can write out a check and cover 
the payments for a preexisting condition and the health services you 
need.
  Make no mistake about it--by putting his name on that legal brief, 
what Chad Readler was interested in doing was taking America back to 
yesteryear when the insurance companies could beat the stuffing out of 
somebody with a preexisting condition and find every manner of reason 
not to get them affordable care.
  People were stuck in their jobs because of something called job lock, 
where they couldn't move to another company, even when they got a 
promotion, because they wouldn't be able to get coverage. That is what 
Chad Readler wanted to inflict on Americans.
  The case he worked on was so obviously political and meritless that 
three career Justice Department attorneys withdrew from it. One senior 
official, an individual who had been praised for 20 years of 
extraordinary service, actually resigned. Mr. Readler said that was OK 
with him too.
  He said: We will take America back to the days when healthcare was 
for the healthy and wealthy. I don't really much care that senior 
officials--nonpolitical officials in the Department--are leaving 
because this was such an extreme way to handle this case. Mr. Readler 
said that all of this was OK and that he would be the public face of 
attacking basic protections for 133 million Americans with preexisting 
conditions.
  On the very same day, the President announced his nomination to sit 
on the powerful Sixth Circuit. That is a lifetime appointment on the 
Federal bench, an extraordinarily important position.
  If there is somebody following the nomination at home, you just might 
ask yourself: Doesn't that sound look a quid pro quo?
  I am the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, where we 
pay for much of American healthcare--Medicare, Medicaid, the children's 
health program, tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act, 
and we have the tax exclusions available to employers. On that 
committee, on which the Presiding Officer is a new member, you get a 
chance to review the credentials of lots of individuals who are 
involved in these decisions in which the Finance Committee is really 
faced with the question of how to make the best use of what is really 
$2 trillion, or thereabouts, of healthcare spending, and I will tell 
you, in this area, it is so important to protect people with 
preexisting conditions.
  The Trump administration just seems to have, with one nominee after 
another, an inexhaustible supply of far-right pretenders--persons who 
claim they will be for protections for preexisting conditions, only to 
turn around quickly and fight to take them away. So it ought to be 
clear that this isn't a routine nomination. Chad Readler thinks 
insurance companies should be able to deny care with people with 
preexisting conditions.
  Colleagues, if you vote for Chad Readler, you are casting a vote to 
endorse the position of turning back the clock and rolling back time to 
the days when insurance companies could discriminate against those with 
a preexisting condition.
  If Mr. Readler's history began and ended with the legal brief 
attacking preexisting protections, in my view, that would be 
disqualifying, but there is more.
  He signed the Trump Justice Department legal brief green-lighting 
discrimination against LGBTQ Americans in the Masterpiece Cakeshop 
case. He defended the transgender military ban. He defended the Muslim 
ban. He defended family separation at the border.
  I am just going to close by way of saying that I think this 
nomination is a byproduct of what happens when the Senate abandons a 
long-held practice of consulting with home State Senators on nominees.
  Since the early 1900s, it has been a tradition for the Judiciary 
Committee to seek input from Senators on judicial nominees from their 
home States. Lower court nominees traditionally don't move forward 
until those home State Senators give the green light. They do so with 
what are called blue slips.
  In this case, the nominee is from Ohio, and the majority leader, 
Mitch McConnell, is in the process of blowing up that tradition and 
moving this nominee over Senator Brown's objection.
  In 2009, when Republicans were in the minority, Mitch McConnell and 
all of his colleagues fought to protect the blue-slip tradition. They 
wrote everybody in sight to protect it--President Obama, Senator Leahy.
  They wrote: ``We hope your administration will consult with us as it 
considers possible nominations to the Federal courts from our states.''
  So they made it very clear a few years ago that they strongly 
supported this, but here they are blowing up a century-old tradition of 
bipartisanship on judicial nominees after defending it.
  This issue came to a head last year, when the Senate took up the 
nomination of Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit, despite objections from 
my Oregon colleague, Senator Merkley, and me.
  We were able to block that nomination. It was the right thing to do. 
This was a nominee who we felt had not been straight with our judicial 
selection committee. As Oregon's senior Senator, I had been dealing 
with these nominees--Democrats and Republicans--for years, but our 
judicial selection commission had never felt so misled. Senator Merkley 
and I led the fight, and we were successful in defeating that nominee.
  Now the White House still wants, apparently, this body to act as a 
rubberstamp and just approve one nominee after another without any 
questions.
  I want my colleagues to understand that by moving this nomination 
forward, they are going to be responsible for creating a new reality--
in effect hot-wiring the process for considering judicial nominees in a 
way that will take us back again to a more partisan approach.
  The bipartisan blue-slip process has worked for over a century. What 
is going on now would end it. This is a breach of bipartisan protocol 
that has further driven the judiciary to a partisan extreme.

[[Page S1678]]

  Following these actions by the Trump administration and the majority, 
I seriously question, if you continue this, whether the current 
structure of the courts is going to survive.
  Colleagues, Chad Readler does not deserve a lifetime appointment to 
the Sixth Circuit. The moment he put his name on the Trump 
administration's absurd legal attack on protections for preexisting 
conditions, he revealed that he was going to be partisan all the way 
and, on top of that, that he was going to exercise poor judgment. He 
has been a defender of discrimination in multiple forms. He has 
defended the indefensible abuse of vulnerable migrant families at our 
border. At this point, he cannot claim to be close to the standard of 
impartiality and evenhandedness that a Senator ought to expect from any 
judicial nominee.
  I intend to vote against Chad Readler. I urge my colleagues to join 
me.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, today I rise to oppose the nomination of 
Chad Readler to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
  I remember the 2018 campaign season, when so many Republicans 
suddenly became the world's most passionate defenders of patients with 
preexisting conditions. They told voters that never ever could they 
even imagine doing anything that would weaken the protections that stop 
health insurance companies from discriminating against people with 
preexisting conditions.
  Whether they be breast cancer survivors or children born with birth 
defects or any of the tens of millions of Americans who manage chronic 
conditions like diabetes or depression or high blood pressure, well, 
Americans are about to find out whether my American colleagues meant a 
word of what they said on the campaign trail. Americans will soon see 
whether Republicans stand up for patients with preexisting conditions 
or vote to confirm Chad Readler to the Ohio Sixth Circuit Court.
  This nominee's record of threatening patients with preexisting 
conditions is not up for debate. Chad Readler was the mastermind behind 
the Trump administration's effort to strip away the core of the 
Affordable Care Act--the principle that health insurance companies 
cannot deny coverage or kick a patient off their policy just because of 
their medical history.
  On the campaign trail, President Trump spoke of protecting Americans 
with preexisting conditions, but we now know that was just another lie.
  Apparently, it wasn't enough for this administration to stop 
defending the Affordable Care Act in court; the President sought to 
attack it in court. Initially, the Trump administration struggled to 
find someone at the Department of Justice willing to take on this 
cause. In fact, three separate career attorneys at the Justice 
Department refused to argue the administration's position in court. One 
employee even resigned.
  Chad Readler, the nominee we are voting on today, was more than happy 
to take on this cruel and unjust cause. He became the chief architect 
of the Trump administration's legal brief, challenging the very 
constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act's protections for people 
with preexisting conditions. In other words, Chad Readler's legal brief 
took the administration's effort to sabotage the Affordable Care Act to 
a whole new level, threatening to bring us back to a time when health 
insurance companies didn't have to cover cancer survivors, or 
individuals with substance abuse disorder, or anyone who has ever 
faced, ever confronted a health challenge in their life. How does 
President Trump reward Chad Readler for leading this assault on 
patients and their families? Well, the day after he filed this reckless 
and morally repugnant legal brief, the President nominated him to serve 
on the Sixth Circuit.
  Now, let me tell you, I spent a lot of time crisscrossing New Jersey 
over the past year, and I don't think I met a single constituent who 
came up to me and said: Senator, what my family really needs you to do 
is once again let health insurance companies deny us care. On the 
contrary, I heard from and continue to hear from New Jerseyans who 
depend on these protections. They can't even believe this is still an 
issue.
  Last summer, I spoke with a woman from Highland Park named Ann 
Vardeman who told me she was diagnosed with PTSD after surviving a 
sexual assault. Ann told me that health insurers shouldn't be able to 
``charge me more for something that is a horrible thing that happens to 
millions of people in this country through absolutely no fault of their 
own.'' Indeed, without the Affordable Care Act, there would be no 
Federal health protections for survivors of sexual violence like her.
  Perhaps one of my constituents--Anne Zavalick of Middlesex, NJ--said 
it best when she wrote about her battle against bladder cancer. She 
wrote:

       It is crucial that I continue to receive scans to make sure 
     there is no recurrence of the cancer. . . . If I don't have 
     coverage for preexisting conditions, I will go bankrupt. . . 
     . Then I will probably die. So, yeah, this is kinda super 
     important to me, personally.

  It should be personal to all of us. Everyone in this body should take 
it personally when this administration attacks protections that 130 
million Americans rely on for their health and financial security.
  People remember what it was like before the Affordable Care Act, and 
they don't want to go backward. They remember how a woman could be 
denied coverage for maternity care or charged higher premiums simply 
for being a woman. Today, being a woman is no longer a preexisting 
condition. They remember how infants born with heart deformities could 
hit lifetime caps within days of being born. Today, families don't have 
to worry about lifetime caps. They remember how cancer survivors and 
Americans with chronic conditions like diabetes or asthma lived in fear 
of being denied coverage or dropped from their policies at a moment's 
notice.
  Today, patients are protected from discrimination, but they will not 
be if the courts side with Chad Readler's shameful arguments on behalf 
of this administration.
  This issue is personal for millions of Americans across our country--
from 3.8 million in New Jersey, to 4.3 million in Georgia, to 4.8 
million in Ohio, Mr. Readler's home State. All told, 130 million 
Americans with preexisting conditions may suffer the consequences of 
Mr. Readler's assault on the Affordable Care Act. These Americans are 
not Democrats or Republicans or Independents; they are human beings 
with a right to access affordable, quality healthcare.
  Does this Senate really want to reward someone largely responsible 
for endangering the coverage our constituents depend on with a lifetime 
appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals? I sure hope not. 
That is not the kind of judgement we want on any court.
  Last fall, we heard a lot of talk from Republicans about protecting 
people with preexisting conditions. We know that actions speak louder 
than words, and it is action that we need right now. We need every 
Member of this body to stand up for the right of all Americans to get 
quality healthcare coverage. We need every Member of this body to stand 
up for the proposition that Americans cannot be discriminated against 
in their healthcare coverage because of a preexisting condition. We 
need every Member of this body to vote against the nomination of Chad 
Readler for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
  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.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.