[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
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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.