[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 82 (Thursday, May 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S2898]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Healthcare

  Now, Madam President, on healthcare and our friends creating the 
Senate graveyard, as well as the abortion bill in Alabama, the House 
has passed over 100 pieces of legislation, many of them with bipartisan 
support, only to get buried in this graveyard of a Chamber. Leader 
McConnell, who controls the calendar, prefers to run it as a 
legislative graveyard.
  Let's take healthcare as an example, the No. 1 issue the American 
people care about. Our colleagues in the House passed a modest bill to 
protect families from getting charged more if they have a preexisting 
condition. It should be bipartisan, and most Republicans--or many of 
the Senate Republicans say they agree with that policy when asked. 
Well, we have a bill that does it, and what does Leader McConnell do? 
He just deep-sixes it and sets aside another tombstone for his 
legislative graveyard.
  What about today's House vote on another set of healthcare bills to 
protect people with preexisting conditions and help them sign up for 
insurance? What is the fate of those bills in the Senate? Will Leader 
McConnell sentence them to the same legislative death as all of these 
other proposals or will Leader McConnell actually allow us to debate 
something of great importance to the American people, to amend it, and 
then vote on it? Hopefully it will pass. I believe it would.
  What is Leader McConnell afraid of? Is he afraid the American people 
will get protection from preexisting conditions? Is he afraid he might 
anger some special interest? Is he afraid he might anger President 
Trump? We have a higher obligation here.
  Instead of debating those crucial pieces of legislation, Leader 
McConnell has treated the Senate like a rubberstamp for the Trump 
administration's often radical nominees. For 3 straight weeks, we have 
only processed nominations, including several judges who are merely 
unqualified ideologues or merely unqualified.
  This matters. The judges we have heard from are narrow. Many have 
offered bigoted remarks in the past, really bigoted. They are not who a 
judge should be. A judge is supposed to walk in the plaintiff's shoes 
and the defendant's shoes, and then come up with a decision that is 
governed by existing law. These people are ideologues, many of them 
stooges and acolytes for the Federalist Society. Now we have in Alabama 
the most radical anti-abortion bill in the country, inviting a 
challenge to Roe v. Wade in the courts. So the effort by the Republican 
leader to remake the Federal judiciary into a conservative redoubt has 
a direct impact on these legal challenges.
  If you ask most of the Republican Members in this Chamber ``Are you 
for repealing Roe v. Wade, hook, line, and sinker?'' they would say, 
no, they are not or they would mostly be silent; they would be afraid 
to answer. Then they vote for judges who want to do it, either 
frontally or by various deep cuts. When our Republican friends vote for 
these radical, hard-right judges, they are saying they want to repeal 
Roe v. Wade, even if they will not say it directly.
  So I say to my colleagues, much as you prefer to remain silent on the 
Alabama Republican abortion bill, your votes for the hard-right, anti-
Roe judges speak volumes--volumes. I would say the whole impetus of the 
Alabama bill is now that we have very conservative, anti-Roe judges on 
the Supreme Court, supported universally by the Members of the other 
side, they feel they have the boldness to introduce a bill that 
actually repeals Roe instead of just curbing it.