[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 86 (Wednesday, May 22, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3032-S3033]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Senate Legislative Agenda

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I don't have a speech prepared. I just 
want to share a few thoughts with my colleagues. What I am about to say 
I intend to say gently and constructively, and that is this: We need to 
do more. We need to do more. By ``we,'' I mean the U.S. Congress.
  We have completed almost 25 percent of the time allotted to this 
current Congress. And what have we done? Other than nominations, which 
are important--and I will come back to that--we have done nothing--
zero, zilch, nada.
  Let me talk about my friends in the House of Representatives first. I 
have great respect for them. I wish I had served in the House. I would 
have loved to have had that experience. So far, our friends in the 
House--at least the leadership--have done two things. No. 1, they have 
passed bills they know have not a hope in Hades of passing the U.S. 
Senate. We call those bills messaging bills, as you know. They are not 
designed for the next generation. They are designed for the next 
election. They don't do anything to make the American people any more 
secure or improve the quality of their lives, and we all know that.
  The second thing that my friends in the House leadership have done--
and I say this with all the respect I can muster--is to harass the 
President.
  Again, I say this gently, and I say this, hopefully, constructively 
to my friends in the House leadership: The House leadership needs to 
urinate or get off the pot. The House leadership needs to indict the 
President of the United States, impeach him, and let us hold a trial--
he will not be convicted--or they need to go ahead and hold in contempt 
every single member of the Trump administration so we can move those 
issues into our court system and get back to doing the people's 
business.
  Now, if they decide to go the court route, I would caution my friends 
to be very, very careful because once it enters the court system, it 
becomes a zero-sum game. One or two things are going to happen. Either 
the administration will win, in which case the oversight authority of 
the U.S. Congress will be undermined, or the House leadership will win, 
in which case no American with a brain above a single-cell organism is 
going to want to run for President of the United States, because 
Congress will be able to find out everything about your life, even the 
most intimate details, whether it is relevant to your job or not and 
whether it happened when you were President or not.
  What I hope happens is that my friends in the House leadership and 
the administration sit down and talk--not talk like 8-year-olds in the 
back of a minivan fighting but talk constructively about how their 
behavior could impact important institutions in this country--and work 
it out.
  I thank the Attorney General for making overtures to the House 
leadership to try to find common ground.
  Now, let me talk about the Senate. We need to do more. I am not 
saying we haven't done anything. We have confirmed some very important 
nominees to the Trump administration. It is long overdue. They are fine 
men and women. We have confirmed some very fine men and women to the 
Federal Judiciary, and I believe they will make this country safer and 
will make this country better. I am very proud of that effort. So let 
me say it again. I am not saying we have done nothing. I am saying we 
need to do more.
  There are issues where our Democratic friends and my Republican 
friends have more in common than we don't. We need to bring the bills 
to the floor of the Senate. Everyone has their own list, and everyone 
in the Senate knows what I am talking about, whether they will say it 
or not.
  What is one of the things that moms and dads worry about when they 
lie down at night and can't sleep? The cost of prescription drugs. 
There is bipartisan support for prescription drug reform.
  I just read a study in the Journal of the American Medical 
Association. They studied the U.S. healthcare delivery system and the 
healthcare delivery systems of all other wealthy countries. So it is 
apples to apples. In America, we pay about $1,500 for every man, woman, 
or child every year for pharmaceutical drugs. In the average rich 
country, other countries pay $750.
  I am not criticizing our pharmaceutical drug companies. What they do 
is marvelous. We live longer. They save money. They keep us out of 
hospitals. But why is everybody else paying $750 and our people are 
paying $1,500? There are things we can do that will help make the 
pharmaceutical industry better but also help consumers. Do you know 
what we are doing about it? Nothing. We need to bring a bill to the 
floor.
  I could give you another example. We all know there needs to be 
reform of our National Emergency Act. We know that. It is not about 
President Trump. It is about institutions, checks and balances, and 
Madisonian separation of powers.
  We could do something together to get rid of spam robocalls. I get 
about 12 a day.
  Rob Portman has a great bill that would end government shutdowns. We 
have more in common on that than we don't.
  We need a supplemental disaster bill. We have Americans who are 
hurting. In my State, after Katrina, we were flat on our backs. If it 
hadn't been for the American taxpayer, we would have never risen to our 
knees, much less to our feet. We have other Americans and friends in 
Puerto Rico who need help. We ought to be able to work it out.
  I could keep going. Everybody has their own list.
  I don't care whether we move a bill through committee or whether we 
bring a bill directly to the floor of the Senate--I am in labor, not 
management; that is above my pay grade--but we need to try. We need to 
try.
  I understand it is an election cycle. I get that. I say to the 
Presiding Officer, I am a politician. You know that. But we are always 
in an election cycle. When are we not in an election cycle? And I 
understand some of my colleagues with a lot more experience than I 
have--and I listen carefully to them, and I try to listen carefully to 
them--are thinking right now: Kennedy, that is just not the way it is 
done here.

[[Page S3033]]

  Well, by God, maybe it is not, but maybe it should be.
  I know some of my friends are thinking: Kennedy, if we do that, we 
are taking too big of a political risk.
  Maybe we are. Maybe we will win.
  I just think that there are bills that will make the American people 
able to live better lives, and we ought to spend a little more time 
thinking about the next generation than the next election.
  With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.