[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 143 (Monday, September 9, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5346-S5349]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Background Checks

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today this Chamber, once referred to as 
the greatest deliberative body, must take action. We have people all 
over the country who want to see action, people who want to see change, 
people who are crying out for their leaders in Washington to do their 
jobs.
  These days, the U.S. Senate has become a place where legislation goes 
to die and the important issues of the day go ignored, in addition to 
inaction--major, major issues, significant issues, like climate change 
and infrastructure and immigration reform.
  Today I will focus on three things that are right before us--three 
bills in the gun legislation area that right now are on the leader's 
desk--and two other areas, election protection and bringing down the 
cost of prescription drugs, where we could literally take action 
immediately.
  I focus on these because they all involve bills that have passed the 
House, and the Senate could literally act today. I focus on these 
because, in all three cases, the timing is urgent.
  I am talking about inaction in the wake of terrible tragedies in 
Dayton and El Paso and in Midland-Odessa, all in just the last month; 
inaction in protecting our elections and making it easier for people to 
vote; inaction in response to serious issues of healthcare costs, 
particularly prescription drug prices.
  First, I will speak about gun safety. Think about the courage--the 
incredible courage--of the people who were in Dayton and in El Paso and 
in Midland-Odessa, of the mom who literally shielded her baby from 
death as she herself perished from gunshot wounds, but she kept that 
baby alive. Or how about the grandpa who died shielding his wife and 
granddaughter or the off-duty soldier who carried children away to 
safety? All of that happened in that store.
  As we approach the anniversary of 9/11, I think also about the first 
responders in all of these mass shootings. Those in Dayton, OH, got 
there in 1 minute--1 minute--but, still, we lost nine people in 30 
seconds. But they were there in 1 minute and saved so many lives. That 
is courage.
  That is the courage of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, 
and I believe in this place of extraordinary power that their courage 
must be matched. The courage must be

[[Page S5347]]

matched to that mom, to that grandpa, to that soldier, to those first 
responders. These are ordinary citizens who stepped up and saved lives. 
It is the least we can do to match their courage.
  The American people can't afford more inaction. But over the past few 
years, to me, it seems we have lost our resolve.
  Today, I implore my colleagues, I implore the Republican leadership 
to find the resolve once again and act with courage just as those men 
and women did in El Paso, in Dayton, in Midland and Odessa and Gilroy 
and Parkland and Newtown and Charleston and Orlando.
  How about all of those families who lose a loved one every single day 
to gun violence in homes, to gun violence on the streets? There are 
1,300 children who die from gunshot wounds each year. That is a 
classroom of kids every single week.
  Yes, we are back today. Congress is back. I believe we should have 
come back sooner. We were in recess for mere hours when the gunman in 
El Paso claimed the lives of 22 people and for only a few hours more 
when the gunman in Dayton claimed 9 lives.
  I was among those who immediately called for the Senate to come back 
from recess so that we could vote on gun safety measures--gun safety 
measures that had passed the House of Representatives with some 
Republican support.
  I said that we should come back for that vote back then on background 
checks. By the way, 9 out of 10 Americans support sensible background 
checks; the majority of hunters support sensible background checks; the 
majority of voters who voted for President Trump support sensible 
background checks.
  I know the history here. As the lead sponsor of the bill to prevent 
perpetrators of domestic violence--perpetrators, people who have been 
convicted of serious domestic violence and stalking--from possessing a 
gun and as a longtime supporter of universal background checks, as well 
as the assault weapon ban and limits on magazines, I was invited to the 
White House right after Parkland, right after all of those kids died in 
that school, and I thought: Well, this is a moment when we can act.

  I was seated across from the President of the United States, and I 
had a piece of paper that I saved, and I wrote down with hash marks how 
many times he said that we should pass the bill for universal 
background checks and stop that gun show loophole. Nine times he said 
it--nine times.
  I was seated next to the Vice President and across from the 
President. I told the President that I come from a proud hunting State 
and that when I look at proposals like this, I say to myself: Do they 
hurt my Uncle Dick in the deer stand? Do they do anything to hurt our 
hunting tradition in our State?
  They don't. That is why the vast majority of hunters support 
universal background checks and a lot of these other measures we talked 
about that day in that conference room in the White House. It was on 
TV, so people can see it. There is a video of it. There is evidence of 
it.
  I thought it was a done deal. But then what happened? The President, 
the next day, met with the NRA, and he folded. He folded, despite the 
fact that on TV in front of the Nation, in front of those kids, those 
surviving kids from Parkland, in front of the families of the kids who 
had died, he made a promise that he didn't keep. That is the history I 
know and I have lived.
  But it doesn't end there. I go back in time. I go back to the saddest 
day in the U.S. Senate for me. That was the morning of the vote on 
background checks. That was years before. That was after the Sandy Hook 
shooting. Those families were there, and I had been working with some 
of the Senators who were leading that bill, and I had to tell those 
parents that morning who had lost their kids--their elementary school-
age kids in that school--that we didn't have enough votes to pass that 
bill.
  I remember one of the moms said to me: You know, I will never forget 
that day. I will never forget the last time I saw my son alive. He had 
severe autism, so he really couldn't speak. But every morning he would 
point at the picture of the school aide, whom he loved so much, who 
would never leave his side. He loved her, and he would point at her 
picture on our refrigerator.
  That is what happened that last day she saw him alive. Then he went 
to school, and then, just a few hours later, she was waiting in that 
firehouse with all of those parents. One by one, those children came 
into that firehouse, and pretty soon, the parents who were left knew 
that they would never see their babies again.
  As she was sobbing in that firehouse, she had this fleeting moment 
where she thought of that school aide, and she knew at that moment that 
the school aide would never leave the side of her little boy.
  When they found them both, shot to death, that school aide had her 
arms around that little boy.
  That mom was in my office that morning, and she had the courage to 
advocate for something she knew wouldn't have saved her kid because of 
the particular circumstances of how that guy got that gun. But what she 
knew about the background checks was that they would save more lives 
than a lot of these other measures. Why? Because the States that have 
them have reduced rates of domestic homicide. Yes, and they help with 
suicide as well.
  It probably would have helped in Midland-Odessa. We don't know all of 
the facts, but what we do know is that one time that guy failed a 
background check, and then somehow he was able to get a gun.
  Those parents had the courage to do that. Then, a few hours later, 
this place didn't have the courage to pass that bill.
  That is the history I have had with this issue, but it goes back even 
further. It goes back to when I was a prosecutor and we had cases all 
the time of everyday gun violence. We had officers killed; we had 
children killed; we had women killed in their homes.
  But the case I most remember actually happened after I left that job, 
and I was in the Senate, and we had a shooting of a police officer in a 
small town. He was just doing his job. He showed up for a domestic 
violence call, which maybe sounds regular to a lot of people but not to 
officers because they know how dangerous those calls are.
  It was a young woman, the victim of domestic violence, 17. The guy 
was in the house, and the officer went to the door, just doing his job. 
He opened the door, and the guy shot him in the head. He was wearing a 
bulletproof vest, but it didn't protect him.
  The widow told me--because I was there for that funeral--the last 
time they had been in that church was for the Nativity play that the 
kids were in. After Christmas, the next time they were in that church, 
she was walking--a widow--down that aisle with her little children, 
with a little toddler in her arms in a blue dress covered with stars.
  That is gun violence. It is not just about one family; it is not just 
about one victim; it is not even just about that police officer and 
that family who will never be the same. It is about our entire 
community. That is my history with this issue.
  So when I come back here and I think of the courage of all of those 
people and all of those survivors and I think about those mass 
shootings and how, one by one, if we had passed these sensible bills, 
we could have prevented some of this from happening, I don't know what 
our excuse is anymore.
  The leader on the Republican side said that ``if the President took a 
position on a bill so that we knew we would actually be making a law 
and not just having serial votes, I would be happy to put it on the 
floor.''
  Then the President said: ``Congress is going to be reporting back to 
me with ideas.''
  The time for ideas is done. The ideas passed in the House of 
Representatives--not all of the ideas that I would like put into law, 
but some really good things got passed that would prevent a lot of 
violence, including the background checks, including closing the 
Charleston loophole, when that White nationalist went into that church 
and gunned down those parishioners only because a background check 
hadn't been completed. It just gives a few more days--that is what that 
bill does--so police officers can do their job and complete the 
background checks.
  How about my bill, which is a bill that is sitting on Leader 
McConnell's

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desk? It closes the boyfriend loophole. What is the status of the law 
right now? Well, if you get convicted of a serious offense of domestic 
violence against your husband or wife--most of the time it is wives--or 
against someone who lives in your house, then you can't go out and get 
an AK-47. You can't go out and get a gun. That is the law right now.
  But if you get convicted of the same crime against a boyfriend or a 
girlfriend--usually a girlfriend--you could go out and get that gun.
  We have had hearing after hearing about this bill. We have had 
hearings because it is so sensible to close that loophole. Why? Because 
half of those domestic homicides involve girlfriends.
  I remember the one we had a few years ago. We heard from the sheriff 
from Racine County in Wisconsin. He described himself as a 
conservative. He said this:

       Dangerous boyfriends can be just as scary as dangerous 
     husbands. They hit just as hard and they fire their guns with 
     the same deadly force.

  That bill is in the Violence Against Women Act right now and is 
sitting on Leader McConnell's desk. That bill passed with 33 Republican 
votes in the House of Representatives. There is absolutely no reason we 
should stop a vote on the entire Violence Against Women Act simply 
because it includes this commonsense provision.
  Those are the three bills right now, soon to be joined by a bill on 
limits on magazines. Why that bill? Because in 30 seconds, nine 
innocent people were killed in Dayton, OH. The cops did everything they 
possibly could. They were there in 1 minute, and still nine people 
died.
  Those are the bills--background checks and closing the loopholes--so 
the cops have time to simply finish their vetting. Why would you want 
to cut off their days at 3? Third, closing the boyfriend loophole to 
help in cases of stalking and domestic violence, and fourth, magazines. 
These are commonsense bills. Would I like to do more with the assault 
weapon ban? Yes, I would. But right now, we could get these done.
  What do we hear instead? We hear this: The President took a position 
on a bill, so then we can wait to see if we can have serial votes, and 
then we put it on the floor.
  The President is saying: Congress is going to report back to me with 
ideas.
  This is a dangerous game of whack-a-mole that has to stop. People are 
dying while leaders are pointing fingers. We could point our fingers 
and vote yes or no, and we could do that today. We ask that those bills 
be called up immediately.
  But it doesn't end there. There are other very important bills we 
should be voting on right now.
  Election security. We know a foreign country invaded our election. We 
know that because we heard it from President Trump's top intelligence 
officials. In fact, Dan Coats, the Director of Intelligence back then, 
said that they were getting bolder. We know that. We know what 
happened. We know they did it in multiple ways. They did it by trying 
to hack into elections and election equipment in all 50 States. We 
found that out. In Illinois, they got as close as the voter files.
  We also know they tried to do it with social media, and there, they 
were more successful. They ran a bunch of ads--paid for them in 
rubles--to try to suppress the vote. I will never forget the one shown 
at our Judiciary hearing, paid for in rubles. It was a Facebook ad that 
went on African-Americans' Facebook pages in swing districts. It was a 
picture of a woman--an innocent woman; they had just taken the face of 
someone from Chicago--and it said: Why wait in line to vote for 
Hillary? You can text your vote. And they gave a number, something like 
86513. That is illegal. That is a crime. If we had known about that ad 
and found the perpetrators, they would have gone to jail. But that kind 
of activity by a foreign country was allowed to run rampant, and when 
the President was asked about it at the G20, standing with Vladimir 
Putin, he made a joke about it, looked at Vladimir Putin, and they 
laughed.
  Do you know what I thought? I thought to myself, hundreds of 
thousands of Americans have lost their lives on the battlefield 
fighting for democracy in our own country and around the world. I 
thought of the four little innocent girls in a church in Birmingham who 
lost their lives in the fight for civil rights, in the fight for 
democracy, in the fight to vote. And he made a joke about it. This 
isn't a joke.
  We have an opportunity. We have several bills on this that I am 
leading, to push for backup paper ballots in the remaining States that 
don't have them and to push for funding for audits and funding to get 
the right election equipment.
  This isn't a joke. It doesn't matter if you are a Republican or a 
Democrat or an Independent; this is about protecting our democracy from 
the invasion of a foreign country. That is why our Founding Fathers 
started this country--because they wanted to be independent and didn't 
want to have foreign influence. It is what we fought for in war after 
war--protecting freedom and democracy.
  This is the new ground for invasions. They didn't do it with 
missiles. They didn't do it with tanks. They are doing it with 
computers, and it is called cyber warfare. We have to be as 
sophisticated in our country as they are when they try to invade it.
  When we tried to call up one of these bills--and Senator Blunt had 
nicely called that hearing in the Rules Committee, of which I am 
ranking member--we got gut-punched--Senator Lankford and I and the 
other authors of the bill, Senator Burr, head of the Intelligence 
Committee, Senator Warner, Senator Harris, Senator Graham--because that 
got stopped by the White House--calls were made--and by the leader. It 
is time to bring back this bill or pass one of the many versions that 
are out there.
  The last area I am going to bring up--and there are many other 
things. I mentioned climate change and immigration reform, but the 
reason I am focusing on these things--gun safety for the obvious 
reason, as well as election security and prescription drugs--is because 
these are bills that have passed the House of Representatives. They are 
something we could do right now.
  What about prescription drugs? It feels like years ago now, but it 
was actually just last January when I went to the State of the Union 
with my guest Nicole Smith-Holt. Nicole's son Alec was 26 years old, a 
restaurant manager in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and he had 
aged off his parents' insurance. Three days short of his payday, this 
hard-working kid--a pretty severe diabetic--wasn't able to afford his 
insulin, so he did what so many diabetics are doing right now because 
of the incredible cost of insulin: He started rationing it. He saved 
it. He took less than he was supposed to take.
  I have talked to seniors who literally keep the injectors with those 
precious drops of insulin so they can use them the next day. When Alec 
tried it, tragically, it didn't work. He died. This should never happen 
in the United States of America, not with as simple a drug as insulin, 
which has been around for nearly a century.
  I brought his mom with me to the State of the Union. She was sitting 
right up there looking down at the President while he claimed--of 
course many times--that he is going to do something about the prices of 
pharmaceuticals.
  I think those who are blocking and slow-walking bipartisan 
legislation to reduce the cost of prescription drugs should give Nicole 
a call. She is smart, she is pretty straightforward, and she is a nice 
person. Listen to her story.
  Healthcare is one-sixth of our economy, and total drug spending 
accounts for over 15 percent of our Nation's healthcare costs, from 
consumers to hospitals and nursing homes.
  Between 2012 and 2016, the price of brand-name prescription drugs 
increased 110 percent. If we don't act now, that number will keep 
increasing as the profit margins for Big Pharma increase hand over 
fist. They have two lobbyists for every Member. For every desk in the 
Senate, pharma has two lobbyists. That is what Nicole looked down on 
when she saw the State of the Union. That number also applies to the 
House of Representatives, where we were that night.
  There are solutions on the table. I think what would make the biggest 
difference, because it involves so many people, would be to pass my 
bill that I have led for years that would harness the negotiating power 
of 43 million seniors and allow Medicare to negotiate to

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bring drug prices down. The VA does it. Medicaid does it. They have 
much less expensive drug prices because negotiation is allowed. I 
figure, with the power of 43 million seniors, we could get pretty good 
deals--43 million seniors--done through Medicare. But right now, it is 
locked in.
  Why would it help people who are not at the age to be on Medicare? It 
helps you because it is the biggest block of drug prices, and once it 
starts going down for Medicare, it will start going down for everyone.
  We can also pass my bill that I worked on for years with Senator 
Grassley to stop big, brand-name companies from paying off other drug 
manufacturers to keep less expensive products off the market.
  Let's think of what that means. What that means is pharma has a drug. 
A lot of times, they have a monopoly. Then someone comes along with 
another version of it that is less expensive. That would be great for 
us, especially when there are three or four competitive drugs. You 
always see those prices go down. Do you know what they do? They 
actually pay the generics to keep the product off the market. The big 
companies then have a monopoly. The new companies bringing the drug in, 
the generic, are fine; they get the money from Big Pharma. The only 
ones who get the short end of the stick are us, the consumers of this 
country. That is why Senator Grassley and I have worked across the 
aisle, and it is time to get that bill passed.
  The third one I would suggest is a bill I first introduced with 
Senator McCain--whom we all miss very much--that would allow Americans 
to bring in less expensive drugs from Canada and other countries as 
well. We know drug prices in Canada are so much less expensive than 
they are in the United States. Some States, like Maine, have tried to 
do this on their own, but they said: No; you have to have a Federal law 
to make this really work. Individuals have tried to do it. Bus tours of 
seniors go up there. We had bipartisan support for this in Minnesota--
former Governor Pawlenty supported changing this bill--but we couldn't 
do it as a State. It really has to be done at the Federal level.
  I am also pleased that Senator Grassley has now stepped into Senator 
McCain's shoes and is carrying this bill for me. He is the chair of the 
Senate Finance Committee. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to 
call this bill up for a vote.
  In conclusion, I started this speech by questioning whether this 
Chamber is even capable of action on big things anymore. I will end by 
asking a question that should be simple: Will the Senate respond to the 
needs of the American people?
  When Americans are shot in cold blood, their bodies littered on the 
floor of a Walmart, will we respond to their needs? Will we respond to 
their families? When their votes are threatened by attacks from a 
foreign country, will we respond to the citizens of this country? Will 
we respond when we know drug prices have gone completely out of control 
and we uniquely could do something about it?
  Today, what this Chamber needs are leaders. Leaders don't hesitate. 
They don't drag their feet or put politics over country. They don't 
block or obstruct progress. If my colleagues don't want to find common 
ground, at least we could show some common sense.
  It is time to live up to the promise of this esteemed body. Inaction 
won't do. The American people can't afford inaction in the wake of 
unprecedented attacks on our elections and our democracy. They can't 
afford inaction when people are actually dying because they can't 
afford common prescription drugs. They can't afford inaction when we 
have people being slaughtered on our streets, going to a festival in 
California, out on a weekend night with friends, going to a movie 
theater, or going shopping for school supplies.
  Historically, this Chamber has done great things. It is one of the 
reasons all of us who got elected to this office decided to do it. Our 
predecessors fought for and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the 
U.S. Senate. This place expanded voting rights the following year. This 
place helped provide a safety net for families, seniors, and kids 
across the country by passing Medicare and Medicaid. Guess what. When 
those things were passed, they weren't totally popular at the time, but 
now they are because they did the right thing. They were leaders. They 
didn't wait. They didn't hesitate. They led. We can and should come 
together and do great things now. That is the America we love. That is 
the America we know. That is the America we can be again.
  I ask that these commonsense measures come up for a vote.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ernst). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the rol1.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.