[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 171 (Tuesday, October 29, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6206-S6219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND 
  DRUG ADMINISTRATION, INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, 
  VETERANS AFFAIRS, TRANSPORTATION, AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT 
                        APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2020

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 3055, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 3055) making appropriations for the 
     Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related 
     Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2020, and 
     for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Shelby amendment No. 948, in the nature of a substitute.
       McConnell (for Shelby) amendment No. 950, to make a 
     technical correction.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

[[Page S6207]]

  



                               Venezuela

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I want to comment on an incident that 
occurred late last week on the floor of the Senate regarding temporary 
protected status, known as TPS, for people from the country of 
Venezuela.
  TPS can be provided by the President to nationals of a country when 
that country is experiencing violence or a catastrophe that makes 
returning to the country unsafe. This is a protection offered by 
America under many different administrations to help those who might be 
in the United States when a calamity occurs in their home countries. It 
has often been granted for countries suffering outbreaks of war or 
natural disaster, which leads me to the issue of Venezuela.
  Currently, the United States is working with regional partners to 
foster an end to a disastrous dictatorial regime still claiming power 
in Venezuela.
  I was there last year, and I saw what was heartbreaking, considering 
that this was once a proud Latin American democracy.
  People are literally starving in Venezuela. They faint in the 
workplace from lack of nutrition. Hospitals don't have electric power 
or the most basic medicines. I visited a children's hospital in 
Caracas, and they told me they didn't have any antibiotics or the basic 
cancer drugs necessary for the children who came to their hospital.
  Millions are fleeing Venezuela as refugees into neighboring 
countries. There is brutal political repression. Opposing the dictator, 
Maduro, is a virtual guarantee of house arrest or worse. Staggering 
government corruption and a systematic dismantling of that country's 
democracy are taking place on a regular basis and resulted in election 
results which were incredible and not believed by anyone in the region 
when they were announced a few months back.
  I have been supportive of this administration's efforts to work with 
other nations to support the interim Presidency of Juan Guaido and 
provide assistance to millions of fleeing Venezuelans.
  While I fear this issue has escaped President Trump's attention, one 
simple step he can take is to grant temporary protected status to 
Venezuelans currently in the United States. Some are here as students 
and others are here on work visas, but they are on temporary status. 
What I am asking the President to do is to give them temporary 
protected status so they will not have to return to Venezuela while the 
danger still lurks.
  Despite repeated requests by myself and many of my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle, President Trump has repeatedly refused. He goes to 
audiences in Florida and talks about confronting the Venezuelan 
dictatorship, then he turns around and refuses to give protection to 
the Venezuelans in the United States who need this protection.
  Ironically, while the President's Department of State has issued 
travel warnings advising Americans not to visit Venezuela because of 
the danger, this President still will not protect Venezuelans within 
the United States who are afraid to return.
  I have met many such Venezuelans in my home State of Illinois, and I 
can tell you they are desperately worried about returning to the chaos, 
violence, and hopelessness of the current Venezuela.
  Since the White House refuses to act, the House of Representatives 
passed a bipartisan bill granting temporary protected status to 
Venezuelans this last July by a 272-to-158 margin. Senator Bob Menendez 
of New Jersey, Marco Rubio of Florida, and I have introduced a similar 
Senate bill, but the majority leader, Senator McConnell, refuses to 
bring up any bill that might not meet the approval of President Donald 
Trump, even a bill offered by leaders in his own political party.
  Senator Menendez and I have tried to call up the House bill for 
passage only to face objection repeatedly from Senate Republicans.
  Last week, to deflect blame from President Trump and the Senate 
Republicans who object to our bill, the junior Senator from Florida 
came to the floor with his own approach. He blocked the bipartisan 
House Venezuela TPS bill from passing and offered a dubious amendment, 
undermining TPS for others as the price for helping the Venezuelans. In 
other words, he said: Well, perhaps we can help Venezuelans as long as 
it is at the expense of others who are in similar status from other 
countries.
  His proposal would in fact significantly weaken the entire temporary 
protected status. For example, his proposal would require congressional 
approval of any extension of TPS beyond the original period, and it 
would limit such extension to an arbitrary 18-month period.
  Ultimately, the proposal from the junior Senator from Florida is 
using the plight of Venezuelans to basically gut the existing Temporary 
Protected Status Program.
  We have seen folks on the other side of the aisle resort to this when 
it came to DACA--Republicans in the Senate trying to use a vulnerable 
population, such as the young people who were raised in the United 
States and want a chance to work their way to citizenship, as 
bargaining chips for an anti-immigrant agenda. Once again, these 
Members are simply refusing to stand up to the President when he fails 
on these issues.
  The solution, indeed, is simple. This administration should grant 
temporary protected status on its own to the Venezuelans, but it 
refuses. Senate Republicans could pass the bipartisan House bill to 
grant Venezuelans temporary protected status, but the Senate 
Republicans refuse.
  Let everyone be clear where the real failure to help Venezuelans 
actually rests.


                           Order of Business

  Madam President, at the request of the Republicans on the Senate 
side, later today, I will be making a unanimous consent request 
relative to the healthcare issue, which was raised by Senator McConnell 
earlier. I am told they are not quite ready this morning, so I am going 
to defer that offer until later in the day when they will be ready, and 
we can have a colloquy on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
  I yield the floor.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.


                             Appropriations

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, even as the Senate works through a 
grouping of appropriations bills on the floor this week, the Republican 
leader has been falsely accusing Democrats of delaying the overall 
process. He just seems to be in a box and pulls things out of thin air.
  The crux of the issue, as everybody knows, is that the Republican 
leadership in the Senate and on the Appropriations Committee has 
refused to sit down and negotiate with Democrats on bipartisan 
allocations to the various agencies. This has always been how we have 
done the appropriations bill when we have succeeded--Democrats and 
Republicans sitting down together and negotiating the 302(a)s and (b)s, 
but, here, the Republicans, without consultation of the Democrats, just 
unilaterally proposed taking over $12 billion from critical health 
programs and military families to pay for the President's border wall--
a wall President Trump promised Mexico would pay for.
  Democrats, of course, are not going to proceed to a defense bill that 
steals from our troops to pay for a border wall the American people 
don't want and aren't supposed to pay for, but in this Republican hall 
of mirrors, that means Democrats are ``delaying a pay raise for our 
troops,'' as the leader charged yesterday, even though that is not 
true, and I believe he knows very well that the pay raise is strongly 
bipartisan.
  The truth is simple. As the leader knows, the annual pay raise will 
go into effect regardless of whether we pass Defense appropriations or 
the NDAA.
  In fact, the Department of Defense just confirmed to the Senate 
Democratic appropriators yesterday that the pay raise for our troops 
will take effect on January 1, without requiring any further 
legislation. The troops and their families will see a 3.1-percent pay 
raise in January. I know the President ties the majority leader in a 
box, in a knot, and he sort of flails around and doesn't know how to 
get out of it because he is afraid to tell President Trump what he is 
doing will not pass, but instead he blames Democrats--that

[[Page S6208]]

seems to be his wont these days--but it is just totally false. It is 
not according to just me but according to the Department of Defense.
  He even went a step further. In the Republican hall of mirrors, 
Democrats might even be ``delaying military assistance for Ukraine.'' 
Can you believe the majority leader would say something like this? The 
comments are laughable. It was the Trump administration that delayed 
hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of already appropriated, 
urgently needed military assistance to Ukraine earlier this year--a 
fact now being investigated by the House impeachment inquiry.
  The fact is, the only purported delay in the appropriations process 
is Republicans insisting on taking money from our military to spend on 
a border wall--something Democrats will not countenance. That is it.
  If the Republican appropriators dropped that request and sat down 
with Democrats, the negotiated bipartisan way forward--which is the 
only way appropriations can proceed--I am sure we could line up the 
rest of the bills for the year. So let's cut the nonsense.
  Leader McConnell, have the honor and decency and courage to tell 
President Trump that he is going to bolix up the whole process again, 
just as he did the last time. We can roll up our sleeves and get to 
work if he would do just that.
  We are already working on the noncontroversial bills, and we could do 
it for the rest, if and when our Republican friends decide to meet us 
halfway.


                               Healthcare

  Mr. President, tomorrow, Senate Democrats will use a provision of the 
Congressional Review Act to force a vote on one of the most crucial 
policy questions we have faced all session--the future of healthcare 
protections for Americans with preexisting conditions. The Trump 
administration has tried several different ways to undermine these 
protections and sabotage our healthcare system.
  One of the most damaging efforts is this rule that gives the States 
the green light to use taxpayer dollars to push junk health insurance 
plans. These plans are hardly worth the paper they are printed on. Many 
don't cover maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health, or 
preventive services. Many could offer insurance companies a way around 
the requirement to pay for your treatment if you develop a preexisting 
condition.
  Just imagine signing up for one of these plans and then you discover 
that your child's heart condition or cancer or lifesaving prescriptions 
drugs were not covered when you need it most? That shouldn't be allowed 
to happen. Republicans and this administration are trying to allow it 
to happen.
  As you can imagine, many insurance companies love the idea. Data from 
the National Association of Insurance Commissioners shows that the top 
three companies that issue these junk plans spend barely 40 percent of 
premiums on healthcare--just 40 percent. Just think about that. 
Republicans want to use taxpayer dollars to fund these junk plans. Is 
that money going toward paying for people's healthcare? No. It is going 
to pad insurance company profits.
  Tomorrow, the Senate will face a simple choice on whether or not to 
defend protections for Americans with preexisting conditions. My 
Republican friends can either stand with the Trump administration and 
use taxpayer dollars to pad profits for insurance companies or stand up 
for American families who struggle to afford healthcare.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, finally, on climate, last week, I announced a bold new 
plan to rapidly phase out gas-powered vehicles for clean vehicles. We 
need a plan of this scale and ambition to reduce one of the largest 
drivers of carbon emissions--transportation--while at the same time 
creating tens of thousands of new jobs and reinvigorating American auto 
manufacturing.
  Predictably, the deep-pocketed special interests in Big Oil and Gas 
are already lining up to oppose this plan. Over the years, Big Oil and 
Gas have spent millions of dollars in lobbying to kill climate-friendly 
legislation and protect their bottom lines. A headline ran yesterday 
announcing: ``Big Oil gears up to fight Schumer electric vehicle 
plan.''
  Well, I have three words for Big Oil: Bring it on. Bring it on, 
because this fight is too important. Climate change is happening right 
now, and it is resulting in more severe weather, sea-level rise, and 
drastic changes to our agriculture.
  As we speak, California is suffering from some of the worst wildfires 
it has ever seen. Scientists tell us that if we do not take drastic 
action to alter our current path, we will not be able to avoid the most 
damaging consequences of climate change.
  Bring it on, because this plan is supported not only by the 
environmental community and climate action groups but by labor unions 
like the UAW, the IBEW, the AFL-CIO, and by large automakers like Ford 
and GM. They all know that the future is moving toward clean cars, and 
we ought to get there before China and create tens of thousands of new 
good-paying jobs right here in the United States.
  Bring it on. If the special interests of Big Oil and Gas want to 
oppose thousands of good-paying jobs for American workers, if they want 
to oppose America's leading the world in the industries of the future, 
if they want to oppose protecting our planet for our children and 
grandchildren, then, they are on the wrong side of history, and we will 
fight them every single step of the way.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               H.R. 3055

  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I am delighted that the Senate is 
taking up four very important appropriations bills, one of them I 
discussed at length last week; that is, the Transportation-HUD 
appropriations bill, which I authored along with my ranking member, 
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. In forging that bill, we gathered 
information from 75 of our fellow Senators, who had 950 requests. We 
went through each of the requests very carefully, and we have built a 
bill that is truly bipartisan, that reflects the priorities of this 
body, and that I trust will be approved as part of this package later 
this week.
  I also want to take the opportunity today, as I am managing the four 
bills in the unavoidable absence of the full committee chairman, 
Senator Shelby, to talk about some of the other appropriations bills 
that have been brought before us.
  As the Presiding Officer is well aware, the Appropriations Committee 
is a committee that makes a real effort to work together to put aside 
petty partisanship and, instead, listen to one another and work for the 
common good. We make an extraordinary effort to find common ground. How 
I wish that could be done throughout Washington today. But the 
Appropriations Committee remains a bastion of common sense, of 
collegiality, and of working together to seek common ground. That is 
why we have had such success in reporting so many of the appropriations 
bills, and I am very proud that the T-HUD bill, as we call the 
transportation and housing bill, was one of those that was reported 
unanimously by a vote of 31 to 0.
  For the next few moments, I would like to talk about another bill 
that had unanimous support on the committee, and that is the CJS 
appropriations bill--Commerce, Justice, and Science.
  Let me begin by acknowledging the hard work of the chairman, Senator 
Moran, and the ranking member, Senator Shaheen, for their work in 
balancing the many priorities that are included in this bill. Once 
again, we saw the chairman and the ranking member working together as a 
team in a bipartisan--indeed, a nonpartisan--way in order to find 
common ground.
  I would like to comment on a few of the provisions of the bill that I 
think are particularly important. First, I am encouraged that the bill 
continues to provide strong support for the National Sea Grant College 
Program, despite the administration's desire to eliminate this program. 
The committee actually provided an increase of $7 million over last 
year's funding level. The University of Maine Sea Grant Program is a

[[Page S6209]]

national leader in ocean research and, as you know, is very important 
to the Presiding Officer from Florida as well.
  (Mr. SCOTT of Florida assumed the Chair.)
  Within the sea grant program, there is $2 million for critical 
lobster research, building on the $2 million that was included last 
year. The sea grant program recently announced seven research awards 
supported by this funding, four of which were awarded to Maine entities 
in recognition of their extraordinary expertise and research. These 
investments will help us to better understand how the lobster stock is 
reacting to changing environmental conditions and ensure that this 
iconic industry--indeed, one of the very symbols of the State of 
Maine--continues to thrive.
  The problem is that we are seeing increasing warming of the Gulf of 
Maine. In fact, it is warming the second fastest of any body of water 
in the world. That has brought new kinds of sea life; for example, 
there is an invasive green crab that has never existed in Maine waters. 
So we are watching the impact very carefully, particularly on our 
lobster industry.
  I am also glad that the bill prioritizes the development of 
technologies to better track the right whale population. The number of 
right whales is problematic. While it is not as low as it was a few 
years ago, it is still troublesome that the population continues to be 
under stress.
  NOAA Fisheries has targeted the Maine lobster industry with 
potentially very onerous right whale regulations, despite the 
government's inability to adequately monitor the movement of these 
right whales.
  We must better understand where the right whales are and where they 
are not. This, too, is important in terms of our warming waters. The 
major food supply for the right whales has moved to the north toward 
Canada, and that is why the entanglements we have seen--which we all 
deplore--have involved Canadian gear. I think that is very important to 
recognize.
  There have also been some Canadian ship strikes. Our lobster men and 
women have been such careful stewards of the resource, and that has 
been true for generations. Lobstering is often a family business, 
passed on from generation to generation. The lobster men and women of 
Maine care deeply about our lobster stocks and about ensuring that 
lobsters are there for generations to come. They have been 
extraordinary conservationists. They invented the V-notching of 
lobsters, the sizing to make sure that lobsters that are big and 
breeders are tossed overboard or those that are too small are returned 
to the water. Unfortunately, our Canadian counterparts often do not 
follow those same cooperative conservation measures, and there is an 
area off the coast of Maine that is known as the gray zone, where it is 
in dispute whose waters--whether it is the United States or Canada's--
the gray zone is.
  We will find American and Canadian lobstermen, both in that area or 
close by, with our lobster men and women following strict conservation 
methods, such as throwing back the lobsters that are too small or the 
big breeder lobsters, only to see their Canadian counterparts keep 
those lobsters and, in some cases, they are undoubtedly the very 
lobsters that have been thrown back into the sea by our lobster men and 
women. So those conflicting conservation measures between American and 
Canadian fisheries have caused Mainers to grow increasingly concerned 
that their Canadian counterparts are threatening the sustainability of 
critical fishing stocks, as well as that fragile right whale 
population.
  The bill that has been reported by the Appropriations Committee 
encourages NOAA to work cooperatively with State, national, and 
Canadian fishery officials on these important issues.
  I also want to express my thanks to the subcommittee for rejecting 
the President's proposed elimination of the Economic Development 
Administration, known as the EDA, and instead providing a reasonable 
increase. The investments made through the EDA provide vital financial 
support for rural Mainers to boost economic growth and create more 
jobs. It has been an essential partner with States, with local 
governments, and with the private sector in boosting areas of Maine's 
economy.
  The bill also focuses attention on an issue that I know the Presiding 
Officer is very aware of because of his membership on the Aging 
Committee, which I am privileged to chair, and that is the serious 
problem of financial fraud directed at our seniors. The GAO, a few 
years ago, estimated that our seniors lose nearly $3 billion a year to 
financial fraud. I think that is just the tip of the iceberg because 
many seniors are too embarrassed to report the fraud they have 
suffered. It is important. It is vital that the Justice Department 
continue to fight financial fraud.
  I am delighted that the former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, 
implemented my recommendation that every U.S. attorney's office should 
have designated a financial fraud attorney who can bring cases and help 
to protect our seniors. We need to aggressively prosecute illegal 
robocallers and increase efforts to collect unpaid fines and penalties 
imposed on them by Federal agencies. It is only our national efforts 
that can go after a call center that is located in India, for example, 
as some of them have been. While to the Justice Department, the 
individual amounts may seem small, they are devastating to a senior who 
has worked hard to save money for their retirement years. In addition, 
when you aggregate all those losses, they result in literally billions 
of dollars.
  The bill also provides increased investments to law enforcement at 
all levels--partnerships that are especially critical to preventing the 
heroin and opioid epidemic that plagues my State of Maine and many 
others. Naming just a few, the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program and 
the Drug and Veterans Treatment Courts are essential to the 
multifaceted approach it will take to stem this epidemic.
  I appreciate that the subcommittee has once again rejected cuts to 
the COPS Anti-Heroin Task Force, a program that has helped Maine's Drug 
Enforcement Agency target illegal opioid sales.
  I want to finally highlight the increased funding for the Byrne-JAG 
and COPS hiring programs, and for the Regional Information Sharing 
Systems known as RISS. Many of Maine sheriffs have come and talked to 
me about the importance of the RISS Program. It supports a cooperative 
effort of information sharing to fight crimes at all levels and has 
been particularly useful to Maine's rural counties. There are also 
important investments supporting the FIRST STEP Act, which we passed 
late last year. It will help implement the goals of the new law, 
particularly with respect to rehabilitative programs at the Bureau of 
Prisons. We need to make sure those who are being released from our 
jails and prisons have the skills and tools they need to pursue a 
lawful life and not resort to their previous habits that landed them in 
jail. That is why the educational and job training programs we have in 
Maine and elsewhere are so important and will be expanded by this bill.
  Those are just a few of the terrific provisions that are in the CJS 
appropriations bill. Again, I commend the chairman, the ranking member, 
and the entire Appropriations Committee for their hard work.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I recognize the majority whip.


                         Remembering Kay Hagan

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, before I begin, I want to say I was sad to 
hear of the death of former Senator Kay Hagan yesterday. Kay 
represented the State of North Carolina in the Senate.
  She was a very dedicated public servant. I think she was someone whom 
all of us who were here at the time enjoyed working with and always was 
a very bright presence. As I said, she was tremendously dedicated to 
the people she represented and the issues she cared so deeply about. 
Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family today. I ask all 
Members to continue to lift her family up.


                               H.R. 3055

  Mr. President, I also congratulate the Senator from Maine on the work 
she is doing on the appropriations process as it is moving forward. She 
chairs a very important subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee 
and also is involved in so many other issues.
  One thing she was speaking about that I certainly wanted to mention 
was the work she does to protect seniors across this country. It is a 
very vulnerable population--vulnerable to the

[[Page S6210]]

fraud attempts made by bad actors out there. She mentioned robocalls. 
She has been a leader on the legislation to try and ban the types of 
robocalls that prey on our senior citizens and lead to all that fraud 
that happens--the billions of dollars she referenced every single year. 
It is important because there are so many perpetrators of schemes out 
there that are designed to prey on and take advantage of those 
populations in our country, particularly our elderly who are 
susceptible to that. I thank her for her leadership on that, as well as 
many other issues that are involved in the appropriations bill she 
mentioned earlier.


                         Health Insurance Plans

  Mr. President, later this week, we are going to vote on a Democratic 
resolution to repeal guidance the President issued to give States more 
flexibility to design insurance plans that meet the needs of their 
residents. Democrats have tried to portray this resolution as a move to 
protect people with preexisting conditions. That is just a smokescreen. 
Democrats know very well that Republicans are committed to protecting 
those with preexisting conditions.
  In reality, this is just another political messaging bill. It is also 
another attempt by Democrats to maximize Washington control of 
American's healthcare. In keeping with their push toward socialism, 
Democrats want to make very sure the States don't have the chance to 
escape from any of ObamaCare's bureaucracy.
  Let me back up a minute and talk about the waiver and guidance from 
the President the Democrats are attacking. Section 1332 of the 
Affordable Care Act--the law the Democrats enacted on a completely 
partisan basis--allows States to apply for waivers from certain 
ObamaCare requirements. The requirements that can and cannot be waived 
are the same today as they were the day ObamaCare passed. Let me repeat 
that. The ObamaCare requirements that can or cannot be waived are the 
same today as they were the day ObamaCare passed.
  The 2018 guidance from the White House did not change anything about 
what requirements can and cannot be waived under section 1332. Let me 
be very clear, 1332 waivers do not allow States to waive ObamaCare's 
preexisting condition protections; they do not allow health plans to 
utilize preexisting condition coverage exclusions; they do not allow 
health plans to refuse coverage for people with preexisting conditions; 
and they do not allow plans to charge individuals more based on a 
preexisting health condition.
  So what do 1332 waivers do? The waivers give States the opportunity 
to take action to stabilize insurance markets and try out new ways of 
providing coverage to individuals who might not otherwise be able to 
afford insurance. My colleagues across the aisle would have the 
American public believe these waivers will ``allow States to greenlight 
substandard, junk insurance plans.'' Well, let me remind my colleagues 
that these plans that they deride as ``junk plans'' are the very same 
short-term, limited-duration plans that were permitted in 7 out of the 
8 years of the Obama administration.
  Another refrain that we will hear from my Democratic colleagues is 
that the administration's guidance will permit States to waive certain 
health benefits, or what we call EHBs. I remind them that the 
Affordable Care Act itself permits the waiving of EHBs by States. The 
Trump administration guidance does not change this. Again, while the 
Democrats would have people believe the Republicans are destroying 
essential health benefits, States can already choose to waive them but, 
to date, have not.
  Most of the States that have applied for waivers have wanted to use 
them for reinsurance programs in order to drive down premiums. Again, 
waivers give States some relief from ObamaCare's one-size-fits-all 
requirements, which allows them to try out new ways to drive down 
prices and help individuals afford care. It is about choice. It is 
about empowering Americans to decide what type of coverage meets their 
needs.
  We might not be having this conversation today if ObamaCare had lived 
up to the rosy promises that were made when it was passed. Yet I don't 
have to tell anyone that it didn't come anywhere close to living up to 
those promises. ObamaCare was supposed to give Americans without health 
insurance access to affordable care while it preserved the health 
insurance of the millions of Americans who were satisfied with the 
plans they already had. As everyone knows, what actually happened was 
quite different.
  Millions of Americans lost their plans. Health insurance premiums 
went up, not down. Also, premiums and out-of-pocket costs on the 
exchanges were unaffordable for many people from the very first day. 
The average monthly premium for a family plan on the exchanges has 
increased by $742 over the past 4 years. That is close to the average 
mortgage payment in my home State of South Dakota. So it is not 
surprising that States would be looking for ways to help families 
afford care through these 1332 waivers.
  Waivers are, in fact, helping to lower premiums. Seven States that 
received waivers saw the average premiums for a benchmark silver plan 
drop by 7\1/2\ percent from 2018 to 2019. States are using these 1332 
waivers to make healthcare more affordable and ObamaCare premiums less 
burdensome. They are not using the waivers to do anything to undermine 
protections for people with preexisting conditions, which is something, 
as I said earlier, they cannot legally do anyway.
  It is worth noting that more than one State with a Democratic 
Governor--not a Republican Governor but a Democratic Governor--has 
applied for a 1332 waiver this year. So are Democratic Senators here 
suggesting that these Governors want to undermine the protections for 
people with preexisting conditions? I don't think so.
  Numerous Americans are struggling to afford their ObamaCare premiums, 
and many others have been priced out of the ObamaCare market 
altogether. It only makes sense to give States as much flexibility as 
possible to address ObamaCare's problems and expand insurance access 
for their residents. Yet the Democrats are so set on maximizing 
Washington's control of American's healthcare that they are determined 
to oppose any ObamaCare flexibility even if that flexibility results in 
there being lower premiums for the American people.
  Today's resolution is just another example of the Democrats' 
prioritizing their political ideology over the welfare of the American 
people, and I hope it will be defeated.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from South 
Dakota's talking about this issue before us this week, which is these 
1332 waivers, and he is absolutely right. Millions of Americans are 
getting less expensive healthcare. Isn't that the whole idea here, that 
healthcare needs to be affordable and that we need to have good, 
quality healthcare?
  There is nothing in these waivers--by the way, many of which are 
going to States that have Democratic Governors--that prohibits people 
from getting coverage for preexisting conditions. In fact, that is the 
law of the land, so that these 1332 waivers cannot take away people's 
rights to healthcare should they have preexisting conditions.
  I think this is the sort of thing we ought to be supporting in this 
Chamber, there being more affordable healthcare and healthcare for 
people who otherwise couldn't afford it.


                             Appropriations

  Mr. President, my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins, is on the 
floor. We discussed earlier that we are actually legislating today. I 
think that it is great because we are passing spending bills. The 
Senate will pass four different spending bills, and she will manage all 
four of them. These are bipartisan bills that will end up getting 
passed here in this Chamber this week that will then go over to the 
House where they will be conferenced with the five bills they have 
passed. The bills aren't that far apart in terms of the total amount of 
money each bill has in the so-called 302(b) category, but there are 
some differences. We will work those out, and we will, hopefully, get 
those to the President for his signature. That is how this place should 
operate.


                               H.R. 3055

  Mr. President, Senator Collins' bill is the transportation bill. This 
one is

[[Page S6211]]

particularly important to my State of Ohio and to other States around 
the country that are desperate for some more funding for 
infrastructure.
  Specifically, in her transportation bill, she deals with these 
bridges that need to be replaced that are obsolete, and many are 
dangerous. We have one in Ohio, called the Brent Spence Bridge, which 
is not only obsolete but has no shoulder anymore because it keeps 
having to be widened to accommodate the traffic. So it makes it very 
dangerous. We have been trying for years to get the funding for that. 
This bill has some funding that will help with regard to these kinds of 
bridges that have heavy traffic but are unsafe.
  This is what we ought to be doing around here. Let's get this done. 
It is infrastructure. It is something we should be able to agree on as 
Republicans and Democrats because it is good for the people we 
represent. So I thank the Senator from Maine for her work on that.


                         Workforce Development

  Mr. President, I am here to talk about the historic workforce needs 
we have in this country and, if we do the right things to respond to 
it, the historic opportunity we have to bring people out of the shadows 
and into work by providing them with the skills they need to be able to 
access the jobs that are out there.
  Pro-growth Federal policies, including the tax reform we passed here, 
the tax cuts, the regulatory relief, and some of the things we have 
done with regard to opening up more energy resources, are helping to 
boost job creation, increase wages, and grow our economy. As an 
example, the most recent data from the Commerce Department shows that 
the economy grew by a healthy 2.6 percent in the first half of this 
year and that official unemployment is now down to 3.5 percent. That is 
the lowest it has been in 50 years. So the economy is moving.
  To me, what is most exciting is that we are seeing solid wage growth 
for the first time in years. In just over the past couple of years, 
nonsupervisory employees, including blue-collar workers, have seen 
about a 6-percent increase in their wages. That is about $1.30 per 
hour. Think about that. After a decade--really, a decade and a half--in 
my home State of flat wages, which are wages that haven't keep up with 
inflation, we now see real wage growth. Now, over 2 years, 6 percent at 
$1.30 an hour means something to the people I represent, but it will 
also be compounded year after year if we continue this.
  This is all great news for the people I represent. They have been 
frustrated. They work hard, play by the rules, do the right thing, and 
then they can't get ahead. Now they are starting to get ahead, and that 
is good. I hear from small business owners in Ohio who have been able 
to do a lot with the tax cuts and tax reform by creating new jobs and 
making new investments. Everyone has. I have literally met with dozens 
of small businesses around our State and have had roundtable 
discussions.
  I have asked them specifically: What happened with regard to the tax 
relief? Where is it going? It is going toward better equipment and 
better technology. Therefore, there is better productivity from 
workers. It is going to higher wages, and it is going to better 
benefits for workers.
  For the past 18 months, we have seen more job openings in America 
than there have been people who have been looking for work. Think about 
that. Consistently, every month for the past 18 months, we have had 
more job openings out there than there have been people who have been 
looking for work. At no time in this century has that happened. This is 
precedent-setting, and it is a good thing. It is all good news, but it 
is not the whole story.
  Part of the story is that we are still seeing a lot of individuals 
who are missing the benefits of this economic expansion. Why? In part, 
they don't have the skills that are needed to take advantage of this 
economic growth. You have more jobs out there than you have people who 
are looking. Yet you have this skills gap that keeps us from being able 
to have the right people in the right place for the right jobs.
  I hear from a lot of employers who say they cannot continue to grow 
if they cannot find these workers. Some companies even say they are 
going to have to leave Ohio or leave the United States if they don't 
have the workforces because a workforce, like other inputs, is very 
important to our having a competitive economy. So we have to solve this 
problem.
  In Ohio and elsewhere, there are now thousands of job openings for 
positions for welders and machinists in factories, for medical 
technicians in hospitals, and for computer programmers and coders in 
almost every sector of our economy. This morning, if you go to 
ohiomeansjobs.com, you will see some of these jobs advertised. There 
are about 150,000 jobs out there. These jobs that you will see are what 
economists call middle-skills jobs. They don't require one to have a 
college degree, but they do require one to have some training and 
expertise after high school.
  What we have to do is to close that skills gap by providing more of 
this training and education for these workers. The supply of skilled 
workers in this category--students who pursue post-high school 
certificates--falls way short of the demand that is out there, and it 
is holding back our economy from fulfilling its potential.
  In the most recent skills gap study from 2018, Deloitte and the 
Manufacturing Institute highlighted this widening problem. As of 
August, there were roughly 484,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs across 
America. Yet the study found that the skills gap may leave an estimated 
2.4 million manufacturing jobs unfilled between 2018 and 10 years from 
now, 2028, with there being a potential negative impact of $2.5 
trillion.
  So the skills gap is already there, but, unfortunately, it is 
widening. If we don't do something about it, we are going to have a lot 
more unfilled manufacturing jobs--good jobs with good pay.
  The best known early training for these kinds of jobs is called 
career and technical education, or CTE. Some of you might remember it 
as being called vocational education. I will say that today's 
vocational education is not yesterday's. It is high technology. It is 
great equipment. It is providing the level of skills that young people 
actually need to understand what is out there in the real world and to 
get a job. This is a very important part of what we are doing as a 
country, and I see it all over Ohio.
  Recently, I toured the Vantage Career Center in Van Wert, OH, where 
juniors and seniors in high school from more than a dozen school 
districts study things like carpentry, like automotive technology, like 
welding, like criminal justice.
  A few weeks ago, I was able to speak to over 1,000 impressive CTE 
students here in Washington, DC, who were advocating for their program. 
In fact, they talked to a lot of the Representatives here in the 
Senate. The group is called SkillsUSA, and their rally every year is 
really inspiring.
  These young people are eager to get this training. They want to get 
the training in order to get the jobs that are out there. We need to 
get more young people engaged in that, more parents signing off on 
that, and more high school counselors signing off on that.
  I cofounded and cochair what is called the CTE Caucus here in the 
Congress. It is focused on holding up and lifting career and technical 
education. We have gone from two Senators to now 29 Senators in our CTE 
Caucus. Our goal is to increase the awareness of CTE programs generally 
and make sure people know this is a good education option for them, to 
get more students interested in career training, and to provide the 
resources and the opportunities to connect these young people with 
skilled jobs that offer good pay and benefits. We have passed some good 
legislation to do that.
  Last year, the President signed into law my Educating Tomorrow's 
Workforce Act. That bill and the Perkins grants in the States that are 
currently providing $1.3 billion in funding every year for ambitious, 
federally funded high schools help to encourage high quality. They make 
sure that the CTE programs are high-performing. Yet career and 
technical education goes well beyond these great high school programs.
  Certificate-granting, workforce-training programs post-high school 
are another key way to close that skills

[[Page S6212]]

gap. In fact, it is probably the most important way because you can get 
an industry-recognized certificate that can lead directly to a job. 
Think of the many workforce training programs that are being offered at 
your local community college or at your local technical or trade 
school.
  For these post-high school training opportunities, we have a problem, 
and we have a solution. The problem is that they are expensive, and a 
lot of young people can't afford them. The opportunity is to allow Pell 
grants to be used for these kinds of training programs. Currently, we 
use the Pell grants to help expand access to college-level education 
here in America. For low-income families, their kids can go to college 
on Pell grants. Unfortunately, they can't use the Pell grants to take 
this short-term, 15-week training program and see the light at the end 
of the tunnel in order to get the good-paying jobs at the end of it and 
have no debt.
  The bipartisan JOBS Act, which I have cosponsored with Senator Tim 
Kaine, of Virginia, will allow us to do just that. It will allow us to 
do the same thing we do with college with these shorter term training 
programs that will give you a high-quality, industry-recognized 
credential. Under current law, low-income students are eligible for 
Federal Pell grants if they attend college for an associate's degree or 
a bachelor's degree but not if they choose to enroll in an accredited 
skills training program for under 15 weeks. In this economy and in this 
day and age, that doesn't make sense at all.
  I am supportive of Pell grants for college. You should know that more 
than half the young people who take out Pell grants for college don't 
end up getting the college degrees or the certificates or anything that 
helps them to get those jobs. Whereas, in these short-term training 
programs, it is highly likely, based on the experience we have looked 
at, that they will get those certificates, and they will get those 
jobs.
  The JOBS Act is needed right now to meet the needs out there. These 
kinds of workforce training programs provide students with the academic 
and technical skills, knowledge, and training necessary to succeed in 
their future careers. They encompass the kinds of high-quality, 
rigorous job training programs that are easily transferable to those 
jobs that are in demand right now, whether it is learning how to 
conduct HVAC installation, how to operate a factory machine--which 
includes, by the way, being able to program a computer that helps run 
that machine--or how to program computers generally, how to be a coder, 
how to ensure you have the skills to be in one of our great healthcare 
tech jobs that are open right now.
  These programs teach students the practical, transferable skills that 
keep our economy moving. I hear about this every time I am home in 
Ohio. During the recent work period that just wrapped up, I held two 
separate roundtables--one at Brainerd Industries in Dayton, OH, and one 
at Talon Products in Cleveland, OH--talking about this issue with 
business owners, with administrators from our community colleges, with 
students themselves, with workers who are on the job. Guess what. All 
of these groups agree that the JOBS Act is a great idea whose time has 
come. They all agree that the skills training programs create a path to 
good-paying jobs, and they want the help.
  What is more, we know that a lot of business owners will help these 
employees, once they get that job, to be able to go back to school if 
they want to, maybe to get a 2-year or a 4-year degree, maybe even to 
get a master's degree, say, in engineering, to take their education to 
the next level.
  The fact that you do a short-term training program to get a job 
doesn't mean you are not going to go back to college, and that might be 
appropriate, in some companies, for many individuals. In fact, a 
representative from Clark State Community College, Crystal Jones, who 
was in attendance in Dayton, OH, said that she specifically believes a 
lack of Pell grant assistance for young people looking to get training 
certificates is a significant barrier. She said it makes it more 
difficult in their efforts to ensure that employers get the skilled 
workers they need. She said the JOBS Act will help.
  Crystal is right. The JOBS Act has been endorsed by the National 
Skills Coalition, the Association for Career and Technical Education, 
the Business Roundtable, and so many other groups. We are told that it 
is the No. 1 priority of the Association of Community College Trustees 
and of the American Association of Community Colleges.
  A lot of us here in this Chamber support our community colleges. They 
do an awesome job. Well, this is their top priority, so we should 
listen to them.
  I am also pleased that the JOBS Act was included in President Trump's 
fiscal year 2020 budget proposal. I thank the President for that, and I 
thank the administration for supporting it, as I thank so many other 
outside stakeholders who are promoting this idea. Let's allow Pell to 
be used for short-term training programs that we need.
  The reason this JOBS Act has such strong support is that it is the 
best proposal out there right now to help fill this skills gap that we 
have. It will cover programs that, at a minimum, require 150 hours and 
8 weeks to complete. Alternative proposals are out there, but they 
severely limit the programs by requiring many more hours--320 hours, as 
an example, in one program.
  Our community colleges in Ohio tell me that none of their short-term 
training programs--none of them--would qualify for that number of 
hours--programs like welding, precision machining, CDL programs for 
truck drivers, electrical trades. They all need the JOBS Act, and they 
need it now.
  As we work to reauthorize the Higher Education Act this year, passing 
the JOBS Act is the top priority for Senator Kaine and me. It is also 
supported by Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray of the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and we strongly 
appreciate their support.
  I hope colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us to get this 
legislation enacted. It just makes too much sense not to do it.
  If we make career and technical education a priority and if we enact 
the JOBS Act, as I have discussed today, we are going to address the 
No. 1 issue we are now hearing from employers all around the country, 
and we are going to help so many thousands of Americans have a better 
opportunity going forward.
  We are going to help our economy at a time when we need to have this 
workforce there in order to have the economy continue to grow.
  There is momentum in Ohio today, with businesses expanding and 
seeking skilled workers, but the skills gap is an impediment. We need 
to seize this opportunity, keep our economy moving in the right 
direction, and help Ohioans develop the skills to grow in the career of 
their choice and to fulfill their potential in life.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.


                           Amendment No. 1044

  Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio for raising 
these issues about the skills gap. This is something that is very 
important in Minnesota, as well, and I agree with him. I think this 
should be a place where we could find some bipartisan agreement. So I 
thank him for his words today.
  Mr. President, today I rise to talk about another gap that I would 
like to ask my colleagues for help in filling.
  For many Americans, the 35-day government shutdown during the last 
holiday season is a distant memory. The national parks have reopened 
with their usual programming; airports are running normally; and 
Federal employees are back on the job with the backpay they had lost 
through no fault of their own because of the Federal Government 
shutdown.
  But for one group of workers, things are not back to normal. These 
are the low-wage workers employed by Federal contractors serving in 
cafeterias, providing building security, and keeping Federal buildings 
clean. These Federal contractors work shoulder to shoulder with Federal 
employees, and though they are often invisible, they play a crucial 
role in keeping the Federal Government working for Americans.
  Thousands--potentially hundreds of thousands--of these workers at 
Federal facilities all across the country were not allowed to work 
during the Federal Government shutdown. They went without paychecks 
during the height of

[[Page S6213]]

the holiday season. They skipped Christmas gifts. They missed tuition 
payments. And they even, in some cases, were unable to afford the 
insulin they need to stay alive if they live with diabetes.

  Unlike Federal employees, these employees of Federal contractors 
didn't get backpay when the government reopened. They were ready and 
willing to work every single day of those 35 days of the shutdown, but 
they couldn't, through no fault of their own, and they paid the price. 
That is just not right.
  Making ends meet in a low-wage job is hard enough, and making ends 
meet when you miss two paychecks--when those paychecks are taken away 
from you--is nearly impossible. Families who didn't get the income they 
were expecting were forced to borrow from friends. They were forced to 
rely on the help of others. They had to make difficult choices, and 
many of them are still in a financial hole that was not created by them 
and that they can't dig themselves out of.
  So, colleagues, I rise today to ask you to help me in righting this 
injustice, and I am glad to be joined on the Senate floor by several of 
my colleagues who also have been strong advocates for these workers. 
Senator Brown from Ohio, Senator Van Hollen from Maryland, Senator 
Kaine from Virginia, along with many of my colleagues, have helped to 
try to right this wrong. In this way, we have introduced bipartisan 
legislation to provide modest backpay to these workers.
  The House included our backpay language in the appropriations package 
that is on the Senate floor today. It is in the bill that the House 
passed. Unfortunately, Senator McConnell's substitute amendment strips 
out this critical provision that would provide backpay to these Federal 
contract workers.
  Today, what I am proposing is that we come together in a bipartisan 
way and that we add back the backpay language--put it back in the 
legislation--and I have filed an amendment that would accomplish this.
  I have talked with many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 
here in the Senate Chamber, and I have to tell you, I have not found a 
single person who was willing to say--who even wants to say--that these 
Federal contractors don't deserve backpay. In fact, more often than 
not, when I talk to my colleagues, they will say: Didn't we take care 
of that?
  Well, colleagues, we didn't take care of that, and now we have an 
opportunity to fix this gap. We have an opportunity to do something for 
these Federal contract workers who are proud Federal Government 
employees in almost every sense of the word.
  Our proposal would allow contractors to fund backpay for their 
employees through a well-known and often-used contracting process known 
as equitable adjustment.
  Often people will say: Oh, Tina, this is a good idea, but it would be 
so difficult to accomplish this.
  Well, actually, there is an existing mechanism for accomplishing 
exactly what we need to do here, and it is called equitable adjustment.
  I have also made clear to my colleagues who have asked questions 
about this that I am happy to work with anyone who has suggestions for 
what we can do to further improve this proposal. But we have been told 
across the board that this is a good way of accomplishing this--an 
equitable way, a way that would have good accountability--and that it 
would work.
  Over the last 10 months, I have been proud to stand with Federal 
contract employees who have been fighting for this amendment and to 
stand with so many others around the country.
  Tragically, in July, one of our strongest voices for these workers, 
SEIU 32BJ President Hector Figueroa, passed away unexpectedly at age 
57. Hector was an amazing advocate for workers all over this country. 
He knew how important it is to solve this Federal contractor backpay 
problem, and he understood viscerally exactly what difference it would 
make in the lives of people who lost that income. It should not be lost 
forever.
  Hector led 170,000 janitors, food service workers, and others in 
their efforts to secure decent wages and better working conditions, and 
he played a crucial role in making sure that these workers' voices were 
heard on Capitol Hill and in State legislatures. Hector was a source of 
inspiration for both workers and public officials, and I miss him as a 
partner in this effort.
  Colleagues, recently we also lost another partner in this fight. 
Chairman Elijah Cummings from Maryland was a longtime champion for 
Baltimore workers, and he was the leader of the primary House committee 
on Federal workplace issues.
  In March, Chair Cummings led a letter with 48 House Members saying 
that ``we must act to ensure . . . federal contractor employees are 
made whole.'' So I rise today to urge my colleagues that Federal 
contract workers should be made whole, as Chair Cummings worked so hard 
to accomplish.
  Let's not forget Chair Cummings' message. Let's not forget the 
passion and the work of Hector Figueroa. Let's not forget about these 
workers. Let's follow on the advocacy of these people and so many 
others to pass backpay for Federal contract workers and make sure that 
these hard-working Americans get the backpay they deserve.
  I am so grateful to be joined on the floor today by several of my 
colleagues, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, who has been such a 
strong advocate for Federal Government contract workers in making sure 
that they do not have to pay the price for this shutdown, which 
happened through no fault of their own. I am very glad to be here with 
Senator Van Hollen today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.


                          Trump Administration

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking our 
colleague, the Senator from Minnesota, Ms. Smith, for her steadfast 
support for this group of Federal contract employees who were left 
behind, and I plan to address my remarks to that subject in one moment.
  Before I do that, I just want to call on every Senator to stand up 
against the vicious character assassination that is taking place 
against patriotic Americans testifying under oath in the House.
  Today we are hearing, in the House, the testimony of Lieutenant 
Colonel Vindman. Here is an individual who served as an officer in the 
U.S. Army, an infantry officer overseas, including in South Korea and 
Germany and a deployment to Iraq for combat operations, where he was 
wounded in an IED attack and awarded a Purple Heart.
  Just a little while ago, the House heard sworn testimony from 
Ambassador William Taylor, who is currently our Acting Ambassador to 
Ukraine. He also served in the U.S. Army. He served in Vietnam; he 
served in Germany. Later, in a different capacity, he served in Baghdad 
as the director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. He served 
in Kabul, Afghanistan, coordinating international assistance. He was 
selected by Secretary Pompeo to be our Acting Ambassador in Ukraine.
  So we can disagree on a whole lot of things. We can also reach 
different conclusions based on the facts. But I hope every Member, 
including, importantly, our Republican Senate colleagues, will stand up 
against the character assassination being launched at these witnesses 
who are giving testimony under oath and under penalty of perjury.
  It is absolutely disgraceful--this kind of character assassination, 
impugning people's motives. These are patriotic Americans.
  At the very least, we should agree on that.


                           Amendment No. 1044

  Mr. President, I also believe we should agree on this important 
initiative that has been brought before this body by Senator Smith to 
do justice and be fair to contract workers who perform a lot of 
thankless and often unnoticed tasks for the Federal Government but who 
are essential to its workings. These are cafeteria workers. These are 
janitors. These are folks who work in Federal offices not just in 
Washington, DC, but all over the country.
  When we had that unnecessary and shameful 35-day government shutdown, 
we not only locked out a lot of Federal workers from doing their jobs, 
not only did the Small Business Administration freeze approvals of 
small business loans, which were important to many businesses around 
the country, not only did the Department of Agriculture shutter the 
farm service centers in rural communities, not only did thousands of 
homeowners face long delays

[[Page S6214]]

in loan processing approvals from the FHA, but these Federal contract 
workers who, in many cases, are living paycheck to paycheck, went 
without pay for 35 days, and they never recouped that pay.
  We did the right thing in this body for Federal Government employees. 
We recognized that the government was shut down through no fault of 
their own. There was nothing Federal workers did to cause the 
government shutdown. They wanted to be at work doing their jobs for the 
American people, and we recognized that. We recognized that they should 
not be penalized for something they had nothing to do with. We should 
do the same thing now for Federal contract workers. That is exactly 
what this measure will do.
  These contract workers typically make between $450 to $650 a week. 
These are not people living high on the hog. These are people getting 
by day to day.
  One of them is Ms. Lila Johnson. She is from Hagerstown, MD. She 
worked as a cleaning services contractor for the Department of 
Agriculture for over 20 years. She is the primary breadwinner for her 
family and is helping raise two grandchildren. During the shutdown, she 
struggled with her rent, her car payments, and her life insurance 
payments on top of keeping food on the table. She lost $1,600. That may 
not sound like a lot to some Senators, but I can tell you it is a lot 
of money for someone living paycheck to paycheck, trying to meet the 
bills, and who is the family's primary breadwinner.
  What this bill is about is making sure Lila Johnson, and others like 
her, are not penalized for something they had nothing to do with, 
harmed by something that was totally beyond their control.
  I thank Senator Smith. I thank our colleague Senator Brown and my 
colleague from Maryland Senator Cardin.
  I also want to remember, as my colleague from Minnesota did, Elijah 
Cummings, who passed away recently--a great Marylander. I knew Elijah 
for over 20 years. He committed himself to many causes important to 
social justice, both for Marylanders and for every American, and this 
was one of them. This is one of the things that he just recognized was 
fundamentally unfair--people who were scraping to get by paycheck to 
paycheck being punished for something they had nothing to do with--
wanting to show up for work, wanting to show up for work every day but 
being shut out and then denied their paycheck. Let's remedy this wrong, 
and let's make sure we adopt this measure.
  Thank you.
  I thank the Senator from Minnesota.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I recognize the Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for their eloquent 
words on behalf of the Federal contractors.
  If you are a Virginia Senator, and if you are a Maryland Senator, you 
meet Federal contractors on any occasion all around the State. We often 
think of the Federal contractors as significantly located in the DC-
Metro area or in Hampton Roads, but some of the smallest counties in 
Virginia have significant Federal contractors. So I am very happy to 
join my colleagues and applaud Senator Smith's efforts in this regard.
  All Americans were affected by the unnecessary shutdown at the end of 
last year--people trying to go to parks to enjoy time with their 
families or visiting other Federal installations that were down. We saw 
the lines of Federal employees waiting outside of Jose Andres's DC 
Central Kitchen in cold January weather. Federal employees, many in 
uniform, were trying to get free meals.
  Some of the most affected, as my colleagues have explained, were 
workers who were suddenly without paychecks through no fault of their 
own. These workers--800,000 of them--worked directly for the Federal 
Government. We were able to secure backpay for those workers and in a 
very positive way. This is something that the body did together, which 
I think is important. We not only got a backpay bill for Federal 
workers for those affected by the last shutdown, but we put in a 
guarantee that in any future shutdown they would get their pay. Once 
you have done that as a guarantee, why have a shutdown? If you have 
guaranteed that people will be paid, why would you lock them out of 
their office and deprive them of the ability to serve their fellow 
Americans?
  Hundreds of thousands of contract workers were not included in that 
backpay bill, and thus they have been left behind. Many of these 
Americans are paid on an hourly basis. They are not annual salary 
employees, and they do live paycheck to paycheck. When the shutdown 
hit, they went home without pay for weeks--5 weeks--and no word on when 
or whether their job would start back up again.
  The people I meet who are in this category are very hard-working. 
They are security guards; they are cafeteria workers; they are cleaning 
staff; they are IT workers--people whose diligent functioning in their 
jobs sort of keep the lights on and the enterprise going.
  Missing a whole month's pay is not a trivial thing for most American 
families, and many of the families had to borrow, rely on friends and 
families to get by, and used the services of soup kitchens or clothes 
closets. Many likely are still carrying debt incurred because of the 
shutdown. Some had to make withdrawals from their Federal Thrift 
Savings Plans, with penalty and interest because of that.
  The individuals were affected, but it is also, bluntly, their 
families, and even the communities and local businesses in and around 
where there are these contracting employees.
  During the shutdown, I asked Virginians to share stories with me, and 
many did. These are Federal employees who were affected by the 
shutdown, but it was not just the employees who shared it, it was also 
these contractors.
  Of course, I did hear a number of stories of Virginians coming 
together. I had a chance to go work as a volunteer at the DC Central 
Kitchen, and what struck me is how many of the volunteers were people 
who had been furloughed. They weren't being paid, and they wanted to 
serve their fellow Americans, but because they were being locked out of 
their office, they decided to go to the Central Kitchen and work 
serving meals to their Federal colleagues.
  Alongside some of the stories that were coming together, I did hear 
tough stories about people who ended up forgoing necessary expenses. I 
will just read a couple to you. These are all from Virginians who are 
Federal contractors.
  Michael, from Herndon said:

       Like many of your constituents, I work as a government 
     contractor for a small business. My entire household income 
     depends on serving government clients, which I am unable to 
     do in light of the government shutdown. My company is losing 
     revenue every day and has arrived at the point where we must 
     force employees to use vacation, take leave without pay, or 
     be furloughed. Unlike federal employees who will almost 
     certainly receive back pay once the shutdown is resolved, my 
     employees and I have no such recourse. I've lived in the 
     Washington DC area for almost 25 years and worked exclusively 
     in serving the government industry, and this is the first 
     time I've been compelled to contact my elected officials.
       Bottom line: I'm struggling. My employees are struggling. 
     Our families are struggling. Small business[es] are the 
     engine of economic growth and stability in our region and the 
     shutdown is destroying us. Please work with all parties to 
     reopen the government as soon as possible.

  Sukumar, from Great Falls said:

       I am the CEO of a small business in Virginia which is 100% 
     focused on federal contracts. After two weeks of shutdown and 
     no end in sight, we are nearing a point where were are losing 
     revenue (because our people can't work), invoices are not 
     getting paid by the Government and we are facing a dire cash 
     flow situation. This will affect our ability to make payroll 
     needing to borrow monies at higher interest rates and 
     increase the perils of shutting down our business. Many of 
     our furloughed employees are having a tough time paying bills 
     and making ends meet. Some of them are contemplating a 
     private sector career, leading to the loss of valuable talent 
     to serve the government.

  Virginia, from McLean said:

       I am a federal contractor working in Washington D.C. and a 
     lifelong Virginia resident. I have been furloughed due to the 
     government shutdown, and because of my status as a contractor 
     will not be receiving compensation after this is over. . . . 
     This is not a vacation for me, nor is it a vacation for any 
     federal worker. . . . It's impossible to plan for lost pay 
     when you are unsure how much pay you might be losing, and 
     it's impossible to amend deadlines when you aren't sure how 
     many projects are going to go unattended to and for how long. 
     Many argue that federal workers should have savings to 
     prepare themselves for the shutdown but I am a young person, 
     this is my first job.


[[Page S6215]]


  A Washington Post article from January detailed the struggles of many 
low-wage workers, including one who lives in the District, Julia, a 
contracted janitor for the last 27 years, most recently at the 
Department of Agriculture, who cares for her elderly mother with 
dementia. She has had to use the last of her sick days to keep money 
coming in. All told, she lost $1,000 in savings, went into debt, and 
relied on the charity of churches for free meals.
  Again, these are people who make the life choice--they could have 
made other choices, but they make the life choice to serve our 
government, meaning serving by, of, and for the people. They did that 
not for grand fame or glory or riches, but they do have an expectation 
that they will not be gratuitously kicked around--maybe a thank-you or 
maybe just being treated fairly.
  I think we did take a step forward when we passed the backpay bill to 
guarantee that Federal workers would be treated fairly. I think Senator 
Smith's amendment, which I am proud to be an original cosponsor of, 
that I hope we will have a chance to take up, would remedy the 
situation with respect to these workers. This is not for every 
contractor. This is the Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Workers Act, so 
it is specifically focused on compensation for the contractors who 
receive low wages, those who are most vulnerable and were most affected 
by losing salary for 5 weeks.
  Here is the good news: The House included this provision in its 
appropriations bill this past summer. It is not in the appropriations 
bill we are now considering in the Senate.
  I implore the majority leader and all of my colleagues to do for 
these low-wage Federal contractors what we did for Federal employees: 
recognize the hardships the shutdown caused these workers and their 
families and add backpay for Federal contractors, which is the bill we 
are getting ready to vote on.
  This would be a little step forward and a precedent. We haven't 
necessarily done this in the past, but just as the guarantee of backpay 
for Federal employees, I believe, starts to build in a little bit of 
firewall against a shutdown, I actually think having a rule, a norm, 
that we would provide backpay for low-wage Federal contractors also 
starts to provide a little bit of a firewall against a shutdown.
  I think we should all be anti-shutdown, and having mechanisms that 
make it harder to shut the government down, or less likely that we 
would shut it down, is something we should all support.
  Without us intervening and doing right by these workers, many of them 
will take years to recover from the financial hole the shutdown put 
them in.
  I ask my colleagues to join together and support Senator Smith and 
her amendment.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kaine for his work on this 
and speaking out on it. It is an issue of justice, an issue of 
fairness, and an issue that--I mean, how can you be against this? I 
don't even pretend to understand it.
  Senator Smith, who is still relatively new to this body, has taken a 
leadership role on an issue that is as important in terms of human 
rights as any I can imagine this body has taken up, this fight for 
Federal contract workers who suffered because of President Trump's 
disastrous shutdown earlier this year.
  When you think about this, these are workers making $8, $10, and 
$12--I know most of my colleagues don't know anybody--well, actually, 
they know people who make $8, $10, and $12 an hour, they have just 
never actually asked them their names and talked to them about their 
lives to find that out. We dress well. We have great healthcare 
benefits. We have good wages here, and most of the people who serve us: 
the cafeteria workers here, the people who come in at night when we 
leave and clean our offices--in this case, many of them are Federal 
employees, but some of them are contract employees. That simply means--
go to the Cleveland airport and talk to the people who drive the carts 
taking people to and from their planes or talk to the people who push 
the wheelchairs of people who have a little trouble getting on and off 
the planes. Those people don't work for United Airlines. They don't 
work for Cleveland Hopkins airport or Dulles or National or the airport 
in whatever it is called--sorry, Senator Smith--in Minneapolis-Saint 
Paul. They work for contractors so often, and those are the people we 
are talking about. Those are the people who are ignored. They are 
making $8, $10, $12 an hour. We don't pay attention to them in this 
body. We don't know their names. We don't speak for them too often. 
Senator Smith, Senator Kaine, and I are speaking for them because we 
know what happened to them.

  I think Americans don't realize that thousands of janitors and 
cafeteria workers and security guards spent weeks out of work because 
of Trump's disastrous shutdown. They are employed by private 
contractors, not the government, and they are paid too little to begin 
with, and they have no way of making up those lost hours and lost 
wages.
  Missing a paycheck--you know, a lot of people in this country can 
absorb missing a paycheck if they are in the 1 percent or the 2 percent 
or the 5 percent or the 10 percent wealthiest people, certainly the 
billionaire President and his multimillionaire--except for those 
Cabinet members who are billionaires--Cabinet with their massive 
investment portfolios. But for most Americans--most Americans--missing 
a paycheck is a big deal.
  The President doesn't understand and doesn't seem to care to 
understand that working people couldn't just send a letter to 
creditors, saying: Please excuse me this month, Mr. Landlord or Ms. 
Landlord, from paying rent or paying my mortgage or paying for my 
medications at the local CVS. They take money out of their savings, if 
they have any savings. It is awfully hard to have savings at $10, $12, 
and $14 an hour. They take money out of those savings. Or, more likely, 
in the case of these contractors who earn $10, $12 and $14 an hour, 
they turn to family members; they run up their credit cards; they go to 
payday lenders; and they never get out from under that, as you know.
  Some of them--many, many of them--are still dealing with the debt. I 
remember talking to cafeteria workers in Senator Kaine's State in 
Arlington. Federal contractor workers who serve food in our Smithsonian 
museums are not Federal workers. Most people who go to the Smithsonian 
figure people who are serving the food and cleaning the place or 
cleaning the offices and exhibits are probably government employees, 
but they are not.
  One worker told me: I have to pay rent, and I have other bills. I 
have a college student in his second semester, and he needs help with 
his books.
  The president of one SEIU local, which represents janitors and 
security officers, said that those workers and their families ``will 
continue to relive the trauma on a daily basis until they are 
compensated for 35 days of income''--35 days of income they went 
without. They are already living on the edge, and this body, because of 
its inaction, because of its head in the sand, because of its--pardon 
my language--boneheadedness, simply ignores them and just washes their 
hands. They say, ``I don't know who they are, and I don't know their 
names, so we are not going to do anything to help them,'' even though 
it was the Trump shutdown that betrayed these workers.
  The same President betrays workers by denying the overtime pay they 
have earned. The same President puts people in the Supreme Court who 
put their thumb on the scale of justice always to support corporations 
over workers, always to support Wall Street over consumers, and always 
to support health insurance companies over patients. Put on top of that 
the Trump tax cuts--a massive giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent.
  I spoke to a group of union members today. They want a transportation 
bill. They want an infrastructure bill. They know what the bridge looks 
like connecting my State in Cincinnati over the Ohio River with that of 
the Republican leader down the hall--Senator McConnell's State. They 
know the needs there. I have to say, we got no money because of this 
tax cut that my friends over here voted for, most of which went to the 
wealthiest 1 percent.
  Because of the Trump shutdown, these workers we are talking about

[[Page S6216]]

went without paychecks. He has done nothing to fix it. It comes back to 
the dignity of work. All work has dignity. Dr. King said that no job is 
menial if it pays an adequate wage, but it also means getting to go to 
work every day and earning that pay.
  For these contract workers, their work has dignity. If the President 
understood that, he would make sure they would get their paychecks. The 
House already passed backpay for contractors 4 months ago.
  I ask my colleagues to join us on Senator Smith's amendment because 
if you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work.
  (Mr. CRUZ assumed the Chair).


                             Amendment 1088

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about Amendment 1088, which 
I introduced with Senator Jones. The amendment is straightforward. It 
provides $5 million to fund Centers of Excellence at 1890 land-grant 
universities. This amendment--I want to underscore this--includes an 
offset.
  Let me tell you why I introduced this. The authorization for these 
Centers of Excellence was included in the 2018 farm bill. I offered it 
as an amendment in the Senate Agriculture Committee. It could be 
critical for schools like Central State, west of Columbus, in Ohio. The 
chairman and the ranking member of the Ag Committee supported it. The 
Senate majority leader supported it, as did the chair of the Ag 
Appropriations Subcommittee. The entire committee supported it. It 
passed by a voice vote.
  Then we passed the farm bill and sent it to the President. We got 87 
votes from this body for the farm bill. That is more than ever, I 
believe, any farm bill has ever passed the Senate. These centers will 
focus on important challenges facing the agriculture sector and its 
workforce.
  I ask unanimous consent that the letter of support from Dr. Kent 
Smith, president of Langston University in Oklahoma on behalf of the 
Council of 1890 University Presidents, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                           Association of Public &


                                      Land-Grant Universities,

                                 Washington, DC, October 29, 2019.
      Hon. Richard Shelby,
     Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Patrick Leahy,
     Vice Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. John Hoeven,
     Chairman, Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Jeff Merkley,
     Ranking Member, Senate Agriculture Appropriations 
         Subcommittee, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Shelby; Vice Chairman Leahy; Chairman Hoeven; 
     and Ranking Member Merkley: On behalf of the Council of 1890 
     Presidents, I am writing to express our support for Senator 
     Brown and Senator Jones' amendment to the FY 2020 Agriculture 
     Appropriations bill to fund the newly created Centers of 
     Excellence. As you know, these new Centers were authorized 
     and created in the 2018 Farm Bill. The work of these Centers 
     is a critical part of the future research in several 
     strategic areas that our Universities will do on behalf of 
     the country.
       I understand that the amendment being considered by the 
     Senate would provide half of the authorized annual funding 
     for the new Centers. While we certainly appreciate that 
     effort, we strongly encourage the Congress to fully fund the 
     Centers to their authorized level. These Centers were 
     promised to our Universities almost 30 years ago and while we 
     are pleased that they are close to being a functioning 
     reality, without this initial funding they will not get off-
     the-ground.
       Again, we strongly support Senator Brown and Senator Jones' 
     efforts and look forward to working with you to have this 
     amendment included in the final version of the FY 2020 
     Agriculture Appropriations Bill.
           Sincerely,
     Kent J. Smith, Jr., Ph.D.,
       Chair, Council of 1890 University Presidents, President, 
     Langston University.

  Mr. BROWN. Dr. Smith notes that they have been promised these Centers 
of Excellence for 30 years. The Senate needs to act, and it needs to 
include my amendment to right this wrong.
  I remind my colleagues that the 1890 land grants were created because 
many States, rather than allowing African-American students to attend 
the 1862 land-grant universities, decided to set up, in the name of 
segregation in those States, a separate system of colleges and 
universities.
  The 1890s schools, as my colleagues know, despite providing a pathway 
to the middle class for generations of mostly African-American 
students, have been ignored or, at best, underfunded since their 
creation.
  I have tried to figure out why my amendment is not just automatically 
set. Again, it was authorized by the Agriculture Committee; it passed 
the Senate unanimously; it was signed by the President. Why isn't this 
amendment acceptable? The majority can't be opposed because the House 
funded this program; the majority has cleared amendments that duplicate 
House money. It can't be because my amendment is too expensive, as the 
majority, I am told, is willing to clear a Thune-Hoeven amendment that 
funds Tribal colleges--which is a good thing--at the same level as my 
amendment.
  I have worked with the committee to find an offset for my amendment, 
and even though the authorization is for $10 million a year, at the 
committee's urging, I have reduced it to $5 million, and still, for 
whatever reason, they can't see clear to support this.
  I know if this came up for a floor vote, we would pass it 
overwhelmingly. I don't know why we need to do that rather than just 
accept this.
  I urge my colleagues to include this commonsense, fully paid-for 
amendment in the appropriations bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this isn't part of the remarks I had 
planned for, but let me just surprise the Senator from Ohio and say I 
agree with him. We need to pass a transportation bill.
  He mentioned some of the union workers he was talking to this 
morning, and they want Congress to function as it should, which means 
we should pass our appropriations bills, the Transportation, Housing 
and Urban Development bill that the Senator from Maine is the bill 
manager on. We ought to do all of our appropriations bills, including 
keeping our commitment to our men and women in the military by passing 
the Defense appropriations bill.
  Unfortunately, we know that politics has overwhelmed our ability to 
function here in Congress, and the Democrats, for some reason, decided 
to filibuster the Defense appropriations bill just recently.
  What I worry about is this obsession with politics and dividing the 
Nation 12 months before the next general election, when everybody who 
is a registered voter will have a chance to vote on the next President 
of the United States. We are going to let that dominate our discussions 
to the failure of our ability to actually pass appropriations bills, 
fund the military, and fund a highway bill, which would provide much 
needed infrastructure development all across our country, including the 
fast-growing States like those the Presiding Officer and I happen to 
come from.
  So I hope that the growing sense I have that we are simply going to 
quit functioning a year out before the election, because of the 
obsession over politics and impeachment mania, does not prove to be 
true. But the storm clouds are on the horizon, and I am becoming 
increasingly convinced that, unfortunately, that is the only thing 
Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats care about, and our ability to 
actually get our work done is going to be tragically squandered.


                     Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

  Mr. President, let me talk about some good news. Of course, this 
weekend, the world celebrated as the hunt for the leader of ISIS--the 
latest terrorist organization that has dominated the news--finally came 
to an end, and President Trump announced the successful raid by U.S. 
troops that led to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the world's No. 1 
terrorist. This, of course, is reminiscent of that effort under the 
Obama administration to take out Osama Bin Laden years after he led the 
effort to kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11 in New York and here in 
Washington at the Pentagon.
  With the elimination of the ISIS caliphate earlier this year, it was 
only a matter of time before al-Baghdadi would run out of places to 
hide. I want to say how much I admire and appreciate the courage and 
the dedication of the men and women who contributed to

[[Page S6217]]

this raid and who actually made it happen. This is an amazing 
combination of talent, training, intelligence, and cooperation with our 
partners in the Middle East that led to this incredible and successful 
effort. I am grateful to our military leaders, our intelligence 
professionals, our servicemembers, and our allies who have been 
tirelessly working for this goal for years.
  I applaud President Trump for making the difficult decision to put 
American troops in harm's way. Fortunately, it did not result in any 
loss of life or injuries, I am told, for the troops who actually 
executed the raid, but let's give credit where credit is due. Just as 
President Obama deserved credit for making the difficult decision to 
take out Obama Bin Laden, President Trump should be entitled to credit 
for making the difficult but important and correct decision to take out 
ISIS's leader.
  Because of the decisive action and flawless execution of troops on 
the ground, it was a great day for freedom-loving people and for all 
Americans that the world's No. 1 most wanted man was brought to 
justice.
  Coincidentally, yesterday, I was in Austin speaking to the Mortgage 
Bankers Association, and Admiral McRaven came on right after me. It was 
an amazing coincidence and a real treat for the mortgage bankers who, 
after I got through talking to them, got to hear from the man who led 
the raid that brought down Osama bin Laden in 2011. It was a remarkable 
moment to reflect on our Nation's ongoing fight to eradicate terrorism 
and the great leaders and the great professionals who have contributed 
to our efforts to keep America safe.
  It is important that we all remember that the fight is not yet won 
and that it actually may never be finally concluded. We must remain 
committed to working with our allies in the region and around the world 
to continue to eliminate terrorism wherever we can and prevent its 
resurgence.
  As I indicated earlier, later this week, the Senate will begin voting 
on spending bills to fund the Department of Defense so that they can 
continue this fight, and it would be ironic, indeed, if our Democratic 
colleagues thwarted our efforts to fund the Department of Defense once 
again in the wake of this incredible accomplishment by those 
professionals.
  Last month, Democrats blocked us from even considering the defense 
spending bill. They decided their seemingly never-ending disputes with 
President Trump transcend national security.
  I hope this weekend's announcement has brought this decision into 
some perspective. We need to quickly pass the defense spending bill to 
ensure that our military will not be impacted by these political games.


                               Healthcare

  Mr. President, on another matter, I continue to hear from my 
constituents back home about the number of Texans who are struggling to 
cover the cost of their prescription medication. We know that 
deductibles, particularly under the Affordable Care Act, have gotten to 
be very high.
  As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon to hear people say that they 
have a deductible of $5,000 or more. The copays they have to pay for 
prescription drugs, strangely enough, in their deductible--the $5,000 
you would have to pay under your Affordable Care Act policy--they get 
none of the benefit of the negotiated discount or rebates that the drug 
companies get with prescription pharmacy benefit managers. That does 
not flow to the consumer. Actually, consumers are being treated much 
worse than the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are 
and deriving virtually no benefit.

  I have heard stories. We had one particularly profound story about a 
woman whose son is diabetic. He became an adult, and she described how 
purchasing his insulin affected many of his decisions, such as moving 
out of the house, getting a job, whether or not to marry, basically 
because he had to manage the high cost of the copay for the insulin 
that was necessary to preserve his life.
  Unfortunately, as in many cases, people end up self-rationing their 
drugs to make them last longer, and that is at a great health risk to 
them, to skip doses or to take less or to otherwise not follow their 
doctor's orders.
  People are frustrated and confused. They are increasingly worried 
about how they and their loved ones are going to continue to cover 
these rising costs, and they want to know what Congress intends to do 
about it. I frequently tell the folks back home that the most 
frustrating moments in Washington, DC, are when the White House and 
Congress agree and when Republicans and Democrats agree that something 
is a problem and needs to be done, but nothing gets done. That is a 
hard one to explain. Everybody says yes, we need to deal with high 
prescription drug costs, but we don't seem to be capable of getting 
things done.
  I am always happy to share updates about the progress we make within 
our committees, such as the Finance and Judiciary Committees I serve 
on. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting a bill across the floor of 
the U.S. Senate, it has proved to be an insurmountable challenge.
  We have spent a lot of time hearing from patients, healthcare 
providers, drugmakers, and other experts about prescription drug costs, 
and it is admittedly a very complex topic, but I think a lot of the 
folks involved in the business sort of enjoy that black box they 
operate in and they are afraid of the transparency that would actually 
reveal who is getting the money and why it is that the savings don't 
flow to consumers.
  We have been looking at every stop a drug takes in route, from 
research and development to the shelf of your medicine cabinet. We have 
seen some things that are pretty alarming. There are pharmaceutical 
CEOs earning big bonuses, of course, as sales go up. I am not opposed 
to CEOs getting paid well for new lifesaving and innovative drugs, but 
I am if they do it at the expense of consumers. We have seen pharmacy 
benefit managers who negotiate backdoor rebates and drive up out-of-
pocket costs. Of course, there are also pharmaceutical companies that 
game the patent system to stave off competition as long as possible.
  In one of our Finance Committee hearings, I was able to ask the CEO 
of AbbVie about their product HUMIRA, which is the most commonly 
prescribed drug in America today, I believe. It is the poster child for 
the kind of gamesmanship that I think ought to infuriate all of us.
  HUMIRA is a wonderful drug. It is used to treat arthritis and a 
number of other conditions, and it has been available for about 15 
years. One might think that would be sufficient time to cover the 
patent period and that a more generic or biosimilar alternative might 
be available, which would be cheaper, much to the benefit of consumers. 
You would be wrong.
  AbbVie currently has 136 patents and 247 applications on HUMIRA. In 
fact, the maze of patents on HUMIRA is so complex that there is no 
biosimilar available in America. This jumbled network of patents makes 
it nearly impossible for a competitor to come into the market. To date, 
there are five competitors to HUMIRA in Europe--five--but not in 
America, not to the benefit of American consumers. All of these five 
competitors that sell a biosimilar alternative to HUMIRA in Europe are 
blocked from selling it in the United States until 2023. That is not an 
accident.
  Again, I don't begrudge companies that discover lifesaving and 
innovative drugs getting the coverage of a patent for the appropriate 
period of time because that is where they recoup their research and 
development costs, and unfortunately not all of these drug discoveries 
turn out with a good story. But this strikes me as gamesmanship and an 
abuse of the system. Patents were intended to guard intellectual 
property and encourage researchers to pour time and resources into 
developing these new drugs. These drugmakers aren't just using the 
patent system to protect their intellectual property; they are abusing 
it, to the detriment of consumers, to increase their bottom line.
  Earlier this year, I introduced a bill with our colleague from 
Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, to take aim at this practice. The 
Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act disarms the so-called patent 
thickets to enable competitors to come to market sooner. This bill 
streamlines the litigation

[[Page S6218]]

process by limiting the number of patents these companies can use so 
companies can spend less time in the courtroom. Competitors would be 
able to resolve patent issues faster and bring their drugs to market 
sooner. Better competition, I am convinced, means better prices for 
patients.
  Our country is a leader in pharmaceutical innovation, partly because 
we offer robust protection for intellectual property. And that is a 
good thing, but we have to do more to stop the bad actors taking 
advantage of those innovation protections in order to maintain their 
monopoly at the expense of the American people. That is exactly what 
the legislation I have introduced with Senator Blumenthal would do. By 
the way, it passed unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
  The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act doesn't stifle 
innovation, it doesn't limit patent rights, and it doesn't cost 
taxpayers a dime. In fact, just the opposite is true. The Congressional 
Budget Office released a cost estimate for this bill and found that it 
would lower spending by more than half a billion dollars over 10 years. 
And that is just savings to the Federal Government for Medicare and 
Medicaid; there undoubtedly would be additional savings for consumers 
in their private health insurance.

  Despite the fact that this legislation received the unanimous support 
of the Judiciary Committee in June, it has yet to make it to the Senate 
floor for a vote. As it turns out, I am informed that the minority 
leader, the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, is leading the charge 
in blocking the Senate's ability to consider that bill.
  Our colleague the minority leader loves to say that the Senate is a 
legislative graveyard because we haven't voted on a number of 
ultrapartisan bills passed by the House, but when it comes to passing 
the bills that actually have bipartisan support--bills that could 
actually pass both Chambers and become law--it looks as though the 
minority leader has become the gravedigger-in-chief. Why he would 
refuse to allow a vote on a bill cosponsored by one of his own Members 
that would lower drug costs for patients across the country and save 
more than half a billion dollars over 10 years for taxpayers is beyond 
me. It seems like a no-brainer. Again, I am afraid that politics may 
have once again interfered with our Democratic colleague's interest in 
making sound public policy.
  While our Democratic colleagues continue their crusade to remove the 
President from office, the American people's lives aren't getting any 
easier. Their lives aren't on hold such that they could just simply 
wait out the politics that seems to crowd out good public policy in 
Washington, DC. We know for sure that their prescription medications 
aren't getting any cheaper. So I would urge our colleague, the Senate 
minority leader, to quit blocking the bipartisan bill I have discussed 
today so that our constituents--all of our constituents--in Texas, New 
York, Maine, and all over the country can begin to enjoy some relief 
from their mounting out-of-pocket drug costs.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.


                      Unanimous Consent Agreement

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that rather 
than recessing at 12:30 p.m., we recess at 12:35 p.m.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I want to associate myself with the 
comments that were just made by the Senator from Texas on the important 
issue of lowering the cost of prescription drugs. Not only the Finance 
Committee and the Judiciary Committee but also the Senate Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee have all reported good bills 
that would help provide relief from the ever-escalating costs of 
prescription drugs.
  Like the Senator from Texas, I, too, have introduced a bipartisan 
bill with Senator Tim Kaine to prevent the gaming of the patent system 
in which a brand-name pharmaceutical company will wait until the last 
moment and then erect a thicket of new patents precisely to prevent a 
lower cost generic or biosimilar from coming to the market.
  It is a shame that apparently the minority leader is blocking bills 
from coming to the floor in this area despite their widespread 
bipartisan support, according to what the Senator from Texas has just 
said. This is an issue we should address. Ninety percent of our seniors 
take at least 1 prescription drug, and 36 percent of them take 4 or 
more in a month's time, and they are particularly burdened by the high 
cost of prescription drugs.
  I, too, have looked at the manufacture of HUMIRA, the best-selling 
drug in the world--a drug that brings some $18 billion in profit to 
AbbVie, the manufacturer. That is fine that AbbVie has been able to 
recoup the considerable R&D that went into what truly is a miraculous 
drug for people with rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and some 
inflammatory bowel diseases, but when the patent period has expired, 
they should not be allowed to block a lower cost generic or in this 
case biosimilar from coming to the market. Yet that is exactly what has 
happened.


                            Aviation Safety

  Mr. President, let me turn to speak on another important issue that 
is addressed in the Transportation appropriations bill that is on the 
Senate floor right now, and that is aviation safety. I know the 
Presiding Officer has done a great deal in this area, and the CEO of 
Boeing is testifying on Capitol Hill today.
  The importance of aviation safety in light of the crashes of the two 
Boeing 737 MAX aircraft cannot be overstated. Last October, Lion 
Airlines Flight 610 crashed shortly after takeoff in Indonesia, killing 
all 189 passengers and crew on board. Just 5 months later, in March of 
this year, an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed and killed 157 
passengers and crew. It is simply unacceptable that both of these 
crashes involved the same aircraft, the Boeing 737 MAX, and were likely 
caused because of the new system known as MCAS, as well as the pilots' 
unfamiliarity with the system and a lack of training. More egregious 
was the fact that the changes that were made to MCAS sectors 
certification for this system had already been delegated by the FAA to 
Boeing. It is clear that Boeing did everything it could to avoid having 
to provide additional training or make pilots even aware of the MCAS 
system.

  Like the Presiding Officer, I have met with some of the families of 
the victims of these crashes, and their pain and grief are truly 
heartbreaking. I am committed to ensuring that we never experience 
anything like this ever again.
  As chairman of the T-HUD Subcommittee, I have been working with my 
ranking member, Senator Jack Reed, to do our part in improving aviation 
safety. We need to hold accountable not only Boeing but also the FAA 
and any other entities that may have played a role in these crashes.
  In July, our T-HUD Subcommittee held an oversight hearing of the FAA 
where we questioned the Acting Deputy Administrator and the Associate 
Administrator for Aviation Safety on the agency's review of the MAX 
aircraft, as well as the agency's aircraft certification processes. 
Since that time, numerous recommendations have been issued by the 
National Transportation Safety Board and the Joint Authorities 
Technical Review, which consisted of technical experts from leading 
international aviation regulators.
  First and foremost, it is imperative that both Boeing and the FAA 
admit the mistakes made with the MAX aircraft and remedy those serious 
errors in order to gain the public's trust in the aircraft again. Just 
today, Boeing's CEO testified before Congress and admitted that Boeing 
``made mistakes and got some things wrong.'' However, we have yet to 
hear what specific changes the FAA will require from Boeing prior to 
bringing the MAX back into service and what long-term changes they will 
make to their aviation and aircraft certification process.
  Ranking Member Jack Reed and I continue to send letters and inquiries 
to the FAA for additional information regarding the agency's 
Organization Designation Authorization Program, or the ODA Program, as 
well as statements made by FAA officials at our July hearing, which 
appeared to be incomplete at best and possibly outright wrong.
  We need to make sure the FAA is a check on the delegation process--a 
true check--and is not captured by the industry that it regulates. 
Safety has to

[[Page S6219]]

be the No. 1 priority for FAA--way ahead of making sure that 
manufacturers can meet their deadlines for aircraft delivery. Safety 
has to come first.
  As a result of the work we conducted on our T-HUD Subcommittee and 
our oversight hearing, Ranking Member Reed and I have provided 
increased funding for aviation safety and aircraft certification 
activities. The need for additional staffing has been confirmed by the 
Joint Authorities Technical Review report, which determined that FAA's 
certification office for Boeing had inadequate staff involved in the 
MAX certification program.
  In addition, the Joint Authorities found that FAA needs to expand its 
staffing for human factors and human system integration work as it 
relates to aircraft certification. In other words, if there is a new 
system, we cannot allow training on that system to be bypassed and 
mention of that system to not be included in the manuals that accompany 
the aircraft. Pilots have to know, going into that cockpit, exactly 
what could happen, and they need training on simulators.
  Clearly, a lot of work needs to be done on this issue. I believe we 
have taken some important first steps in the T-HUD bill that is before 
us.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________