[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 184 (Sunday, October 25, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6533-S6554]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



        Medical care for the uninsured could cost billions more

  Doctors and hospitals could lose a crucial source of revenue, as more 
people lose insurance during an economic downturn. The Urban Institute 
estimated that nationwide, without the A.C.A., the cost of care for 
people who cannot pay for it could increase as much as $50.2 billion.
  Hospitals and other medical providers, many of whom are already 
struggling financially because of the pandemic, would incur losses, as 
many now have higher revenues and reduced costs for uncompensated care 
in states that expanded Medicaid. A study in 2017 by the Commonwealth 
Fund found that for every dollar of uncompensated care costs those 
states had in 2013, the health law had erased 40 cents by 2015, or a 
total of $6.2 billion.
  The health insurance industry would be upended by the elimination of 
A.C.A. requirements. Insurers in many markets could again deny coverage 
or charge higher premiums to people with pre-existing medical 
conditions, and they could charge women higher rates. States could 
still regulate insurance, but consumers would see more variation from 
state to state. Insurers would also probably see lower revenues and 
fewer members in the plans they operate in the individual market and 
for state Medicaid programs at a time when millions of people are 
losing their job-based coverage.

                             1,000 Calories


Menu labels are among dozens of the law's provisions that are less well 
                                 known

  The A.C.A. requires nutrition labeling and calorie counts on menu 
items at chain restaurants.
  It requires many employers to provide ``reasonable break time'' and a 
private space for nursing mothers to pump breast milk.
  It created a pathway for federal approval of biosimilars, which are 
near-copies of biologic drugs, made from living cells.
  These and other measures would have no legal mandate to continue if 
the A.C.A. is eliminated.''
  The ACA has made significant progress in the ability to expand 
women's access to health care. Pushing for its repeal means putting 
that progress and women's futures at risk.
  I would like to read an article by Jamille Fields Allsbrook from the 
Center for American Progress entitled ``Repealing the ACA During the 
Coronavirus Pandemic Would Be Devastating for Women's Health and 
Economic Security.''
  It reads:

       The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been one of the most 
     significant advancements for women's health and economic 
     security in a generation. The law expanded coverage to 
     millions of uninsured people through financial assistance and 
     public insurance and also improved the quality of existing 
     coverage, including by expanding access to reproductive and 
     maternal health services and by prohibiting discrimination 
     against women and people with preexisting conditions. Yet its 
     fate remains uncertain. On November 10, the U.S. Supreme 
     Court will hear oral arguments in California v. Texas, a case 
     that will determine the constitutionality of the ACA. 
     Specifically, the high court will determine whether the 
     individual mandate is unconstitutional and whether the 
     remainder of the law is inseverable from that provision. 
     Especially with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's recent passing, 
     the benefits and consumer protections that women have gained 
     and

[[Page S6534]]

     come to rely on could swiftly be eliminated. In short, if the 
     ACA is repealed, coverage for more than 20 million people and 
     the significant benefits and consumer protections that have 
     been gained under that law are at stake.
       Compounding this issue, the ACA repeal would come at a time 
     when the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis 
     have already burdened women. For instance, unprecedented job 
     losses have resulted in the loss of insurance coverage; 
     barriers to maternal and reproductive health care have been 
     erected; the providers women rely on--who were already 
     underfunded--have been stretched to capacity; and health 
     disparities that have historically burdened Black and Latina 
     women have been exacerbated and compounded. Repealing the ACA 
     during the pandemic would no doubt cost women--especially 
     women of color, women with disabilities, women with low 
     incomes, and young women.
       First, repealing the ACA would reduce access to treatments 
     and vaccines during the pandemic and allow COVID-19 survivors 
     to be discriminated against in the insurance market, thus 
     lengthening the time that the crisis will likely affect women 
     and their families. Second, the economic crisis has already 
     harmed women the most, and eliminating coverage and allowing 
     gender rating and coverage caps would shift additional costs 
     on to women. Lastly, existing barriers to maternal and 
     reproductive health services, both those created during and 
     before the pandemic, would likely be exacerbated.
1. Repealing the ACA would prolong and worsen the effects of the 
    pandemic for women and their families.
       While a repeal of the ACA would be chaotic and devastating 
     even in typical times, the current pandemic would only 
     magnify its effects. Without coverage, women would experience 
     barriers to a COVID-19 treatment and vaccine--which could 
     prolong the effects of the pandemic. These barriers would be 
     most devastating, however, for women of color given the 
     health inequities associated with COVID-19. Compared with 
     white, non-Hispanic people, Black people are 2.6 times more 
     likely to contract the virus, 4.7 times more likely to be 
     hospitalized, and 2.1 times more likely to die from the 
     disease. Similarly, American Indian and Alaska Native people 
     contract the virus at 2.8 times the rate, are hospitalized at 
     5.3 times the rate, and die at 1.4 times the rate of white, 
     non-Hispanic people. And Latinx people are 2.8 times more 
     likely to contract the virus, 4.6 times more likely to be 
     hospitalized, and 1.1 times more likely to die of COVID-19 
     than white, non-Hispanic people.
       Even worse, if the ACA is repealed, COVID-19 survivors 
     could be discriminated against when seeking insurance 
     coverage. Without ACA protections, insurers in the individual 
     market could once again charge enrollees more or deny them 
     coverage if they have a preexisting condition. This could 
     affect the more than 7 million Americans who have been 
     infected with COVID-19, as it could be deemed a preexisting 
     condition.
       Even before the pandemic, a Center for American Progress 
     analysis found that nearly 68 million women--more than half 
     of girls and nonelderly women in the country--had a 
     preexisting condition. If insurers are able to make the 
     determination as to whether a person has a preexisting 
     condition, conditions ranging from HIV/AIDS to breast cancer 
     to the nearly 6 million annual pregnancies could again be 
     included in this category. And importantly, Black, Latinx and 
     American Indian and Alaska Native people have higher rates of 
     COVID-19 as well as certain chronic conditions such as 
     cervical cancer and diabetes, so eliminating coverage and 
     protections for people with preexisting conditions would harm 
     these communities the most.
       2. Women's financial security would be threatened by an ACA 
     repeal.
       Women have lost the majority of jobs since the start of the 
     pandemic. In fact, multiple studies have pointed to the fact 
     that the current recession is tougher on women than men. One 
     U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that unlike past 
     recessions, ``the [coronavirus] crisis has battered industry 
     sectors in which women's employment is more concentrated--
     restaurants and other retail establishments, hospitality and 
     health care.'' Additionally, school closures have forced 
     women, who are more likely to be primary caregivers for young 
     children or sick family members, to reduce hours or leave 
     their jobs--which can also result in coverage loses. In 
     particular, Black and Latina mothers are more likely than 
     white mothers to be the sole or primary breadwinners of their 
     households, so they will be hit hardest by the additional 
     financial burdens. Before the pandemic, there was already a 
     wage gap between women and men--a gap that is exacerbated by 
     race and ethnicity, given that Black, Latinx, and American 
     Indian and Alaskan Native populations experience poverty 
     rates that are significantly higher than those of non-
     Hispanic, white populations. Perhaps as a result, women were 
     already more likely than men to forgo or delay accessing 
     recommended care due to costs.
       Yet given the pandemic, losing the financial security 
     afforded by having insurance coverage would be even more 
     devastating for women. The ACA provided financial assistance 
     for private insurance coverage and expanded enrollment in the 
     Medicaid program, which resulted in the uninsurance rate 
     reaching a historic low. As a result, the uninsurance rate 
     among women declined by nearly half from 2010 to 2016. An ACA 
     repeal would merely undermine safety net programs when people 
     need them the most. Women comprise 58 percent of Medicaid 
     enrollees according to 2018 data, and Medicaid expansion 
     resulted in a 13-percent decrease in the uninsurance rate 
     of young women of reproductive age--19 to 44 years old--
     with low incomes. In particular, Medicaid's no- and low-
     cost services afford necessary and preventive health care 
     access to people with low incomes, a disproportionate 
     number of whom are women of color due to systemic racism, 
     sexism, and poverty. From 2013 to 2018, due to the ACA's 
     coverage expansions, fewer Black women and Latinas 
     reported delaying care as a result of costs, narrowing the 
     disparity between white women and women of color.
       Women who maintain access to insurance coverage could also 
     face increased costs. If the ACA's prohibition on gender 
     rating is repealed, insurers could once again charge women 
     more for coverage in the individual and small-group markets 
     simply for being women, reinstating a practice that 
     collectively cost women $1 billion more than men each year. 
     Additionally, the ACA created the Health Care Rights Law, 
     which prohibits discrimination in health care on the basis of 
     sex, race, color, national origin, age, and disability; 
     notably, this marks the first time that a federal prohibition 
     against sex discrimination was applied broadly to health 
     care. Lastly, if the health care law is repealed, women with 
     chronic conditions, such as HIV and cancer, could be subject 
     to annual lifetime limits--a practice prohibited under the 
     ACA that allowed insurers to require plan enrollees pay out 
     of pocket for all services after they reach a certain dollar 
     threshold. These increased costs could easily price many 
     women out of insurance in the middle of a public health 
     crisis.
       The ACA has also been associated with improving job 
     opportunities. The majority of people in the United States 
     access health coverage through their employer, yet by 
     improving access to coverage that is not job-based, the ACA 
     has afforded people the ability to leave or switch jobs with 
     assurance that they won't lose the coverage. Moreover, the 
     ACA created at least 240,000 jobs in the health care industry 
     from 2014 to 2016--and women comprise the majority of health 
     care workers. The chaos that would result from repealing the 
     ACA would be felt particularly acutely by those employed in 
     these jobs.
       3. Repealing the ACA would exacerbate existing barriers to 
     reproductive and maternal health care services.
       According to the Centers for Disease Control and 
     Prevention, pregnant people with COVID-19 have higher rates 
     of hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit, and 
     mechanical ventilation. And alarmingly, Black pregnant women 
     are disproportionately contracting COVID-19. Subsequently, 
     there are concerns that the pandemic will exacerbate existing 
     health inequities that have led to Black, as well as American 
     Indian and Alaska Native women, dying from pregnancy-related 
     complications at around three times the rate of white, non-
     Hispanic women. A repeal of the ACA in its entirety would 
     result in reduced access to pre- and post-natal care for as 
     many as 13 million people in the individual market because 
     the individual and small-group health plans would no longer 
     be required to cover certain basic health care services--
     known as essential health benefits--including maternity and 
     newborn care. Eliminating the expanded eligibility created 
     under the ACA could also worsen the crisis given that 
     Medicaid expansion is associated with lower rates of maternal 
     and infant mortality and covers 50 percent of births in the 
     United States.
       Moreover, due to the many unknowns that remain regarding 
     how COVID-19 affects pregnant people, some individuals may 
     want to delay or forgo pregnancy, necessitating access to 
     comprehensive reproductive health services. The ACA requires 
     most plans to cover birth control with no out-of-pocket 
     costs. As a result, women have saved more than $1.4 billion a 
     year in out-of-pocket costs on birth control pills. According 
     to data from the National Women's Law Center, 61.4 million 
     women currently have access to birth control as well as other 
     preventive services, such as well-woman visits, with no out-
     of-pocket costs--thanks to the ACA. Without requirements for 
     those services to be covered, women would be forced to pay 
     out of pocket or forgo care if they could not afford to. 
     Illustratively, without insurance coverage, birth control 
     pills would cost a woman up to $600 per year, and an 
     intrauterine device would cost about $1,000 out of pocket.
       Additionally, the pandemic has erected barriers that make 
     it harder for women to access necessary preventive care--both 
     as a result of job losses and barriers to accessing care 
     during the pandemic. As a result, women have already delayed 
     care in recent months. A repeal of the ACA would only lead to 
     further delays given that plans would no longer be required 
     to cover preventive screenings, mental and substance abuse 
     services, rehabilitative services, and a host of other 
     services.
       President Donald Trump and his conservative allies in the 
     Senate are not only forgoing their responsibility to address 
     the dueling health and economic crises, they are also rushing 
     to install a new, conservative justice on the Supreme Court 
     who would tilt its balance in favor of striking down the ACA. 
     With November oral arguments quickly approaching, this has 
     increased the risk

[[Page S6535]]

     that the health care law will be repealed. Given the health 
     benefits, protections against discrimination, and financial 
     security that the ACA affords women, destroying the law would 
     be immeasurably harmful to women at any time. But repealing 
     the law in the midst of a global pandemic that has infected 
     millions of Americas and killed more than 200,000 people in 
     the United States would result in even more chaos and 
     devastation.

  One of the newest groups of people with preexisting conditions who 
are worried about losing or being able to afford coverage are the COVID 
long-haulers. I would like to read this article from PEW Stateline, 
written by Michael Ollove, entitled ``COVID-19 `Long-Haulers' Worry 
About Coverage Costs.''
  It reads:

       Andrea Ceresa has been through three gastroenterologists 
     already and now is moving on to her fourth.
       She's seen an infectious disease specialist, a 
     hematologist, cardiologist, an ear, nose and throat 
     specialist, a physiatrist and an integrative doctor. She has 
     an appointment coming up with a neuropsychologist and another 
     one with a neurologist. She had an endoscopy, colonoscopy, CT 
     scan, brain MRI, and so many blood tests, she said ``I 
     feel like a human pin cushion.'' She was planning a trip 
     soon to an acupuncturist and has a referral for 
     occupational therapy.

  Ceresa, a resident of Branchburg, NJ, relayed this medical litany on 
day 164 of her COVID-19 ordeal. So far, she said, nothing much has 
helped.
  Before COVID-19, Ceresa was a healthy, active 46-year-old who managed 
a dental office by day and sang professionally by night, a woman who 
enjoyed yoga and jumped on a WaveRunner any chance she got. Now, beset 
by a multitude of unshakable symptoms, she said COVID-19 has 
transformed her into a ``shell'' of what she was. All parts of her body 
are in rebellion. She has severe, persistent diarrhea, constant nausea, 
dizziness, paralyzing fatigue, piercing headaches, numbness in her 
limbs, blurry vision, ringing in her ears, and a loss of hearing, an 
insurmountable deficit for a musician. She gets a rash on her face, 
finds light and Sun painful on her eyes--a condition known as 
photophobia--and suddenly finds herself feeling uncomfortably cold for 
no reason. On top of all that is an alarming brain fog.
  ``At some point in this conversation,'' she warned, ``I might lose my 
train of thought or forget words.''
  When this will end--if it will end--none of those doctors and 
specialists can tell her, nor can anyone else, not at the Federal 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of 
Health, the World Health Organization or any other major health 
organization. As a result, Ceresa has no idea what life holds for her.
  So-called long-haulers like Ceresa pose policy questions that have 
yet to command much public attention but daily become more pressing for 
those with lingering problems. Unable to work, will they have access to 
health insurance, especially if the Trump administration succeeds in 
overturning the Affordable Care Act. Will Medicaid be available to 
them? Will the Federal Government invest in research and treatment? 
Will they be eligible for disability benefits?
  Advocates say it is essential to begin grappling with these questions 
now as it becomes increasingly clear that for many being ill with 
COVID-19 is not a transitory experience.
  ``As time goes on and infection rates go up, the fallout is an 
extraordinary number of people who were previously healthy, working, 
and engaged in the economy will now become shadows of their former 
selves,'' said Diana Berrent, founder of Survivor Corps, a grassroots 
organization connecting those who have been infected with COVID-19. 
Berrent said it has 107,000 members.
  ``People are aging decades in the course of months,'' said Berrent, 
who is still experiencing symptoms months after her positive test. 
``People in their 20s are suffering heart attacks and strokes months 
after their moderate or even mild COVID experiences.''
  More attention needs to be paid to those with persistent, serious 
COVID-19 symptoms, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor 
and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health 
Security.

       In this pandemic so far we've thought mainly about the 
     metrics of deaths and hospitalizations, but now we must think 
     about people with long-haul symptoms. How will this affect 
     society as a whole? What happens if people don't go back to 
     their former level of activities?

  For her part, Ceresa has no idea when or if she will be able to 
return to work. She lost her employer-sponsored healthcare and recently 
got on an ObamaCare policy. But, with uncertainty hanging over the ACA, 
she wonders how long she will have it
  ``I have a plethora of preexisting conditions that I never had 
before,'' she said.
  Meanwhile, hardly a day goes by that she doesn't have some kind of 
medical appointment, including some at Mount Sinai Hospital in New 
York, which opened what Berrent said is one of only two centers in the 
United States specifically focused on those with ``long COVID-19.''
  ``I'm doing everything you can imagine to try to get better,'' Ceresa 
said. ``If someone says, `Try this,' I'll try. I'll walk on coals. The 
list of referrals I have is off the charts.''
  Exactly how many people fall into the category of long-haulers is 
uncertain, which is part of the problem, Berrent said. There is very 
little research yet on the experiences of people who suffer from 
persistent COVID-19 symptoms.
  ``Even if it's a small percentage of people with long-haul 
symptoms,'' Adalja said, ``with more than seven million people infected 
overall that's still going to be a big number.''
  The CDC in late July reported that 35 percent of symptomatic adults 
who had tested positive for COVID-19 said they had not returned to 
their usual state of health 2 to 3 weeks after their tests. Among those 
ages 18-34, 1 in 5 hadn't returned to their normal states of health. 
The survey did not include children.
  There appears to be no data yet on numbers of people experiencing 
serious symptoms over longer periods of time or detailed information 
about their circumstances, such as age, gender, medical histories, or 
course of their illnesses. Complicating the data collection is that 
many of them, even those with debilitating symptoms, were never 
hospitalized.
  Some researchers are delving into the subject, including Natalie 
Lambert, a medical researcher at Indiana University School of Medicine, 
who has partnered with Berrent's group to amass a far more extensive 
list of COVID-19-related symptoms reported by long-haulers than the 11 
symptoms CDC identifies. Lambert's survey lists 98. Respondents 
characterize more than a quarter of those symptoms as painful.
  Because so little is still known about COVID-19, Lambert said doctors 
often dismiss patient concerns that their symptoms are virus related.
  ``If a provider is updated, things move along and that patient has 
access to best care,'' said Lambert. ``But if the provider is not up to 
date or is skeptical that the symptoms are COVID-related, they might 
think that it's just a case of reflux or anxiety. In those cases, 
patients are stuck.''
  Kelly Ausiello, a 42-year-old registered nurse in Hendersonville, NV, 
has had a constellation of symptoms since April, including severe 
migraines, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and weakness. Ausiello has 
stopped going to doctors because none knew what to do for her.
  ``They keep saying they don't know how to help me,'' she said. ``They 
just say, `I don't know,' `I don't know,' `I don't know.' ''
  She had to suspend her studies to become a nurse practitioner, which 
she was on course to complete in December. She doesn't know if her 
health will allow her to ever resume.
  ``My life is changing maybe forever,'' she said.
  Long-term COVID-19 raises several policy issues. For people affected, 
none is more urgent than the threat of losing their health insurance.
  The ACA, which passed in 2010, barred health insurers from denying 
coverage to people with serious or chronic health conditions prior to 
enrollment, adding significant surcharges to their premiums, curtailing 
their benefits, or imposing extended waiting periods on them.
  Such protections would vanish if the Supreme Court invalidates the 
ACA, as the Trump administration and Republican Governors or attorney 
generals in

[[Page S6536]]

20 States are urging it to do. The Court is scheduled to hear arguments 
in the case next month, possibly with a new, decisive, Trump-nominated 
Justice on the bench.
  A 2017 Federal study found that up to 133 million Americans under age 
65 had preexisting conditions. COVID-19 could add substantial numbers 
of people to that total.
  Without the ACA's protections, people who had a positive test for 
COVID-19 could be denied coverage. More than 7.5 million cases have 
been reported in the United States. Because the virus has been linked 
to damage to the heart, lungs, and brain, a positive COVID-19 test 
could be used to argue that a patient had had a preexisting condition--
COVID-19--to refuse claims to a patient who later developed a disease 
related to one of those organs.
  But even those with negative tests could get caught in the same net, 
according to a paper published late last month by the Kaiser Family 
Foundation. The paper notes, for example, that rideshare drivers who 
get tested because they worry they have been exposed could be refused 
coverage if an insurer determines that those seeking tests have higher 
odds of infection.
  ``If ACA protections are invalidated, such people might be turned 
down, charged more, or offered a policy that temporarily or permanently 
excludes coverage for COVID-19,'' the paper said.
  Karen Pollitz, one of the authors, described insurers as ruthless 
when it came to medical underwriting in the days before the ACA.
  ``The individual health insurance market pre-ACA was a competitive 
market,'' she said. ``It did not pay for one insurer to be more 
generous than another. It was a race to the bottom.''
  Without explaining how they would do it without the ACA, President 
Donald Trump and some congressional Republicans have promised they 
would continue to protect those with preexisting conditions.
  At least 17 States have adopted laws preserving preexisting condition 
protections should the ACA be overturned, but the effectiveness of 
those laws is questionable.
  The ACA also helps stabilize health insurance premiums through 
Federal tax credits it provides to low-income policyholders. Those 
dollars would be eliminated without the ACA, probably putting health 
insurance out of reach for many Americans, particularly those facing 
high surcharges for preexisting conditions.
  Even if some States tried to preserve the protections within their 
borders, insurers could simply refuse to offer coverage to residents of 
those states.
  The elimination of the ACA also might scrap the Medicaid expansion 
that was part of the law. That alone could deprive more than 12 million 
low-income, adult Americans, some of them no doubt long-haulers, of 
health insurance coverage.
  The dearth of testing, especially early in the pandemic, could become 
a problem for long-haulers if Congress eventually creates a fund to 
help pay for COVID-19 treatment, as it eventually did for first 
responders affected by their work at Ground Zero after 9/11.
  ``People are going to need to prove they had COVID, but how do you do 
that when tests weren't available or were faulty?'' said Berrent. 
``That's going to put people in a pickle.''
  Without firm, black-and-white results, patients with lingering 
symptoms could find it impossible to make their case that their 
illnesses were coronavirus-related.
  ``There may come a period in which people are going to have to prove 
that COVID is the reason for their heart issue or lung disease and not 
just that they're getting older,'' said Nathan Boucher, an assistant 
research professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public 
Policy.
  Berrent said many of those in her group complain of doctors not 
believing them. ``People are being gaslit by doctors,'' she said. ``And 
it's more women than men. I call it a modern-day version of what they 
used to call female hysteria.''
  Joy Wu, a 37-year-old engineer in the San Francisco Bay area, has had 
firsthand experience with that medical skepticism. She contracted what 
she believes was COVID-19 after returning in March from a vacation on 
the Galapagos Islands.
  She experienced dizziness, nausea, fatigue, back pain, confusion, 
excruciating headaches, and such weakness that she has repeatedly 
fallen. Sometimes her heart races so fast, she said, ``It feels like 
it's going to explode.'' She has episodes of tingling in her limbs and 
brain fog.
  Because she didn't have the respiratory symptoms most often 
associated with COVID-19, she didn't have a diagnostic test until day 
43, too late to know if she was infected, as she thinks she was, weeks 
earlier. She tested negative.
  She said an ER doctor diagnosed her with COVID-19, although three 
medical doctors have attributed her symptoms to anxiety. But Wu said 
that both a psychiatrist and a psychologist who examined her told her 
that mental illness doesn't explain her symptoms. It was through a 
COVID-19 support Facebook group that she found others with similar 
symptoms.
  Apart from ensuring that long-haulers can get health insurance, 
Berrent believes policymakers need to ensure that COVID-19 patients 
will not be barred from receiving disability benefits. Many, such as 
Ceresa and Wu, will not return to the workforce anytime soon.
  ``Disability wasn't meant for people when they're 30 or 40, but 
that's what we are going to be facing,'' she said.
  Beyond finding a way to pay for COVID-19 treatment, Berrent said, the 
Federal Government should invest heavily in understanding the medical 
experience of long-haulers with an eye toward developing effective 
treatments. She wants to see more post-COVID-19 centers established for 
research and treatment.
  ``We need a warp speed race for a therapeutic for people suffering 
from post-COVID-19 that parallels what we're seeing for the development 
of a vaccine,'' she said.''
  The Affordable Care Act has helped millions of Americans access the 
health coverage they need, and it has worked to address racial 
disparities in health coverage. Overturning it threatens to undo that 
progress.
  I would like to read an article from the Kaiser Family Foundation by 
Samantha Artiga, entitled ``Loss of the Affordable Care Act Would Widen 
Racial Disparities in Health Coverage.''
  It reads: ``In November, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear 
arguments on a legal challenge, supported by the Trump administration, 
that seeks to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As noted in a 
previous KFF analysis, the outcome will have major effects throughout 
the health care system as the law's provisions have affected nearly all 
Americans in some way.
  One of the most significant aspects of the ACA has been its expansion 
of health coverage options through the Medicaid expansion to low-income 
adults and the creation of the health insurance marketplaces with 
subsidies to help people purchase coverage.
  This analysis shows that these new coverage options have contributed 
to large gains in coverage, particularly among people of color, helping 
to narrow longstanding racial disparities in health coverage. The loss 
of these coverage pathways, particularly the Medicaid expansion, would 
likely lead to disproportionate coverage losses among people of color, 
which would widen disparities in coverage, access to care, and health 
outcomes.
  Prior to the ACA, people of color were significantly more likely to 
be uninsured than White people. The higher uninsured rates among groups 
of color reflected limited access to affordable health coverage 
options.
  Although the majority of individuals have at least one full-time 
worker in the family across racial and ethnic groups, people of color 
are more likely to live in low-income families that do not have 
coverage offered by an employer or to have difficulty affording private 
coverage when it is available.
  While Medicaid helped fill some of this gap in private coverage for 
groups of color, before the ACA, Medicaid eligibility for parents was 
limited to those with very low incomes (often below 50% of the poverty 
level), and adults without dependent children--regardless of how poor--
were ineligible under federal rules.
  People of color experienced large coverage gains under the ACA that 
helped to narrow but did not eliminate disparities in health coverage. 
Coverage

[[Page S6537]]

rates increased for all racial/ethnic groups between 2010 and 2016, 
with the largest increases occurring after implementation of the ACA 
Medicaid and Marketplace coverage expansions in 2014. Overall, nearly 
20 million nonelderly people gained coverage over this period, 
including nearly 3 million Black people, over 5 million Hispanic 
people, and over 1 million Asian people.
  Among the nonelderly population, Hispanic individuals had the largest 
percentage point decrease in their uninsured rate, which fell from 
32.6% to 19.1% between 2010 and 2016.
  Black, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Native 
Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) people also had larger 
percentage point decreases in their uninsured rates compared to their 
White counterparts over that period. These coverage gains reduced 
percentage point differences in uninsured rates between some groups of 
color and White people, but disparities persisted.
  Most groups of color remained more likely to be uninsured compared to 
White people. Moreover, the relative risk of being uninsured compared 
to White people did not improve for some groups. For example, Black 
people remained 1.5 times more likely to be uninsured than White 
people, and the uninsured rate among Hispanic people remained over 2.5 
times higher than the rate for White people.
  Between 2016 and 2017, and continuing in 2018, coverage gains stalled 
and began reversing for some groups. Over this period there were small 
but statistically significant increases in the uninsured rates for 
White and Black people among the nonelderly population, which rose from 
7.1% to 7.5% and from 10.7% to 11.5% respectively. Among children, 
there was also a statistically significant increase in the uninsured 
rate for Hispanic children, which rose from 7.6% to 8.0% between 2016 
and 2018.
  Recent data further show that the number of uninsured continued to 
grow in 2019 despite improvements in household economic measures, and 
indicate the largest increases between 2018 and 2019 were among 
Hispanic people.
  The growth in the uninsured likely reflects a combination of factors, 
including rollback of outreach and enrollment efforts for ACA coverage, 
changes to Medicaid renewal processes, public charge policies, and 
elimination of the individual mandate penalty for health coverage.
  The ACA provides coverage options for people losing jobs amid the 
economic downturn associated with the pandemic. The economic fallout of 
the coronavirus pandemic has led to historic levels of job loss. As 
people lose jobs, many may face disruptions in their health coverage 
since most people in the U.S. get their insurance through their job.
  Early KFF estimates of the implications of job loss found that nearly 
27 million people were at risk of losing employer-sponsored health 
coverage due to job loss. Many of these people may have retained their 
coverage, at least in the short term, under furlough agreements or 
employers continuing benefits after layoffs. However, the health 
coverage options made available through the ACA have provided options 
for people losing employer-sponsored coverage who might otherwise 
become uninsured.
  Following enrollment declines in 2018 and 2019, recent data indicate 
Medicaid enrollment increased by 2.3 million or 3.2% from February 2020 
to May 2020. Additionally, as of May 2020, enrollment data reveal 
nearly 500,000 people had gained Marketplace coverage through a special 
enrollment period (SEP), in most cases due to the loss of job-based 
coverage.
  The number of people gaining Marketplace coverage through a SEP in 
April 2020 was up 139% compared to April 2019 and up 43% in May 2020 
compared to May 2019.
  People of color would likely experience the largest coverage losses 
if the ACA coverage options were eliminated. In the absence of the ACA, 
states would lose a pathway to cover adults without dependent children 
through Medicaid under federal rules. They also would lose access to 
the enhanced federal funding provided to cover expansion adults.
  As such, states would face challenges to maintain coverage for adults 
without dependent children and parents and many would likely roll back 
this coverage, eliminating a coverage option for millions of low-income 
parents and childless adults who do not have access to other affordable 
coverage.
  Moreover, without the federal subsidies, many people would not be 
able to afford private coverage. Since people of color experienced 
larger gains in coverage under the ACA compared to their White 
counterparts, they would likely also experience larger coverage losses 
if these coverage options were eliminated.
  Loss of the Medicaid expansion, in particular, would likely lead to 
disproportionate coverage losses among people of color, contributing to 
widening disparities in coverage, access to and use of care, and health 
outcomes. Overall, among the nonelderly population, roughly one in 
three Black, Hispanic, and AIAN people are covered by Medicaid compared 
to 15% of White people.
  Further, research shows that the ACA Medicaid expansion to low-income 
adults has helped to narrow racial disparities in health coverage, 
contributed to improvements in access to and use of care across groups, 
and narrowed disparities in health outcomes for Black and Hispanic 
individuals, particularly for measures of maternal health.
  In sum, the outcome of the pending legal challenge to overturn the 
ACA will have effects that extend broadly across the health care system 
and touch nearly all Americans. These effects could include widening 
racial disparities in health coverage and health care, at a time when 
there is a growing focus on prioritizing and advancing health equity 
and in the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected 
people of color in the U.S.
  Without the ACA coverage expansions, people of color would likely 
face widening gaps in health insurance coverage, which would contribute 
to greater barriers to health care and worse health outcomes and leave 
them at increased risk for medical debt and financial challenges due to 
health care costs.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, Senators have worked through the weekend 
and the clock is obviously winding down later today. Tonight after 
final confirmation vote, Judge Amy Coney Barrett is going to become 
Justice Amy Coney Barrett. For those of us who have been advocating for 
her--in my case it has been since the summer of 2017--that is welcome 
news. She is an unparalleled nominee and will be a dazzling originalist 
on the Supreme Court.
  None of the baseless allegations that have been leveled against Judge 
Barrett have swayed any votes. Democrats didn't lay a glove on Judge 
Barrett in her confirmation hearing, and I think she ran circles around 
career politicians who want to outsource more lawmaking to unelected 
judges. Some folks are upset about that, and even though many of my 
male colleagues on the Judiciary Committee also complimented the 
Judiciary Committee chairman on a very well-run hearing, tragically, 
the minority leader--it seems that he has decided to make Dianne 
Feinstein a scapegoat for the unforgiveable sin of being unwilling to 
turn more of Judge Barrett's hearing into another Michael Avenatti 
clown show. I think that is just a painful moment in this institution's 
history, and it speaks volumes about how low some people are willing to 
sink in response to outside activists who would like to see bare-
knuckle politics be the only thing that happens in the Senate.
  Judge Barrett's opponents know that they don't have the votes. They 
know they don't actually have public support. They have seen the 
polling rise steadily week after week after week over the last month as 
the American public has gotten to know Judge Barrett better and learn 
more about her. They are more and more comfortable with her and less 
and less open to some of this sort of hyperbolic rhetoric that we have 
seen leveled against her.
  This is actually my fourth consecutive hour on the floor this 
morning. I have heard a series of speeches and one of the things that 
is obvious is that there are a whole bunch of phrases that were written 
up. I don't know who wrote them up. I don't know how this process 
happens, but speech after speech after speech uses really similar

[[Page S6538]]

phrasing to try to alarm and disturb and unsettle the American people, 
and I think the cynicism is just really tragic. I have heard now, I 
think, four speeches in a row implying that when Judge Barrett becomes 
Justice Barrett later tonight, that obviously means the end of 
healthcare in America. The last speech, actually, included this phrase: 
A vote for Amy Barrett is a vote to end healthcare. The speech said: 
``A vote for Amy Coney Barrett is a vote to end healthcare.''
  That isn't just preposterous, it is so destructive of the public good 
and of public trust, and I don't want this body to continue its 
decline, but I hope that next April, May or June, when the Supreme 
Court rules and when ObamaCare doesn't die--as no expert thinks this 
case is actually going to do. There are no Court watchers who really 
believe that the Supreme Court is going to end ObamaCare this year. 
Severability is a pretty important legal concept that those of us who 
serve as public servants for a time should be helping the American 
people understand. And yet nobody on the other side of the aisle is 
talking about severability, even though everybody watching the court 
case knows that even if the opponents of ObamaCare prevail in this 
case, that severability is what everyone expects will actually happen. 
And yet we hear again and again and again this rhetoric just motivated 
by the cynical desire to get people to vote out of fear and panic in 
the November elections. Nobody really believes this stuff. So I hope 
the Democrats that are making these speeches, staying here all night to 
say again and again things like ``a vote for Amy Coney Barrett is a 
vote to end healthcare,'' please have the courage to come back next 
April, May, and June and say you lied to the American people, you were 
just trying to scare them into voting, and say what you were saying was 
BS.
  Whoever writes these outside talking points, it is really 
destructive, and the Senators know better than to parrot this pap.
  So they are out of arguments, but they are not out of sound bites, 
and one of the things that is true in American life is that with 
freedom of speech, even if your sound bite is nonsense, you have the 
right to be wrong, and you have the right to say it. So given that we 
are going to be here all day--it is all over but the shouting--it seems 
like we don't have to play the same speeches on repeat over and over 
again. We can actually do two things, and I think we should spend a 
little bit of time reviewing how we got here and a little bit of time 
talking about where we go next.
  First, we should explicitly name the Senate's most valuable player. 
As somebody who is a junior member of this body, I don't want to cross 
``Cocaine Mitch,'' the gentleman from Kentucky, but the truth of the 
matter is, the Senator most responsible for the confirmation 
proceedings we have happening on the floor today is not from Kentucky. 
The Senator most responsible for the fact that Amy Coney Barrett is 
going to be confirmed tonight, the Senator most responsible for the 
confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh is the former 
Democratic leader from Nevada, Senator Harry Reid. It was Senator Harry 
Reid who blew up the filibuster for judicial appointments in November 
of 2013, and the rest of how we got here is just a footnote on that 
history.
  Leader McConnell walked through some of this history on Friday and 
Saturday, how at every turn, from Robert Bork to Brett Kavanaugh, many 
progressives have, in an effort to try to secure policy outcomes in the 
Supreme Court, been escalating the confirmation wars. I won't repeat 
all of that history from Friday and Saturday here, but when Harry Reid 
went nuclear, he set the Senate on a path to this day.
  So here we are with more than 200 Federal judges confirmed in the 
last 4 years. Again, I have been on the floor for the last 4 hours, so 
I have heard multiple people lament the pace of judicial confirmations 
on the floor. Some people love it; some people hate it, but whether you 
got hate mail or you got love letters, your destination address should 
be Las Vegas, NV. There is simply no equivalent or comparable event in 
the confirmation escalation wars since they were created with the 
``Borking'' of Robert Bork in 1987. There is simply no comparable event 
with November of 2013 when Harry Reid decided to make this body simply 
majoritarian on confirmations.
  So where do we go next? It is no secret that some of my colleagues on 
the left are itching to blow up the legislative filibuster. It is a 
slightly better kept secret that a whole bunch of Democrats in the 
Senate think this is a really bad idea, but they are scared to death of 
the activist groups that have decided to go after Dianne Feinstein in 
the last 3 weeks as a sort of trial run to show what happens to people 
who would resist trying to turn the Senate into a simple majoritarian 
body. But I still want to at least compliment those folks in this body 
who started to talk openly about their desire to blow up the filibuster 
for the legislative process as well around here. I think it would be a 
very destructive thing to do, but I appreciate the people who are at 
least talking about it explicitly.

  I have been fighting about some of this with my friend Chris Coons. 
He is now open to blowing up the legislative filibuster, even though he 
was the leader of the Senate letter in--I think it was January of 
2017--in defense of the filibuster. The position he had then, when 
there was a new administration of a different party, is the position I 
had then, and it is still the position that I have now. And regardless 
of what party holds power around here in 2021 or 2025, I am still going 
to be defending the Senate as a supermajoritarian body that tries to 
actually have a deliberative process.
  So I think that my friend Chris is wrong about being open to blowing 
up the legislative filibuster, but I don't think he is wrong because he 
is a Democrat. I think a whole bunch of Republicans were wrong about 
this issue in January of 2017, and so I fought with them as well. I got 
lots of angry calls and texts from Republican Members of the House of 
Representatives in early 2017 for defending the legislative filibuster 
because the House and Senate are supposed to be different kinds of 
bodies. We have different purposes. So my argument to Democrats now or 
in January is the same as the argument I made to Republicans in January 
of 2017, and that is that blowing up the filibuster would be to 
functionally kill the Senate. It would dramatically change not just 
this institution but the structure of governance in our Republic. 
Because without the filibuster, the Senate becomes just another 
majoritarian body, and we already have one of those. It is called the 
House of Representatives.
  The House and the Senate are supposed to have different complementary 
functions, and if we kill the filibuster in the Senate, we will have 
simple 51-to-49 votes radically changing the direction of the country. 
We would see governance swings on a pendulum where big chunks of 
American life could be rewritten every 2 years with simple 51-to-49 or 
49-to-51 majority changes and therefore new majority votes. We would 
become more like a parliamentary European system. It is a system that 
has some virtues, but we don't have that system, and our Founders 
didn't pick that system on purpose. In the age of declining trust and 
increasing cynicism, the answer is surely not more instability. This 
would deplete, not replenish, our declining reservoirs of public trust.
  Killing the deliberative structure of the Senate would accelerate 
Congress's ongoing slow and bipartisan suicide where fewer and fewer 
decisions are made by the people's elected representatives and more and 
more decisions would be made by an unelected bureaucracy that the 
people back home whom we represent in Nebraska or New York or Rhode 
Island or Virginia--the speeches that I have been hearing this 
morning--where those folks don't have any power to hire or fire the 
people who work in the administrative state, and accountability of 
governance to the people means that we want the elected representatives 
to be making most of those decisions, not the unelectable bureaucracy. 
Even though lots of those people are well-meaning servants, they are 
simply not accountable to the public.
  Senators like Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Kyrsten Sinema would see 
diminished influence as the people of West Virginia, Montana, and 
Arizona got increasingly sidelined for even

[[Page S6539]]

more representation of New York and California.
  Some of my colleagues apparently want to finish the work that Senator 
Reid began. This would be to double-down on the division, the cynicism, 
and the partisanship, and they would pretend that that is a day that 
they would never regret. But I think it would be really useful for more 
of the folks who are thinking now of whether they are in favor of 
ending the legislative filibuster or whether they are too scared to 
stand up to the activist groups demanding they end the legislative 
filibuster, it would be useful for a lot more of them to go on the 
record with the things they say to me in private about the regrets 
about November of 2013.
  I have only been here since January of 2015, and I have had either 
seven or eight different Democrats currently serving in this body tell 
me how much they regret the vote that they took at Harry Reid's urging 
in 2013 to end the filibuster for confirmations to the judiciary.
  And I understand that a junior Republican Senator from Nebraska 
doesn't have a lot of sway in the Democratic conference, but maybe they 
would listen to the quote of a different, more influential Senator:

       [I]f the right of free and open debate is taken away from 
     the minority party and the millions of Americans who ask us 
     to be their voice, [then] I fear [that] the partisan 
     atmosphere in Washington will be poisoned to the point where 
     no one will be able to agree on anything. That does not serve 
     anybody's best interest, and it certainly is not what the 
     patriots who founded this democracy had in mind. We owe the 
     people who sent us here much [better] than that. We owe them 
     much [much] more.

  I will repeat the quote:

       [I]f the right of free and open debate is taken away from 
     the minority party and the millions of Americans who ask us 
     to be their voice, [then] I fear the partisan atmosphere in 
     Washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be 
     able to agree on anything. That does not serve anybody's . . 
     . interest, and it certainly is not what the patriots who 
     founded this democracy had in mind. We owe the people who 
     sent us here more than that. We owe them much [much] more.

  That quote was from the junior Senator from Illinois in 2005, Senator 
Barack Obama, speaking passionately to this body about why it was 
different, why it is different, and why we have a stewardship 
obligation to defend the deliberative structure of the Senate. Senator, 
then President Obama was right then; he is right now; and I fear that 
he will sadly be right in the future, if partisan tribalists decide to 
blow up the Senate and pack the Supreme Court.
  The debate over Amy Coney Barrett is over. We will be voting soon, 
but in the coming months, the debate for a critical piece of American 
governance will start. I beg my colleagues to heed Senator Obama's 
advice. Protect America's structure of three branches of government. 
You lost this vote, but please don't burn down this institution. Again, 
you lost this vote under the rules that Harry Reid created in 2013. 
Please don't burn down this institution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, good morning to you. You stand watches 
everywhere.
  We are here, in part, because of a Supreme Court nomination, but we 
are here also because of a Supreme Court process that has turned foul 
in a considerable number of ways.
  I would like to spend the time that I have with you this morning 
walking through some of the history that got us there.
  With respect to the now-standard Republican talking points that the 
only reason that we are here today in this partisan wrangle is because 
of Harry Reid, I would submit that the spectacle of procedural wreckage 
that surrounds all three of the last Supreme Court nominees completely 
belies any suggestion that Senator McConnell would have respected the 
filibuster of a Supreme Court Justice. They have broken essentially 
every rule that got in their way--it didn't matter what it was--over 
and over again. And the idea that they would break every rule but that 
one simply makes no sense.

  So I can see that it is sort of a cute and clever argument to go back 
and point out that Harry Reid broke the effort to stonewall all of 
President Obama's appointees to the DC Circuit Court, which was what 
was going on at the time, but the rest of the wreckage belies that this 
would have been protected by Leader McConnell in the mad, headlong rush 
to load up the Supreme Court with nominees who have been through this 
very, very peculiar Supreme Court process.
  To those who wonder why it is that we talk a lot about healthcare in 
the context of this nominee, look no further than the Republican Party 
platform that my colleagues supported, which says that Republican 
Presidents will appoint judges to reverse the ObamaCare cases. That is 
the language from their own party platform. So expect some skepticism 
about the sincerity of Republican expressions that they are shocked--
shocked--that we would try to tie the fate of the Affordable Care Act 
to this nominee when they have put that in their party platform.
  One of the unpleasant aspects of the process that I am about to 
describe has been that the handoff to special interests of control over 
who gets appointed to the Supreme Court means that there is an audience 
for auditioning. Over and over again, we have seen judges audition to 
that audience in order to get onto that all-important Federalist 
Society list or, in the case of Judge Kavanaugh, to get escorted by 
Leonard Leo, the operative of that operation, right around the list and 
onto its very top. Nobody auditioned like Brett Kavanaugh.
  But Judge Barrett made her own effort, and that was to make it very 
publicly clear that she disagreed with Justice Roberts, the swing vote 
who protected ObamaCare. That mattered because the outrage in the 
rightwing that their Supreme Court they thought they had claimed 
actually made one decision against their political interests--a sense 
of betrayal by Justice Roberts. That was very acute.
  It was into that environment that Judge Barrett added her unsolicited 
opinion--just threw it out there--that Roberts was wrong; that the 
dissent had it right. Obviously that allows us--in fact, requires us--
to draw the logical conclusion that when she is the swing vote, she is 
going to go with the minority. So she telegraphed how she would rule in 
this matter. She became the nominee. It was on the Republican Party 
platform that she should reverse the ObamaCare cases. How are we not 
supposed to notice this when you say this in all caps?
  So, please, let's not pretend that we are making up a connection 
between this appointment and the persistent Republican attack on our 
present healthcare system.
  The first thing you have to understand in looking at the Republican 
judicial selection process is that we are now looking at three--we are 
now looking at three nominees who have come through this process. It 
began when I was in Munich on a trip with Senator McCain and Judiciary 
Chairman Graham. He wasn't the chairman then, I don't believe. But we 
had gone to the Munich Security Conference together, and word came--in 
fact, I believe Senator Barrasso was there as well, who is now 
presiding. Word came that Justice Scalia had died on a hunting vacation 
and that there was a vacancy.
  It became quickly evident that Merrick Garland, the chief judge of 
the DC Circuit Court of Appeals--a very widely respected judge, someone 
about whom Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had 
said very good things in the past, presumably a consensus nominee--was 
likely to be the nominee of President Obama, a man who very often tried 
for consensus and very often was spurned.
  In this case, it did not take long for someone to decide that was not 
going to happen and, indeed, that no Obama nominee was going to be 
brought forward. It happened quickly but not so quickly that a few 
Members of the Senate said that they would, of course, meet with the 
nominee. That would be standard practice; of course, they would.
  In any event, my recollection is that no one did--no Republican 
Senator did. That was a very sudden pivot by an entire body of people 
to go from a normal process to something very new and abnormal. In my 
experience, when a whole lot of people all pivot together to go from 
what is normal to something that is new and abnormal, you look for a 
reason.

[[Page S6540]]

  If you see all the branches blowing in one direction on a tree, you 
may be indoors. You may not actually be able to feel the wind blowing. 
But when you see all the branches lean, you can draw the reasonable 
conclusion--in fact, you can draw perhaps the only reasonable 
conclusion--that there is a wind blowing those branches, which begs the 
question: What was the wind blowing all those branches to so 
immediately step out of the norms of the Senate--not just 1 or 2 or 10 
but as an entire caucus--and pivot to this new abnormal response to a 
Presidential nominee? To me, that is a sign. That is a sign that 
political force is being applied, that a strong wind is blowing, and 
that all the branches have to lean in the same direction.
  On we went through that process with very, very strong statements 
being made by judges about this newly found principle that, during an 
election year, you don't confirm Supreme Court Justices. They invented 
that new principle--highly convenient to that moment, but they 
described it as a principle.
  Here is Senator Daines in 2016: ``I don't think it's right to bring a 
nominee forward in an election year.'' He put it in about the strongest 
moral terms that one could use. He used terms of principle. He used the 
distinction between right and wrong. ``I don't think it's right to 
bring a nominee forward in an election year.'' Why? So that the 
people's voice--the people who have already begun voting had their 
voice reflected.

  So that was probably--I don't know--maybe 8 months before the 
election. Here we are closer to 8 days before the election, and we are 
going through this process, and there has been this extraordinarily 
abrupt reversal of that supposed principle from 2016. ``I don't think 
it's right.'' If it is not right, why are we doing it right now? 
Suddenly, it is right in 2020.
  Senator Daines wasn't alone. Mitch McConnell was the Senate floor 
orchestrator of all of this. He said: ``Of course, of course, the 
American people should have a say in the court's direction.'' That is 
why we can't take up Judge Garland now--because the American people 
should have their say months before the election. Here we are days 
before the election--flips-o, change-o. What could that mean?
  Senator Grassley: ``The American people shouldn't be denied a 
voice.'' That was then; this is now.
  Lindsey Graham: ``Hold the tape.'' ``Hold my words against me,'' the 
chairman said. If an opening--here was his rule: ``If an opening comes 
in the last year of President Trump's term, we'll wait till the next 
election.'' Could you get clearer than that? ``If an opening comes in 
the last year of President Trump's term, we'll wait till the next 
election.'' ``Hold the tape.''
  Ted Cruz: ``You don't do this in an election year.''
  So what does it signal when people take a stand assertively on 
principle that it wouldn't be right--Steve Daines; that ``you don't do 
this''--Ted Cruz; that ``of course, of course, the American people 
should have their say''--Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley--what does 
it say when people take a stand on principle on one occasion and then 
on the very next occasion, in the very next election, at the first 
opportunity, they completely reverse themselves on their supposed 
principle?
  Well, one possibility is that there has been a minipandemic in the 
Senate of hypocrisy; that somehow there is a little germ here, and 
somebody brought hypocrisy into the Republican caucus, and everybody 
caught it, and they feel an unhealthy desire to go out and violate 
principles that they espoused on the previous occasion. That doesn't 
seem very credible to me.
  What seems more credible is that something is blowing in the 
branches; that there is a force--a political force--at work that causes 
Republican Senators to take a firm stand on principle, albeit a novel 
one, a peculiar one, an unprecedented one, but in their words, a firm 
stand on principle in the 2016 election, and exactly in the very next 
case, in the 2020 election, completely reverse that supposed principle. 
My experience in politics is that when you see people forced to engage 
in hypocrisy in broad daylight, look for power in the shadows.
  So we began with the Garland-Gorsuch switcheroo based on this ``you 
don't do this in an election year'' principle. Then we went on to Judge 
Kavanaugh, and the narrative has developed on the Republican side that 
Judge Kavanaugh was treated very unfairly, as if no witness came 
forward to testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had been 
assaulted by a young Brett Kavanaugh. I don't know what we were 
supposed to do with that information. Were we supposed to tell the good 
professor: Go away. We don't want to hear from you. Sorry, it is a 
little late. The chance that a person headed for the Supreme Court 
might have committed sexual assault is something we don't take at all 
seriously. We don't want to get to the bottom of it. We don't want to 
know.
  This was a woman who was willing to come and testify in front of all 
of America, subject herself to the hostile questioning of a 
professional prosecutor hired by the Republicans just for that 
occasion. She stuck to her guns and, in my view, was credible. To this 
day, I still believe her. The nature of her testimony was very 
consistent with the testimony of sexual assault victims who have been 
through that kind of an ordeal.
  Do I know what happened? No. But she was a credible witness. She was 
willing to come into the Senate Judiciary Committee and claim that 
Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her. Of course, we had to hear from her. 
Republicans want to blame Democrats for that, but seriously, would you 
not have let her testify? Really? That does not seem very credible.
  So she came. She testified. She was credible. Despite the rightwing 
having launched their flying monkeys at her in such vehemence, she had 
to leave her house, hire private security, go into hiding, she 
nevertheless came; she nevertheless was credible.
  All we asked for was an investigation to find out what had happened, 
to do our best to get to the bottom of it. It was going to be difficult 
because it happened years ago, but it would seem to me that we owed 
this institution and the Supreme Court our best effort. Did we get a 
best effort? No, we got a slipshod, truncated decision that, to this 
day, the FBI refuses to answer questions about. Why? Why not give Dr. 
Blasey Ford, why not give the American people, why not give the Supreme 
Court a best effort from the FBI to get to the bottom of whatever 
happened?

  There is every indication that the tip line the FBI set up was never 
reviewed and followed up on. I have been a prosecutor. I have run the 
attorney general's office in Rhode Island, which is the lead 
prosecutorial office for the State. I have been the U.S. attorney for 
Rhode Island, running Federal prosecutions. The whole purpose of a tip 
line is to bring in evidence from the public and sort through it 
because every tip line has bonkers evidence in it. But you sort through 
the chaff to see if there is any wheat there, if there is anything that 
needs to be looked into.
  It does not appear that the FBI looked into anything that came in 
through the tip line. It looks like the tip line--if you could imagine 
the comments box, it looks like they attached the comments box directly 
to the dumpster so that the tips went straight into the waste bin. I 
know of no ``tip'' that got followed up on.
  Once again, why? Why would the FBI allow itself to be associated with 
a truncated, incomplete investigation? Well, they said why. They said 
it was because they are not operating like an FBI when they do this. 
They are operating as an agent of the White House. They are operating 
at the White House's bidding when they are doing these confirmation 
investigations. They don't behave like the FBI then and follow their 
procedures. They do as they are told. That is a pretty strong clue and, 
once again, a signal of powerful political forces at work to try to 
cram nominees, even very troubled ones, onto the Supreme Court.
  Then we come to Judge Barrett, who had to be the subject of this 
massive flips-o, change-o of what was right for our traditional 
nominees in an election year and enumerable minor broken rules along 
the way.
  As I said, in all three of these recent nominations, there is a trail 
of procedural wreckage through the Senate. I don't think my colleagues 
hate Senate procedure. I don't think they get a form of malicious glee 
out of smashing

[[Page S6541]]

Senate procedure. When you see a lot of procedural wreckage in the 
Senate, look for a motive. Look for a force. Look for a force.
  Three for three, we have seen powerful signals of a motive force at 
work. Sure enough, when you look at the process itself, you see some 
real peculiarities.
  First of all, when these judges got selected, they had something in 
common. They all went through a process hosted at the Federalist 
Society and run by a person named Leonard Leo. The Wall Street Journal 
editorial page editor described this relationship as a subcontractor. 
The judicial selection got subcontracted out to this private 
organization and its operative--subcontracted out. The White House 
counsel said this organization was insourced to the White House. 
Leonard Leo was put on temporary leave from the Federalist Society--
like that is a big deal--to supervise the process.
  Can we just stop for a minute and accept that it is weird that any 
private organization would be made the subcontractor for the selection 
of Supreme Court Justices? I don't care if it is the Girl Scouts of 
America. It is weird and it is wrong that a private organization should 
be the subcontractor for selecting judges.
  And it gets weirder and wronger when you see the big anonymous money 
pouring into that organization. The Washington Post took a pretty good, 
thorough look into this scheme, and they said that the whole scheme was 
$250 million worth of dark money--$250 million. They described it as 
``a conservative activist's behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the 
Nation's courts.'' On whose behalf, one wonders. But you don't know 
because of the $250 million, most of it is anonymous money, what we 
call around here ``dark money.''
  You have the last three nominees selected by a private organization, 
secretively, which is also taking huge donations from anonymous donors. 
The whole scheme runs up to $250 million, according to the Washington 
Post. That is a pretty big deal. If you can't see that that is a recipe 
for corruption, you are wearing blinders, because the idea that a 
private organization becomes designated to pick who is on the Supreme 
Court and then takes big anonymous donations is a prescription for 
disaster.
  But it does produce nominees. At the end, you get your selection--
one, two, three. Then, those nominees get TV campaigns run for them. 
There is a big PR effort, a political effort, and that is run by 
something called the Judicial Crisis Network, which has as its 
operative Carrie Severino. Judicial Crisis Network gets boatloads of 
anonymous money also. You have the same problem--a private 
organization, a secret organization that takes boatloads of anonymous 
money having a central role in campaigning for these nominees. That is 
also abnormal. This is new, this is peculiar, and this is wrong, in my 
view.
  By the way, when that Washington Post article came out, Leonard Leo 
got blown like an agent in a covert operation. And to protect the 
Federalist Society, he had to jump out, go do something else. So he 
went out to go do dark money-funded voter suppression. Guess who jumped 
into his role for Judge Barrett? Well, well, well, none other than Ms. 
Severino.
  The Judicial Crisis Network offices are next to the Federal Society's 
offices--same building, same floor.
  How big is the money? Well, here is a little filing from the Judicial 
Crisis Network. This is from IRS Form 990. Look at this, a contribution 
for $17.9 million--$17.9 million. Do we know who gave them $17.9 
million to put on TV ads for a judicial nominee who had been selected 
by the dark money group behind the Federalist Society? We do not. We do 
not. But somebody wrote a $17 million check to support a PR campaign 
for a Supreme Court nominee. How do we know they didn't have business 
before the Supreme Court? How do we know that when they are anonymous?

  By the way, they did it again. Somebody gave $17 million to push off 
Garland and help Gorsuch. And then another 17-plus million dollars came 
in for the troubled Kavanaugh nomination. Do we know that it is not the 
same donor? No, we don't. It could be the same donor, in which case 
somebody gave $35 million anonymously to influence the makeup of our 
U.S. Supreme Court.
  And they may have business before the Court. There is a case called 
the Caperton case in which the Supreme Court said you had a due process 
right not to have Judges who had big money spent on their behalf to get 
the office rule in your case. This looks like a Caperton problem--$35 
million spent by conceivably one donor who may very well have business 
before the Court.
  Why would you do this? Why would you do this? Why would you ever 
allow judicial nominees to be selected this way, funded by dark money, 
anonymously, controlled by private, secretive organizations? Why would 
you do that? Why is that acceptable at all? I submit that were the shoe 
on the other foot, the other side would have its hair on fire about 
such a performance.
  The fact that this seems OK is yet another indication of the branches 
blowing in the wind here because it is not OK by any objective or 
reasonable standard. The only thing that makes this OK is if that 
political force makes this OK in the same way they made it OK to 
reverse the 2016 principle on the very next occasion in 2020.
  When you see hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the 
shadows.
  It doesn't end once their judges are selected and once the judges 
have their campaigns paid for by $17-million check writers. When they 
are on the Court, guess who shows up in orchestrated choruses. Groups 
funded by dark money. In some cases, they are the litigating lawyer 
group. In some cases, they come on afterward as what are called friends 
of the court, amici curiae--friends of the court.
  We had one case that I looked at about the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau, where it turned out that a whole bunch of amici 
curiae showed up--friends of the court, a whole bunch of them. So I did 
this graphic in the brief that I filed. It showed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
8, 9, 10, 11 briefs filed in that case by nominally separate groups, 
all funded by the same organization, Donors Trust, 8 out of 11 funded 
by the Bradley Foundation, and more overlapping donors throughout. This 
was just my work.
  The Center for Media and Democracy went back and did an even more 
thorough drill down and came to even more astonishing conclusions about 
the overlap between the funding of these groups showing up in these 
orchestrated choruses.
  By the way, they don't tell the Court that they are all funded by the 
same groups. They don't tell the other parties that they are all funded 
by the same groups. There is actually a disclosure in the briefing rule 
that says you are supposed to disclose who paid for your briefing. They 
use that to mean who paid for the printing of the brief.
  So you can take a million-dollar contribution from somebody or, who 
knows, a $17-million contribution from somebody, and then pay a couple 
of thousand bucks yourself to have the brief published and disclose 
nothing to the Court, nothing to the parties about who is really behind 
these phony-baloney, trumped-up, front-group friends of the court. But 
they do provide an educating chorus for the judges and tell them how to 
rule.
  By the way, the Center for Media and Democracy showed that not only 
is the funding going to these groups, but the same funding is going 
over there to the Federalist Society to support this judicial selection 
operation. And from Judicial Crisis Network, you have the 
interchangeable Leonard Leo and Carrie Severino. This looks like a 
single scheme--a single scheme through which a small group of very 
secretive, big money donors, donors capable of writing a $17-million 
check to help influence who is on the Supreme Court, get together and 
control the selection of Supreme Court Justices, fund the PR campaigns 
and the TV advertisements for those Supreme Court Justices, and then 
show up through front groups to pitch the Justices on what they want 
from them.
  That is about as unhealthy a situation for a Court as one could have. 
Again, we are like the frog--the alleged frog in the pot. It has gotten 
worse and worse. It has stunk more and more, but it happened kind of 
gradually and we, for some reason, acted as if this is somehow normal. 
There is nothing normal about this.

[[Page S6542]]

  As a lawyer, I spent a good deal of my life in appellate courts. I 
have argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. I have argued in several circuit 
courts of appeals. I argued over and over before our State supreme 
court. To the extent I had a specialty, it was appellate law. As the 
Governor's legal counsel in Rhode Island, I was involved in picking 
judges for the State courts on the Judiciary Committee. I have been 
involved in picking judges for the Federal courts.
  Folks, this is weird. This is not right. Nobody behaves this way. 
Nobody farms out the selection of judges to private interest groups 
that don't disclose their donors and take up to $250 million into the 
scheme, which is according to the Washington Post. It is weird enough 
that people feel the need to run TV ads for judicial nominees, but when 
they are taking a check for $17 million or two checks for $17 million 
from an anonymous donor or, maybe, two anonymous donors, if you think 
that is weird, it is because it is. That shouldn't happen anywhere 
around a court.
  There are a lot of high-minded speeches about the importance of the 
judiciary and its independence and all of that. The most important 
standard that a court must meet is that it is not a pantomime court, a 
pantomime court in which the rituals of adjudication get acted out. 
People come to the bench, wearing their robes. They hear the arguments, 
render decisions, read the briefs, but at the end of the day, the 
decision is cooked by big special interest influence that has 
insinuated its way into the Court by controlling the selection of 
judges, by funding the PR campaigns for those judges, and by being the 
orchestrating force behind the amicus curiae.
  You might think that I am being a little aggressive in suggesting 
that they are orchestrated. Well, do you remember this group, the 
Bradley Foundation, that I showed you from my Supreme Court checklist 
that funded 8 out of the 11 groups in that case? Here is a memo of a 
grant it is giving to something called the Judicial Education Project, 
which is a sister organization to that same Judicial Crisis Network. 
This is a little bit of a pea in a shell game, so forgive me, but they 
are directly related groups. The staff recommendation says that, at 
this highest of legal levels, it is a request for funding for amicus 
curiae in a case--in several cases--at the Supreme Court. It is very 
important to orchestrate high-caliber amicus efforts--orchestrate.
  For Pete's sake, the secret funders themselves use the word 
``orchestrate.'' So something is up. Something is not right. Something 
is rotten in Denmark. If the American people are good enough to entrust 
us with the ability to answer their questions about this mess, we will 
answer their questions about this mess. I will tell you that I cannot 
get my questions answered, not without gavels, not in this Senate, not 
in these committees. Yet I think it matters if an individual wrote $35 
million worth of checks to influence the makeup of our U.S. Supreme 
Court to know whether they have business before the Court, to know who 
they were, and to be able to even do the Caperton analysis of whether 
somebody's due process rights have been infringed by influence.
  So, in some respects, this is the end of things. This is the third of 
three nominees who have all had the same characteristics. They have 
been selected through this scheme. They have been campaigned for 
through this scheme. They have generated bizarre procedural behavior in 
this Senate--all three, three for three. It is like the triple 
trifecta--three judges, three characteristics: selected, campaigned 
for, bizarre procedural anomalies.
  When you see that kind of behavior, that means there are a lot of 
branches leaning the same way, and if that doesn't mean the wind is 
blowing, then give me a better explanation. I think there is a foul 
wind blowing, and we need to find out who is behind it, and we need to 
find out what it means for our treasured Supreme Court.
  I will close by saying that the results are already coming in. Even 
before Judge Barrett gets to the Court, the results have already been 
coming in from this effort.
  I did an article some time ago that we had pretty thoroughly fact-
checked, red-teamed, and reviewed that at the time said there were 72 
decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Roberts, that 
had the following characteristics: One, they were 5-to-4 decisions--the 
narrowest, barest majority. Ordinarily, a Supreme Court likes to see 
bigger majorities than that because it is conducive to the integrity 
and strength and credibility of the Court. There were 72 5-to-4 
decisions.
  They had an additional characteristic in that they were not just 5 to 
4 but a partisan 5 to 4. No Democratic appointee joined the 5. So, 
again, if you are an institutionalist, you look at that, and you think, 
hmm, maybe that is not the Court putting its best foot forward. That is 
an awful lot of partisan 5-to-4 decisions.
  Then the third characteristic is that you can identify quite readily 
in those cases a big Republican donor's interest--something that one 
would want by way of an outcome. What we calculated at the time in that 
article is that the score in those 72 5-to-4 partisan decisions with a 
big Republican donor's interest implicated was 72 to 0--some pitching 
balls and calling balls and strikes. It was 72 to 0. That is a route, 
and we have been tracking it since then. I put the number now to 80 to 
0 because the article was written some time ago. So now we are at 80 
partisan 5-to-4 cases in which a big Republican donor's interest was 
implicated and in which, by 80 to 0, the Big Interests won.
  Now, some of these are pretty flagrant. I think Citizens United is 
going to go down in history as a disgraceful decision of the U.S. 
Supreme Court, sort of the political equivalent of Lochner.
  Shelby County, in which the Court made up facts in order to strip a 
section out of the Voting Rights Act, in turn, unleashed voter 
suppression laws across the States that had been held back by the 
preclearance provisions that the Court summarily decided 5 to 4 that it 
didn't like any longer.
  Janus, which is the case that took down a 40-year-old precedent 
involving labor law in which legal groups had an astonishing role, 
actually went through four cases along the way. It is a long saga, and 
I won't burden this speech with that now. At the end of the day, the 
lawyers for the labor movement, while walking up to the Supreme Court 
for argument that day, knew perfectly well how the Court was going to 
rule. That is not how courts should operate
  Heller, the gun case, was 5 to 4. A former Supreme Court Justice had 
described the theory that Heller had adopted as a fraud on the public, 
but Heller turned a fraud on the public into the law of the land. Guess 
what--the NRA is very active as a donor in these fights. The NRA was 
all over the Kavanaugh nomination in particular.
  So you had these flagrant decisions, and I just mentioned those 4, 
but there are 80. That leaves 76 others. They are usually--often, I 
should say--about power. They are often about moving power into 
corporations, expanding corporate power, allowing unlimited money into 
elections--allowing dark, anonymous, unlimited money to operate in 
elections.
  Who benefits from that? Entities with unlimited money and a motive to 
spend it like, say, the fossil fuel industry.
  As for intervening in elections and allowing bulk gerrymandering to 
proceed, multiple courts have figured out how to stop that nefarious 
practice. It is, actually, not complicated when you are dealing with 
bulk gerrymandering and how to stop it and, over and over again, the 
bulk gerrymandering efforts to take an entire delegation and try to 
cook it so that it doesn't represent the popular vote in that State.
  Over and over again, courts have seen through that. They figured out 
how to respond to it until it got to the Supreme Court. Then, with 5 to 
4, sorry, folks, we are not going to take an interest in that. Keep at 
it. Voter suppression will tear down the preclearance provisions of the 
Voting Rights Act. All of this election mischief that leans heavily to 
supporting the Republican side has been supported.
  With deregulation, if you are a big polluter and if you are a big 
donor, you probably don't like regulatory agencies. You probably would 
like to have some more freedom from regulatory agencies. Over and over 
again, these decisions try to hurt the independence

[[Page S6543]]

and strength of regulatory agencies--over and over.
  Then the last is the civil jury. My God, the civil jury is in the 
Constitution, for Pete's sake. We fought so hard over the civil jury 
that people didn't want to adopt the Constitution until there was a 
Seventh Amendment that protected it in the Bill of Rights. Protecting 
the civil jury was in the Declaration of Independence. Interference of 
the civil jury by the Crown was a cause of war in the Revolutionary 
Era.
  The civil jury is an institution of governance in this country. It is 
a big deal. Yet these supposed originalists on the Court keep tearing 
down, whittling away, diminishing, and degrading the civil jury 
because--guess what--if you are a big, powerful, well-funded lobbyist, 
greased corporation, or interest group, you can march around this place 
like a King, throwing your money around, getting everybody to bow and 
scrape for you, with lobbyists smoothing the path for you. You can 
wander into the executive branch if you have the right control and get 
your stooges appointed to the regulatory agencies. You can be powerful. 
You can get your way.
  Then you have to suffer the indignity of showing up in a courtroom 
where you have to be treated equally before the law, where what you say 
has to be put to the test of perjury, where you have to turn over your 
real documents and not phonied-up position papers, where, if you tamper 
with the jury, it is a crime.
  No wonder big special interests don't like civil juries, and no 
wonder this Court, 5 to 4, over and over again, chops away at the 
institution of the civil jury, but don't tell me that you are being an 
institutionalist or an originalist when you are attacking an 
institution in the Constitution--in the Seventh Amendment, the Bill of 
Rights. That is the work that these 80 5-to-4 partisan decisions have 
been doing. It has been to turn this Court, more and more, into the 
servant of big corporations. Guess what. Americans are paying 
attention.
  There was a poll a little while ago that asked whether the Supreme 
Court favors corporations more than people or people more than 
corporations. The poll showed, 49 to 7, that 7 times as many Americans 
think the Supreme Court views corporations more favorably than people 
than say the Court views people more favorably than corporations. So 
something is out. Something is up. A foul wind is blowing. There is way 
too much anonymous money in and around this Court process.
  It is, by the way, at the same time, the only Court that does not 
have a code of ethics in the Federal system. When Judge Barrett is 
elevated from her circuit court to the Supreme Court, she will go from 
a court that has a judicial code of conduct to a Court that does not. 
She will go from a court that requires the transparent disclosure of 
gifts, travel, and hospitality to a Court that requires less disclosure 
not only than circuit courts but less disclosure than Cabinet officials 
and less disclosure than Members of Congress. The highest Court has the 
lowest standards for ethics and transparency.
  So, to all of my colleagues who have given speeches about the 
integrity and value of the Supreme Court and our judicial branch, I 
hope you will help us as we try to look at what on Earth is exactly 
going on over there--why amici curiae show up in Court without 
disclosing who they are really there for; why $17-plus million checks 
are being written by anonymous individuals, what the relationship is 
between the $250 million that poured into Leonard Leo's effort and who 
got chosen, and what the expectations were of the people who spent $250 
million to influence the makeup of the Supreme Court; and why the 
highest Court has the lowest standards for ethics and for transparency.
  We are not in a good place right now with this Court. The things that 
are happening are truly bizarre, unprecedented. It is bad enough that 
there should be dark money in elections--but dark money in judicial 
selections? Please defend that if you think that is right. If you think 
that big special interests should be able to write big, anonymous 
checks and, thereby, gain a voice in the composition of the U.S. 
Supreme Court, please come and defend that proposition, because I don't 
think you can.
  It has never been the case in the Supreme Court before. It has never 
been the case in the circuit courts of appeal before. It has never been 
the case in State supreme courts, in my experience.
  The dark-money influence in and around the Court is unprecedented, 
and it is wrong, and the American people are entitled to the truth 
about it.
  I see I have gone into my next speaker's time a bit. So I will yield 
the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, last Tuesday, in my home State of 
Wisconsin, in-person early voting started. Over the past week, people 
have showed up to vote in record numbers, as they have across our 
entire country, because they want to make sure their voices are heard. 
Why? Because they know how high the stakes are for them in this 
election, an election that will determine our next President and 
control of the U.S. Senate, an election that is just 1 week away.
  My position on President Trump's Supreme Court nomination has been 
very clear since the tragic passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 
Voters across America should be allowed to cast their ballots first and 
have their votes counted before this Senate votes on a lifetime 
appointment to our Nation's highest Court. The people should be heard 
first, but it is clear that the majority leader and a majority of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no interest in listening 
to the people. That is why they are rushing and ramming President 
Trump's Supreme Court nomination forward just days before the election.
  This rigged and illegitimate process is wrong, and it follows a 
pattern of the majority leader and Senate Republicans abusing their 
power to break their own standards on Supreme Court nominations.
  Back in 2016, 8 months before the election, President Obama nominated 
Merrick Garland to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court after the passing 
of Justice Antonin Scalia. Judge Garland is a highly experienced and 
qualified judge, and I have no doubt that had he been given the 
opportunity, he would have earned more than 60 votes in the U.S. 
Senate. But he was never given that opportunity because the majority 
leader decided to deny Judge Garland a hearing and a vote in the 
Senate.
  With the standards broken on the Garland nomination, the majority 
leader established a new one: no Supreme Court nominations by the 
Senate during an election year. Here we are in an election year. 
However, Majority Leader McConnell has broken his own rule and created 
yet another new one. Instead of applying the same standard that he 
imposed on President Obama with the Garland nomination in March of 
2016, 8 months before an election, he created a new standard now for 
President Trump with his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett made 39 
days before an election. The majority leader is rushing President 
Trump's nominee forward, with a Senate vote as people are voting, as we 
stand 1 week--1 week--before election day.
  What is the rush? My home State is a national red zone for COVID-19. 
We are experiencing our worst outbreak of infections since the pandemic 
began, breaking records for new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. 
Right now, people want action, support, and relief from Washington.
  The House passed the Heroes Act over 5 months ago. Was there a rush 
for the Senate majority to take action to confront the public health 
and economic crisis that has only gotten worse since then? No, this 
legislation has been sitting on the majority leader's desk since May, 
while businesses have closed, millions have lost their jobs, and 
hundreds of thousands of Americans have died.
  At the beginning of this month, the House, once again, passed an 
updated version of the Heroes Act to provide local communities and 
frontline healthcare workers with the support they need to stop the 
spread of this

[[Page S6544]]

deadly virus. This legislation provides support to workers, families, 
schools, local governments, and small businesses.
  Was there a rush from the Senate majority to take action? No, 
instead, the majority leader told the White House not to support this 
legislation because it would divide the other side of the aisle and 
they needed to focus on pushing this Supreme Court nomination forward 
before the election.
  What is the hurry? My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have 
been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act and take away people's 
healthcare since I came to the Senate back in 2013. I remember that 
vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act well. It was 2017, right here on 
the Senate floor. As President Trump and Senate Republicans sought to 
repeal the Affordable Care Act, Senator John McCain did something we 
are not seeing from the majority now with this illegitimate Supreme 
Court nomination process. Senator McCain stood by his principles and 
gave a thumbs-down to repealing our Nation's healthcare law.
  President Trump's response has been to try to do what the American 
people will not let this Senate do. In 2015, President Trump made clear 
his intentions with Supreme Court nominations when he said: ``If I win 
the Presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, 
unlike Bush's appointee John Roberts, on ObamaCare.''
  In May of this year he said: ``We want to terminate healthcare under 
ObamaCare.''
  The day after he announced his nomination of Judge Barrett, he 
tweeted that the Supreme Court invalidating the Affordable Care Act 
would be ``a big WIN for the USA!''
  Just last week, he said he would like to ``terminate'' the Affordable 
Care Act and ``we have a very good chance of doing it.''
  He is right, but that is the problem. President Trump, with his 
Department of Justice, has supported a Republican lawsuit to overturn 
the Affordable Care Act completely. On November 10, 1 week after the 
election, the Trump-backed lawsuit will come before the U.S. Supreme 
Court. Judge Barrett has a record of criticizing and opposing the 
previous Supreme Court decisions that have upheld the Affordable Care 
Act. It is clear as day that the majority leader and Senate Republicans 
are driving a vote on the President's Supreme Court nomination in order 
to do what Trump wants--overturn the Affordable Care Act completely, 
terminate people's healthcare, and take away protections for people 
with preexisting health conditions.
  Here is what is at stake if Judge Barrett does what Trump and Senate 
Republicans have been trying to do for years. Over 186,000 
Wisconsinites have been infected with COVID-19, which could now be 
considered a preexisting health condition. These people need the 
guaranteed protections that our Affordable Care Act provides, and they 
cannot afford to have the Supreme Court terminate their healthcare. If 
the Affordable Care Act is overturned, over 133 million Americans with 
preexisting health conditions could stand to lose their guaranteed 
protections or be charged more, including more than 2 million 
Wisconsinites who have preexisting health conditions.

  This issue is personal to me, as it is for so many others. When I was 
9 years old, I got sick--really sick. I was in the hospital for 3 
months. I eventually recovered. But when it came to health insurance, 
it was like I had a scarlet letter. My grandparents, who had raised me, 
couldn't find a policy that would cover me, not from any insurer and 
not at any price, all because I was a child who had been labeled with 
those terrifying words--``preexisting health condition.''
  This is also personal for Chelsey from Seymour, WI, whose daughter 
Zoe was born with a congenital heart defect. Right now, thanks to the 
Affordable Care Act, Zoe is guaranteed access to coverage without being 
denied or charged more. Chelsey wrote to me: ``I'm pleading with you as 
a mother to fight for the kids in Wisconsin with pre-existing [health] 
conditions that are counting on you to protect that right.''
  Her fight is my fight today. No parent or grandparent should have to 
lay awake at night wondering if the healthcare they have today for 
themselves and their children and grandchildren will be there tomorrow. 
The fact is, more children have become uninsured in every year of the 
Trump administration, and striking down the Affordable Care Act would 
be the final, devastating blow to children's healthcare.
  If President Trump succeeds with his lawsuit and gets a ruling from 
the person he is putting on the Supreme Court, Judge Barrett, an 
estimated 800,000 children would lose healthcare insurance.
  When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act over a decade ago, I led 
the effort in the House to include a provision that now allows young 
people to remain on their parents' health insurance until they turn 26. 
In Wisconsin, that means over 40,000 young adults in their twenties who 
have been infected with COVID-19. Many of these young people are likely 
already on their parents' health insurance plan or are receiving 
premium tax credits provided by the Affordable Care Act to lower costs 
and make healthcare more affordable.
  Recently, I heard the story of Amy from Neenah, WI. Her daughter is a 
nursing student at Marquette University in Milwaukee. She is on her 
mother's insurance plan, and they are worried that if the Senate shoves 
this nomination forward and Judge Barrett does what President Trump 
says she will do, this young nursing student and future frontline 
healthcare worker will be kicked off her mother's insurance and lose 
access to her healthcare.
  Kirsten from Green Bay, WI, told me her story of being diagnosed with 
a very serious heart defect when she was just 11 days old. By the time 
she was 13 years old, she had undergone 17 angioplasties. Before the 
Affordable Care Act was passed, she struggled to keep insurance 
coverage, and she doesn't want to go back to the days when insurance 
companies wrote their own rules and could choose to deny people 
coverage, charge people more, or set annual or lifetime limits on 
people's healthcare.
  Kirsten, who is now 24 years old, said:

       Amy Coney Barrett has made it clear that she opposes the 
     [Affordable Care Act]. With this nomination, the Republican 
     Party is actively saying that our lives do not matter. If a 
     decision is made on the Supreme Court nominee before the 
     election, the American people are taken out of the selection.

  The message I have heard from Wisconsin has been clear. People want 
to be able to vote before the Senate votes. People want their voices to 
be heard. People want their healthcare protected, and they certainly 
don't want it taken away by President Trump or his nominee to the 
Supreme Court during a deadly pandemic that has taken over 1,700 lives 
in my home State of Wisconsin and over 221,000 American lives.
  I would remind my friends on the other side of the aisle that for the 
women I have spoken about today, as well as all American women, if the 
Affordable Care Act is terminated, insurance companies could once again 
charge women more than men, and insurance companies could stop covering 
basic services, like maternity care, cancer screenings, and 
contraception. The threat this nominee poses to women's health cannot 
be overstated.
  The threat isn't limited to the Affordable Care Act; it extends 
beyond that. President Trump took office with a promise to nominate 
Justices and judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He has nominated 
Judge Barrett, and her judicial record reveals a firm disagreement with 
the Supreme Court's five decades of established constitutional 
protections for women's reproductive rights.
  Let's all be honest with the American people. Since day one of this 
administration, a woman's constitutional right and freedom to make her 
own healthcare choices, including access to birth control, has been 
under assault. We know what Amy Coney Barrett's personal views are, and 
I know that some of you support her for them. But let's be clear. I 
don't oppose her because of her personal views. What I do oppose is the 
phony game that is being played where the people pushing this 
nomination forward pretend that this nominee is simply a blank slate 
and will consider nothing more than words on a page in her Court 
decisions concerning women's reproductive health.
  Right now, in States across the country, Roe v. Wade is under attack, 
and

[[Page S6545]]

millions of women are at risk of losing the freedom to make their own 
healthcare decisions without interference from politicians playing 
doctor. Dozens of abortion rights cases are headed toward the Supreme 
Court as we speak. The stakes could not be higher for women's health 
than they are right now with this nomination
  We all know what Judge Barrett's judicial record is, and her public 
advocacy is clear. This is a nominee who has been fundamentally hostile 
towards reproductive health and rights. That is what is relevant here 
because our Supreme Court plays an essential role in protecting and 
upholding civil rights and civil liberties, including the 
constitutional right for all women to make their own personal 
healthcare decisions and to have access to safe and legal reproductive 
care.
  The least this nominee's Senate supporters could do is be honest with 
the American people. We all know that, if given the opportunity, a 
Justice Barrett would overturn Roe v. Wade. Don't pretend you don't 
know how she will come down on this issue. You should at least have the 
courage of your convictions and say to the people who are voting right 
now in this election that you support Amy Coney Barrett's nomination 
because you support overturning Roe v. Wade, too, and you know she will 
help do it.
  Just as I don't trust this nominee to protect people's healthcare or 
women's reproductive rights, I have no faith in Judge Barrett to 
respect the progress that the LGBTQ community has worked so hard to 
achieve.
  Unlike President Trump's nominee, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a 
strong belief in equality for all, which was reflected in her life's 
work and in her judicial record on LGBTQ rights issues. In June, we 
again saw real progress in the Supreme Court with a landmark victory 
for justice and equality when the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that 
workplace discrimination against LGBTQ people is wrong and our Nation's 
civil rights laws forbid it.
  But we have a lot more work to do. LGBTQ people in many States can 
still be evicted from their homes or denied services simply because of 
who they are or whom they love. The House passed the bipartisan 
Equality Act to end this kind of discrimination well over a year ago, 
but that, too, has been in the majority leader's legislative graveyard 
and has not even received a vote in the Senate because he is afraid it 
just might pass.
  Here we are today moving forward on a Supreme Court nominee who I 
believe is a real threat to LGBTQ rights--again, not because of her 
personal preference to oppose marriage equality; rather, because she 
has openly and publicly defended the dissenters in the Supreme Court's 
landmark Obergefell case by questioning the Court's role in even 
deciding that case.
  Earlier this month, two of the dissenters in that case whom Judge 
Barrett defended previously--Justices Thomas and Alito--came out and 
attacked the Court's 2015 decision, which declared that same-sex 
couples have a constitutional right to marry under the 14th Amendment 
guarantee to equal protection under the law.
  We just celebrated the 5-year anniversary of marriage equality 
becoming the law of the land, and I have no faith in Judge Barrett to 
protect this constitutional right.
  President Trump wants to overturn the Affordable Care Act completely 
and take away people's healthcare and protections for preexisting 
health conditions in the middle of a deadly pandemic. This President 
wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and have the government take away 
reproductive freedoms for women. He has done nothing to move equality 
and fairness forward for the LGBTQ community and has worked to turn 
back the clock on hard-won progress. Judge Barrett has been nominated 
and will likely be confirmed by this Senate to do what President Trump 
wants. This nominee's complete and total unwillingness to show any 
independence from the President makes that clear to me.
  I believe it is wrong for Senate Republicans to rush this 
confirmation vote before the American people have voted and our next 
President and the next Senate have taken office. I oppose this 
illegitimate process, and I oppose Judge Barrett's confirmation for a 
lifetime appointment to our highest Court because I do not have faith 
in her being a fair and independent Supreme Court Justice for the 
American people.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer for the 
recognition today and thank you very much for being here.
  Today, the Senate is gathered in the middle of an unprecedented 
pandemic. More than 220,000 Americans have died, millions more have 
been infected, and millions more are out of work because of the 
resulting economic crisis. These are some of the hardest times to fall 
upon this Nation in decades. People are hurting. They are scared, they 
are exhausted, and they are looking for help.
  Millions of Americans are also looking around asking how they can 
help in their communities. They are stepping up, whether it is as 
members of the essential workforce, as healthcare workers, or by 
donating their time or resources to a charity or local food bank. We 
are seeing the best of this country.
  Here in the Senate, we, too, have the power to do something to help. 
On a much larger scale, we have the power and the duty. We could do 
something big to help beat this virus, to help people and businesses 
get back on their feet, get the kids back in school, to help make life 
easier for the millions who are struggling.
  Yes, the Senate is gathered in the middle of a pandemic, but we 
aren't gathered here by the majority leader to do anything to help the 
American people. We aren't gathered here to do the hard work, to 
negotiate, to compromise, and to pass an urgently needed COVID-19 
relief package that Americans are clamoring for--no. Instead, we are 
gathered here today to fast-track the confirmation of a far-right judge 
onto the U.S. Supreme Court, in the middle of a pandemic, 8 days before 
the conclusion of a Presidential election, with tens of millions of 
ballots already having been cast. It is shameful. This body has truly 
lost its way.
  The American people are looking on in anger and disbelief as the 
Senate majority focuses on this nomination just 4 years after the 
majority in no uncertain terms said that the Senate should not consider 
a Supreme Court nominee 8 full months before the election. Yes, that is 
what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said--the Senate should not 
consider President Obama's Supreme Court nominee a full 8 months before 
the election. But now he says we should install President Trump's 
nominee 8 days before the election. How did we get here? Why would 
Republicans so flagrantly violate their own rules and violate the 
legitimacy of the Court and Senate for this nominee? To solve that 
mystery, we have actually got a clue. It is on the Supreme Court 
schedule.
  On November 10, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a suit, 
brought by Republican attorneys general and supported by the Trump 
administration, to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Three years after 
the Senate Republicans tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care 
Act in Congress, they are now trying to terminate the law in the 
courts. Their relentless pursuit to destroy the Nation's healthcare law 
knows no end, and they need to get their Supreme Court nominee onto the 
Bench in time to hear their case.
  You have heard it many times over the last few weeks, but it bears 
repeating, what is happening right now, because it is stunning. Senate 
Republicans are rushing another far-right judge onto the bench days 
before the election and all in the effort to cement a conservative 
majority on the Supreme Court to destroy the Affordable Care Act in the 
middle of a pandemic.
  This is all taking place under the direction of a President who has 
stated that the coronavirus pandemic ``affects virtually nobody.'' That 
is the President's direct quote--``affects virtually nobody.'' That is 
what he is saying about the pandemic.
  Republicans want to rip away healthcare from millions of people in 
the middle of a public health crisis that has killed more than 220,000 
Americans. They want to take away protections from millions of people 
living with preexisting conditions in the middle of a pandemic--a 
pandemic that has caused millions more Americans who have contracted 
COVID-19 to now have a new preexisting condition.

[[Page S6546]]

  The President openly admits he wants the Supreme Court to do what 
Republicans in Congress couldn't do, and that is to demolish the ACA. 
``It will be so good if they end it.'' That is the President's quote. 
He said that on 60 Minutes. ``It will be so good if they end it,'' 
speaking about what he wants the Supreme Court to do and what his 
Justice Department is arguing.
  And the President and Republicans in Congress won't have any plan to 
replace what they want to destroy. After all these years of trying to 
end the Affordable Care Act, including a 2-year period when the 
Republican Party held control in the House, Senate, and White House, 
they still don't have a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
  If Republicans succeed and this Supreme Court nominee joins an 
increasingly conservative Court in striking down the ACA, the results 
would be catastrophic for my home State of New Mexico. The estimated 
834,700 New Mexicans with preexisting benefits would face higher costs, 
fewer benefits, and could have trouble finding coverage.
  Overturning the ACA would immediately end coverage for millions of 
Americans who became eligible for Medicaid through the Medicaid 
expansion. In fact, in my State of New Mexico, 250,000 people have 
coverage under that expansion. Seniors getting prescription drugs could 
no longer afford their medications.
  It is people like Jeanne, an Albuquerque-based senior who told me 
recently:

       Now, like many seniors, I take a medication that is so 
     expensive that I would reach the donut hole every year. I 
     can't afford to pay for that medication out of pocket.
       Rural hospitals, which are absolutely critical during this 
     pandemic, could close their doors. As Dr. Val Wangler, the 
     chief medical officer of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health 
     Care Services told me:
       The Affordable Care Act is critical to the health of 
     patients in New Mexico's rural communities. Threatening the 
     healthcare coverage of our communities in the midst of the 
     greatest public health crisis of our times is unconscionable.

  For Indian Country and Native communities, ACA repeal would be 
absolutely devastating. I have heard firsthand accounts from Tribal 
leaders, Native families, and healthcare providers about how the ACA 
has improved the healthcare landscape across Indian Country--literally 
saving lives. The ACA has opened the doors for so many Native Americans 
to access the care they need, whether it is an unplanned medical 
emergency or routine wellness checkups and screenings.
  Access to quality healthcare is critical for Native communities, 
which face disproportionate impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. The 
Federal Government has a trust and treaty obligation to consult with 
Tribes and to provide Native Americans healthcare. With this rushed, 
hypocritical process, Senate Republicans are violating our most sacred 
duties to Indian Country.
  We know that the Supreme Court will rule on the fate of the 
Affordable Care Act. That much is certain. But what other cases might 
this Court rule on in the near future, or in what other cases might 
Judge Barrett cast the deciding vote?
  Well, as you have heard me mention a few times now, we are in the 
middle of a Presidential election--the most important election of our 
lifetimes. Facing an uncertain outcome at the polls, President Donald 
Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine the legitimacy of this 
election. He has lied about the safety of mail-in voting, despite the 
fact that he is a mail-in voter himself. He deliberately tried to 
weaken the Postal Service, and President Trump, along with Members of 
this very body are telegraphing that they want the Supreme Court, not 
voters, to decide this election. They want to sow enough doubt about 
the legitimacy of the democratic process that it has to go to the 
courts, and they want their hand-picked conservative judge to tip the 
scales for them.
  You don't get to choose the judge who decides your own case. That is 
not how we achieve true justice in a democracy. The core of our system 
is having an impartial judge.
  It has been shocking to watch as this President, aided and abetted by 
Members of this very Senate, has been so overt about his desire to put 
a judge on the Supreme Court who will rule in his favor in any disputed 
election. That is a tactic of authoritarians, not a democracy.
  But in her confirmation hearing, Judge Barrett wouldn't even comment 
on whether a President should commit to the peaceful transfer of power, 
as this President has refused to do. She called that a political 
controversy. The peaceful transfer of power is not a political 
controversy. It is one of the most sacred tenets of our democracy.
  What else might Judge Barrett rule on in the coming years? No doubt 
cases concerning the most urgent, existential crisis we are facing as a 
Nation--climate change. Cases to decide whether we will let big 
polluters do whatever they want to our air, water, and planet.
  There is no denying the science of climate change. It is a real and 
present danger to the lives and livelihoods of people all across this 
Nation and the world. My home State of New Mexico is in the bull's eye, 
with increasingly severe wildfires and droughts.
  This President is one of the few public figures left in this country 
who says he doesn't believe the scientists. You would hope a nominee to 
the Supreme Court--the highest Court in our land--wouldn't follow his 
lead. But Judge Barrett, again, wouldn't even comment on whether she 
believes climate change is real. She again said that was a political 
controversy.
  The only place climate change is a political controversy is within 
the White House and within the Republican Party, and the rest of us are 
paying the price while they decide whether or not to believe the 
overwhelming consensus of the scientific community--whether or not to 
believe their very eyes.
  There are so many other issues on which a Justice Barrett would 
likely rule, including a woman's right to make her own healthcare 
decisions. A leading advocate for women's rights to reproductive 
health, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be replaced with a public 
advocate against Roe v. Wade. The nominee signed her name to statements 
against Roe that ran in full-page newspaper ads, undisclosed to the 
Senate. She signed joint public letters against Roe. This was also 
undisclosed to the Senate. She gave multiple speeches to organizations 
dedicated to overturning Roe, undisclosed to the Senate. In a law 
review article, she wrote that abortion was ``always immoral.''
  And after promising for years only to nominate judges who will 
overturn Roe, Senate Republicans suddenly are shy about it. They 
suddenly don't have the courage of their convictions, and they won't 
let the public in on their true, long-stated agenda--overturning Roe 
once and for all.
  There is so much else at stake in this fight--on voting rights, on 
worker rights, and so much more, all with real human consequences for 
the lives of people all across this country.
  Let's not lose sight of the real people who will be affected by this 
Republican march to overload the Court with loyalists.
  With so much at stake, the American people deserve to have a say. It 
is that simple.
  So I urge my Republican colleagues to take a step back and think 
about what you are doing. Think about the long-term damage you are 
doing to the legitimacy of the courts and to the faith of the American 
people that their voices are being heard.
  What is at stake is more than Justice Ginsburg's seat. It is the 
American people's seat
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from New 
Mexico for his remarks just now.
  I rise today to join him and my other Democratic colleagues in 
opposing Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court.
  I want to begin by acknowledging the nature of the moment that we are 
in right now. We are mere days from an election day, during an election 
period in which tens of millions of Americans have already voted. We 
are grappling with a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more 
than 220,000 Americans, and millions are out of work.
  Yet, rather than focusing on providing the comprehensive relief that 
lives and livelihoods are depending upon, Republicans have instead made 
pushing this nomination through their top priority.

[[Page S6547]]

  The American people deserve better.
  One of the most solemn responsibilities of a U.S. Senator is 
providing advice and consent with regard to a Presidential Supreme 
Court nomination. This is a lifetime appointment to the highest Court 
in our land, which will impact the lives of every single person in this 
country. The consequences of this nomination are far-reaching, and 
right now there is perhaps no more consequential issue than healthcare.
  The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been 
relentless in their attempts to sabotage our healthcare system, repeal 
the Affordable Care Act, and eliminate the healthcare protections that 
millions of people depend on.
  But for years, Republicans have failed legislatively to repeal this 
law. So now, instead, they have turned to the courts. President Trump 
said he wants to ``terminate'' the Affordable Care Act, and has said 
that he would nominate judges who would do just that.
  One week after this election, just 9 days away, the Supreme Court 
will hear the lawsuit supported by the Trump administration to repeal 
the entire Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with 
preexisting benefits.
  It is no secret that this is why Senate Republicans have rushed Judge 
Barrett's nomination through.
  For some of my colleagues, this nomination is a means to an end, a 
way to finally repeal the Affordable Care Act, a law that has helped so 
many. For the American people, however, this isn't a game.
  Over the course of the last several weeks, people in my home State of 
New Hampshire and across the country have spoken out about what the 
repeal of this law would mean for them, just as they have spoken out 
each time that Republicans have tried to take coverage away.
  I recently heard from Michelle and Joe O'Leary of Atkinson, NH. 
Michelle and Joe's son Matty was diagnosed with a rare brain condition 
at the age of 4. Right now, Matty is doing well, but he requires a 
lifesaving brain infusion treatment at the hospital, from 4 to 6 hours 
every 2 weeks.
  His father said that the minute that they miss an infusion, Matty's 
health would begin to decline rapidly.
  Joe and Michelle said that on top of all of the challenges that their 
family experiences on a day-to-day basis, they still have to wake up 
each morning fearing the implications if the Supreme Court overturns 
the healthcare law--fearing what will happen if coverage is taken away 
and they can't access the treatment that their beloved Matty needs.
  Joe and Michelle shared the details of this deeply personal 
healthcare story in order to preserve healthcare for their son and 
millions of others. They shouldn't have to. No one in America should 
have to plead with their legislators to not take their healthcare away. 
No one should. But they do, in the wealthiest country on Earth.
  Joe and Michele are not alone. If Judge Barrett is confirmed and 
becomes the Court's deciding vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act, 
an estimated 20 million Americans could lose their healthcare coverage.
  Making matters worse, in pushing this nomination through, my 
colleagues could undermine healthcare in the midst of a devastating 
pandemic.
  And just as we are learning that the long-term effects of this virus 
will likely mean that treatment for some will be ongoing for a 
lifetime, the Senate Republicans are moving to overturn the Affordable 
Care Act--just when it is needed most. It is unconscionable.
  Potentially ripping away healthcare from millions of Americans is 
just one of the many things at stake. Women's reproductive freedom is 
at risk. President Trump has said that he will only nominate judges who 
would overturn Roe v. Wade, and Judge Barrett has repeatedly criticized 
this landmark ruling that provides women with the freedom to make their 
own healthcare decisions, control their own destinies, and be full 
citizens of the United States of America.
  Equality for LGBTQ Americans is also at risk. Just this month, two 
Justices on the Supreme Court indicated their desire to overturn the 
decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which delivered marriage equality to so 
many. Judge Barrett has previously defended the dissenting opinion in 
that case.
  And voting rights are at risk. Judge Barrett refused to acknowledge 
the fact that communities of color face disproportionate obstacles in 
voting. Nor would she acknowledge what every lawyer and, really, most 
high school students know--that voter intimidation is illegal and 
antithetical to our basic principles.
  Judge Barrett would not even give a straight answer when asked if 
Presidents should commit to a peaceful transition of power, an 
essential element of our democracy and one that we have held up as an 
example to the rest of the world throughout our history.
  And despite asserting that she is independent and not swayed by 
politics, Judge Barrett's refusal to acknowledge that climate change is 
real--after acknowledging other scientific facts, such as the 
infectious nature of COVID-19 and that cigarettes can cause cancer--
reveals her alignment with and responsibility to a far-right, climate-
change-denying agenda.
  Our founding documents gave us the flexibility and the tools to grow 
in our understanding of what individual freedom means and who is 
entitled to it. These tools have given us the power to create change 
and move forward, to unleash the talent and energy of previously 
marginalized citizens.
  Our country has prospered, thrived, and led as a result. But Judge 
Barrett's views and her judicial philosophy are not rooted in that 
belief. She, instead, would constrain individual liberty and empower 
corporations and put the progress that so many have fought for at risk.
  Republicans have moved this nomination forward in contradiction of 
the rules that they themselves invented in 2016. Our society and our 
democracy rely on the idea that all sides of political debate will play 
by the same rules. That means, when any faction loses, it does so 
knowing that it will have a fair chance in the next round. When that 
understanding is disrupted, it destabilizes our democracy, and it sows 
confusion and chaos. My Senate Republican colleagues' actions make it 
clear they believe that the rules do not apply to them and that they do 
not care about destabilizing our democracy in this way.
  We should not vote on a Supreme Court nomination while an election is 
actually underway. For the first time in American history, we are 
voting on a Supreme Court nominee just days before election day. My 
Republican colleagues have shown they will stop at nothing to get this 
nominee through no matter how many rules they break and no matter how 
many Americans' rights are threatened. They are doing so all while 
people across the country are pleading with us to come together to 
provide more support amid a public health and economic crisis. My 
Senate Republican colleagues' priorities are clear, and they are an 
outrage.
  I cannot support a lifetime nomination of an individual who puts the 
healthcare and basic civil rights of millions of Americans at risk. I 
will oppose Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court, and I 
urge my colleagues to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, 1 month ago, Judge Amy Coney Barrett was 
selected by President Trump to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, filling 
the vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
  Since then, Judge Barrett has more than proven her qualifications for 
this job. A respected Federal judge, educator, and public servant, 
Judge Barrett has conducted herself throughout this process with poise 
and integrity. She has certainly demonstrated her intellect, her legal 
acumen, and her commitment to the Constitution of the United States. 
She is, clearly, a brilliant jurist who interprets the Constitution as 
written and carefully weighs the facts of a given case.
  Despite the Senate Democrats' repeated attempts to drag her into the 
political fray, Judge Barrett has proven that she will make her 
decisions based on the law rather than politics.
  When I met with Judge Barrett earlier this month, I was assured that 
she would be guided by the law and precedents and be faithful to the 
Constitution. As Judge Barrett herself has said

[[Page S6548]]

more than once, ``A judge is obligated to apply the law as it is and 
not as she wishes it would be.'' She is obliged to follow the law even 
when her personal preferences cut the other way or when she will 
experience great public criticism for doing so--the law, not politics.
  As a fellow Hoosier, I have had the privilege of getting to know 
Judge Barrett and her family over the last several years, since she was 
nominated to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
Seventh Circuit. When I met the then-Notre Dame Law School professor, 
it was abundantly clear that she was a star. My colleague at the time, 
former Democratic Indiana Senator Joe Donnelly, agreed with that 
assessment. A brilliant legal scholar, Judge Barrett was and is held in 
the highest regard by her peers in the legal world.
  Judge Barrett's qualifications outshined personal attacks and 
religious bigotry, and she was confirmed by a bipartisan majority to 
that circuit court, and as a judge, she has more than proven her legal 
credentials. She has heard more than 600 cases and authored nearly 100 
opinions. I should note she is the first woman from Indiana ever to 
serve on that esteemed court.
  As I said, when I introduced Judge Barrett before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee earlier this month, I was proud to cast my vote for 
Judge Barrett in 2017, and I look forward to doing so again for 
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Three years ago, I did not hear 
a single credible criticism--not a single one--of Judge Barrett based 
on her legal qualifications, and I haven't heard one at any time 
throughout this confirmation process.
  The Democrats have tried to make this process about anything other 
than Judge Barrett's qualifications. Alarmingly, they have made threats 
about what the consequences will be if we move forward.
  First, they threatened to pack the Supreme Court if we confirmed this 
nominee, but we all know they were talking about this long before--long 
before--Justice Ginsburg's passing. By way of example, my colleague 
from California Senator Harris said: ``We are on the verge of a crisis 
of confidence in the Supreme Court . . . and everything is on the 
table.'' That is a quote from March of this year.
  Senator Harris isn't alone. She just happens to be the most prominent 
at this point. In fact, according to the Washington Post, 11 Democratic 
Presidential candidates--5 of whom were sitting U.S. Senators--said 
they were in favor of or open to packing the Court.
  Second, they have threatened to eliminate the legislative filibuster 
if we confirm this nominee. Now, folks, they wanted to get rid of the 
60-vote threshold long before this vacancy on the Supreme Court ever 
occurred. Again, I will use Senator Harris by way of example: ``I am 
prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.'' That 
was in September of 2019.
  There are 18 Democrats who ran for President of the United States who 
supported that move, including 6 sitting U.S. Senators and 2 Governors 
who are now running for the Senate.
  Third, they have threatened to add States to the Union if we confirm 
this nominee. We know that has been on the far-left's wish list for 
years.
  These idle threats aren't going to stop us from carrying out the will 
of the American people, though, and confirming Judge Barrett. When we 
confirm Judge Barrett this week, she will be the fifth woman and the 
first mother of school-age children to serve as a Supreme Court 
Justice. She will also be the only current Justice to have received a 
law degree from an esteemed law school other than Harvard or Yale.
  I will tell you, Hoosiers are extremely proud of Judge Amy Coney 
Barrett and the trail she has blazed for others. She is a role model 
for young women everywhere, including, I might say, my own three young 
daughters. I am incredibly proud that our next Supreme Court Justice 
will be one who hails from America's heartland--from the great State of 
Indiana.
  I urge my colleagues to come together and carry out the will of the 
American people by swiftly voting to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to 
the Supreme Court of the United States.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Boozman). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROMNEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ROMNEY. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for the 
confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Court. She is exceptionally intelligent, academically astute, 
and impeccably credentialed. She has a record of sound opinions and 
temperament as a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Her 
life experiences provide her with valuable perspective and evident 
wisdom. Perhaps most important, she is a woman of unquestionable 
character and integrity, the presence of which is essential to our 
Nation, as the confidence of the Court itself is in the balance. I will 
be honored to vote to confirm her nomination.
  Mr. President, I also rise to address my concern regarding the 
division and contempt for others that is growing among many of our 
citizens. The causes of this malady are many and varied, but one to 
which I draw attention is the declining trust held by the citizenry in 
our many institutions. A democratic republic is highly dependent upon 
the confidence of its people in the institutions that lie at its 
foundation. These includes churches, schools, governments at all 
levels, the press, corporations, markets, and most relevant today, the 
justice system and the courts. Absent public confidence in these 
institutions, a democratic republic will not thrive or perhaps endure.
  Fortunately, the Supreme Court enjoys a great deal of respect from 
the American people. Unfortunately, the third branch may be one of the 
few institutions of our democratic republic that is not experiencing a 
collapse in public trust.
  Our churches have been diminished by scandal and by politicization.
  Trust in local law enforcement has fallen as we have witnessed some 
officers, who have sworn to protect our communities, endanger the lives 
of citizens. While this is particularly true for citizens of color, the 
demonstrations by millions of Americans are evidence that the distrust 
is broadly shared.
  Trust in the FBI and the intelligence community, long admired for 
their integrity and professionalism, has withered with the attacks by 
politicians from both parties, though admittedly my party has been the 
more vocal. What a message it sends when the President accepts the word 
of the Russian President rather than the conclusions of our 
intelligence agencies.
  Even the CDC and the FDA have fallen in credibility, due both to 
inevitable human error and to blistering political attacks.
  The free press is not only protected by the Constitution; it is 
critical to the preservation of democracy. Here, too, charges of ``fake 
news'' and claims that the press is the enemy of the people--worsened 
by the media's constant amplification of divisiveness--have so 
diminished the trust many Americans have in the media that they instead 
believe bizarre, anonymous conspiracy theories on the internet.
  Now, more than at any other time during my lifetime, it is essential 
the Supreme Court retain the trust of the Nation. It may be one of the 
very few, if not the only, of the institutions in which the great 
majority of Americans have confidence. That is why Judge Barrett's 
integrity, wisdom, and commitment to the rule of law is so important: 
She will be critical to the preservation of the public's perception of 
the legitimacy of the Court.
  Judge Barrett wrote in a Texas Law Review:

       If the Court's opinions change with its membership, public 
     confidence in the Court as an institution might decline. Its 
     members might be seen as partisan rather than impartial and 
     case law as fueled by power rather than reason.

  Consideration of institutional legitimacy has long been a factor in 
the Court's deliberations. But I would argue that this factor should be 
given even greater weight today, as so many of our other institutions 
are diminished and under attack. This would be particularly true were 
the Court called upon to decide a matter that would determine the 
outcome of a Presidential

[[Page S6549]]

election. In my view, it is of paramount importance that such a 
decision follow the law and the Constitution where it leads, regardless 
of the outcome, and thereby be beyond reproach, clearly nonpolitical, 
and preferably unanimous.
  The Senate will soon send Judge Barrett to the highest Court in the 
land. I am confident that she is up to the measure of the times in 
which we now live. May God bless her and her family as they begin this 
chapter of service to our Nation.
  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.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, later today we will confirm Amy Coney 
Barrett to the Supreme Court. By now, I don't need to tell anybody that 
she is one of the most highly qualified Supreme Court candidates in 
living memory. Her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee was 
a master class in what a Supreme Court Justice should look like, which 
is probably why a majority of voters want the Senate to confirm this 
outstanding nominee to the Nation's highest Court.
  A CNN anchor recently pointed out that, ``in another age . . . Judge 
Amy Coney Barrett would be getting 70 votes or more in the United 
States Senate . . . because of her qualifications.''
  That is unquestionably true, but, unfortunately, it is extremely 
unlikely that Judge Barrett will be collecting 70 or more votes later 
today because, for my Democratic colleagues, this has never been about 
Judge Barrett's qualifications. Democrats were never going to support 
this nomination, no matter how supremely qualified the individual in 
question. The President could have nominated the wisest, most 
outstanding jurist in the history of the world, and Democrats would 
still be opposing this nomination--in large part simply because it was 
made by this President.
  Democrats had their talking points ready from the beginning--the same 
talking points that they trot out for every Republican Supreme Court 
nominee. The sky will fall if this nominee makes it on to the Court, 
they cry. Minorities will suffer. Women will suffer. Americans will 
lose their healthcare. They have used that one a lot this time.
  Democrats would like to convince Americans that Republicans are 
trying to confirm Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court for the sole 
purpose of eliminating the Affordable Care Act and protections for 
preexisting conditions. It is a ludicrous charge. Every Republican--
every Republican--in the Senate supports protections for preexisting 
conditions, but apparently that doesn't matter to Democrats.
  The truth is, Republicans have no idea how Judge Barrett would rule 
on any particular ObamaCare case. The facts of each case are unique, 
with unique legal and constitutional issues.
  What we do know is that Judge Barrett will approach each case without 
prejudices or preconceived notions. We know that she will examine the 
facts of the case, the law, and the Constitution, and make her decision 
based solely on those criteria--not on her political beliefs, not on 
her personal opinions, just the law and the Constitution, no matter 
which party drafted any legislation in question. That should reassure 
Democrats, but it doesn't because, for many Democrats, their primary 
concern in confirming judges is not whether they will uphold the law 
but whether they will deliver the policy outcomes that Democrats want.
  That is why some Democrats are threatening to resurrect the long-
discredited idea of court-packing, should they return to the majority. 
They are not sure that they can rely on a Supreme Court with Judge 
Barrett to deliver the policy outcomes that they want. So they want to 
add Justices to the Supreme Court until they can be sure that they will 
get the results that they desire. One has to wonder where this will 
end.
  Let's say Democrats add three more Justices to the Court. Then, when 
Republicans take the majority back, we add three more Justices to 
counteract the Democrats' power grab. Then Democrats get back in power 
and add still more Justices. It won't be long before the members of the 
Supreme Court are more numerous than the Members of the U.S. Senate.
  In addition to trying to scare Americans by suggesting that 
Republicans are trying to take away Americans' healthcare, Democrats 
have also tried to delegitimize the process. They have tried to suggest 
that it is wrong for Republicans to take up this nomination in an 
election year because Republicans didn't confirm Merrick Garland when 
President Obama nominated him in an election year. I am not going to 
spend a lot of time on this because the Republican leader, myself, and 
others have spent ample time demonstrating that confirming Judge 
Barrett is well within historical precedent.
  But I will say this: The Constitution of the United States gives the 
Senate the power to advise and consent to nominations made by the 
President. The Senate has full authority to accept or reject the 
President's nominations at any point in time during a Congress or 
President's term. There is no constitutional carve-out for election 
years. The minority party may not always like it when the majority 
confirms a nominee, which I completely understand, having been in the 
minority myself. But that doesn't mean that the majority party is doing 
anything wrong by proceeding with a nomination.
  I also have to ask: Are Democrats seriously suggesting that if they 
were in the same position--if they were in the majority in the Senate 
and the President were a Democrat--they would decline to approve a 
qualified jurist to the Supreme Court simply because the vacancy had 
occurred in an election year? I think everyone knows that if Democrats 
were in the same position, they would absolutely confirm a Democratic 
nominee to the Court--as they repeatedly urged us to do in 2016--and 
they would be well within their constitutional rights to do so, just as 
Republicans are well within our constitutional rights to confirm Judge 
Barrett.
  Before I close I would like to touch on another claim the Democratic 
leader keeps making--that Judge Barrett's nomination is somehow 
distracting Republicans from the COVID crisis or that her nomination is 
preventing us from taking up COVID legislation.
  That is flatout false. The Senate is capable of focusing on more than 
one important issue at a time. In fact, it is pretty much a requirement 
of our job that we be able to do so. Has the Democratic leader 
forgotten that Republicans tried to bring up additional COVID relief 
legislation literally just days ago and that Democrats, led by the 
leader, filibustered and that they did the same thing when we brought 
up COVID relief legislation in September?
  Republicans have been ready to pass additional COVID legislation for 
months. The only reason we haven't passed it already is that Democrats 
have refused to agree to any compromise legislation that could actually 
make it to through the Senate and to the President's desk.
  I am hoping that sooner rather than later, my friends on the other 
side will see the value of working together to provide real relief to 
our fellow Americans. This disease doesn't recognize party differences, 
and I am hopeful that my colleagues will realize that passing COVID 
relief shouldn't be a time for insisting on partisan priorities.
  It is unfortunate that Judge Barrett's nomination has been 
overshadowed by so much partisanship from Democrats, but ultimately 
what matters is that we are confirming this outstanding nominee.
  As I said yesterday, I came to the Senate with the hope of putting 
judges like Amy Coney Barrett on the bench: thoughtful, intelligent men 
and women with a consummate command of the law, and most of all--most 
of all--with a clear understanding that the job of a judge is to 
interpret the law, not to make the law, to call balls and strikes, not 
rewrite the rules of the game.
  I am very proud to cast my vote to confirm Judge Barrett, and I look 
forward to calling her Justice Barrett in the very near future.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S6550]]

  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, as august and impressive as this 
setting is, what is happening today is not normal. We have said it 
numerous times, but we should say it again because we need to prevent 
it from becoming normal.
  In fact, what is happening today is sad, surreal, even shocking. We 
are 8 days away from an election. In an unprecedented rush to confirm a 
Supreme Court nominee, we are taking the place of the next President 
and the next Senate in confirming the next Justice, even as the 
American people are denied a voice and a say in that decision.
  What is happening here is not normal because our Republican 
colleagues have explicitly broken their word. We have submitted to the 
Judiciary Committee quotes from 17 of them promising that there would 
be no confirmation of a next Justice during an election year.
  It is not normal because, in fact, historically, no Justice has been 
confirmed after July in an election year.
  It is not normal because we are here, in the midst of a pandemic, 
confirming a Justice who would potentially decimate our healthcare 
system now in the middle of a healthcare crisis.
  It is not normal because the administration has said, as recently as 
Sunday, through its Chief of Staff, there is no control over this 
pandemic. This abject surrender is shameful and disgraceful.
  And it is not normal because the American people have a right to 
expect from us in this body that we would address that pandemic and 
that we would pass another pandemic relief bill. It has passed the 
House. All we need to do is vote.
  In fact, on Saturday afternoon, I came to the floor with a number of 
my colleagues and offered, by unanimous consent, measures that have 
passed the House by a bipartisan majority, but there was objection to 
moving forward. My Republican colleagues, in objecting, said it is 
procedural harassment. I beg to differ. It is democracy. It is 
democracy to address the needs of the American people. That is what is 
normal in the Congress of the United States, or at least it should be.
  The fact is that our Republican colleagues are shattering the norms 
and breaking the rules and breaking their word, and there will be 
consequences. There inevitably are consequences when one person breaks 
her or his word to another.
  But there is a larger significance here, which is that Amy Coney 
Barrett, as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, will shift radically 
and dramatically the balance politically on that Court. It is an 
unelected body with lifetime terms, which is the antithesis of the 
elected bodies that serve in the U.S. Congress or the elected 
President, and this radical shift will shatter the legal fabric of that 
Court.
  Now, I know that my Republican colleagues will refuse to acknowledge 
it, but, in fact, it is part of an agenda--a rightwing agenda--that has 
existed for some time to move the Court to that radical extreme fringe. 
In fact, they have turned the U.S. Senate into a kind of conveyor belt 
of judicial appointments not just to the Supreme Court but to Federal 
courts at every level.
  Dark money is the vehicle for turning the U.S. Senate into that 
conveyor belt. As we have documented as recently as Friday, through a 
report that we produced, showing how the NRA has been at the tip of the 
spear of a movement involving shell entities making contributions, 
receiving money, and channeling it to Members of this body who have 
confirmed those nominees so that that dark money produces appointees to 
the Federal bench.
  Amy Coney Barrett is part of that conveyor belt. She is only the 
latest of the appointees who threatens to shift not just the Supreme 
Court but the Federal judiciary radically to the right. The purpose is 
to achieve in the courts what our Republican friends and the radical 
right and the fringe elements of the Republican Party couldn't 
accomplish in the legislatures. They couldn't achieve in the State 
legislatures or in the Congress what they now seek to do by legislating 
from the bench through activist judges who will tilt our entire 
political system against the majority will.

  The agenda is essentially to constrain and constrict and even cripple 
the healing and helping power of our Federal Government under the guise 
and the smoke screen of originalism. They want to restrict and 
constrain the vision of an expanding individual's right to essential 
liberties. They want to constrict, instead of expand, an increasingly 
inclusive America. And that judicial philosophy is what underlies 
disappointment of Amy Coney Barrett. They want to legislate from the 
bench and achieve in the courts what they couldn't achieve in our 
elective bodies because they are losing in those elective bodies.
  As Shannon Watts, a leader of Everytown, said to me the other day: 
They are going to the courts, not because we are weak in achieving 
measures against gun violence but because we are growing stronger and 
stronger.
  In fact, there is a grassroots movement composed of Everytown, Moms 
Demand Action, Students Demand Action, Gifford, Brady, Connecticut 
Against Gun Violence, Newtown Action Alliance, and Sandy Hook Promise--
all part of a grassroots movement that is moving America toward 
protecting against gun violence.
  But Amy Coney Barrett has a view of the Second Amendment that she has 
acknowledged in a speech ``sounds kind of radical.'' That is a quote--
``sounds kind of radical.'' It sounds kind of radical because it is 
kind of radical, and that radical view is losing in elective bodies, in 
State legislatures, and in local governments that are moving to protect 
people against gun violence.
  We see the same phenomenon on healthcare, on reproductive freedom, 
and on voting rights. The majority of Americans want to expand the 
inclusiveness of America and the vision of individual rights and 
liberty, not roll them back, not turn back the clock to this 
originalistic textualism that underlies Amy Coney Barrett's philosophy. 
She will bring that philosophy to the Bench, as she has done on the 
Seventh Circuit as a member of the court of appeals there. That is the 
danger, and that is the alarm we are sounding here.
  The Affordable Care Act is about protecting people who have 
preexisting conditions, but it is also about protecting children who 
are on their parents' healthcare policies until the age of 26. It is 
about lowering the cost of prescription drugs. It is about making more 
widely available healthcare by providing subsidies to folks who need 
the help. It is about banning insurers from charging women more just 
because they are women.
  Preexisting conditions affect 130 million Americans; in Connecticut, 
1.5 million residents of our State--52 percent of our population. 
Preexisting conditions are diabetes, asthma, heart disease, high blood 
pressure, and now COVID-19. Yes, COVID-19 is a preexisting condition 
because of the damage that may be done to lungs, hearts, livers, and 
other organs.
  In the midst of a pandemic of COVID-19, this administration is 
putting on the highest Court in the land a Justice who would strike 
down that protection. Of course, they have a ruse. It is called 
severability. Our Republican colleagues say: Don't worry; the Court can 
strike down one provision and keep the whole law--or the rest of it in 
place.
  Severability--you sever the part that is unconstitutional. It is a 
doctrine of law. But that is not what the U.S. District Court held in 
striking down the Affordable Care Act in the case that is now before 
the U.S. Supreme Court--the same case that will be argued on November 
10, where Judge Barrett will sit, assuming she is confirmed today. The 
U.S. District Court didn't hold that it was severable. On the contrary, 
it struck down the whole law. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
Circuit didn't hold that it was severable.
  The administration is not looking for severability. It says: Strike 
down the law. The President of the United States says: It couldn't come 
soon enough. Eliminate the Affordable Care Act in total, including the 
protection for people with preexisting conditions. They promise to 
replace it.
  The President's Press Secretary handed to Leslie Stahl, after his 
``60 Minutes'' interview, the supposed plan, a replacement, which was 
absurdly a

[[Page S6551]]

collection, apparently, of past Executive orders, other documents--
completely irrelevant and inadequate as a supposed replacement. So this 
idea of severability is another ruse.
  Our Republican colleagues also say our fears are ``apocalyptic.'' The 
majority leader used that word yesterday--``apocalyptic.'' It is not 
apocalyptic if you have a preexisting condition. It is not apocalyptic 
if you care about the people who have preexisting conditions. It is not 
apocalyptic if you have lived through the excruciating pain and anguish 
and anxiety, as the Curran family has, of having a child with a 
preexisting condition.
  Let me introduce you to Connor Curran, a 10-year-old--in fact, he 
just celebrated his 10th birthday in Ridgefield; I was with him that 
day--who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I have told his story on the 
floor in this place numerous times over the course of these past years 
since I first met him about 5 years ago. Connor is a hero. There are 
few in this body who could claim to have had his courage and 
perseverance at that age--maybe at any age. His smile lights the world. 
His courage is matched by his parents.
  I introduced Connor to Amy Coney Barrett at the hearing because I 
wanted her to know the impact on real people and real lives, the real 
harm that would be done if the Affordable Care Act is struck down.
  Connor has survived this debilitating disease because of treatment 
his parents couldn't have afforded without the Affordable Care Act. It 
is that simple. They wrote to me asking me to make a plea to Amy Coney 
Barrett: Please don't take away Connor's healthcare. They asked me to 
ask her to make a pledge--doctors make this pledge--first, do no harm. 
First, do no harm.
  I don't know whether Amy Coney Barrett heard or saw Connor. Of 
course, his poster was there when I told his story. I don't know 
whether the impact of that story will move her, but my hope is that it 
will, and my hope is--or was--that it would move my colleagues, because 
the real harm to real people is not only about Connor Curran, this 
brave boy who will lose his ability to walk and his ability to hug and 
then to hold hands, to play with his brothers. And in spite of all of 
it, he has demonstrated that perseverance and courage that I hope will 
move this body, even in this closing hour, to respect the importance of 
the Affordable Care Act. Others, like Julia Lanzano, who has treatment 
for a brain tumor because of the Affordable Care Act, and countless 
others who have that kind of treatment, are enabled by the Affordable 
Care Act to do so.
  It may seem to my Republican colleagues apocalyptic but not to Connor 
Curran and his family.
  Tens of times, Republicans in this Senate have sought to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act. They failed. Now they are trying to do it from the 
courts--legislate from the bench through an activist judge like Amy 
Coney Barrett.
  They are rushing this nomination not only to strip away healthcare 
from people like Connor, but they also want to end a woman's right to 
decide and choose when and whether and how to have a family.
  I want to emphasize something to my Republican colleagues that I hope 
they hear. When you take away a woman's right to make that decision, 
when you turn women who seek an abortion into criminals, when you make 
doctors performing abortions guilty of crimes, you don't end abortion. 
You make getting an abortion more costly. You make getting an abortion 
more excruciatingly difficult. Most importantly, you make it more 
dangerous--literally dangerous. Hundreds of women died every year 
seeking unsafe abortions before Roe v. Wade protected their right to 
choose.
  I remember that era because I was a law clerk to Justice Harry 
Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court shortly after he wrote the majority 
opinion in Roe v. Wade, and we thought the issue was resolved: Women 
have the right to make that choice, legally.
  But far from resolution, what we see is a continued assault on that 
right. Now Republicans have stacked the bench with activist judges 
ready to chip away at reproductive rights and even reverse Roe, 
chipping away at it through State legislatures--restrictions on 
clinics, the width of their hallways, the requirement for admitting 
privileges.
  We can be sure that victims of rape or incest will be forced to carry 
an abuser's child if those restrictions are upheld or Roe is reversed. 
If you doubt it, let me introduce you to Samantha.
  One night in January 2017, Samantha went out with a few friends and 
coworkers. She woke up the next morning in a coworker's home, confused, 
scared, and covered in her own blood. She had been raped.
  After she was raped, Samantha was, in her own words, a zombie. She 
just wanted the event to be erased from her memory. That March, 
Samantha took a pregnancy test, and then another, and then another. 
They kept coming back with the same result--pregnant.
  After the horrible violence she faced, she simply couldn't process 
that she was now pregnant. She chose to have an abortion.
  When Samantha shared her story with me, she wrote: ``I knew that, if 
I couldn't end this pregnancy, it would end me.''
  Reversing Roe v. Wade will matter for Tracy, also from Connecticut, a 
woman I met, also courageous and honest. Tracy was diagnosed with stage 
IV endometriosis, which caused an ongoing inability to have a healthy 
pregnancy.
  But she was, as she describes it, ``one of the lucky ones.'' She had 
access to care and was able to receive in vitro fertilization treatment 
to assist in getting and staying pregnant. But Tracy was scared when 
she saw that a group that sponsored an open letter, signed by Judge 
Barrett, had recently stated that they wanted to criminalize having a 
child through IVF.
  In a world without Roe, there will be nothing to protect against a 
law making it a crime for a woman to do what Tracy did and for a doctor 
to perform that medical procedure which enables her to achieve her 
lifetime dream of having a child.
  Sadly, we don't have to wonder what Judge Barrett's position on a 
woman's right to choose will be. She signed a letter calling Roe v. 
Wade ``infamous'' and called for ``the unborn to be protected in law.'' 
That is her legal view, her position on the law.
  I didn't ask her in the hearing about her personal views or her 
religious faith--those issues are private--but her position on the law, 
just as she left no doubt about her view of the Affordable Care Act 
when she wrote that Chief Justice Roberts stretched that measure beyond 
its true meaning in order to uphold it--I am paraphrasing--or said 
about King v. Burwell, upholding the Affordable Care Act, that the 
dissent had the better of the legal argument.
  In another letter signed by Judge Barrett, she called Roe v. Wade's 
legacy ``barbaric.'' We know what Judge Barrett will do about the 
Affordable Care Act and about reproductive freedoms because she has 
been screened and vetted. There is no mystery. Donald Trump has said he 
would impose a strong test--his words--and that strong test was to 
strike down the Affordable Care Act and overturn Roe v. Wade.
  We cannot go back. We cannot roll back these rights. We cannot turn 
back the clock to an America that banned abortion in many States, drove 
it underground, and made vital healthcare services dangerous and even 
deadly. We can't go back to an America where the rich and privileged 
can find a way out of unintended pregnancy but the rest of America is 
denied that access to healthcare.
  There is a racial justice element here because the ones who will 
suffer, predominantly and disproportionately, are women of color, women 
of lesser means financially, who live in those States and cannot travel 
to others like Connecticut, where Roe v. Wade was codified in statute 
when I was in the State legislature as a State senator. I helped to 
lead that effort to codify it in statute. But Connecticut's law won't 
help the woman in Texas or Louisiana who is denied that right.
  Make no mistake, this threat is not some abstract, hypothetical 
notion in the future, some apocalyptic vision of what might happen in 
the United States of America. We are one step away. In fact, there are 
17 abortion-related cases that are literally one step away from the 
U.S. Supreme Court. There are cases like SisterSong Women of Color 
Reproductive Justice Collective v. Kemp, a case currently before

[[Page S6552]]

the 11th Circuit involving a challenge to a ban on abortion as early as 
6 weeks into pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.
  There are cases like Memphis Center for Reproductive Health v. 
Slatery, a case challenging an escalating ban on abortions at 6, 8, 10, 
12, and so on weeks into pregnancy, depending on where the Sixth 
Circuit deems it appropriate for a woman to lose the right to choose 
for herself when and whether to have a child.

  There are additional cases involving bans on abortion later in 
pregnancy, when women can face the most severe health risks and rely on 
their doctors for accurate information and compassionate care.
  There are ``reason-based bans'' that merely exist as a pretext for 
interrogating and intimidating women who seek an abortion.
  There are cases like Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast v. Rebekah Gee, 
which challenged years of inaction by the State of Louisiana on a 
Planned Parenthood affiliate's application for a license to provide 
needed abortion care.
  There are other challenges to redtape laws that require abortion 
providers to jump over obstacles--needless, senseless hurdles that 
serve no medical purpose but exist just to burden them and make 
necessary abortion services harder to obtain--and numerous other 
abortion laws designed to limit access, strictly to limit access in the 
supposed name of healthcare.
  Access to reproductive healthcare is already hanging by a thread in 
many States across the country. Judge Barrett's nomination imperils the 
access that remains, and these cases are just one step away from the 
highest Court--at least 17 of them, one step away from the Court that 
Amy Coney Barrett will join.
  Reproductive rights are not the only rights at stake in this 
nomination. Voting rights hang in the balance as well. For years, 
Republicans have decided that they are willing to suppress the vote if 
it helps them to win election. This fundamental assault on our 
democracy has taken many forms, and we have seen them across the 
country as recently as this election, ongoing, in realtime.
  Republican-appointed judges have worked with Republican elected 
officials to allow suppression action to take effect and be sustained. 
These judges proclaim themselves to be originalists, but they betray 
provisions of the Constitution, the 14th and 15th Amendments, that our 
ancestors fought a civil war to secure: equality and the right to vote.
  A civil rights movement, a century later, secured the passage of the 
Voting Rights Act and made those rights real for many Americans. People 
marched, some died to pass that law. But this conservative Supreme 
Court betrayed the legacy of Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and  John 
Lewis when it gutted the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case, 
and this Court continues to attack voting rights and it will continue 
under Amy Coney Barrett.
  Howard Porter, Jr., a Black man in his seventies with asthma and 
Parkinson's disease, was a plaintiff in one of those cases decided just 
this month. Howard simply wanted to be able to cast his vote safely, 
without contracting COVID-19.
  He wrote to the court:

       So many of my ancestors even died to vote. And while I 
     don't mind dying to vote, I think we're past that--we're past 
     that time.

  On a partisan vote, the conservatives on the Supreme Court disagreed.
  Amy Coney Barrett will join them, and rushing this nomination on the 
eve of the election means that she will join them possibly to vote on 
the election itself while on the Court.
  Is that view apocalyptic? Not if you believe Donald Trump, who said 
the reason why he wants a ninth Justice is to decide the election, not 
the voters--the Supreme Court. He said the quiet part out loud--and so 
did a number of my colleagues in our Judiciary Committee meeting. He 
said: This election will end up in the Supreme Court, and ``I think 
it's very important we have nine Justices.''
  And when I asked Amy Coney Barrett if she would recuse herself from a 
case about this election as a result of these comments, she refused to 
answer or commit.
  I call on her to postpone her taking the oath of office until after 
the next President of the United States is inaugurated. Why not remove 
any doubt about conflict of interest, any question about the legitimacy 
of whatever decision may be necessary by the Supreme Court by 
postponing her investiture. I ask her to make that commitment and for 
my colleagues to join in that call and for the President to respect it.
  This nomination is not just about healthcare; it is also about the 
assault on a woman's right to choose, on voting rights, and it is about 
whether governments can enact reasonable, sensible gun violence 
protection laws to keep America safe.
  I want to tell you, finally, about Natalie Barden. Natalie is 18 
years old. She was 10 when her little brother Daniel was killed at 
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, on December 14, 2012. 
Daniel was 7 at the time. He was one of 20 innocent, beautiful children 
and a sixth grade educator who were killed that tragic morning.
  I was at the firehouse not long after. I witnessed the unspeakable 
grief on the faces of parents and families whose children were gunned 
down, families who realized that some of those children were not coming 
home.
  Eight years later, Natalie says that her grief is still real. Her 
crusade for gun violence prevention measures inspires me. So does the 
work of her parents and other families there in Newtown and across the 
country--survivors I have met, families I have come to know and respect 
and admire.
  What happened at Sandy Hook, sadly, was not an isolated abhorrent 
incident; it is part of an epidemic, a scourge, a public health menace 
of gun violence. In the last 10 years, gun violence has taken more than 
350,000 lives in rural communities and urban communities and every 
community in between. No community is immune. None of my colleagues' 
communities can claim they are immune.
  Judge Barrett's view of the Second Amendment--that it would give 
felons, for example, the right to buy or possess firearms; that it 
would put the burden on the government to prove they are dangerous; a 
view that she acknowledges sounds kind of radical--would potentially 
result in striking down the laws that Natalie has crusaded to achieve; 
that Janet Rice of downtown Hartford, who lost her son Shane, believes 
can help save lives because, in fact, those gun violence prevention 
measures can save lives.
  Universal background checks; closing the Charleston loophole; Ethan's 
Law, named after Ethan's Song, who perished because of an unsafely 
stored weapon--these measures can help save lives. A ban on ghost guns, 
untraceable because they have no serial numbers; a ban on high-capacity 
magazines--these laws can help save lives. But with Amy Coney Barrett's 
nomination, every single gun violence prevention measure at every level 
of government is in grave peril because she will join others on that 
Court who believe with her in this radical agenda of striking down 
those measures.
  Tabitha Escalante of March for Our Lives said to me the other day: 
``Nothing less than everything is at stake.'' And that is because, 
again, there are cases literally one step away from the highest Court, 
including Duncan v. Becerra, where Judge Kenneth Lee on the Ninth 
Circuit became the first Trump-nominated judge to rule that a ban on 
high-capacity magazines violated the Second Amendment. That outlier 
opinion flouted the unanimous consensus of other Federal appeals judges 
who have upheld large-capacity magazine bans in their State. There are 
numerous other cases that involve measures that help save lives--one 
step away from being struck down.
  My Republican colleagues have the majority. They may have the votes 
to push this nomination through today, but they don't have the American 
people, and they don't have history on their side. They are doing it 
because they can, because they have the votes, but Americans can do 
something too. They can vote. They can show they want gun violence 
protection measures and reproductive freedoms and the Affordable Care 
Act and voting rights and workplace safety. They don't want an America 
that rolls back to an originalistic view, a smokescreen that constricts 
rights and liberties.
  There is something larger than just one Justice and one vote at stake 
here. Nothing less than everything is at

[[Page S6553]]

stake--a shift in the balance of the Court that will last for decades 
if we do not act to correct, and believe me, there are appropriate 
measures that should be considered. The American people have the power 
in this election to speak out and stand up to protect their own health, 
the public health, and the health of our democracy.
  I fear for the Supreme Court's legitimacy. I revere the Supreme 
Court, having argued before it, having clerked on it. Its legitimacy 
depends on faith and trust. We must act to restore the credibility and 
legitimacy of the Court, which has been so gravely imperiled.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis.) The Senator from Washington
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, Justice Ginsburg was the first Supreme 
Court Justice I ever voted for and a North Star for me and so many 
others whose futures were irrefutably made possible in part by her life 
and her work.
  I pledged I would do everything in my power to honor her last wish--
that the next President fill her vacancy--not just because Justice 
Ginsburg was a legal giant who can never be replaced but because I 
understand, like she did, that making such a momentous decision so 
close to an election could exacerbate our Republic's challenges and 
spin our democracy into chaos.
  That is why I have been fighting so hard to push my colleagues to 
stop this charade and to just wait a few weeks. We should not be voting 
on this lifetime appointment while the American people themselves are 
in the middle of voting, of telling us how they want this country's 
future to look.
  This is all made even worse by the fact that we are in the middle of 
a pandemic, and instead of working with Democrats to pass serious 
relief our communities are calling out for, Republicans are refusing to 
do anything but jam this anti-healthcare judge on to the Supreme Court.
  Over the last 3 years, I have seen Republicans rubberstamp hard-right 
judicial nominees like it is all they came here to do, but watching 
them ignore the clear wishes of the American people, explicitly reject 
attempts to help families and communities get through this pandemic, 
and press on with this grotesque power grab--it is a new low for this 
body. It is a new low for our country and for the people we serve.
  As I have made clear, I will be voting against Judge Barrett's 
confirmation, just like I voted against her confirmation to the Seventh 
Circuit Court of Appeals, against Justice Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and 
against so many other Trump-nominated judges who, whether they admit it 
or not, are part of a Republican strategy to roll back our hard-won 
progress.
  Judge Barrett clearly fits the same mold as the more than 200 
partisan judges Senate Republicans have fast-tracked onto the Federal 
bench who are anti-healthcare and anti-abortion but pro-big business 
and pro-wealthy special interests.
  This was all reinforced during the sham nomination process as Senate 
Republicans and Judge Barrett tried to downplay their own litmus test.
  Judge Barrett was asked to affirm the constitutionality of the law 
that protects healthcare for hundreds of millions of Americans. She 
refused.
  She was asked to affirm the longstanding ruling of Roe v. Wade as a 
superprecedent. Not surprisingly, given her record includes a statement 
calling Roe ``barbaric,'' she refused.
  She was asked to affirm the constitutionality of the ruling that 
allowed same-sex marriages and opened up a new chapter of equality for 
LGBTQIA+ couples. She refused.
  She was asked to affirm that climate change is causing air and water 
pollution. Yet, even on this matter of scientific fact, Judge Barrett 
refused to answer, and that was apparently exactly what Senate 
Republicans hoped she would do.
  The lack of transparency from Judge Barrett and Senate Republicans is 
concerning, not because we don't know where they stand--we do--but 
because they are so comfortable obfuscating cold facts about Judge 
Barrett's record and judicial philosophy as well as their own previous 
statements, as if they are not real.
  For example, in 2016, they were adamant that when the Supreme Court 
loses a Justice in an election year, the people's voices should be 
heard before the vacancy is filled. For 8 months, they refused to hold 
a hearing on President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, but now, even 
as the American people are in the process of voting, Republicans are 
trying to ignore their voices. Not on my watch.
  I recently asked people in Washington State to share their personal 
stories about what is at stake for their families. The response has 
been overwhelming, and the stories have been alarming.
  I have heard from people whose stories show how different life was 
before and after Roe v. Wade and how much would be lost if reproductive 
rights were rolled back.
  I have heard from people who fear their right to marry or adopt a 
child or start a family could be lost.
  I have heard from people who are worried they will die if Republicans 
get their way at the Supreme Court and take away the healthcare and 
protections they rely on.
  Republicans may want to pretend the stakes are not this high, but 
they don't have to take my word for it; they can listen to their own 
constituents and look at their own records.
  For Republican Senators to stand here and tell families ``not to 
worry'' is kind of like the captain of the Titanic passing out 
umbrellas and telling passengers that is all they need--with one key 
difference. Republicans have made clear from the start that hitting the 
iceberg is not an accident; it is the plan.
  Despite the fact that climate change is an existential threat--
something the vast majority of the public understands--Republicans 
continue to cower to a President and special interests who insist it is 
a hoax.
  Despite the hard-fought progress for LGBTQIA+ rights, they have stood 
by this President who undermines them at every turn.
  Despite the fundamental importance of the right to vote, they have 
blocked our efforts to restore and secure those rights and protect our 
democracy.
  Despite what they would have you believe, Republicans have tried time 
and again to end protections for people with preexisting conditions and 
upend healthcare in our country.
  If the failed TrumpCare vote from a very few years ago is too painful 
or distant a memory for Republicans to revisit, they are at this very 
moment championing a lawsuit that would do all the harm of that bill 
and then some. Who is going to hear that lawsuit? The deciding vote 
could be a Justice picked by a President who vowed--vowed--he would 
only choose nominees who will rule against protections for preexisting 
conditions, who thinks that would be a ``big win,'' and who said just 
last week that he hopes that happens.
  It is no mystery why President Trump nominated and Republicans are 
rushing to confirm a judge with a record of hostility to the Affordable 
Care Act.
  It is no secret that a victory for them would be a disaster for 
families across our country. If you don't believe me, ask Mays from 
SeaTac, WA, who lives with sleep apnea, asthma, prediabetes, complex 
post-traumatic disorder, and hypothyroidism. If Republicans succeed in 
this lawsuit, she would lose her Medicaid expansion coverage and access 
to care, meaning her conditions could deteriorate, increasing her risk 
of diabetes, coma, or dying in her sleep.
  If you don't believe Mays, then ask Rhiannon from Arlington, WA, who 
has type 1 diabetes and could get kicked off her parents' insurance 
plan if Republicans win this case at the Supreme Court. As she wrote to 
me, ``Right now the ACA is the only hope I have of living past 26.''
  If you don't believe Rhiannon, ask Madeline, who has a medical 
condition which makes pregnancy fatal. For Madeline, affordable 
healthcare coverage--coverage that includes access to birth control--is 
absolutely essential, as is the right to an abortion. If Republicans 
get their way, insurance companies would no longer have to cover birth 
control, even though a pregnancy for Madeline would be life-
threatening.
  Things get even worse for her if Republicans overturn Roe v. Wade. 
Last year, when Madeline learned that, despite being diligent about her 
birth control, she was pregnant, she knew what she had to do. She had 
to get an abortion. It was safe; it was legal; it

[[Page S6554]]

was totally her decision; and it was lifesaving.
  But if Judge Barrett were Justice Barrett, if the right to abortion 
were a thing of the past, Madeline's pregnancy would have been a death 
sentence. As she put it, ``This isn't a right vs. left issue for a lot 
of us, it's life or death--and knowing [that] is at stake . . . is 
terrifying.''
  Madeline isn't the only person who is terrified. If Republicans win 
their lawsuit, over 130 million people with preexisting conditions like 
Madeline could be charged more for their health insurance, have 
benefits excluded, or be denied coverage entirely.
  Over 20 million people like Mays and Rhiannon could lose coverage for 
Medicaid expansion, the exchanges, or their parents' plans. Insurance 
companies could exclude essential health benefits countless other 
patients rely on, like prescription drugs or maternity care or therapy 
or wheelchairs or much more.
  Half the country could be charged more for health insurance just 
because they are a woman. Seniors could face thousands more in 
healthcare costs with the return of the age tax and the Medicare 
doughnut hole. Lives of people with disabilities could be upended if 
they lose access to home- and community-based services that help them 
live independent lives or if insurance providers can discriminate on 
the basis of disability by denying coverage or charging more.
  And people with expensive healthcare needs--cancer diagnosis, a 
medically complicated pregnancy, a fight with COVID-19--could be left 
with an enormous bill since insurance companies won't have to cap 
patients' out-of-pocket costs but will be able to place annual and 
lifetime limits on their benefits.
  And we cannot forget the communities of color who already face worse 
outcomes due to systemic racism in our healthcare system who would be 
hit hardest by so much of the damage of the Republicans' healthcare 
lawsuit.
  Healthcare isn't all that is at stake for families--far from it. 
Fundamental rights and protections and opportunities for workers are on 
the line. The fate of immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers--
families and Dreamers who came to our Nation in search of a better life 
and brighter future are on the line. And hard-fought victories for the 
LGBTQIA+ community are on the line.
  Matthew, in my home State of Washington, and his husband were able to 
marry, to adopt, and fortunate to be able to form a loving family. But 
that might not be possible for LGBTQIA+ couples like them in the future 
if the highest Court in the land turns back the clock and refuses to 
see them as equal under the law.
  The bottom line is that this Supreme Court fight is not about 
politics. It is about the lives of hundreds of millions of people. If 
Republicans don't believe my constituents, I invite them to ask their 
own. I encourage them to listen because I guarantee people across the 
country know what Republicans have been saying, know exactly what 
Republicans are voting for, and they are speaking up about it.
  I am here sharing their stories on the Senate floor, and Democrats 
brought their stories to the committee room so that Republicans have no 
choice but to hear them.
  When we vote, Republicans will have no excuse to pretend they do not 
know exactly what is at stake. Instead, every one of them will have a 
simple choice. Will you listen to the families who are speaking up, the 
people who are saying to you, in no uncertain terms, that if you put 
this judge on the Court, if you win this partisan lawsuit, it could 
kill me or will you ignore them?
  If Republicans truly want to reassure their constituents and want to 
show they are listening, the choice is simple: Vote no on this 
nomination. For those who choose to put this President and the 
profoundly lost Republican Party above anything else, to those 
Republicans who are capping these brutal last 4 years off with such a 
staggering show of fealty and partisanship and callousness, know the 
consequences of this vote will be felt long after this President is 
gone from office, regardless of the outcome of this election. People of 
this country will not forget and neither will your Democratic 
colleagues.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Pursuant to rule IV, paragraph 2, the hour of 12 noon having arrived, 
and the Senate having been in continuous session since yesterday, the 
Senate will suspend for a prayer from the Senate Chaplain.
                                 ______