[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 158 (Thursday, September 29, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5515-S5517]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
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AFFORDABLE INSULIN NOW ACT--Continued
Unanimous Consent Agreement
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
resume legislative session; that it be in order for Senator Braun to
offer amendment No. 5765; that at 1:45 p.m., all motions and amendments
other than the substitute be withdrawn; that no further amendments be
in order to the bill; that substitute amendment No. 5745 be agreed to;
that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time; and that
the Senate vote on the passage of the bill, as amended, with 60
affirmative votes required for passage, without further intervening
action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Order of Procedure
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, for the information of the Senate, there
will be two rollcall votes at 1:45 p.m. The first vote will be on the
passage of the continuing resolution to fund the government through
December 16. The second vote will be on the confirmation of the Gomez
nomination upon reconsideration.
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I yield the floor.
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. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Nomination of Rebecca E. Jones Gaston
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am on the floor this afternoon with a
request to confirm a highly qualified nominee with bipartisan support,
whose nomination has stalled for 210 days since it was approved by the
Finance Committee.
My understanding is there may be an objection to a unanimous consent
request that I would like to offer, and, hopefully, any Senate
Republican who seeks to object will come to me. And I hope, whatever
concern they have--if, in fact, it is the case--that we can work it out
and this very, very qualified individual can serve as Commissioner on
Children, Youth, and Families within the Department of Health and Human
Services.
I am talking about Rebecca Jones Gaston. And my view is that this
Agency is a hugely underappreciated part of our government. Its whole
mission is to help vulnerable kids and families stay safe and get ahead
in life. It is challenging work, and that means you have got to have
strong leadership in place.
One of the big recent jobs for this Agency has been implementation of
the Family First Prevention Services Act. Our colleague, the late Orrin
Hatch, and I worked on this for years because we wanted to transform
the child welfare system, and that is an undertaking now underway
because Chairman Hatch went to members on the other side of the aisle
and reached out. And we built a coalition for this hugely consequential
bill.
Before the bill, there was essentially a set of two choices, neither
perfect, for kids looking at the prospects of families and foster
homes. You could keep a child with a family in a situation that was not
exactly ideal. You would have problems with alcohol. You would have
problems with drugs. There were just problems at home. If you didn't
keep the child there, you would send them off to a foster care
facility. Well, there are some good foster care homes, but we know that
there are some that are not exactly up to par.
What Chairman Hatch and I did, with bipartisan support in the Finance
Committee, is devise a third path, and that is what Ms. Gaston would be
working on at this Agency that does so much good for kids. We
essentially said this third path meant that there could be support at
home for the parents who were dealing with alcohol challenges or drug
dependency or something of that nature. You could also have an older
individual, a grandparent, come in and assist.
But the point was, we came up with a third, far healthier path. It
was a landmark. Marian Wright Edelman, who has done so much work for
young people, so much effort, said that it was a monumental
achievement. And, in fact, it was, and that is why we want Rebecca
Jones Gaston there to implement it.
And what the status quo was before that legislation was families,
essentially, breaking apart. And so the bill is called Families First
because it keeps families together--keep them together whenever you can
come up with a strategy to make it safe for the child. It could be with
mental health care for Mom and Dad. As I said, maybe a grandparent
steps in to take care of the grandkids. Lots more flexibility.
Mr. President, as former Governor, you and I have talked about that
flexibility in human services. That is what Chairman Hatch and I worked
on, and it is how we got it passed into law.
Now, obviously, you then have to go forward to implement it. That
means you have to work with State and local agencies, the
administration, the Congress. Everybody wants to get this right.
Rebecca Jones Gaston is an ideal nominee to lead the effort. She has
experience in Oregon. She has also been a highly successful advocate
for young people as Oregon's child welfare director within the State's
Department of Human Services.
She had a similar post--I hope everybody hears this who is watching
it--under a Republican Governor in the State of Maryland. So this is a
person who can work well with both sides.
She brings 25 years of experience in dealing with families and kids.
Her qualifications for this job are undeniable. And I think it is fair
to say members on the Finance Committee are looking forward to working
with her.
I previously sought to pass this nomination by unanimous consent
earlier in the summer. There was one Senate objection. I believe that
issue has been resolved.
This nomination has waited long enough. We have a very good person,
bipartisan support. There is lots of work to do.
And I would just close by way of saying, I heard one Senator might be
objecting. That Senator has lifted their objection. And now I hear some
kind of report that someone else is objecting. And my hope is the
Senator with the objection will contact me so we can address the
concern, clear the nomination before we leave, which, I think, we are
all very hopeful will be the case.
At this point, I want it understood that I am going to ask unanimous
consent later in this session, and I hope there will be no objection.
With that, I yield the floor.
And I have additional business here in a few minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Tribute to Mike Evans
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to
speak about Mike Evans, the Finance Committee's chief counsel, who is
retiring at the end of this week. This is going to bring to a close 27
years of extraordinary Senate service and almost 9 years on the Finance
Committee staff.
It is not an atomic secret that I am very, very much involved in
basketball with my children and still dreaming about how it didn't work
out to play in the NBA. But to just paraphrase one thought with respect
to the way this place works in terms of actually getting results the
way Mike Evans did on the IRA--a hugely important bill, where the major
pieces came from the Finance Committee, where we had extraordinary work
done by the president of the Senate--if you speak in the parlance of
basketball, Mike Evans will long be remembered as one of the all-
stars--the NBA all-stars, so to speak--in Senate service.
He has, without any doubt, for millions of people in Oregon and
across the country, caused them to have a better life because of his
work in the Senate. And to just tick off a few of the reasons why I
feel that way, let me just give a bit of history.
In early 2014, I had a brief tenure as chairman of the Finance
Committee. And to the Senate's great fortune, Mike agreed to return to
be the Senate Finance Committee's chief counsel. His experience goes
back to days when he did good work for Chairman Baucus.
And the reality is, since then, you name a big legislative
accomplishment in the areas of healthcare, tax policy, support for
working families, Mike has been right at the heart of it. A few
examples: Not long after Mike's return, the Senate passed the largest
set of tax cuts for working families in many years.
There was the 2015 trade debate that was all about what I call
getting trade done right: strong enforcement, serious protections for
workers in the environment, more sunlight in our trade policy than ever
before.
Many members had said we had never approached trade in that way. With
Mike's good work, there were colleagues on our side of the aisle who
said this is the first trade bill we are voting for.
Starting in 2017, there was a shift in our work as Finance Committee
Democrats focused on protecting vulnerable Americans from the Trump
administration's policies that singled out the vulnerable. We stopped
the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and destroy Medicaid in
its tracks. We showed the American people that the Trump tax law was
not a middle-class tax cut. Above all, it disproportionately favored
billionaires and corporations. And we saw that all through the Trump
years.
Mike was absolutely crucial developing a strong, innovative,
progressive
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agenda for the next time Democrats led the committee. When the pandemic
hit, the committee stepped up and sprung into action. We came up with
historic legislation to support workers and small businesses to prevent
an economic collapse.
More recently, with the good work, particularly done by Senator Brown
and Senator Bennet, Senator Casey, Senator Booker--my colleagues--the
Finance Committee led the effort to pass the largest reduction in child
poverty ever to come from one bill.
The President of the Senate knows we worked for a full decade--a full
decade--to pass the largest clean energy bill in U.S. history, a major
step in the fight against climate change.
It does not happen, it simply does not happen without the gentleman
sitting next to me, Mike Evans.
Medicare is going to start delivering a big dose of price relief for
prescription drugs. So seniors are going to benefit. In fact, Mike
Evans always told me: Let's make sure you can get help to people soon.
That means in literally a couple of days, on October 1, because of
Mike's good work, we are going to start seeing penalties for price
gouging by big pharmaceutical companies. They are going to have to
write out checks to Medicare for the amount over inflation. Mike Evans
led the fight on those issues, right at the center of our major
accomplishments.
In the column of ongoing priorities, we said: Something is not right.
If nurses and firefighters in Maine or Mississippi or any other State
pay taxes with every paycheck, billionaires can pay what they want,
when they want to. And we have been saying we want everybody to be
successful. My goodness, that is what America is about. But we also
want everybody to pay their fair share.
And I am really pleased that the President has been talking about a
billionaire minimum income tax. We have been coming together all in the
name of fairness. And Mike looks specifically at how to do that and
address the parliamentary and legal concerns.
I would be on the floor until breakfast time tomorrow--and I see our
friend from Mississippi has something that is important to him--and I
just want to close with one last point.
You know, I think if you walked into a coffee shop in Maine or Oregon
or Mississippi and you said: ``Well, let me talk to you a little bit
about reconciliation,'' people would be a little baffled with you, but
maybe they would say, I hope the couples can work it out, or something;
and haven't thought of this reconciliation too much.
Well, we know here in the Senate reconciliation is a briar patch of
tricky rules and procedures; get something wrong, and all the work you
have done to come up with a good policy goes by the boards.
So you have to comply with the Byrd rule, which is something
resembling English, and Mike, of course, speaks this unique tongue of
the whole Byrd rule world. It means scrubbing your legislation for Byrd
rule violations, writing tomes of legal memoranda. Then you have to go
before the Senate Parliamentarian to make sure your bill stands up to
scrutiny.
I see the Parliamentarian right there, and as she knows, we are very
appreciative of her professionalism. Mike and I, I think, would be the
first to say you don't win all the calls. That is kind of the way it
works, but the Parliamentarian has always been professional. And
somehow I think Mike Evans and the Parliamentarian, wherever they are
going to be in the years ahead, they are going to be batting around the
ideas of what it takes to move legislation forward in the Senate.
This is as much a compliment to Mike and the Parliamentarian as to
say this is, for all its flaws, part of what you have to do to get
issues addressed and do it fairly. Nobody in this country is more
experienced on this floor than Mike Evans.
If you want to think about remembering Mike as I will, opposing
counsels sort of weep when Mike Evans walks through the door because
they know that with that full stack of binders and materials, he is
ready. If I can go back to my basketball roots, when you are dealing
with Mike Evans, you better come to play because he is ready every
single time out.
Typically, these arguments are handled by brilliant staff before the
Parliamentarian. On one occasion, I gather, a Senator kind of strutted
into the room and challenged Mike to a debate. I am not sure how it
ended, but Mike is pretty much undefeated against colleagues on the
other side who actually have election certificates.
In all seriousness, the many hours of work he has put into these Byrd
rule arguments--work that I know feels like a real slog--it is part of
making life better for people, and we appreciate Mike doing it.
Last point I want to make is about Mike's character. He has a great
sense of humor. He is wonderful to be around. He is kind. He is a
mentor to younger staff. He is the only person I know who can pepper
Shakespeare quotes and Springsteen lyrics into the same discussion of
dense economic policy.
Some people get lost around here in the jargon of what happens up
here. Mike is about helping the real people get ahead in life,
particularly somebody who doesn't have power and clout and somebody who
just deserves a fair shake. He has never lost sight of that. It is his
loadstar. We are so thankful for his years of service.
Last announcement, just to wrap up. I think Mike feels, and I do,
too, if you are going to step into big shoes--and these are NBA-style
shoes, they are big--we are really thrilled that Tiffany Smith will be
the new Finance Committee chief counsel starting next week. She is a
15-year veteran of the Finance Committee. She has been our chief tax
counsel since 2016. She leads the best and most effective tax team
there is. She has been in the trenches with Mike for years, and I think
she is going to reflect very well on the Finance Committee and the
Senate. She has a huge record of accomplishments as well. You will see
those talents in action soon. She is going to hit the ground running.
I just say, as I see my friend from Mississippi here, if any
colleagues on the other side of the aisle think they are going to get a
break in reconciliation debates when Mike retires, they have another
thing coming with Tiffany Smith. She is somebody who is going to be
able to fill his shoes very well.
Mike can now get on to the season passes that apparently he wants to
the Folger; he can go tour with the Boss; and he can catch all the Red
Sox and Celtics games he wants. But I have said this before, staff can
leave our office, but they don't get to leave our special family.
With enduring thanks to Mike Evans, enduring thanks to the good work
he has done that has made lives better in this country, Mike, big
thanks. Godspeed.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
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