[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4365-S4380]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

     MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
              APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2024--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked, the Senate will 
resume legislative session.
  The clerk will the report the motion to proceed.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 198, H.R. 4366, a bill 
     making appropriations for military construction, the 
     Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the 
     fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other 
     purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, at the start of the year, when Vice Chair 
Collins and I took over as leaders of the Senate Appropriations 
Committee, we announced something ambitious: We were going to return 
the committee to regular order.
  The first thing everyone told us was: That is great. We all want to 
return to regular order. We all want to show the American people that 
Congress can actually function; that we can work together and solve 
problems and pass bills to make their lives better.
  But the second thing they told us was essentially: Good luck. You are 
going to need it.
  Well, Vice Chair Collins and I went to work. We said: Look, if this 
is going to happen, we have to show we are serious about writing these 
bills that can actually be signed into law. That meant a few things.
  First of all, it meant we had to work with the funding levels in the 
debt ceiling deal struck by President Biden and Speaker McCarthy, a 
deal that I had--and I still have--concerns about and which required 
tough funding decisions across each of our 12 bills. But the President 
and Speaker shook hands, and that is the agreement that Congress passed 
into law. We can't produce serious bills if we start by throwing that 
framework out the window.
  Secondly, it meant we had to work together to find common ground, 
including on tough and thorny issues, and compromise where necessary to 
produce spending bills that could make it through both Chambers and to 
the President's desk. That meant avoiding poison pills that could sink 
these bills.
  And, third, we wanted to make sure that we had an open, bipartisan 
process. We wanted to give each and every one of our colleagues the 
chance to weigh in on these bills and the American public the chance to 
see our work on them. So we held over 40 hearings this spring to assess 
our Nation's needs for the year ahead. We sought input from all of our 
colleagues. We wrote these bills together, and then we held markups for 
the first time in 2 years. We televised the markups--the first time 
ever--so people could follow this debate from home. And at those 
markups, we discussed the draft legislation, considered amendments, and 
voted on our bills.
  The result: For the first time in 5 years, we passed all 12 of our 
funding bills out of our committee, and we did it with overwhelming 
bipartisan support. Nine of the twelve bills passed unanimously or had 
just a single ``no'' vote. In total, 97 percent of the votes on our 
bills in committee were ``yes'' votes.
  These are not the bills I would have written on my own. They are not 
what Vice Chair Collins would have written on her own. They are the 
bills we wrote together, along with our colleagues on the committee and 
with input from nearly every Senator on both sides of the aisle.
  They are serious bills that can be signed into law, which is how this 
process should work. We should come together, look for common ground, 
and build on it to write bills that solve problems and make people's 
lives better and give our Nation and communities the resources they 
need to stay safe and competitive, to grow and thrive. That is exactly 
what the three bills in this package do.
  As chair of the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans 
Affairs, and Related Agencies, I am

[[Page S4366]]

pleased to say I was able to work with Senator Boozman to put together 
a bill that gets our military and our veterans the support we owe them, 
the support that they need.
  This is essential to keeping our Nation safe because our ships and 
submarines and aircraft are only as good as the infrastructure they 
rely on and the troops who operate them. So this bill provides DOD with 
$19.1 billion for military construction. That is an increase over 
fiscal year 2023 levels.
  This funding will help with construction needs across our country at 
base installations for projects like childcare development centers to 
make sure our servicemembers and their spouses can go to work knowing 
that their children are safe and housing like the barracks project at 
Joint Base Lewis-McChord in my home State and other facilities across 
the country to support our troops.
  It will help make sure that our shipyards, like the naval base in 
Kitsap and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, are up-to-date and up to the 
challenges of this moment.
  These investments will build our presence around the world, 
especially in the Indo-Pacific regions, and strengthen our military 
infrastructure to keep it resilient in the face of threats like severe 
weather and earthquakes.
  And I am really glad we included funds to address harmful PFAS 
chemicals and other toxins at former installations that could put our 
communities in harm's way.
  I am also very proud of the work we have done in this bill to support 
veterans and their families. As the daughter of a World War II veteran, 
I take the promises we made to those who fought for our country very 
seriously, and this bill ensures that we keep those promises by fully 
funding VA's budget request. We are talking about increased funding for 
mental health, suicide prevention programs, the caregivers program, 
expanding the childcare pilot program--that continues to be a huge 
priority for me across all of our appropriations bills--funding for 
homelessness prevention programs for our veterans, rural health 
programs, and, of course, women veterans' healthcare.
  By the way, women are the fastest growing demographic of veterans 
overall. Our MILCON-VA funding bill also increases VA infrastructure 
funding so we can begin to address the challenges related to VA's aging 
medical facilities, and it reflects the much-needed pause and reset 
happening with the electronic health record modernization program.
  I was raising the alarm from day one about how the unacceptable 
botched rollout of that program hurt veterans in my home State, and I 
am watching closely to make sure we see changes that provide real 
results for our veterans and our VA providers because, at the end of 
the day, these investments are not just about programs and contracts. 
This is about our promise to get veterans the benefits they earned and 
need to stay healthy, like prescriptions, mental health care, cancer 
screenings, and more.
  So the stakes could not be higher for those families, and we owe them 
that much, which is why I am proud this bill sends a clear, bipartisan 
message: We are not going to shortchange our veterans and 
servicemembers, and we will live up to our obligation to provide them 
with the resources that they need.
  The next bill in this package--from the Subcommittee on Agriculture, 
Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies--
makes sure we are living up to another crucial obligation, and that is 
to keep our food supply safe and secure, and support rural communities 
across our country, because, at the most basic level, we can't have 
strong communities if people can't put food on the table. That means 
making sure that the food that is sold in our country is safe. It means 
protecting families from shortages--so avoiding and mitigating supply 
chain disruptions, addressing climate crises, like droughts, which can 
threaten crops we all rely on. It means addressing food insecurity so 
people can afford--and access--the food they need to keep their 
families healthy and fed. And it means supporting our Nation's farmers, 
who are such a huge part of our economy. For example, every day in my 
home State of Washington, we ship apples, cherries, wheat, potatoes, 
pulse crops, and so many other commodities across the country and 
across the world.
  So I want to thank Senator Heinrich and Senator Hoeven for their very 
hard work to help put together a bipartisan bill that delivers on those 
crucial issues. This bill will make sure the FDA has the resources it 
needs to keep grocery stores and dinner tables safe and to implement 
the bipartisan cosmetics legislation that we negotiated last year and 
that many of us worked on very hard to pass.
  It also includes crucial funding to support our farmers, for example, 
increased investments in agricultural research. Just last month, I was 
home and visited my alma mater, Washington State University, which is 
home to world class agricultural research programs. This funding will 
help universities like WSU to tackle problems that our farmers are 
facing, like, in my State, smoke exposure to wine grapes, herbicide 
resistance, and little cherry disease; not to mention efforts that we 
need to make to address water shortages, improve our yields, use 
inputs, and more.
  The bill also funds absolutely critical nutrition programs like WIC, 
which is a lifeline that keeps so many families from going under. This 
bill fully funds WIC at the level included in the President's budget 
request, and we know that participation and costs for the program are 
changing. So as we work to get final appropriations bills signed into 
law, I will keep working around the clock to make sure that no one 
loses their WIC benefits and no one is forced to be on a wait list. We 
have got to maintain the strong bipartisan support for that program 
going forward and continue to fully fund it, and that is a top priority 
for me.
  My family had to rely on food stamps for a short time, and thanks to 
that help that we got when I was young, every one of my six brothers 
and sisters and I have been able to now grow up and give back to our 
communities because our country had our back when we needed it.
  So make no mistake, our investments in WIC are not just the right 
thing, the moral thing; it is an investment in the future of America.
  So if I haven't painted a picture yet, investments like this, which 
maintain our nutrition programs, support our farmers, and keep our food 
supplies safe and secure are truly mission critical to our Nation's 
future, but they are also bipartisan. There are things that we can all 
agree on that are important for America.
  Finally, this package includes the funding bill from the 
Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies 
Subcommittee. I previously led this subcommittee alongside Vice Chair 
Collins, as the chair and ranking member, and, I can tell you, 
investments here are critical to help prevent people from living on the 
streets or being out in the cold and to get people and goods where they 
need to go in a safe and timely way.
  Washington State, like so many other States in our country, has 
really been grappling with our Nation's housing and homelessness crisis 
for years. So I am glad that we are able to maintain and build on some 
key investments in this bill that provide rental assistance to families 
in need, increase our housing supply, support maintenance for 
distressed properties, and connect people with healthcare, education, 
unemployment programs, and other support services.
  And I hope we can come together in a bipartisan way to do more to 
tackle those challenges in a serious way in the future, because while 
this bill does take important steps and includes necessary investments, 
our housing and homelessness crisis is going to take a lot more than 
flat funding in most areas and modest funding increases in some 
programs, which is what was possible to negotiate under the tough 
budget caps in this debt ceiling deal.
  When it comes to our Nation's transportation infrastructure, the 
investments in this bill are especially important in light of some of 
the derailments and disasters and disturbing close calls we saw this 
year. I am very pleased that we were able to increase funding for the 
Federal Aviation Administration so it can address the shortage of air 
traffic controllers, reduce flight

[[Page S4367]]

delays, increase efficiency, modernize technology, and critically 
improve safety, which is so important given the concerning number of 
near misses we have seen recently.
  This bill also increases the Federal Railroad Administration's 
funding for its safety work to make sure we have enough inspectors to 
keep our rails safe and that we can research important questions to 
improve rail safety and efficiency.
  So I really want to thank Senator Schatz and Senator Hyde-Smith for 
their excellent work putting that bill together.
  Each and every one of the appropriations bills in the package before 
us today is the result of an open, bipartisan process that invited 
input from every single Senator. In fact, that is true for all 12 of 
the bills our committee passed--all in overwhelming, bipartisan votes.
  And, as my colleagues know, the Senate Appropriations Committee has 
plenty of Members on opposite ends of the political spectrum--strongly 
progressive Democrats and deeply conservative Republicans. In other 
words, getting here took a lot of hard work, late nights, and early 
mornings. And we had to really set politics aside, listen to each 
other, focus on the problems, and find common ground.
  I think I speak for everyone when I say this work has not been easy. 
And, of course, I know as well as anyone that our work is not done. I 
think we all understand a CR will be necessary to see this process 
through. And we all understand supplemental funding is absolutely 
essential to respond to some of the urgent challenges our States are 
facing, like delivering disaster relief that communities desperately 
need today, paying our wildland firefighters, continuing to have our 
Ukrainian allies' back, and addressing the fentanyl crisis, not to 
mention the need, as I have spoken, of addressing the childcare funding 
cliff that threatens to put childcare further out of reach for too many 
families.

  And, of course, even after we pass this funding package before us 
today, we need to get all the rest of our appropriations bills across 
the finish line. But by passing this package and the rest of our 
appropriations bills, we are showing the American people that there is 
a clear, bipartisan path for us to do our jobs and fund the government.
  There is absolutely no reason for chaos or a shutdown, and I will 
continue working nonstop with my colleagues to make sure we get that 
job done. This was never going to be easy, but none of us came here 
because we thought it was easy. We came here because we wanted to make 
life better for folks back home, helping people and solving problems. I 
have said that a lot during my time here in the Senate, and I have 
brokered a lot of bipartisan deals, always in service to the people I 
represent back home, the friends and neighbors that I grew up with. 
Helping people and solving problems, that is our job, and I would like 
to see us do more of that together--Democrats and Republicans.
  So I urge all of our colleagues: Let's keep this momentum going. 
Let's show the American people that Congress can work for them. There 
doesn't have to be a calamity over funding the government. Let's show 
that there can and will be major policy disagreements on any number of 
issues, but their elected leaders can come together on what we agree 
on, and we will fund the government responsibly so they don't have to 
worry about chaos or shutdowns.
  And on that note, I would like to encourage my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle to come to the floor and talk about these bills--
what they mean for your State, what they mean for your constituents, 
what your priorities are here--and to talk to me and to talk to Senator 
Collins if you have amendments and ideas for how we can make these 
bills better, because Senator Collins and I are working now to clear a 
managers' package and set up votes. Our staffs are still working too, 
and we are happy to work with your team so we can pass the strongest 
bills possible.
  We have been working closely from day one to run an open, bipartisan 
process and to get input from all of our colleagues and to make sure 
everyone can make their constituents' voices heard.
  One issue Vice Chair Collins and I heard about from many of our 
colleagues is the need to support communities rebuilding after recent 
disasters. I will have more to say on that in the days ahead, but it is 
front of mind for both of us and the Appropriations Committee as a 
whole to take care of our communities that are working so hard to 
rebuild after the recent horrible disasters, which include, as we know, 
the wildfires in Hawaii and in areas in Washington State, flooding in 
Vermont and California, as well as the damage caused by Hurricane 
Idalia.
  So, as we get started on this bill, I say to all of my colleagues: 
Come to the floor. Talk to us. Work with us so we can get this funding 
package passed, help people, and solve problems.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am very pleased to join Chair Murray as 
we begin debate on the first of what I hope will be a series of fiscal 
year 2024 appropriations packages considered on the Senate floor in the 
coming weeks. And I want to commend Chair Murray for her leadership, 
for her bipartisanship, for her relentlessness in getting us to where 
we are today. It did take a lot of work, and it has been a pleasure to 
be her partner.
  When Chair Murray and I took the helm of the Appropriations Committee 
at the beginning of this year, we set forth the goal of returning 
regular order to the appropriations process. Now, Chair Murray and I 
have served in the Senate long enough that we remember what regular 
order means. It means going through the committee process, reporting 
bills out after hearings and a markup, and bringing them to the Senate 
floor. But many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle have never 
experienced regular order. That is how long it has been since we have 
done the process the right way.
  The system just works better when we adhere to regular order, with 
committee members having the opportunity to shape legislation, and the 
Senate as a whole having the chance to work its will.
  Regular order is not easy. In fact, it is a lot of work. Our 
committee members spent much of the winter and spring in hearing rooms, 
holding nearly 50 subcommittee hearings and briefings on the 
President's fiscal year 2024 budget requests. We scrutinized the 
funding levels, evaluated the programs, and asked the tough questions.
  In June and July, our members were hard at work at developing, 
drafting, and advancing the fiscal year 2024 funding bills. For the 
first time ever, our committee markups were televised so that our 
deliberations and our votes on amendments and on passage of each bill 
were fully transparent. The result, as Senator Murray has said, for the 
first time in 5 years, the Senate Appropriations Committee has reported 
each and every one of the 12 appropriations bills. All of them passed 
with strong bipartisan support. Seven of them were approved 
unanimously.

  Today, we take the next important step in restoring deliberation to 
the appropriations process as we bring the first package of funding 
bills to the Senate floor. I know that both Chair Murray and I are 
committed to doing our part to ensure a constructive floor debate with 
a robust amendment process. This will require the cooperation of all 
Members, and I hope we will be able to work together toward that goal. 
It is critical that we succeed in this effort so that we do not once 
again find ourselves in December faced with the unpalatable choice 
among a 4,000-plus-page omnibus bill, a yearlong continuing resolution, 
or, worst of all, a government shutdown.
  The Republican leader spoke this morning about the importance of the 
package of bills before us. He noted that this legislation ``is 
designed to address a trio of important commitments--to America's 
farmers, to our veterans, and to investing in transportation 
infrastructure.'' He went on to note that ``seven percent of American 
adults are veterans of our Armed Forces.'' I am pleased to say that in 
Maine, that percentage is even higher. We rank among the top in the 
country in the number of veterans on a per capita basis who have 
answered the call to serve. The leader also noted that ``ten percent of 
American jobs are supported

[[Page S4368]]

by agriculture. And our entire economy hinges on safe and efficient 
railroads, airports, roads, and bridges.'' The leader's remarks 
succinctly sum up the importance of these bills.
  Our package includes the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs 
bill, led by Senators Murray and Boozman. It was approved by the 
committee on June 22, so Members have had a great deal of time to 
scrutinize and read the language of that bill. This wasn't something 
assembled hastily, behind closed doors, at the last minute. To the 
contrary, it was subject to in-depth hearings, negotiations, and 
transparent markups.
  We are also going to include, I hope, the Agriculture, Rural 
Development, and Food and Drug Administration bill written by Senators 
Heinrich and Hoeven, which was also approved on June 22. It is a very 
important bill to the State of Maine, where potatoes are our No. 1 
crop.
  I grew up in Northern Maine, where potatoes are grown, and I helped 
to pick potatoes when I was age 10. The schools would recess so that 
the schoolchildren could help the farmers get in the crop before the 
heavy freeze made that impossible.
  Of course, Maine is also known for its wonderful wild blueberries and 
many other crops.
  We are also going to look at and include the Transportation and 
Housing bill drafted by Senators Schatz and Hyde-Smith, which was 
approved on July 20.
  Each of these bills--each one of them--was reported unanimously. That 
hardly ever happens around here. It is a tribute to the chairmen and 
chairwomen of those subcommittees and the ranking members and how hard 
they worked to put together a bill that reflected not only the views of 
their subcommittees and the full committees and input from Chair Murray 
and me but from so many other Senators who wrote to us with their 
priorities.
  The first bill, the MILCON-VA appropriations bill, invests in 
critical Department of Defense infrastructure. It provides funding to 
support the European and Pacific Deterrence Initiatives, unfunded 
construction priorities of the Active Guard and Reserve Forces, and 
improved housing for our servicemembers and their families, which is so 
important at a time when we are experiencing recruitment problems.
  I am particularly pleased that this bill fully funds the Shipyard 
Infrastructure Optimization Program, including the President's request 
for $545 million for Drydock No. 1 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard 
located in Kittery, ME--an essential national security asset for our 
submarine fleet.
  This bill also keeps our commitment to our veterans by funding VA 
medical care and veterans' benefits, including disability compensation 
programs, education benefits and vocational rehabilitation, and 
employment training.
  Like Senator Murray, I, too, am the daughter of a World War II 
veteran, and thus, our commitment to our veterans is very personal to 
me. My father was a combat veteran in World War II who fought in the 
Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded twice and earned two Purple Hearts 
and a Bronze Star. It was he who taught me to honor our veterans.
  I will never forget as a child his taking me to the Memorial Day 
parade every year in our hometown of Caribou, ME. He would hoist me 
high on his shoulders so that I could see the veterans march by and 
salute our flag.
  I will never forget those lessons, and they are the reason I care so 
deeply about the service of our veterans.
  I want to commend Chair Murray and Ranking Member Boozman for their 
great work on this bill, and I know they will describe its provisions 
in more detail. In fact, Senator Murray, Chair Murray, already has.
  The second bill in the package is the Agriculture appropriations 
bill, which funds programs that support our farmers, ranchers, and 
rural communities. Both the Presiding Officer and I, I think, represent 
two of the most rural States in America. It also protects our Nation's 
food and drug supply and ensures that low-income families have access 
to critical Federal nutrition programs.
  I am particularly pleased that despite this tight budget environment, 
this bill provides increased funding for agriculture research to 
support food security and sustainability and for FDA initiatives 
focused on drug and device shortages, food safety, and critical 
research focused on neuroscience and ALS. I commend Chairman Heinrich 
and Ranking Member Hoeven for putting together such a strong bill.
  Finally, the third bill in the package provides essential funding for 
the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development and 
related Agencies.
  Both Chair Murray and I have a soft spot in our hearts for this bill 
because each of us spent many years as either the chair or the ranking 
member of the THUD Subcommittee.
  It supports the RAISE grant transportation program and the Bridge 
Formula Program that help address our Nation's deteriorating 
infrastructure.
  It invests in the FAA, supporting the addition of 1,800 air traffic 
controllers. We have a huge shortage in Bangor, ME. I heard from the 
air traffic controllers about how terribly understaffed they are. And 
the bill would modernize outdated systems, such as the Notice to Air 
Missions System that went offline earlier this year, shutting down the 
Nation's airspace for several hours.
  I am especially pleased that this bill contains support for shoreside 
infrastructure improvements at our Nation's State maritime academies--
including Maine Maritime Academy--that are necessary for docking the 
newly constructed national security multimission vessels that are also 
the training ships for the maritime academies.

  At a time when virtually every State faces an affordable housing 
shortage, this bill also maintains existing rental assistance for more 
than 4.6 million households and continues to make meaningful 
investments aimed at tackling the persistent and growing problem of 
homelessness, especially among our Nation's veterans and youth. I thank 
Chair Schatz and Ranking Member Hyde-Smith for their tremendous efforts 
on this bill.
  I also want to mention that both Senators from Hawaii--and Senator 
Schatz again today--have talked to all of us about the tragic loss of 
life, the devastation that the recent wildfires have caused in their 
beloved home State. I note that the Presiding Officer, representing the 
State of Vermont, also has had a need for disaster assistance, as have 
the State of Maine and so many other States. We need to support the 
people of States that have been hit by these devastating disasters in 
their time of need.
  Let me conclude my opening remarks by expressing my heartfelt 
gratitude to all of our committee members--particularly our 
subcommittee chairs and ranking members--for their extraordinary work 
in getting us to this point. Again, I especially want to commend Chair 
Murray for her leadership and commitment.
  I look forward to a productive floor debate as we move forward, and I 
ask my colleagues for their support. The choice before the Senate is 
clear: Do we want to pass, with amendments, carefully considered 
funding bills or do we want to default to either an omnibus bill many 
thousands of pages long and with very little transparency or, worse, a 
yearlong resolution that funds programs that are no longer needed, 
prevents new programs from starting up, wastes taxpayer dollars, and is 
subject to indiscriminate cuts due to the provisions of the Fiscal 
Responsibility Act? The choice is very clear. The Senate should proceed 
to debate, consider amendments, and pass the appropriations bills.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois, the Democratic 
whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this is indeed a historic moment in the 
U.S. Senate.
  As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee for more than two 
decades, I can remember a time when, in fact, 12 different 
appropriations bills came to the floor of the Senate for consideration. 
It has been at least 5 years--maybe longer--since we have done that. 
Instead, we bundled all of the appropriations in one big omnibus bill 
and handed it over to leadership to decide. We waited for that 
desperate vote where they said: You have to vote for this; it is take 
it or leave it.

[[Page S4369]]

  Well, we are back in the stage of due deliberation on appropriations, 
and I want to commend those who have brought us to this moment.
  If you asked me at the beginning of this session to pick two 
Senators--one a Democrat and one a Republican--who could achieve this 
goal, I would have chosen the two who are here on the floor today, 
Senator Patty Murray and Senator Susan Collins. They are extraordinary 
legislators, some of the hardest working people in the U.S. Senate, and 
they truly have dedication to a national purpose beyond anything that 
partisan politics might generate.
  I have seen them at work for years and worked with them together. I 
can't think of a better team, and I am more than happy to work with 
them to achieve their goal for 12 appropriation bills considered and 
passed on the floor of the Senate. It will be historic, and it will 
serve the American people better than most of them could imagine today 
because it will mean we will take the time to do each of these bills in 
a thoughtful, careful way. So let me start by commending them for being 
here today and for the work that has brought us to this moment.


                    United Auto Workers Negotiations

  Mr. President, on July 12, the United Auto Workers and the Big Three 
automakers--General Motors, Ford and Stellantis--began contract 
negotiations to determine their next 4-year labor deal. Since it was 
founded nearly 90 years ago, the United Auto Workers have fought for 
and won victories that have helped strengthen America's working 
families. The UAW has won better pay for its members, safer working 
conditions, employer-funded pensions, health insurance, education 
benefits, and much more. UAW helped to allow autoworkers and their 
families to buy homes, take vacations, send their children to college, 
and retire with dignity. Autoworkers work hard; they deserve their 
opportunity to enjoy the American dream.
  But the legacy that I have just described is in danger. Over the last 
20 years, autoworkers have faced dozens of plant closures, lost jobs, 
wage cuts, and contract concessions. In 2009, the UAW made major 
concessions in its contracts to help these same automakers receive 
government assistance. This included job security provisions, cost-of-
living adjustments, and financing for retiree healthcare. They made 
sacrifices so that their employer companies survived during that 
terrible situation in our economy.
  How have they done? The automakers have reaped billions of dollars in 
profit since. But these benefits have not been passed down to the 
workers, and UAW members have seen their wages and standards of living 
suffer. Over the past 4 years, the CEOs of the Big Three that I have 
listed have seen 40-percent wage hikes on average, while autoworkers 
have seen 6.1 percent.
  Decades ago, the ratio between CEO and median worker pay was around 
20 to 1, which meant the big shots in the boardrooms were making 20 
times what the fellow was making on the assembly line. Today it has 
changed. No longer 20 to 1; it is 300 to 1. Should CEOs be earning 300 
times more than autoworkers? I don't think so.
  Stellantis, General Motors, and Ford have reported collective profits 
of nearly--get ready--$250 billion between 2013 and 2022 and a combined 
profit of $21 billion alone in the first 6 months of this year--$21 
billion.
  The salaries of their CEOs--listen to these--$29 million for the CEO 
of General Motors, $21 million for Ford's CEO, $24 million for 
Stellantis--further evidence of this notion of corporate royalty. In 
2007, the average wage for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General 
Motors was $28 an hour--in 2007--while the starting wage was $19.36 an 
hour. In today's dollars, that is $28.50. Today, the starting wage for 
autoworkers at the Big Three is $18.04 an hour--more than $10 lower 
than what starting wages would be if they had kept up with inflation 
since 2007. Eighteen dollars an hour.
  In Springfield, IL, coming back from picking up some hardware at 
Lowe's, I passed a Taco Bell. The sign out front said starting pay $17 
an hour at Taco Bell. Autoworkers--professional men and women who work 
hard--are being offered $18; Taco Bell, $17.
  Meanwhile, these same workers who are making $18 an hour for the 
automobile manufacturers are asked to work 10- to 12-hour days, 6 to 7 
days a week. And 61 GM, Ford, and Stellantis plants have been idle or 
closed since 2003. Thousands of jobs have been lost. And I can tell 
that story personally because one of the idled plants was a Belvidere 
assembly plant in Belvidere, IL, owned by Stellantis. That plant opened 
58 years ago. They once had 4,500 union workers. In February, they laid 
off 1,350 workers who were blindsided at the time by that announcement. 
This was devastating, not just to the families of the workers but to 
the community.
  I begged Stellantis: Reconsider this decision. And I have spoken to 
the president of the United Autoworkers who tells me it is one of his 
highest priorities. Workers are fed up. Earlier this year, autoworkers 
struggled to breathe in factories across Illinois and other States due 
to unprecedented wildfire smoke in Canada. Now they are saying, in this 
negotiation: Enough.
  At the same time, Congress and the Biden Administration have made 
major investments in clean energy--including the production of electric 
vehicles.
  Corporations cannot impose the cost of transitioning to electric 
vehicles on the shoulders of today's workers. We can and should invest 
in these vehicles while making sure they continue to be produced with 
union labor. These corporations that I talked about--the Big Three--
have benefited from billions of dollars in profits in recent years. Why 
haven't the workers benefited as much?
  In just two days on September 14, contracts covering 150,000 UAW 
workers at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis will expire. At the 
same time, Stellantis put plants on critical status for 90 days.
  What does that mean for the current workers before the contract would 
be announced? It would mean that they would work 7 days a week, 12-hour 
shifts. Why are they doing this? They are trying to pile up inventory.
  Under critical status, workers can only receive 1 day off every 30 
days, unless they use family medical leave. Meanwhile, Stellantis 
complains that it is behind thousands of units, while it continues to 
lay off workers. It just doesn't add up.
  I urge the Big Three and the UAW to negotiate in good faith, reach an 
agreement before September 14--just 2 days away--and prevent a strike 
that will cost billions of dollars and impact 150,000 hard-working 
autoworkers.
  This agreement must be fair to workers, include a restoration of the 
benefits that autoworkers sacrificed more than a decade ago, to keep 
these families afloat. And Stellantis must reconsider the closure of 
Belvidere assembly plant and welcome back the workers it laid off in 
February.
  There is a lot at stake. The automobile industry is a major part of 
our economy. Autoworkers have done their best; they have sacrificed 
right and left to make sure that this industry stays as strong as it 
is--and even stronger--in America. The CEOs need to show a spirit of 
cooperation and teamwork to make sure that when they reopen this with a 
new contract, we are going to have many more years of prosperity for 
American automakers.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.


                 Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 336

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Democrats' mandates 
that forced our young Senate pages to be vaccinated three times. In a 
free society, no one should be forced to take an injection; no one 
should be forced to have a surgery; no one should be forced to submit 
to a medical procedure--particularly a medical procedure that was 
approved under emergency-use authorization.
  Democrats' support for medical choice when it comes to vaccines 
appears to be inconsistent and selective. But I fear they won't be 
persuaded by any arguments towards liberty, so I would like to direct 
the majority of my remarks to the actual science about whether or not 
adolescents should have to be forced to have three COVID vaccines.
  Initially, there were arguments made saying: We must forcibly 
vaccinate these kids or they will infect the older folks, the 
antiquarian Senators. But it turns out that argument fails because the 
science in the end showed that the vaccine didn't prevent transmission 
of the disease.

[[Page S4370]]

  In fact, in August 2021, CDC Director Rachel Walensky admitted for 
COVID-19 that the vaccine does not stop transmission:

       Our vaccines are working exceptionally well . . . But what 
     they can't do anymore is prevent transmission.

  So the government, the proponents, those for the mandates argue: 
Well, we have to do it; it will stop the disease and we won't have any 
more spread.
  Well, it turns out that wasn't true. The vaccine does not stop 
transmission. With that, it should have been the end of the arguments 
for mandates, because you are no longer talking about your health 
versus someone else's health. The only argument that those who are for 
the mandates argue now and those who argue for taking the vaccine is 
that it reduces your health risk--the individual who chooses to get 
vaccinated. However, when you look at the data, that appears only to be 
true for targeted populations.
  If you are at risk for being hospitalized or dying from COVID, over 
age 75, immunocompromised, have other health concerns, there is some 
argument for a vaccine. But for a young, healthy person, there is no 
logical argument. If you look and ask yourself will taking a booster 
reduce transmission, the argument is no. Whether you are at risk or 
not, it does not reduce transmission.
  If you are at risk for hospitalization or death, it may well reduce 
that. But the young pages we are talking about are not at risk for 
that. In fact, when we look at it, throughout Europe, there was a study 
of 23 million folks--young folks--and they found the death rate was 
zero. Israel looked at this: Death rate zero for young, healthy people. 
Germany looked at this, ages 5 to 17: Death rate for young, healthy 
people, zero.
  And people say, well, what is the big deal? The vaccine is not that 
big a deal. You know, certainly, it is not going to hurt them. It has 
to be better than having COVID. Well, it turns out when you weigh the 
risks versus the benefits for a particular age group, it is actually 
not true. If you look at the risks of side effects from the vaccine--
and the main worrisome side effect that we are concerned with is an 
inflammation of the heart called myocarditis or pericarditis--a study 
by Prasad and Knudsen looked at 29 different studies and found that the 
incidents, averaged out, was a little over 2 per 15,000.
  The Vaccine Safety Datalink looked at this again and found also it 
was about 2, 2.5 out of 15,000. Even the CDC admits that the risk of 
myocarditis for young people is about 1 in 15,000. Tracey Beth Hoeg 
looked at a retrospective study of those who have been injured by 
vaccines and found the incidence of adverse cardiac events was about 
1.62 per 10,000. So it's not like every kid is going to get 
myocarditis, but you have to weigh the incidence of 1 or 2 or 3 out of 
15,000 getting a serious disease that could affect their health or even 
debilitate them.
  The risks and benefits are different for every individual. That is 
why in a free society, the individual or the individual and their 
parents make this decision with their doctor; sometimes they get more 
than one opinion. But we don't mandate--in a free society, we don't 
just tell them: Do what you are told or else. But that is what is 
happening.
  It is not just happening here in the Senate--although, the Senate is 
setting a terrible example for the country. Many universities are still 
doing this. It is actually medical malpractice to require these 
vaccines for kids. It turns out when you look at the incidence of 
myocarditis, over 90 percent of the heart inflammation that occurs in 
young people occurs after the second dose.
  You can get rid of 90 percent of--admittedly, not a real common 
problem--but you can get rid of 90 percent of the risk of this vaccine 
by not requiring more than one. But we are not talking about just the 
second dose, where 90 percent of the inflammation comes from the second 
dose. We are talking about Senate Democrats--because Republicans would 
like to get rid of this--Senate Democrats are requiring three vaccines. 
There is absolutely no scientific evidence. In fact, when this went to 
the committee studying this, the first committee that looked at this 
was the FDA Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, 
and Dr. Paul Offit sits on this committee.
  They voted not to advise giving the booster to anyone unless they are 
over 65. They said: Let's look at the risks and the benefits. The 
disease COVID appears to be affecting the older generation. They are 
more at risk. We can put up with some risk for the vaccine; but for the 
kids, it is not worth it. The committee voted.
  So then it went from the FDA's committee to the CDC's vaccine 
committee. Guess what? They voted against recommending the booster 
also. They said, reserve the booster for those who are at risk, for at-
risk populations.
  So how did we get a booster mandate? How did we get a booster advice 
from the CDC saying everybody from the age of 2 months should get a 
booster? How did we get it? The CDC political appointee of the Biden 
administration overrode the FDA vaccine committee and overrode the CDC 
committee.
  Dr. Paul Offit was and still is on the Vaccine Related Biological 
Products Advisory Committee, and he voted to reserve the booster for 
those at risk. He is the director of Vaccine Education Center and 
professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at 
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
  He is not someone who is opposed to vaccines. He spent his whole life 
advocating for vaccines. He is on a committee that has approved the 
COVID vaccine. He just simply said the vaccines should be targeted, and 
it should be extended and advised--not even mandated but advised--for 
people over 65 but not for kids. His committee voted no. The FDA 
committee on vaccines voted no; don't give the vaccine to kids.

  The CDC committee on vaccines voted no; don't give it to kids.
  What do Senate Democrats want? Put their heads in the sand and make a 
political decision because they love central authority to mandate that 
these kids get three vaccines, even though the science goes against all 
of it.
  Paul Offit, when asked whether or not his son who was 24 would get 
the vaccine, he said:

       He shouldn't get the vaccine.

  So we are stuck with a situation where there is no evidence and no 
historical precedent for mandating this kind of treatment. There is no 
historical precedent for mandating that the Senate and Senate Democrats 
intervene between the doctor of these children and making their own 
medical decisions. It is taking away the idea that risk and benefit are 
debated and discussed based on your risks and benefits. So what we find 
is that advice that actually probably is good, if you are over 65, to 
consider getting a booster--although it still should be voluntary--we 
are going against the best advice to actually promote that these kids 
get a vaccine that may well be harmful to them.
  The CDC has admitted it doesn't stop transmission. But then you want 
to ask yourself, what are other countries--what are they doing around 
the world? They looked at 23 million people, ages 12 and up, in 
Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. What did they find? They found 
that after two doses of the mRNA COVID vaccine, the risk of myocarditis 
was higher than compared with those who were not vaccinated. This is 
exactly why much of Europe is now limiting the vaccine and not giving 
the vaccine to certain age groups.
  What they found in these studies is that adolescent males, 
particularly between the ages of 12 and 26, are at a heightened risk 
for this. In fact, Tracy Beth Hoeg, in her study, looked at the 
possibility of adverse cardiac events versus a possibility that someone 
their age could go to the hospital over a 120-day period. They found 
that the possibility of an adverse cardiac effect was about five times 
greater than any of these kids even going to the hospital.
  But what we did find is--and this is why several countries have 
actually limited this--Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and 
Norway now restrict the mRNA vaccine and don't advise giving the 
vaccine to this age group, particularly don't advise giving them three 
vaccines.
  A study in December in the Journal of Medical Ethics found about 14.7

[[Page S4371]]

cases of myocarditis--actually, 1.47 cases per 10,000 in ages 18 to 29. 
They also found that those who had the heart inflammation, 3 months 
later were still suffering from the inflammation of the heart.
  Dr. Offit, who sits on the committee that voted against recommending 
this for adolescents and for children, wrote in an op-ed that 
``[a]healthy young person with two mRNA vaccine doses is extremely 
unlikely to be hospitalized with covid, so the case for risking any 
side effects--such as myocarditis--diminishes substantially.'' That is 
why they did recommend against the third vaccine, which is exactly the 
opposite of what the Democrats are doing. They do and want to mandate 
three vaccines on these kids.
  As one editorial put it last year, if being boosted becomes a 
prerequisite for participation in normal life, the vaccine's 
diminishing efficacy means the boosting campaign will never end.
  Dr. Marty Makary, professor of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 
wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

       The U.S. government is pushing Covid-19 vaccine boosters 
     for 16- and 17-year-olds without supporting clinical data. A 
     large Israeli population study, published in the New England 
     Journal of Medicine . . . found that the risk of Covid death 
     in people under 30 with two vaccine shots was zero.

  Germany showed zero deaths among healthy kids ages 5 to 17.
  There is no scientific rationale for mandating three COVID vaccines 
for healthy kids. Even World Health Organization Chief Scientist Dr. 
Soumya Swaminathan said last year that ``there's no evidence'' that 
suggests healthy children and adolescents need booster shots--no 
evidence. This is the head of the WHO. These are not opponents of 
vaccines. These are people saying that there is no evidence and that it 
might harm these kids to get vaccinated, and yet Democrats will vote 
today, the lot of them, to say that basically we must force these kids 
to get three vaccines or they can't be up here.
  Now, you might say: Well, gosh, we are just so worried and we don't 
know everything and so what do we do?
  Well, how about all the other people who work up here? At any point 
in time, the other 10 or 15 people in this room, are they required to 
get vaccines? No. We are only requiring one group subset to do it. 
These kids have to get three vaccines. They are the least likely to get 
sick from COVID. They get COVID, and they don't even know it. The 
vaccine doesn't stop them from getting COVID. They have naturally 
acquired immunity as well. If you don't ask yourself what that means, 
you are not paying attention to any science.
  Wouldn't you want to know whether they have had it? Even if you 
really thought a vaccine mandate was great, what if I have already had 
COVID? Do I need three more vaccines? Because I have already had COVID, 
I developed natural immunity.
  Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School says that mandating 
people who have already had COVID that they still get vaccinated makes 
zero sense from a scientific point of view, and it makes zero sense 
from a public health point of view. A study in Lancet supported this 
view, stating that current evidence does not appear to show a need for 
boosting in the general population.
  That is why the FDA committee and the CDC committee both voted 
against advising it. It is not only bad advice; it is a horrific 
mandate. It would be one thing if you want to give advice to tell 
people that we think it is a good idea, but it is another to tell them 
they have got no choice. Do you want to participate in the elite 
program here in the Nation's Senate? You can't come unless you do what 
Democrats want, submit to three vaccines, even though it may increase 
your risk of heart inflammation. They don't care. Mandates are fine.
  A study at Lancet looked at this and said that it was a bad idea. It 
says: Currently available evidence does not show the need for 
widespread use of booster vaccination in populations that have received 
an effective primary vaccine or who have already been infected with the 
disease.
  When we consider the rules for the pages, we ought to ask: Will these 
policies be expected to continue indefinitely? The virus mutates about 
every 3 or 4 months. You have got a brandnew virus. You have got a 
virus now you didn't have 3 or 4 months ago. The vaccines also lose 
their potency. Are you going to mandate until the end of time? It is 
also not the same.

  Are you going to stick your head in the sand and say this is 2020? 
No, the virus in 2020 actually was more lethal.
  One of the good things about viral evolution is they typically evolve 
to become less dangerous and more transmissible. You can catch COVID by 
looking at somebody wrong, but fortunately it is not as deadly as it 
once was.
  Are there still some people dying from COVID? Yes, people who are at 
high risk. If you go to a doctor and you have chest pain and you are 12 
years old, he doesn't or she doesn't treat you the same way as if you 
would go in and you are 60 years old.
  If you walk into an emergency room and you are 15 years old with 
chest pain, they usually might think of asthma or other problems but 
typically not a heart attack. People are treated differently based on 
their age. Doctors think of what is common in that age group.
  If I go in with chest pain, they are going to do heart enzymes. They 
are going look for a heart attack. That is the first thing they are 
going to look for. But they don't treat everyone the same.
  This is blindly what we are being told by the Democrats; that 
everybody is the same, submit or else. But it is not just the pages 
whom they are hurting here. It is not just the pages that they are 
increasing their risk for this heart inflammation. They are setting an 
example and other universities are doing it. Still, tens of thousands 
of young American kids are being forced to take three vaccines.
  You say: Well, they are not being forced. They can choose not to go 
to Yale or Harvard. What if your dream had always been to go to one of 
these schools? You have to give up your medical freedom and your good 
judgment just simply so you can do exactly what Democrats tell you to 
do?
  Multiple scientific studies have shown a heightened risk of this 
heart inflammation or myocarditis for children and teenagers after 
taking the vaccine. Ninety percent of the myocarditis comes after the 
second or the third vaccine. If you simply went to one vaccine, you 
would get rid of 90 percent of the problem. And yet, they are still 
insisting that we do something that is actually medical malpractice, 
that these kids be forced to take three.
  Multiple countries have begun restricting the vaccine for certain age 
groups. Germany, France, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden all have 
restricted Moderna's vaccine for young people. Norway, South America, 
and the UK all chose to recommend only one dose of Pfizer due to the 
risk of cardiovascular side effects for boosters in children. And yet 
what we would get today is not a discussion, not we are open to 
compromise, no maybe the science has changed and we will reevaluate it; 
you will get from the Democrats: No, get three boosters or you can't 
come to the Senate.
  Why is the U.S. Senate choosing to ignore the risk other countries 
have acknowledged when mandating these vaccines for young people who 
are in peak physical condition? What happened to a belief in medical 
choice? What happened to a belief in medical freedom?
  Public health measures should be backed up with proof that the 
benefits outweigh the burdens, and if you want to treat everyone the 
same--you want to say that teenagers are the same as 75-year-olds--that 
is not good medicine; that is not good science.
  There is no evidence that when it comes to vaccination and booster 
mandates, especially for teenagers who as a group are less vulnerable 
to the virus than any Senator, that is why I am asking unanimous 
consent today that we pass my resolution to get rid of this ridiculous 
and unscientific mandate.
  So, therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 336, which is at the desk; 
further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, 
and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the 
table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

[[Page S4372]]

  

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. First of 
all, I want to assure the pages that we normally don't spend this much 
time debating you guys.
  At the end of the July session, there was a verbal assault on pages 
who were in the Rotunda, which caused both Senator Schumer and Senator 
McConnell to rise to the pages' defense.
  We have now spent an inordinate amount of time this week debating 
healthcare policies related to the pages.
  Second, while Senator Paul and I often find common cause, I am 
continually stunned at his unseriousness about the scope of this 
ongoing tragedy. No matter how many times I hear Senator Paul rail 
against vaccines, I am still heartbroken by the fact that so many of my 
colleagues don't understand the devastation that has been wrought in 
this country, as 1.1 million Americans--1.1 million Americans--have 
died from COVID, in large part, because of the ongoing attacks against 
vaccines that work that has undermined the public's confidence in one 
of the very best tools that we have to combat the worst of this disease 
and this virus.
  I am looking at a scientific study from earlier this year naming 
COVID-19 as the eighth leading cause of death for children in this 
country. It is true, it is rare for a child to die from COVID, but when 
you have 1.1 million people dying of COVID in this country, of course 
there is going to be an unacceptable number of children who die from 
COVID.
  COVID-19 deaths displaced influenza and pneumonia, becoming the top 
cause of death for children caused by any infectious or respiratory 
disease. It caused substantially more deaths for children than any 
vaccine-preventable disease, historically, this study showed.
  And so, yes, our pages are working for us. We are responsible for 
them while they are here. And, yes, children are not immune from COVID. 
And, lastly, the only mandate that we are talking about as we consider 
Senator Paul's resolution is the mandate in his resolution. Right now, 
there is no statutory or rules-based vaccine mandate. The Senate has 
been silent on this question.
  So it is up to the public servants who run the Senate and the medical 
advice they rely on as to whether or not pages should be required to 
get vaccinated.
  There is no mandate.
  Senator Paul's resolution is a mandate. Senator Paul says under no 
circumstances can pages be required to be vaccinated, even if the virus 
mutates, even if a new vaccine comes along that is even more 
efficacious--under no circumstances can there be a requirement for a 
vaccine. Under current policy, under current statute, under the current 
rules of the Senate, it is up to the Senate leadership. It is up to the 
medical advice that they rely on, and they could change that advice as 
time goes on. Under Senator Paul's mandate, they could only make one 
choice.

  COVID cases are rising. People are at risk again, and this constant 
campaign to use every mechanism possible to try to undermine people's 
faith in medicine and science and vaccines is not just about the pages 
who serve here; it is about the entire American public that is 
disserved by a U.S. Senate that continues to try to undermine the basic 
tools that we have to try to fight this ongoing epidemic that still 
plagues too many in this Nation.
  For that reason, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, in no way, shape, or form have I opposed 
vaccines for those who are at risk. Back when my in-laws, who are 92 
and 86, first became eligible for the vaccine, the first thing we did 
was call the health department to see if we could get them a vaccine. 
Unfortunately, the health department wouldn't answer the phone, but 
they did have a useful message. They said, if we knew anybody who was 
not wearing a mask, we could report them to the police, but they didn't 
do anything about vaccines.
  But I have never been opposed to vaccines. In fact, a lot of the 
vaccine hesitancy that we have in our country comes from the 
unscientific, unfounded, and half-baked ideas of the Democrats on this. 
When Democrats tell you that we should force 15-year-olds to be 
vaccinated--because that makes no sense and because their parents know 
it makes no sense and they know it makes no sense--that leads to the 
distrust of the government on other fronts.
  So I mentioned earlier--and this, apparently, was lost and not 
necessarily received by the other side--that the FDA committee, in 
looking at boosters, advised not to give boosters to teenagers. Now, 
they hide behind that by saying: Oh, there is no mandate. Ask these 
kids if there is a mandate. Ask their parents. Ask the media. Call them 
up. Ask them: Is there a mandate? No, they can't be here unless they 
have three vaccines. There is a mandate. We have the chance to undo the 
mandate, and that is what the vote would be about.
  The FDA didn't even advise giving it. The FDA didn't even advise 
giving it to them, but they definitely didn't advise mandating it. The 
CDC said the same thing. The only reason we got any kind of approval 
for this booster is that the political appointee of the Biden 
administration overrode both of the vaccine committees in order to 
approve it.
  Normally, you would have to prove efficacy--a reduction in 
hospitalization. Well, transmission would be one. The Senator came to 
the floor and said this is a vaccine-preventable disease. Well, this 
isn't a vaccine-preventable disease because it doesn't stop 
transmission; it doesn't stop you from getting it.
  But here is the thing: If you look at kids and boosters and you want 
to prove whether they are good for kids--and this is all we are talking 
about. We are not talking about the elderly or the infirm or people who 
have risk factors. We are talking about these kids. If you look at 
these kids and you ask, ``Do they have any risk factors or are any of 
them dying?'' we will refer to some statistics here. Well, the 
statistics aren't accurate. If you look at healthy kids--there was not 
one healthy kid. The answer wasn't a few. It was zero. In Germany, zero 
healthy kids died. In Israel, zero healthy kids died. A handful of 
unfortunate cases of children in our country did die. I think it was a 
little over 100 kids in a country of 330 million, and, sadly, every one 
of those cases had a severe medical illness and a problem.
  I think it is an abomination that they want to say, ``Oh, we are the 
only ones who care about the million people who died,'' when we are the 
only ones who have been trying to figure out where this virus came 
from. For the last 3 years, I have been asking every day: Did this 
virus escape from a lab?
  And not one Democrat will stand up and say: I will help you find out. 
We will look at it together.
  Every Democrat has said: We don't care. We don't know, and we don't 
want to know where the virus came from.
  But if it came from a lab, maybe we should quit funding this 
research. Should we quit sending our money to China, to a lab that 
operates in an unsafe manner? That would be a way to show you care 
about a million people.
  But this is, make no mistake, a mandate on these young pages. It is 
wrong. It is malpractice. It shouldn't happen. There is no scientific 
evidence, and the government's own vaccine committees don't advise it. 
Yet Democrats, today, have said they don't care about the pages. They 
don't care about their parents. They don't care about their medical 
privacy. They don't care about their ability to discern the risks and 
benefits of having a medical procedure. So medical choice be damned. 
Democrats are going to tell you what to do, and just remember that. 
Just remember that they don't care at all about your own choice about 
your own body.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.


                             Appropriations

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the Members of the Senate know, this 
week, we are expected to vote on a series of three appropriations 
bills--3 out of the 12 appropriations bills that passed out of the 
Senate Appropriations Committee a couple of months ago. With just 2\1/
2\ weeks left before the end of the fiscal year, time is of the 
essence. Unless Congress funds the government in the next 18 days, the 
government will shut down.

[[Page S4373]]

  Now, you might ask yourself, if these appropriations bills passed out 
of the committee with strong bipartisan votes months ago, why are we 
waiting until 18 days before the deadline to begin the debate and vote 
on these appropriations bills--and not all of the appropriations bills, 
just a subset of three.
  Well, we know shutdowns do not benefit anybody. I notice on social 
media there is a lot of anger out there in Washington, and people say: 
Yes, let's shut down the government. That is a good thing. It is too 
big. It is too intrusive. It is doing things I don't like.
  But, if you think about this for a moment, with a shutdown, 
servicemembers--members of our military--will have to work without pay. 
Veterans won't get the benefits or services that they have earned. 
Mortgages and other loan applications will be delayed. Passport 
processing will grind to a halt. Maybe there is even a risk that 
Medicare and Social Security payments will not be delivered on time. So 
shutdowns are a blunt instrument. I think we have realized that, with a 
shutdown, when the government reopens, the same problem is staring you 
right in the face, so you might as well deal with it on the front end 
rather than on the back end.
  From minor inconveniences to major disruptions, the American people 
are affected by lapses in government funding. We have learned that 
lesson before. The surest way to avoid any funding drama, which is what 
we are experiencing now, drama--the surest way to avoid that is to pass 
spending bills on time and in a transparent, normal process, something 
we call regular order around here. That means using the processes that 
are already in place to write, debate, and pass quality legislation. 
And it is done in a transparent sort of way, where every Senator--all 
100 Senators--can participate. If they have got a better idea, they can 
offer an amendment. They can try to persuade colleagues, and they can 
get a vote.
  Well, at the start of this summer, I was feeling somewhat optimistic 
about the government funding process. The day the Senate passed 
legislation to lift the debt ceiling and curb government spending, 
Leader Schumer and Leader McConnell issued a joint statement about the 
funding process. They asked the chair and vice chair of the 
Appropriations Committee to get the regular process back on track. They 
also pledged to work in a bipartisan fashion to advance funding bills 
and noted ``expeditious floor consideration would be key to preventing 
automatic funding cuts.''
  Well, there is no question our friends on the Appropriations 
Committee, led by Senator Murray and Senator Collins, have done their 
job. They did. As a matter of fact, I think three of these bills--maybe 
the three in front of us--passed with unanimous votes in the 
Appropriations Committee, and all of them passed with broad bipartisan 
support. The point is the Appropriations Committee passed all 12 
regular appropriations bills before the Senate adjourned for the August 
recess. To show you how rare that is these days, this is the first time 
in 5 years that the Appropriations Committee actually processed all 12 
bills.
  I want to commend Senator Murray and Senator Collins and the entire 
Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, for doing their job 
and for doing it on a timely basis.
  Well, thanks to their hard work, the Senate was in a strong position 
to advance these appropriations bills on an individual basis or, if 
necessary, to combine a few of them in what sometimes are called 
minibuses. We were well positioned to do that well in advance of the 
September 30 deadline.
  As Senator Schumer affirmed in that joint statement earlier this 
summer, expeditious floor consideration is key, but his actions don't 
match those words. Today, more than 80 days after the Appropriations 
Committee passed its first spending bill, the full Senate is 
beginning--beginning--to consider the first batch of those bills. This 
is 80 days after the first bill passed. That is not what anybody would 
call expeditious.
  The American people may or may not know it, but the majority leader 
has tremendous power. He has near-full ball control in terms of the 
Senate's agenda and the timing of legislation. He actually determines 
which bills come to the floor, when they receive a vote, and how many 
amendments will be considered. The majority leader is in the driver's 
seat. Senator Schumer could have called any of these bills up for 
consideration, debate, and a vote at any time in the last couple of 
months, starting with the first one that was passed 80 days ago.
  Senator Schumer has been around here a long time. He is a smart guy. 
He is a shrewd operator and a worthy adversary when it comes to 
politics, but he knows the Senate can't complete its work in 18 days. 
Plus, in addition to the 12 funding bills, we need to pass the farm 
bill, the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, and the 
final version of the National Defense Authorization Act. That is a lot 
of work in an impossibly short amount of time. The majority leader 
knows that, and he knows, if he actually wanted to keep his commitment 
to the Senate, to Senator Collins, and to Senator Murray, that he 
should have started this process far earlier than today.
  The Senate had a 2-week recess over the Fourth of July, and we had a 
5-week recess in August. There has got to be some time in there that we 
could have used on something other than routine nominations, whereby 
Senator Schumer could have put these bills on the floor, and we could 
have kept to his commitment of the expeditious consideration of the 
bills. I understand that these recesses are sacrosanct. I am not sure 
we needed 5 full weeks for the August recess. Maybe 4 weeks would have 
been good but with a little notice so that everybody could plan.
  My point is that Senator Schumer, apparently, had no interest in 
seeing each of these 12 bills being voted on on the Senate floor before 
the deadline. So here we are.
  Now, you may ask: Why would Senator Schumer sabotage the regular 
order process for the appropriations bills? Well, there are a couple of 
reasons. One is that it maximizes his power because he knows, once you 
get down to the deadline, that four or five people are the ones who are 
going to basically figure out how to get out of this box canyon.
  Meanwhile, the rest of the Members of the Senate, all 98 or so of us, 
are left with no options. We can't engage on behalf of our 
constituents. We can't cut what needs to be cut. We can't prioritize 
the spending. We can't offer amendments. We can't vote. All of that 
goes down the drain when the majority leader sabotages the timing of 
this appropriations process.
  Senator Schumer waited 18 days before a potential government shutdown 
before putting the first funding bill on the floor. Now, if there is a 
shutdown, and I don't recommend it, it was engineered by the majority 
leader himself, which is why it should be called a Schumer shutdown.
  I hope that doesn't happen, but he knows that the House is in a 
different place than the Senate in terms of the spending levels. He 
knows that Speaker McCarthy has a razor-thin majority. He knows the 
politics of what is happening in the House. He has already been quick 
to blame the House for a potential shutdown. But, as I have explained 
here, any potential shutdown is Senator Schumer's own making.
  The press has already taken hook, line, and sinker the narrative that 
this is somehow the fault of Republicans in the House.
  While the majority leader is quick to say the Senate passed 12 
bipartisan appropriations bills through the committee, we are engaging 
in a bipartisan process this week, maybe next week. Well, he knows we 
can't get through this process between now and the end of this month. 
So he knows that basically what he has engineered is one of two 
options: He has either engineered a shutdown, or he has engineered a 
continuing resolution, which essentially means postponing or continuing 
the funding at current levels to some future date. Of course, that is 
going to have to be negotiated, what that date looks like.
  This is not a genuine effort to return to regular order. It is, 
frankly, political theater. It is an attempt to make good on the 
promise to return to regular order without actually doing it.
  I have been fortunate to have been in the Senate for some time now. I 
have seen this place work well, where every Senator gets to contribute 
to the process, where the committees do their

[[Page S4374]]

work, where the majority leader gives the Members of the Senate an 
adequate time to debate bills and to vote on amendments and to pass 
legislation. When you do that, it is much easier to build consensus, 
bipartisan consensus, to actually get things done, and the work product 
is far superior because everybody has had a hand in crafting it.
  Every Member of this Chamber--and by extension, all 330 billion of 
our constituents--deserves a say in this legislation. Regardless of 
where they are from, which committees they sit on, or how long they 
have been in the Senate, all 100 Senators should have a voice in this 
process.
  The majority leader has squandered valuable time that could have been 
spent debating, amending, and passing appropriations bills on a timely 
basis. That is why everyone knows that a continuing resolution is the 
probable outcome of this disaster.
  It did not have to be this way. And if there is a shutdown, which I 
hope there is not for the reasons I have tried to explain, I think it 
should be called the Schumer shutdown.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                        Prescription Drug Costs

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise with many of my colleagues today 
to mark a new era for patients in this country.
  Last year, we decided that enough is enough, and we put an end to the 
sweetheart deal that let drug companies charge seniors on Medicare 
whatever they wanted for some of the most common lifesaving and life-
improving prescription meds on the market. Now the Big Pharma companies 
are trying to stop this legislation with absurd lawsuits.
  I will talk about that effort in a moment, but for now, let me say 
unequivocally that allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices is a 
victory for seniors, a victory for taxpayers, a victory for patients 
and their families, and a victory for America.
  Mr. President, thank you for your work on this as the Senator from 
Vermont. When you were the House Member for Vermont, you led this bill 
in the House, and I led it in the Senate. We worked together to allow 
for negotiation on drugs. Finally, this bill has been passed into law 
as part of larger legislation.
  A number of our colleagues, including Senator Wyden of Oregon, have 
long been leaders on this issue.
  I think we all know this progress could not have come soon enough. We 
know that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for the same 
brand name prescription drugs. In fact, prescription drug prices in the 
United States are more than 250 percent higher than drug prices in 
other industrialized countries. Not only are prices sky high, we have 
all watched them get higher.
  As Senator Wyden has worked on it; as you, Mr. President, have worked 
on this; as Senator Schumer has worked on this, we have continued to 
battle, sadly, the other side when it comes to putting our provision 
into law that allows Medicare to negotiate better prices. Finally, we 
did it on our own. We did it on our own but not really. We did it with 
the seniors of this country, with AARP at our side, with so many 
advocacy groups.
  Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill to have the money go into 
higher profits for companies that already are making much more than the 
average company on the stock exchange.
  Not only are we seeing high prices, but it literally makes it 
unaffordable for some patients. What good are treatments and cures if 
they go unused because they are unaffordable? The average price of the 
25 brand name medications that Medicare spends the most on, 25 top 
blockbusters, has tripled on average, tripled since the drug hit the 
U.S. market.
  Think about it. We all believe in competition. We believe in 
capitalism. Well, if you allow for real competition and generics to get 
on and you don't mess around and play around with the patent system and 
change this little thing so you get a longer patent and you don't put 
into law a sweetheart deal that says Medicare can't negotiate any 
prices for 50 million seniors--which, by the way, affects everyone else 
because when that, the biggest negotiating group in the country, is 
locked out from the table, when they are locked out of the room, it 
hurts everyone else as well.
  This change alone, when the administration just put the first 10 
drugs on the negotiating table, 900--900--we have so many people 
involved and who will be affected by this that we will save over $300 
billion. That is a big, big deal.
  Not only are prices sky high, we know that the numbers only grow more 
shocking as you learn about the people behind them and about the profit 
margins of the big drug companies.
  I am thinking of Kerry and his wife, who live in Cloquet, MN. Both 
take Jardiance. This prescription drug costs them $750 each for just 1 
month's supply, and that is on top of the cost of their other meds.
  I know of a 71-year-old Medicare beneficiary from Oak Grove, MN, who 
also relies on Jardiance to control a heart issue. Last year, the drug 
cost her about $530 for a 90-day supply, roughly a sixth of her take-
home pay from her job at a senior care residence.
  Another Minnesotan, a 67-year-old Medicare beneficiary from 
Glenville, paid roughly $750 total for a 90-day supply of Jardiance and 
Januvia and stopped taking the drugs altogether due to the cost.
  Then there is another patient from Rochester, MN, southern Minnesota, 
who was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. She was relieved to 
find that she would be able to take an oral medication instead of 
invasive chemotherapy treatments, but it was going to cost $680 per 
month, nearly half of her monthly Social Security check. Her daughter 
applied for grants and figured out a way to make ends meet, but it just 
shouldn't be that hard.
  Those are just a few of the many Minnesotans who have had to tighten 
their belts to satisfy Big Pharma's greed. You will hear the stories 
from Oregon. You will hear the stories from every State in the country. 
In fact, Big Pharma makes almost, as I said, three times the average 
profit margin of other industries on the S&P 500 exchange, three times 
larger profit on average of other industries on the S&P stock market. 
Yet nearly 30 percent of Americans say they haven't taken their 
medications as prescribed due to costs. That is unacceptable.
  The Presiding Officer, over in the House, and I led these bills to 
get rid of that sweetheart deal. And, yes, we got this in through the 
Inflation Reduction Act, got it signed into law.
  A couple of years ago, Medicare announced the first 10 drugs selected 
for price negotiation, including, as I mentioned, Jardiance, which 
treats heart failure and diabetes; Januvia, another prescription for 
diabetes; Enbrel, for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis treatment; and 
Xarelto and Eliquis, medications to prevent blood clots. Taken 
together, those two--Xarelto and Eliquis, to prevent blood clots--are 
taken by 5 million Medicare beneficiaries.
  I want to correct one statistic I used. It is up to 9 million 
Americans with Medicare Part D who take the drugs that were selected, 
and they have spent--I said 300--they have spent $3.4 billion in out-
of-pocket costs. Up to 9 million Americans with Medicare Part D take 
those 10 drugs, paying an average of between $121 and $5,200 a month 
out-of-pocket. And $5,200 a month--how much is that per year? The pages 
can do the math. That is $60,000 on average per year.
  What does this mean for a senior on a fixed income? That relief is 
finally coming.
  For years, we toiled on this legislation, as the Presiding Officer 
and Senator Wyden know, but it was Joe Biden who finally got it over 
the finish line and signed it into law, giving Medicare the power to 
negotiate with drug companies to help bring the price of medications in 
the United States down.
  The law also, as we all know, has other provisions--$35 out-of-pocket 
monthly cap on insulin. This new policy has lowered the cost of daily 
living for over 1.5 million Americans already.

[[Page S4375]]

We now have drug companies that have voluntarily, for non-seniors, 
capped it. I predicted this would happen--several of us did--because it 
is kind of hard to say: Well, seniors get $35, but a 15-year-old has to 
pay $100 a month. So you are starting to see that change. That law also 
provides free recommended vaccines, like the shingles or pneumonia 
shots. That is going to help the average Minnesota senior save 100 
bucks. Then, of course, the legislation puts a $2,000 cap on out-of-
pocket spending for Medicare beneficiaries starting in 2025.
  What happened? Lawsuits. Johnson & Johnson--let's name them--Johnson 
& Johnson has sued. I thought when we passed it, signed into law by the 
President of United States--anyone who knows ``Schoolhouse Rock!'' 
knows you have both Houses, a bill signed by the President, it is law. 
What do these guy do? They go out, and they sue in court, like: Oh, we 
made a sweetheart deal 20 years ago, and we want it back, so we are 
going to sue. They hired tons of lawyers.
  Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, 
and Novartis, as well as the industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical 
Research and Manufacturers of America, better known as PhRMA--they have 
all sued.
  We know that this effort is patently absurd. Government Agencies 
negotiating on drug prices isn't novel or unprecedented. The VA has 
done it for years.
  End story: We persisted after nearly $400 million was spent on 
lobbying in Congress. After every Member of Congress had three 
lobbyists assigned to them, we still passed this bill.
  We still passed this bill. So big surprise, they have gone to court. 
But we will win there, too. Their legal argument is somewhat absurd, 
that somehow this is a taking, when in fact it is their choice to 
participate in capitalism and provide these drugs and be part of a 
competition. It is not a taking if they don't want to sell drugs to 50 
million Americans. I guess that is up to them.
  These first 10 drugs are just the beginning. We must go then to the 
next 15, the next 15, the next 20. That is how the law works and, at 
the same time, take on these patent cases that Senator Grassley and I 
have done, Senator Cornyn, Senator Blumenthal, others in Judiciary are 
leaving those to take on the sham petitions, take on the product 
hopping, and take on all the bad stuff that keeps competitors off the 
market.
  But in the end, this should be a celebration. This has finally begun, 
and they are not going to end the celebration for 50 million seniors 
with all their lawyers, no matter how many they hire, and no matter how 
many they bring to the courthouse.
  With that, I yield to my wonderful colleagues.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, Senator Klobuchar has said it very well, 
and I want to pick up on her remarks. And we are here to reflect on the 
extraordinary achievement in the Inflation Reduction Act in order to 
provide for the first time a real measure of relief--a real measure of 
relief--for these staggering costs seniors and others pay for medicine 
in our country. And I am going to talk about the negotiation issue.
  And I want to say, this is just the next and essential piece of what 
we are doing to get relief for the consumer. For example, through most 
of the summer, I talked about the price-gouging penalty that we got in 
the law.
  And I see my friend Senator Stabenow, my colleague who has been my 
seatmate on the Finance Committee--we sure wish she wasn't retiring--
but the price-gouging penalty is the first such thing in Federal law. 
This is a penalty that it has imposed, as Senator Stabenow remembers, 
when drug companies hiked their prices over inflation. They have to pay 
a rebate to Medicare, which is used to lower the out-of-pocket costs 
for seniors. And Senator Stabenow and I have been out crunching the 
numbers on this issue. And one of the areas that we found is that these 
drugs, particularly those that are administered in a doctor's office, 
already are producing massive savings.
  Senator Stabenow, we found a drug a couple of weeks ago where seniors 
are saving several hundred dollars per dose--per dose--I would say to 
my colleagues--on one of these cancer drugs you get in the office. And 
this is just the beginning, as Senator Klobuchar has said.
  So this legislation, which didn't, unfortunately, get a single 
Republican vote, represents a seismic shift in the relationship between 
consumers and Big Pharma and especially authority for Medicare to 
negotiate prices of prescription drugs with manufacturers.
  And I just want to take a few minutes to pick up on this issue of the 
barrage of legal actions Big Pharma and their allies are taking to stop 
Medicare drug price negotiation. And we have been talking about all 
these lawsuits that the big companies--and I gather the Chamber of 
Commerce is with them all the way--have filed to prevent seniors and 
families from getting a break on medicine.
  So these legal actions that the big companies and the Chamber of 
Commerce are taking beg the question that I just want to offer up this 
afternoon: What would happen in America if our country didn't negotiate 
in our economy?
  The fact is, negotiating on price is the underpinning of the American 
marketplace. It ensures you bring two sides together to get a fair 
deal. And the question really has to become: Are these companies that 
have filed these suits really arguing that the government shouldn't try 
to get a fair price on medicine for more than 50 million American 
seniors?
  Senator Stabenow, that is the essential question--are they really 
arguing to the American people--and by the way, this is taxpayer money, 
much of this is taxpayer money--are they really arguing that seniors 
and taxpayers shouldn't get a fair deal?
  Now, the fact is that Medicare, in particular, with such strong 
taxpayer backing has a special argument for being a program that 
negotiates to get fair prices on because Medicare is not just a slip of 
paper, as we have examined in the Finance Committee often.
  I see Senator Whitehouse, our distinguished colleague.
  Medicare is not just a slip of paper with a few words on it. Medicare 
is a guarantee; it is a guarantee for seniors of good quality coverage. 
And it just begs the question: If you have a guarantee and a guarantee 
of something specific--good quality coverage--wouldn't you 
automatically say that the taxpayer should be able to have a friend and 
advocate negotiating for them in order to get the best possible deal? 
And I think the answer to that question is pretty obvious.
  Now, Big Pharma has, unfortunately, taken a very different position. 
They have been guarding the prohibition on price negotiation in this 
country like the Holy Grail. And they don't like that we have closed 
this chapter. And the first 10 drugs were not drawn out of a hat. 
Congress made it clear in black letter law the criteria of the Federal 
Government has to use.
  And so what we are doing now, Senator Stabenow--we have been talking 
to many of the members of the Finance Committee--is we are looking at 
the fact that these 10 drugs also were ones where we made sure and put 
in the criteria specifically where you had significant taxpayer support 
in terms of getting the drug to market. So again, another argument for 
why you ought to negotiate, the costliest drugs and drugs that get to 
market with taxpayer money.
  Now, Senator Klobuchar, I thought, very eloquently described a number 
of the drugs, but I think--and I want to give my colleagues a chance to 
make their remarks--I think we ought to reflect on the importance of 
making sure that, when Big Pharma has been double-dipping into 
taxpayers' wallets for these important medications--groundbreaking 
research from the National Institutes of Health are another research 
arm of the Federal Government. Then, after the research was funded by 
taxpayers, manufacturers sell the drugs developed using taxpayer-funded 
research back to taxpayers at sky-high prices, are they really not 
going to have a chance to get a better deal?

  Enbrel, which is the drug we mention often on the floor, was 
discovered at Massachusetts General Hospital using NIH-supported 
research. The hospital sold the patent rights to the drug manufacturer 
that has profited off Enbrel

[[Page S4376]]

at the expense, Senator Stabenow, of taxpayers for now going on 30 
years.
  My colleagues are going to have a chance to go into further detail 
about this, but I think when you are talking about Big Pharma and a new 
law that considers among a host of other factors prior to Federal 
financial support, provided by the taxpayers that we have the honor to 
represent, it means that the government should stand up for seniors and 
taxpayers to make sure that they get a good deal.
  An investment in basic science funded by American taxpayers is based 
on our record in the Finance Committee, often the foundation of the new 
drug--and when drug manufacturers use this taxpayer-funded research to 
make a drug, the price of the drug should be lower to reflect taxpayer 
investment, and you get the best possible deal for those taxpayers when 
you negotiate.
  And I will just close by saying, I think my colleagues know from 
talking to people at home, most people when you discuss this issue 
think it is absurd that for all these years, nobody could negotiate for 
them. What they are surprised about is not so much that a law passed, 
even though Senator Klobuchar talked about beating all these lobbyists, 
what they are surprised about is how people with a straight face have 
made the case for years that, with all of the taxpayers' support for 
medicine that I just outlined, that you wouldn't have started 
negotiating for taxpayers and seniors a long time ago.
  I really appreciate Senator Klobuchar doing this. I see the Chair, 
who has been our champion in the other body for many years, my 
seatmate, Senator Klobuchar--we have an exciting new Member from the 
west who has also joined us. This is an important chance to really 
think through where we are headed. And Senator Stabenow knows we have 
got a lot more to do. We are taking on the PBMs, the middle men, who 
are also a factor in driving up prices.
  But tonight is a chance because Senator Klobuchar has taken this time 
for us to outline what the negotiation issue is all about. I have tried 
to go through some of the history about how you were stunned to hear 
over the years that you couldn't negotiate. That has been changed.
  My colleagues are going to continue this discussion, and you are 
going hear a lot more about it because, for all of those people, all of 
those people that I knew, starting with the Gray Panthers who were 
standing in those pharmacy lines, getting mugged at the pharmacy 
counter trying to figure out how they were going to choose between 
their food and their rent, they are going have new hope because prices 
are going to be negotiated. There is going to be hope for them, and 
there is going to be hope for American taxpayers. And it is long 
overdue.
  I yield to my colleagues.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. HICKENLOOPER. Mr. President, when I first arrived in this 
building a couple of years ago, Senator Klobuchar--one of the first 
things she brought up was the cost of pharmaceuticals, drug 
prescriptions for the American people.
  Well, this is the beginning of the end for Americans getting the 
short end of the stick from pharmaceutical companies peddling 
prescription drugs. For years, we all have been paying much more than 
those in other countries pay for the same drugs. But now, Medicare has 
taken the first step towards ending that stranglehold on lifesaving 
drugs.
  Let's be clear: This is not some unfair assault on global drug 
companies. Rather, this is a transition that is going to give Americans 
the same opportunity to afford lifesaving drugs as others in other 
countries are given.
  According to Kaiser Family Foundation, the U.S. spends far more than 
any other industrialized country for prescription drugs, from getting 
charged $150 more for Xarelto--which reduces the risk of coronary 
artery disease--to getting ripped off by paying $1,600 for Enbrel, an 
arthritis drug.
  Eliquis, a very common blood thinner--and one that I have occasion to 
use myself--prevents blood clots but costs an extra $514 out of pocket 
for Medicare enrollees in Colorado. In Germany, it is only $96. It is 
five times more in the United States.
  Why should we pay more than Germans and Canadians and the Swiss? What 
possible rules of common sense should permit drug companies the right 
to charge us many times more than what the rest of the world pays for 
the same drugs?
  Part of the answer is that, up until now, we have let them. 
Medicare--the largest buyer of prescription drugs in the United 
States--has never been allowed to negotiate the price of drugs with 
pharmaceutical companies.
  As Senator Wyden was making painfully clear, the losses to the 
American people have been substantial. Until now, Medicare has had to 
accept whatever price Big Pharma dictated, even when Medicare knew we 
were subsidizing the rest of the world.
  Well, that changes today. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act we 
passed last year, Medicare finally has the ability to negotiate with 
Big Pharma and get us a fair price for these drugs. Medicare will take 
the 10 most expensive drugs each year and negotiate their prices down.
  But the impact goes far beyond the impact just on seniors or just for 
those 10 drugs. First, every year--every year--Medicare will negotiate 
down 10 more drugs, so the costs will keep coming down each year. In 
future years, Medicare will be able to negotiate even more drugs.
  Second, because Medicare is the largest buyer in the American market, 
there is a darn good chance that other big buyers, like private 
insurance companies, are going to negotiate to bring the price they pay 
down to what Medicare will pay. A falling tide lowers all prices.
  So what exactly does that mean now? Medicare has announced the first 
drugs it will negotiate. They include the two I mentioned, Xarelto and 
Enbrel, along with eight others. Four of the drugs treat diabetes. The 
others treat or prevent blood clots, heart failure, kidney disease, 
blood cancers, and arthritis.
  In 2022, Medicare enrollees taking these 10 drugs paid $3.4 billion 
in out-of-pocket costs. That is what they paid out of their own 
savings. The average per-enrollee cost was a staggering $5,247 for the 
most expensive drug on the list, Imbruvica, which treats blood cancer.
  It is a big deal in every State. It is a big deal in my home State of 
Colorado. Over 100,000 Medicare enrollees in Colorado take these 10 
drugs, and 43,000, including me, take Eliquis--this is a blood thinner 
to help prevent blood clots--with an average out-of-pocket cost of over 
$500. Twenty-one thousand take Xarelto and pay $447, on average, out-
of-pocket costs.
  The bottom line: Seniors on Medicare are getting ripped off, and 
going forward, they are going to spend less. They are finally going to 
spend less on the prescription drugs they need, in many cases, just to 
stay alive. If all goes according to plan, the rest of us will also pay 
less once insurance companies follow Medicare's lead.
  This isn't a fix to all the problems in the healthcare system in this 
country, but it is a pretty big step, and it is a reminder that we are 
not helpless to fix the other problems we face that are still out 
there. All it takes is the will to come together and get things done. 
Hopefully, this is just the beginning.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I will be very brief. I wanted to come to the floor to 
thank all of my colleagues for coming to the floor and talking about 
this issue. Our Democratic caucus has been persistent champions in the 
fight to lower drug costs for Americans.
  I want to thank Senator Klobuchar, who has been such a leader on this 
issue, for calling us together tonight.
  It was said year after year, decade after decade: They are never 
going to take on the big drug companies. They are never going to get 
those high costs--in some cases, outrageously high costs--down.
  But last summer, we did, and we won. Now millions of Americans are 
seeing their drug costs go down as the Inflation Reduction Act goes 
into effect. The 10 prescription drugs which my colleagues have talked 
about are not drugs used by a rare few but are used by millions that 
affect so many different illnesses, and they will treat things like 
diabetes and heart failure and cancer and kidney disease and blood 
clots and more.
  The pain you feel when you talk to a parent who says: My child has 
been diagnosed with cancer, but it costs $1,000

[[Page S4377]]

a month for the drug, and I can't afford it. What am I going to do?
  What pain. Well, that pain is going to be greatly reduced in hundreds 
of thousands of cases now that we have done this.
  We are not stopping. We are going to keep going. It is a huge deal. 
We are capping the price of insulin at $35. We did it for seniors on 
Medicare, and now we are going to fight to get it for everybody else. 
The Presiding Officer is helping to lead that charge. The cost of all 
drugs, which once was unlimited, will start at $3,000 a year in January 
and go to $2,000 in 2025.
  The No. 1 thing our constituents are asking about is high costs. The 
No. 1 thing that bugs them about the government is that no one seems to 
get a handle on those high costs. Well, this is a shining example where 
we are reducing their costs by taking on the special interests. We are 
not stopping here.
  I yield the floor and thank my colleagues for being here.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I really feel like this is a celebration 
because we have been talking about how Americans have been taken 
advantage of for years--forever--in terms of high prices. We have been 
paying the highest prices in the world forever and oftentimes three and 
four times more than people in other countries.
  I know I receive messages from families every day who are struggling 
to pay for their prescription medications. The truth is, we understood 
this. We finally had the opportunity where we had President Biden and a 
Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. We took on Big Pharma, 
and we won. So this is really a celebration.
  We are not done. We have more to do. We are just getting started, but 
this is a big deal. It is a big deal.
  One out of four Americans can't afford their medicine right now--one 
out of four. That is shameful in the United States of America. Back in 
1998, when I was a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I took 
busloads of seniors from Detroit, one side of the Ambassador Bridge to 
the other side. A few minutes across the bridge was Windsor, Canada. We 
crossed the bridge and cut prescription drug prices by 40 percent by 
crossing a bridge.
  It has made no sense to me. The reason I have been championing this 
for so long and so appreciate the leadership of Senator Klobuchar and 
so many of us who have worked together is that this just simply makes 
no sense, and it has cost lives and people's livelihoods, trying to pay 
for their medicine. You shouldn't have to skip doses or split pills in 
half or choose between paying your electric bill or taking your 
medicine.
  So the good news is, despite the fact that if you just look at the 
U.S. Senate--just in the Senate, there are 15 lobbyists for every 
Senator, and they work every day to try to stop us from lowering 
prices. But despite that, we took on Big Pharma, and we won.
  I want to thank the Presiding Officer for your leadership on the 
first thing we were able to do that is so tangible.
  In Michigan, we have nearly 67,000 Michiganders on Medicare who now 
benefit from a cap on insulin of $35 a month--not the $600 or $700 that 
the average person was paying; $35 a month. That is saving lives.
  By the way, insulin is something that was discovered and developed 
100 years ago--100 years ago. It costs $10 to make, and we had to go 
through a major fight to cap it at $35. But our Presiding Officer, the 
Senator from Georgia, led that, and I want to thank you for doing that.
  We have nearly 673,000 Michiganders who are going to save an average 
of $356 thanks to the $2,000 total cap we are going to put on. Right 
now, folks are, on average, paying $14,000, $15,000 a year and 
oftentimes thousands of dollars more than that. We are capping that. 
This next year, it is capped at $3,200; next year, $2,000, and that is 
it--$2,000-a-year out-of-pocket costs for seniors. It is extraordinary. 
It will save lives.
  So this is a time, I think, of celebration.
  We have nearly 1.8 million Michigan seniors who are now going to be 
able to get free shingles vaccines and other critical vaccines that 
before they maybe just didn't do because, on average, it was $300 or 
$400 to do, and now they can protect themselves with vaccines. That is 
a big deal.
  Senator Wyden was talking about his provision, which is so very 
important, which is to say that if a drug company, under Medicare Part 
D--which are the drugs you get in the hospital or in the doctor's 
office--that if they go up faster than the rate of inflation--the Biden 
administration now has the authority to check every 3 months--if it 
goes up faster than inflation, they will roll the price back. As of 
July 1, it was an average of over $470 per dose on a cancer drug. So 
this is a big deal. It is a big deal that we are talking about right 
now.
  The biggest of all: Medicare is beginning to negotiate prices just 
like the VA, which gets a 40-percent discount, by the way. That is the 
ultimate.
  When I first came to the Senate after taking those bus trips across 
the border, I really took on this whole question about prescription 
drugs and really leaned in in so many ways. I was excited we were going 
to do Medicare Part D that passed under the Bush administration until I 
saw the fine print where it prohibited Medicare from negotiating 
prices. That was the fine print. It sounded great, but the drug 
companies were able to insert the language that says: You can't 
negotiate. We get to charge whatever we want.
  That is what has happened since then.
  So here we are. The first 10 drugs that will be negotiated through 
Medicare were announced just a week or so ago, and we are talking about 
those drugs that will deal with blood clots and heart failure, 
diabetes, psoriasis, blood cancers, arthritis, and so many more things. 
These are the top drugs in terms of usage and price--the first 10. Then 
there will be more, and there will be more, and there will be more 
until we get the full negotiation.
  We know that negotiating on just these 10 drugs will help more than 9 
million people--9 million people--lower their costs--just those first 
10. This is a big deal. We know we have more to do to lower costs, more 
to do together to address healthcare costs and other costs that people 
pay.
  But I think it is pretty safe to say that the prescription drug 
companies are the biggest lobby here. We finally had the votes. We had 
the President who was willing to do it, President Biden. We had the 
majority in the House and the Senate to do what we knew needed to be 
done regardless of how much clout they have, and so that is what we 
did.
  You know, I get letters like all of you do and talk to people all the 
time, but Diane of Bloomfield Hills, who is retired and on Medicare, 
shared with me that she is a diabetic, and she takes two types of 
insulin, or four injections per day--four injections per day. She told 
me that she used to pay a copay of $650--$650 or more--for a 3-month 
supply for just one of her prescriptions. She takes four injections a 
day--for just one of her prescriptions. But not anymore. Back in 
January, Diane went to the pharmacy like usual, and the pharmacist told 
her that her 3-month supply would be $105; not $650--$105. She said: 
``I paid and walked away with a big smile on my face.''
  The Presiding Officer led that effort to put a smile on her face and, 
I am sure, create a little more capacity for her to take care of 
herself and to be able to have a good life.
  People like Diane should not have to go without the medicine they 
need. They shouldn't be forced to skip doses or take less than was 
prescribed to save money. They shouldn't have to choose between their 
medicine and putting food on the table or paying the bills. That is 
what this is about.
  So it is a celebration, and I am so proud that we joined with 
President Biden to take the first step to make sure that people are 
going to be able to afford the medicine they need.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am very happy to be here and resolve 
a--I guess, celebrate the resolution of a longstanding wrong done to 
the American people. Senator Stabenow can correct me if I am wrong, but 
my recollection is that the ban that Congress put on Medicare 
negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies the way, say, the 
Veterans' Administration already does was a magical appearance of

[[Page S4378]]

a tiny little bit of language, not in the Senate, not in the House, but 
in the secret confines of the conference committee that merged the two 
bills.
  It just slipped in as a sentence. Nobody took credit for it. I still 
can't identify who slipped that thing in there; but once it got slipped 
in, the pharmaceutical industry defended it with all the venom and 
power and money and muscle that they had. And we beat them. We took it 
away.
  Now, just like the Veterans' Administration, Medicare gets to 
negotiate and drive prices down, and that is going to make a big 
difference for Rhode Islanders with diabetes, with cancer, with blood 
clots, with heart disease, with rheumatoid arthritis. This happened 
because all of us--Senate Democrats--got together, stuck to our guns, 
and made it happen through the Inflation Reduction Act which came out 
of the Budget Committee, originally--the authorization. We are lowering 
the prices of these 10 very expensive drugs; and even though the 
pharmaceutical industry is going to try to wrassle around in court, it 
is pretty hard to say that Medicare doesn't have the same authority 
that its sister Agency, the Veterans' Administration, has to negotiate 
for pharmaceuticals.
  It shows how much they will try to try to get that little slippery 
sentence that got slipped into that bill back to defend their price 
gouging.
  Vaccines are now free with Medicare. Insulin is capped at $35 a 
month. Drug companies are penalized if they jack up their prices higher 
than the rate of inflation. A $3,250 cap on out-of-pocket spending for 
seniors is just about to go into effect, and the next year it drops to 
a $2,000 limit. I think that will cover 11,000 Rhode Islanders who now 
pay higher out-of-pocket costs than those.
  These changes will save tens of thousands of Medicare Part D 
enrollees in Rhode Island over $23 million. That is a big number in our 
small State. I would like to think that the Inflation Reduction Act was 
bipartisan. It would be great if this had passed with bipartisan 
support. It didn't. Not a single Republican vote came. I regret that, 
but we are going to continue. There is more progress to be made. We 
have shown that it can be done.
  And while we are at it, we need to strengthen Medicare--both Social 
Security and Medicare, and we have a bill that has had its hearing in 
the Budget Committee to strengthen Social Security and Medicare by 
making people who are making over $400,000 a year and the superrich--
who hide their income through all sorts of tricks so it doesn't show up 
as regular income--pay a fair share, support these essential programs.
  So we can celebrate a win today, and we can go forward with 
confidence to future wins.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in celebrating a major 
and long overdue achievement allowing the American people to have the 
benefit of a government that will stand up to negotiate prices and try 
its best to make the prescription medications that they need for 
themselves and the people they love to be affordable.
  You know, what is a greater responsibility that a government has to 
its citizens to help create a healthcare system that is accessible and 
is affordable? Why is it that in this country, the citizens that we all 
represent are getting hammered on the cost of medications that if they 
just go across the border to Canada, they can get at one-tenth, one-
fifth of the price?
  Why is it? It is because until this day, we have been the only 
government that has not been willing to use price negotiation to 
protect consumers from price gouging by Big Pharma, and it is really 
brutal. I mean, every one of us--I talk to Vermonters, Senator Stabenow 
was talking about Michiganders, Senator Whitehouse was talking about 
constituents in Rhode Island--by the way, some of whom are Republicans, 
some of whom are Democrats, some of whom are Independents, many of whom 
don't even bother to pay much attention to the political process. But 
when they have to get access to that medication that is really 
essential to their well-being, they can't afford it.
  We are paying, they are paying--all our citizens--in many cases, 2\1/
2\ times, on average, what folks across the border in Canada or in 
Europe are paying for the same medication. And, you know, it is 
terrific when Big Pharma, through their research, comes up with 
medications that can extend our life. But if they charge so much that 
we can't afford it, what does that do?
  And time after time, we have seen folks make these horrible decisions 
about cutting back on their medication at the threat to their own life 
and safety because they literally can't afford it.
  Now, the pharmaceutical industry, let's give them credit: They have 
created lifesaving drugs. That is a tremendous thing. But they can't 
use the fact that they are doing something good to jack up prices to 
make it unaffordable just for self-enrichment.
  You know, we, as a government, have done an enormous amount to help 
pharma with the innovation side, and they are suggesting that this 
legislation is going to interfere with that capacity. Is it true? No. 
Think about what we have done--we, the government, taxpayers. No. 1, 
the intellectual property is protected; so for that period of time, 
oftentimes well over a decade, they can charge whatever they want to 
charge and they have the exclusive right to have that drug on the 
market. And they charge a lot.
  No. 2, we have created an employer-sponsored healthcare system where 
we have employers in all of our States where it is really important to 
that employer to provide good-quality healthcare to its employees, and 
they have to pay whatever the premiums are that are, oftentimes, 
inflated as a result of us having the highest prescription drug prices 
in the world.
  Third, we have a Medicare/Medicaid program, which is a guaranteed 
purchasing pool to buy the products that they create. So pharma has 
protection on its profits with an exclusive period; it has a government 
that stands behind the right of citizens to have access to healthcare 
through Medicare particularly, Medicaid, and also employer-sponsored 
healthcare.
  And then what you see is the pharmaceutical industry going beyond the 
patent rights that it has for that market exclusivity and do the things 
that Senator Klobuchar was talking about where they try to extend the 
life of the patent well beyond what that limited period was supposed to 
be.
  And then, by the way, Wall Street gets in the game here, because what 
many of the companies have claimed is research is a corporate buyout. 
Company A buys company B that has a patent, a popular and necessary 
drug. They pay billions for it; and then to pay for the purchase price, 
they inflate the cost of that prescription drug. And they can do it; 
they get away with it.
  So, you know, Senator Hickenlooper asked the question: Why is the 
outrage not about that we let it go on for so long?
  So pharma is going to do fine and keep doing what they are going to 
be doing. They are going to have the patent exclusivity; they are going 
to have a government and a Senate with Republicans and Democrats 
maintaining the Medicare program so that folks who are going to need 
prescription drugs are going to be able to get them. They are going to 
do fine.
  But, finally, we have price negotiation so that, in effect, if you or 
I are going to the pharmacy to buy aspirin and we buy a hundred because 
the per-unit cost is a lot less, we get to pay wholesale--we get to 
decide about bargaining by what we purchase, a big amount or a little 
amount. Medicare should be able to do the same thing.
  So this is so overdue and so beneficial to everybody that we all 
represent, regardless of, politically, whose side they are on. This is 
about a shared need that our society has for access to prescription 
medication. And, of course, to the Presiding Officer, we all appreciate 
the focus that you put on insulin. I mean, if there isn't a more 
shocking example of a rip-off. This drug has been around for decades; 
there is no new innovation. But what there is, is pricing power. So 
those companies that had the ability to set the price, to raise the 
price, and to do it again kept going up and up and up, even though 
there were not any additional intellectual breakthroughs with the 
actual core of what insulin is.
  You know, we in this country know that working Americans are 
struggling

[[Page S4379]]

to pay their bills. Things are expensive, and it is not just inflation. 
Things are expensive in many cases because there is real corporate 
power, and they can set the price they want. Nowhere do they do that 
with more abusive consistency than in pharmaceutical prescriptions. And 
we can decide, as a Senate, that we are going to find ways to make 
things affordable by stopping the rip-off.
  Having the capacity for Medicare to negotiate prices is a major 
breakthrough. It is no small thing. It is the beginning; it is not the 
end of our efforts. And I thank all of my colleagues for working 
together to help all of our constituents, regardless of who they voted 
for, because the thing they all have in common is they want to protect, 
especially, the people that they love.
  And in the arguments from pharma, what I find so alarming is that 
what they prey upon is the love that people in America have for their 
families because, if you are a mom or you are a dad and you have got a 
son or a daughter who needs a prescription drug and you can't afford 
it, you will take out a second mortgage or you will sell the house or 
you will get rid of your retirement account. You will do whatever it 
takes to save the person you care about. And pharma, with their 
pushback, saying this is going to threaten innovation is preying on 
those fears that all of us have about what will happen if we don't do 
everything we can to help the person that we love.
  And you know what, it is not about that for pharma. They are doing 
pretty well. Those salaries are astonishing. Those corporate buybacks 
are very rich. So I am proud to be with my colleagues here to stand up 
for the right that our citizens have--affordably, confidently, 
securely--to be able to have, when they need it, access to the 
prescription medication that is going to extend their life and save 
their loved ones.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada.
  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Mr. President, there are over 578,000 Nevadans 
across my State enrolled in Medicare, and their hard-earned Medicare 
benefits provide coverage for their healthcare expenses.
  The problem is, when I travel around my State and I speak to 
Senators, the No. 1 thing that I hear about is how difficult it is to 
afford the prescription drugs that they need. Let me give you an 
example.
  Sue Bird and her husband Tom, they live in rural Nevada in Fernley, 
NV. Tom has diabetes; and even though they are both on Medicare, 
covering all their healthcare expenses costs them nearly $1,000 a 
month. That can be a crushing amount for two retirees on a fixed 
income.
  The stress of Tom's diabetes alone affects his blood sugar, but add 
in the worry over the price of their medication, their dental and 
vision and other healthcare costs, and it becomes almost too much to 
handle for them.
  So why are Tom and Sue's medications so expensive? I will tell you 
why, and you have heard it from my colleagues over and over this 
afternoon: Because, year after year, Big Pharma has decided that they 
need to jack up prescription drug prices. All the while, their 
executives are raking in millions of dollars in profits.
  These pharmaceutical companies are driving higher prices. They are 
forcing millions of older Americans to pay more in premiums and out-of-
pocket costs.
  Our seniors made this country what it is today. Tom is a fourth-
generation Nevadan. We really have a duty to ensure quality affordable 
healthcare for people like Tom and Sue and seniors across the country 
when they retire.
  That is exactly what Democrats did when we passed the Inflation 
Reduction Act. We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for people 
with Medicare. We made vaccines free to seniors, and we are holding 
drug companies accountable for raising the prices faster than the rate 
of inflation.
  Now you are hearing, in a major victory that has been decades in the 
making, that we finally gave Medicare the green light to negotiate 
lower prescription drug prices directly with Big Pharma. This is going 
to make a huge difference for Nevadans and for Americans across the 
country.
  The Biden administration just selected the first 10 drugs for price 
negotiations under Medicare Part D. These are widely used medications. 
About 10 million people with Medicare take one or more of these drugs 
each year to treat serious conditions like diabetes, heart failure, 
blood clots, and cancer, and they are extremely expensive. Medicare 
enrollees taking any of these 10 medications paid a total of $3.4 
billion out of pocket in 2022.
  For his diabetes, Tom Bird takes Jardiance, one of 10 drugs on the 
list. This month, he paid about $466 for it.
  Now, these 10 drugs cost Medicare over $50 billion last year alone. 
That is outrageous. Think about where that money is going. Think about 
where it is going. How much money is enough for these Big Pharma 
companies?
  But do you know what? The fact that Democrats fought to ensure that 
Medicare can negotiate directly with drug companies is going to change 
all that. It will give seniors a fair deal. It will lower healthcare 
costs, and it will also cut back on Federal spending by $25 billion. 
That is $25 billion that we are saving taxpayers across the country.
  And this is just the beginning. Each year, more medications will be 
added to the negotiation list, allowing Medicare to keep bringing down 
prescription drug costs and saving more taxpayer dollars.
  And I will tell you what, our seniors across this country, like Tom 
and Sue, who helped build our country and make it what it is today, 
will be able to breathe a sigh of relief. This is all thanks to the 
Inflation Reduction Act, which continues to benefit Nevadans and 
Americans across the country.
  I am proud of the work that we all did when we passed this 
legislation. I am proud of the Biden-Harris administration for not only 
supporting the passage of it and working to get this done but also the 
implementation.
  I can tell you that I know my colleagues and I are going to make sure 
and keep working to ensure that seniors across this country, whether 
they are in Nevada or across this country, see lower healthcare costs, 
because every senior should be able to retire with dignity. They have 
worked for it. They have worked hard to make that happen, and we should 
at least make sure that we are lowering those costs to help them.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Ms. BALDWIN. I rise today to stand alongside the over 80 percent of 
Americans who support Medicare being able to negotiate the price of 
prescription drugs, because despite being the wealthiest Nation in the 
world, too many Americans are struggling to afford the medications that 
they need to survive. More than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries are 
struggling to afford their medications.
  I have heard devastating stories from Wisconsin seniors who have been 
put in impossible situations and forced to ration or forego their 
medications, all while the drug companies turn record profits.
  No American, and especially our seniors who are on fixed incomes, 
should have to choose between putting food on the table or accessing 
the prescription drugs that they need to stay healthy. That is why I 
was so proud to support the Inflation Reduction Act to finally provide 
some relief for Wisconsin families and hold the big drug companies 
accountable for prioritizing profits over people.
  And now, we are seeing the results. We capped the cost of insulin 
out-of-pocket at $35 a month for seniors, we lowered healthcare 
premiums for millions of Americans, and we penalized drug companies for 
raising their costs faster than inflation.
  Last month, we reached a new milestone that has been a long time 
coming. Medicare announced the first 10 drugs that they will negotiate 
with drug companies. These are lifesaving medications that millions of 
Americans take to stay healthy, treating everything from diabetes to 
heart disease, to blood cancers. By lowering the costs of these drugs, 
fewer seniors will have to choose between buying groceries and taking 
their medication, and fewer families will lie awake at night worrying 
about how they are going to afford the cost of their loved one's 
medication.

[[Page S4380]]

  Most importantly, Medicare finally stepping up and taking on the big 
drug companies means that fewer Americans will be priced out of the 
care that they need to live healthy lives. We have more work to do, but 
the Inflation Reduction Act was a historic step in the right direction.
  Every American deserves access to affordable and comprehensive 
healthcare, and I am committed to finishing what we started last year 
with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                          Budgetary Revisions

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 
2023--the FRA, by its initials--which Congress passed 3 months ago, 
represented a bipartisan agreement. It resolved a manufactured default 
crisis. It avoided an economic catastrophe that was threatened, and it 
set funding levels for the upcoming year. Pursuant to section 121 of 
that Act, I previously filed, on June 21, budgetary aggregates and 
committee allocations for fiscal year 2024. Today, I am adjusting those 
levels to account for Senate amendment No. 1092 to H.R. 4366, the 
proposed package making appropriations for the fiscal year ending 
September 30, 2024.
  This first package includes the fiscal year 2024 Military 
Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies; Transportation, 
Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies; and Agriculture, 
Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies 
appropriations bills.
  Section 251 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act 
of 1985, as amended by the FRA, establishes statutory limits on 
discretionary funding levels for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and allows 
for adjustments to those limits. Sections 302 and 314(a) of the 
Congressional Budget Act allow the chairman of the Budget Committee to 
revise the allocations, aggregates, and levels consistent with those 
adjustments. Senate amendment No. 1092 is eligible for an adjustment. 
Division C, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and 
Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2024, includes $10.8 billion of 
budget authority and $8.3 billion of outlays that are designated as 
emergency funding. The emergency funding in this division is consistent 
with the bipartisan agreement tied to the enactment of the FRA.
  In addition, the Senate Appropriations Committee has reported eight 
other bills that include funding eligible for an adjustment. I am also 
making those adjustments in today's filing.
  In total, I am revising the allocation to the Appropriations 
Committee by $62.2 billion of budget authority and $23.8 billion of 
outlays. Excluding off-budget amounts, I am revising the budgetary 
aggregates by $61.9 billion of budget authority and $23.5 billion of 
outlays.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these accompanying 
tables, which provide details about the adjustment filing, be printed 
in the Record at the conclusion of these remarks.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

      REVISIONS TO BUDGET AGGREGATES--BUDGET AUTHORITY AND OUTLAYS
  (Pursuant to Section 121 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 and
          Section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974)
                             ($ in billion)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                           2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Spending Aggregates:
    Budget Authority...........................                4,878.570
    Outlays....................................                5,056.741
Adjustment:
    Budget Authority...........................                   61.854
    Outlays....................................                   23.541
Revised Aggregates:
    Budget Authority...........................                4,940.424
    Outlays....................................                5,080.282
------------------------------------------------------------------------


   REVISIONS TO THE ALLOCATION TO THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS FOR
                            FISCAL YEAR 2024
  (Pursuant to Section 121 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 and
          Section 302 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974)
                             ($ in billions)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     Current                   Revised
                                    Allocation  Adjustments   Allocation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revised Security Budget Authority      886.349        8.000      894.349
Revised Nonsecurity Budget             703.651       54.198      757.849
 Authority.......................
General Purpose Outlays..........    1,813.382       23.830    1,837.212
------------------------------------------------------------------------


         DETAIL OF ADJUSTMENTS TO THE ALLOCATION TO THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2024
                   (Pursuant to Sections 302 and 314 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974)
                                                 ($ in billions)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                Disaster     Program      Wildfire
        Detail of Adjustments Made Above          Emergency      Relief     Integrity   Suppression     Total
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commerce-Justice-Science:
    Budget Authority...........................        2.250        0.000        0.000        0.000        2.250
    Outlays....................................        0.927        0.000        0.000        0.000        0.927
Defense:
    Budget Authority...........................        8.000        0.000        0.000        0.000        8.000
    Outlays....................................        2.209        0.000        0.000        0.000        2.209
Energy and Water:
    Budget Authority...........................        1.365       -0.003        0.000        0.000        1.362
    Outlays....................................        0.666        0.000        0.000        0.000        0.666
Financial Services:
    Budget Authority...........................        0.000        0.143        0.000        0.000        0.143
    Outlays....................................        0.000        0.110        0.000        0.000        0.110
Homeland Security:
    Budget Authority...........................        4.300       20.261        0.000        0.000       24.561
    Outlays....................................        1.605        1.216        0.000        0.000        2.821
Interior and Environment:
    Budget Authority...........................        2.195        0.000        0.000        2.650        4.845
    Outlays....................................        1.711        0.000        0.000        0.910        2.621
Labor-HHS-Ed:
    Budget Authority...........................        4.500        0.000        2.447        0.000        6.947
    Outlays....................................        2.295        0.000        1.974        0.000        4.269
State-Foreign Operations:
    Budget Authority...........................        3.250        0.000        0.000        0.000        3.250
    Outlays....................................        1.939        0.000        0.000        0.000        1.939
Transportation-HUD:
    Budget Authority...........................       10.840        0.000        0.000        0.000       10.840
    Outlays....................................        8.268        0.000        0.000        0.000        8.268
    Total:
        Revised Discretionary Budget Authority.       36.700       20.401        2.447        2.650       62.198
        Revised Discretionary Outlays..........       19.620        1.326        1.974        0.910       23.830
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Emergency-designated funding in the Defense bill adjusts the revised security allocation; other emergency-
  designated funding adjusts the nonsecurity allocation. Of the program integrity amounts, $344 million of
  budget authority and $289 million of outlays are from the Disability Insurance Trust Fund and are off-budget.
  The off-budget amounts are not included in the adjustment to the budget aggregates.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

  

                          ____________________