[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10378-10398]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The bill clerk read the nomination of William Francis Hagerty IV, of 
Tennessee, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the 
United States of America to Japan.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.


                         Healthcare Legislation

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
what I saw happen over the Fourth of July in Wyoming while visiting 
with people, visiting with patients, doctors, and nurses. What I am 
seeing is that the pain of ObamaCare continues to worsen. The 
healthcare crisis we are seeing across this country continues to grow. 
The crisis is rising, the choices are disappearing, and the American 
people are desperate for Congress to step in and do something to help 
rescue them from the rising costs and collapsing choices of the Obama 
healthcare law.
  It is interesting. When the Democrats passed ObamaCare, the 
Democratic leader at the time, Harry Reid, said that we would all get 
an ``earful of wonderment and happiness.'' Those were his words about 
how great the law was. Well, every weekend at home in Wyoming and I am 
sure in the Presiding Officer's State of North Carolina, we get an 
earful, too, and it is not about wonderment and happiness over 
ObamaCare. What I hear from patients, doctors, and nurses at home is 
that ObamaCare is hurting them, hurting our communities, hurting our 
State. I hear about the rise in premiums. I hear about the declining 
number of options, the collapse of ObamaCare. We have one choice in 
Wyoming. We used to have two. Both lost money in spite of very high 
premiums. What we saw is that one ended up going out of business, and 
the one we have in business--the only one we have--is still losing 
money.
  We are fortunate because we have at least one provider providing 
coverage. There are now 40 counties across America where no one will be 
selling ObamaCare insurance next year--no one, not a single company 
will be selling ObamaCare insurance.
  In Nevada, where prior Senator Harry Reid is from, only three 
counties are going to have anyone selling on the ObamaCare exchange--
only three of the counties in the entire State, the State that Harry 
Reid represented in the Senate for many years. People living everywhere 
else in his home State will have I think one choice, maybe more, but in 
terms of these counties, no one is selling ObamaCare insurance at all. 
The State health insurance exchange put out a statement in his home 
State that said that the people living in the rest of the State face 
what they described as a healthcare crisis.
  Democrats predicted wonderment and happiness about ObamaCare, but 
there is a healthcare crisis all across the country. People in that 
State are going to have no access to the insurance plans the Democrats 
promised them under ObamaCare. A lot of Americans are not much better 
off or in better shape right now.
  There was a headline in the Independence Day edition of USA TODAY 
that said ``1,370-plus counties have only one ACA insurer.'' The 
article was about a study that was done by the Robert Wood Johnson 
Foundation. They found that people living in 1,300 counties have no 
choice when it comes to the ObamaCare plan; there is just one company 
offering the mandated coverage. Washington says you have to buy it; not 
many people want to sell it. Washington doesn't seem to care.
  Democrats don't seem to care about the fact that what they promised 
was a marketplace and what we have ended up with is a monopoly. 
Remember when Democrats promised there would be more competition? 
Essentially there is none. When there is none, we end up with less 
competition and generally with higher prices, which is what people 
across the country are seeing. Prices have essentially doubled in 
ObamaCare marketplaces over the last 4 years. That is why a lot of 
people are finding out that while they may still have access to 
coverage, it is so expensive, they can't afford to buy it--because they 
are down to one choice.
  Health insurance companies keep releasing information about how much 
higher they expect rates to go next year, which continues to be a 
problem. I have seen the headlines. ``Another ObamaCare Rate Shock.''
  Look at what is happening in Tennessee. Earlier this year, Aetna and 
Humana both said they were dropping out of ObamaCare exchanges 
completely. Cigna is one of the last big companies that are still 
willing to sell these plans. Well, they say they are going to have to 
raise premiums by 42 percent next year.
  Look at what is happening in Georgia, just across the border from 
Tennessee. Blue Cross Blue Shield is asking for an average rate hike of 
41 percent in Georgia. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had an article 
about it just last week. They said Blue Cross might charge as much as 
75 percent more for one plan next year. That is ObamaCare.
  Remember President Obama saying that if you like your plan, you can 
keep your plan? Those plans are gone.
  Remember President Obama saying that rates would drop by $2,500 a 
year for people? That is not what we saw. What we are seeing is what is 
continuing today.
  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is saying that Blue Cross Blue 
Shield may charge as much as 75 percent more next year. They quoted one 
man as saying: ``That's a breath taker.'' Another woman quoted in the 
article responded to these price increases by

[[Page 10379]]

saying simply ``Yikes!'' That is what people are facing all across the 
country.
  I remember President Obama, leaving office, forcefully defending it 
and being proud. There is very little to be proud of here.
  People all across America are having the exact same reaction as they 
see how much their own insurance companies are raising their rates all 
across the country. That is not the wonderment and happiness the 
Democrats said we would be hearing about when this was passed. The high 
prices are a big reason so many people are dropping their insurance 
coverage. They can't afford it. The people most likely to drop out, we 
find out, are, of course, the young people.
  Gallup came out with the results of a recent survey on Monday, just 2 
days ago, with big headlines all across the country. What they found is 
that 2 million fewer Americans, under ObamaCare, have insurance today 
than they did at the end of last year, just 6 months ago. There have 
been 2 million fewer over the last 6 months.
  So, in just 6 months, 2 million people have gone off insurance. Most 
of them are young, and according to the survey by Gallup, they 
basically say they dropped it because it was just too expensive. They 
do not feel that they are getting value for their money. These 2 
million people are not talking about the wonderment and happiness of 
ObamaCare. They are just leaving it behind.
  Democrats said people would love ObamaCare. They said ObamaCare would 
bring down prices. It has not. They said it would increase competition, 
but they did not get that one right either. None of this is happening. 
Now the Democrats are starting to say that having Washington-mandated 
health insurance is not enough. They say we need health insurance to be 
run entirely by Washington. Apparently, they did not learn the lesson 
that said that the Washington-mandated insurance--having to buy a 
Washington product--would be good enough. Now they are recognizing that 
it is not good enough. They are saying that we need Washington in 
charge of all of it.
  They call it single-payer healthcare, but let's talk about what it 
is. It is government-controlled healthcare--government-mandated, 
government-controlled, government-run, one-size-fits-all healthcare. It 
is a single payer, with the American taxpayers paying the bill.
  We see what happened in California when its legislature passed a 
similar thing in the State senate. They asked: What is the cost? $400 
billion. What is the budget of the entire State of California? $190 
billion. So what they proposed in the State senate has passed in the 
State of California and costs twice what the entire budget is in the 
State of California. To give what the people of California have been 
promised by the State senate, they are going to have to raise taxes on 
people, and then you will get the rationing of care and the lines and 
the waiting time. It is what happens around the world with government-
mandated, government-run insurance. We see that in Canada, and we see 
that in England.
  I was practicing medicine prior to coming here to the Senate. I was 
an orthopedic surgeon in Wyoming. I knew we needed to do healthcare 
reform, but ObamaCare was the very wrong reform. Democrats were wrong 
then, and all of the talk about government-run healthcare is wrong 
today--wrong today for the people of this country.
  Look, we understand that we need a better solution than ObamaCare. 
That is what I hear about every weekend in Wyoming. We need to put 
patients in charge, not the government. With the Democrats and the 
speeches they are giving and the bills that have been cosponsored in 
the House by a majority of the Democrats, they want to put the 
government solely in charge of healthcare in this country.
  We need to have people at home making their own decisions, making 
their own choices, and not have Washington, DC, imposing its one-size-
fits-all approach. We need to give people options, not mandates. People 
deserve choices. That is what the American people want. That is what 
Democrats promised years ago, but they never delivered. That is what 
Republicans are committed to giving the American people today--doing it 
now so that patients can get the healthcare they need from doctors whom 
they choose and at lower costs so that patients can make the decisions, 
not Washington. That is where we are today as we continue to debate and 
discuss healthcare in this country at this time.
  Just coming back from Wyoming, I visited with many folks--many former 
patients, a number of doctors whom I had worked with over the years, 
and nurses. I was at several hospitals. I just heard, unilaterally, 
across the State of Wyoming that ObamaCare continues to be a burden on 
the people of the State. They want freedom. They want choice. They want 
flexibility. They want to make decisions for themselves, not have 
Washington dictate to them and, certainly, not have government 
controlling healthcare in this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I have had the good fortune of being in 
both the House and the Senate during the period of passage and 
implementation of the Affordable Care Act and now the debate over 
repeal, and I have heard consistently from my Republican colleagues two 
things. One is that they did not think the Affordable Care Act was the 
right approach to fixing the problems of America's healthcare system. 
There were 60-some odd times that the House or the Senate voted to 
repeal all or parts of the Affordable Care Act. The second thing I 
heard consistently over that period of time, dating from 2009, is that 
the Republicans were prepared to offer a replacement to the Affordable 
Care Act that would be better, that would be an improvement over the 
Affordable Care Act--indeed, over the status of the American healthcare 
system when the Affordable Care Act was passed. The ground has shifted 
mightily since then.
  The Congressional Budget Office tells us that, under the Republican 
plan either passed in the House or in the Senate, a humanitarian 
catastrophe will result in this country. Tens of millions of people 
would lose their healthcare. That is not what Republicans said their 
replacement would do. They said their replacement would be better than 
the Affordable Care Act.
  The CBO says that rates will go up immediately by 20 percent on 
almost everybody. Then, after that, if you are young and healthy, rates 
will probably go down, but for everybody else, the amount of money you 
have to pay in premiums, copays, and deductibles will go up. There is 
nothing in the Republicans' bill about cost--nothing that addresses the 
underlying issues with an American healthcare system that, procedure by 
procedure, costs twice as much as in most other countries--and nothing 
about quality. There is not a single provision in the bill that 
encourages higher quality.
  As we get ready for Republican repeal bill 3.0 or 4.0--whatever this 
next version will be that will be released secretly to Republicans 
tomorrow--I think it is just worth reminding everybody what Republicans 
said would happen. I will just use our President's words. I understand 
that many of my Republican colleagues here do not ascribe to all of the 
beliefs and statements of our President, but he is the leader of the 
Republican Party. All of my colleagues did support him, and they stood 
with him in the House of Representatives, arm in arm, when they passed 
the Republican House's repeal and replacement bill.
  President Trump wrote this:

       I was the first and only potential GOP candidate to state 
     there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and 
     Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

  So no cuts to Medicaid was the promise. Yet the bill that the 
President has endorsed and is trying to help Leader McConnell push 
through the Senate involves debilitating cuts to Medicaid--$700 billion 
to $800 billion worth of cuts to Medicaid--resulting in millions of 
people being pushed off of that benefit. The cut to the State of 
Connecticut would be $3 billion. We are a tiny State. Our Medicaid 
Program is

[[Page 10380]]

somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion. We would lose $3 billion 
of that. The promise was that we would not cut Medicaid. This bill cuts 
Medicaid.
  President Trump wrote:

       If our healthcare plan is approved, you will see real 
     healthcare, and premiums will start tumbling down. ObamaCare 
     is in a death spiral!

  There is always one long sentence and then one very short sentence.
  Here are the two claims: ``Premiums will start tumbling down.'' That 
has been the promise, and that has been a consistent promise--that 
costs will go down if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and replaced 
with a Republican plan. The CBO debunks this from beginning to end. It 
says that premiums will go up. They will start tumbling upwards 
immediately at rates of 20 percent. If you are older or if you have any 
history of preexisting conditions, your premiums will continue to go 
up. The danger, of course, is in thinking that the only thing that you 
pay in the healthcare system is premiums. I could pretty easily 
construct a healthcare reform proposal in which your premium would go 
dramatically down. How would I do that? I would just shift all of the 
payments onto deductibles, onto copays, and I would give you nothing 
with regard to the actuarial benefit of the plan. It is easy to get 
premiums to go down if you do not care about what you are actually 
covering and the size of your deductibles and the size of your copays.
  Then, ``ObamaCare is in a death spiral!'' The CBO debunks that as 
well. The CBO says that, if you leave the Affordable Care Act in place 
over the course of the next 10 years, 2 or 3 million people will lose 
healthcare insurance. If you pass the Republicans' healthcare bill, 
that is where the death spiral occurs. There are 23 million people who 
will lose insurance if you pass the Republicans' bill, but 2 to 3 
million people will lose insurance if you do not pass it.
  Again, President Trump writes:

       Healthcare plan is on its way. Will have much lower 
     premiums and deductibles--

  Here, he is making a commitment on deductibles. Once again, the 
Congressional Budget Office says that premiums will go up and 
deductibles will go up, especially for individuals who are older or 
individuals with preexisting conditions--

     while at the same time taking care of pre-existing 
     conditions!

  This bill does not take care of people with preexisting conditions. 
Why? Because it allows for any State to allow insurance companies to 
get out from the minimum benefits requirement. If you have cancer, 
technically, the Senate Republicans' bill says that you cannot be 
charged more, but you may not be able to find a plan that covers cancer 
treatments. So that is not protecting people with preexisting 
conditions. The CBO says this specifically. It says that, especially 
for people with preexisting mental illness and preexisting addiction, 
they will be priced out of the marketplace because they will not find 
plans that cover their illnesses. You cannot just protect people with 
preexisting conditions by saying that insurance plans have to cover 
them. You actually have to require insurance plans to offer the medical 
benefit they need.
  Once again:

       Our healthcare plan will lower premiums and deductibles--
     and be great healthcare!
       Insurance companies are fleeing ObamaCare--it is dead.

  I have already covered the part about premiums and deductibles, but 
let's remember that insurance companies were not fleeing ObamaCare 
until President Trump was sworn into office. The period of open 
enrollment covered a period prior to his inauguration and a period 
after his inauguration. Before President Trump's inauguration, open 
enrollment was on pace to enroll a record number of Americans in 
exchange plans and Medicaid plans--record enrollment. Enrollment fell 
off a cliff after President Trump was sworn into office and signed an 
Executive order that told all of his agencies to unwind the Affordable 
Care Act. People listened to President Trump, who said that he was 
going to kill the Affordable Care Act, and they stopped signing up for 
those plans.
  It got worse when he refused to pay insurance companies. Right now, 
the President will not commit to paying cost-sharing subsidies to 
insurance companies more than 30 days ahead of time. He stopped 
enforcing the individual mandate, and it is no surprise that insurance 
companies are saying they do not want to participate in these exchanges 
because the President is trying to kill them. He has made it very clear 
from day one.
  I have had the benefit of being on the floor a number of times with 
Senator Barrasso, who often came down to the floor, following my 
remarks, during the period of the implementation of the Affordable Care 
Act. I heard him talk about the fact that there will be freedom for 
Americans to have or not to have insurance if this piece of legislation 
is passed. It is a wonderful idea that people will be free to not be 
able to afford insurance. The reality is that, yes, some individuals 
buy insurance today because they are compelled to by the individual 
mandate, but there is a reason for that. If you do not compel people to 
buy insurance who are healthy, then you cannot protect people who are 
sick.
  I sat where the Presiding Officer is during Senator Cruz's 24-hour 
filibuster. In the middle of that filibuster, he said exactly that. 
Senator Cruz, in the middle of the his filibuster, said that we all 
understand that you have to have the individual mandate in order to 
prohibit companies from charging higher premiums for people who are 
sick, and my Republican colleagues know that because they kept the 
individual mandate in their bill.
  So this nonsense about no one's being required to buy insurance is 
belied by the text of the legislation we are considering. There is a 
mandate in this bill. There is a penalty in this bill. It is just a far 
meaner and crueler penalty than was included in the Affordable Care 
Act.
  What do I mean by that?
  So the Affordable Care Act doesn't mandate that you buy insurance in 
the sense that if you don't buy it, you will be locked up in jail; it 
says that if you don't buy insurance, you will pay a penalty on your 
income tax. If you don't buy insurance, there will be a penalty.
  That is exactly what the Republican Senate bill says. It says that if 
you don't buy insurance, you will incur a penalty. In their bill, the 
penalty is that you will be locked out of buying insurance for 6 
months. If you are sick, or even, frankly, if you are healthy and you 
need to go see a doctor for something, you will have to pay for that 
out of your pocket for those 6 months. If you are sick, and you have a 
serious condition and you are legally refused healthcare because of 
this legislation, the consequences could be dire, but whatever the 
scope of the consequences, it is still a penalty, just like there was a 
penalty in the bill that the Democrats supported and passed in 2009 and 
2010.
  So it is just not true to say that now Americans have the freedom not 
to have healthcare. You don't because you are going to be penalized if 
you let your health insurance lapse. If you don't make payments for a 
couple months, you are locked out of the insurance market. That is just 
a different kind of penalty than the one that is in our bill.
  The truth is that while I admit there are some people who buy 
insurance today because they fear that penalty, it is necessary, as 
Republicans realize, in order to make sure the markets don't spiral out 
of control, because if you say that you can't charge people with 
preexisting conditions more and you don't require healthy people to buy 
insurance, then why would any healthy person buy insurance? They will 
just wait until they are sick because they know that once they are sick 
and need very expensive care, they can't be charged any more for it.
  The nature of insurance is that people who have the good fortune to 
be healthy or to be free of accident or natural disaster subsidize 
individuals who are not so fortunate--who are sick, who do have an 
accident occur to their home or who are subject to a natural disaster. 
That is how insurance works.

[[Page 10381]]

  Republicans realize that because they put a penalty in their bill, 
but for as many people who buy insurance because they are forced to, 
most people buy insurance because they want it because they recognize 
it is better to have insurance in the case that they or a loved one 
gets sick, and that is whom we are talking about here. Of the 23 
million who lose insurance, according to CBO, under the Republican 
bill, millions and millions of those are those people who want 
insurance but will not be able to get it because they are priced out by 
the Republican bill. I can see there will be some people who will make 
that choice, but there will be millions more who had insurance today 
who will not be able to get it moving forward.
  As Republicans finish up this latest round of secret negotiations, I 
just want to make sure we are on the same page about what this bill 
does. It mandates that you buy insurance, just in a different way. It 
has a penalty just like the Affordable Care Act has a penalty.
  I want to make sure we remember what Republicans stated as their 
goals for this replacement. The goals were that the system would be 
better, but by every single metric, this proposal will result in worse 
healthcare for people. Less people will have insurance. Rates will go 
up for everyone except for young, healthy people. Costs will continue 
to spiral out of control, and no additional measures will be taken to 
make quality better. Every single problem that Republicans address in 
the existing healthcare system gets worse.
  Senator Barrasso complains mercilessly about these exchanges. CBO 
says the exchanges will shed even more people. The costs will go even 
higher. Senator Cornyn regularly tweets out that the Affordable Care 
Act still left 28 million people uninsured, but this bill you are 
debating will double the number of people who don't have insurance.
  For all of my Republican colleagues who rightly come to the floor and 
talk about the fact that the cost is too high for individuals in our 
system, there is not a single provision in this bill that deals with 
the actual cost of the service, of the procedure, of the visit, of the 
surgery.
  I am deeply worried that this next version of the Republican repeal 
and replace bill will result in premiums going up by 15 percent and 
only 17 million Americans losing healthcare and it will be declared a 
victory, but that is not what Republicans promised. They promised to 
repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something that is 
better, not something that is less bad than the original version of the 
replacement plan they introduced.
  I think the reason that to many people it appears this bill is 
falling apart is because when my colleagues went home this weekend, 
they heard an earful from their constituents--from real folks who will 
be affected by this piece of legislation.
  Alison is 28 years old. She is from Milford, CT. She was in my office 
this week. She came to DC this week, she and her boyfriend, I think--I 
don't want to ascribe an engagement to them that is not true; I think 
her boyfriend. They came down here this week. They were supposed to be 
on vacation this week, and they decided to spend some of their vacation 
coming to Washington so Alison could tell her story to Members of 
Congress.
  When she was 9 years old, she was diagnosed with a rare liver 
disease. At the time, she and her family were told that they would need 
to find a liver transplant in roughly 10 years or she wouldn't survive.
  At the start of her sophomore year at Sacred Heart University in 
Connecticut, she was starting to have symptoms of a condition that 
results from a buildup of ammonia in her brain. She was having a hard 
time concentrating, abdominal pain, nose bleeds, nausea, vomiting, and 
joint pain. Her doctor said it was time for her to get that transplant, 
that she was at that critical moment when she needed it.
  Unfortunately, none of her family or 8 other candidates--friends, I 
think, of the family--were a match. So in desperation, her parents 
wrote an email and just sent it out to people who lived in Trumbull and 
in the Sacred Heart University community. From that email, an anonymous 
young man stepped forward. He was tested and determined to be a match. 
The surgery was a success. When she walked on stage to receive her 
diploma from Sacred Heart University, she was joined by that anonymous 
donor, and her fellow graduates gave her a standing ovation.
  Now, her family was lucky because she had insurance through her 
father. She is, because of the Affordable Care Act, allowed to do that, 
at the time being under 26 years old. Her insurance paid for virtually 
everything that was necessary, but, she says, had my dad not had the 
healthcare benefits he did, I know my family would not be in the place 
we are today because my parents would have lost everything they worked 
so hard for. There was no way we could have afforded to pay for all of 
those burdens.
  Today she worries that if this bill is passed, she, as a young woman 
with a preexisting condition, will be destined to a life of 
discrimination because she may not be able to find a plan that covers 
her condition because of the withdrawal of protection with respect to 
the minimum benefits requirements. Even in Connecticut, she is 
vulnerable to that withdrawal of protection, not because Connecticut is 
likely to allow insurance plans to offer coverage that doesn't include 
the minimum benefits but because if you work for a big company, and 
even if you are housed in Connecticut, if that company anchors their 
plan in a State that does strip away the insurance protections, then 
you lose the protections even as a resident of Connecticut.
  Alison is now a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Yale 
University Children's Hospital. She is contributing in a big way to our 
State and to the healthcare system. Yet she is living in fear of this 
legislation being passed. So she took some of her vacation to come to 
Washington to share her story with us.
  I am with Senator Collins. I think the Republicans should scrap this 
garbage piece of legislation. I hope they understand our offer is 
sincere--it is not political--that Democrats do want to sit down with 
Republicans and try to provide some reasonable fix to what still ails 
our healthcare system.
  I will end with this thought: It doesn't have to be like this. 
Healthcare does not have to be a political football that is just tossed 
from one side to the other every 10 years. That is what has been 
happening here for my entire political lifetime. I was elected to 
Congress in 2006, in part because of the tempest of popular frustration 
with the way in which Republicans passed the 2003 Medicare 
Modernization Act, which included the new prescription drug benefit 
that Democrats saw--and sold--as a giveaway to the drug and insurance 
industries. Democrats used healthcare as a political cudgel to bludgeon 
Republicans after the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act. Its 
implementation was very rocky, just as the implementation of the 
Affordable Care Act was. The Democrats used it against Republicans.
  In 2009, it was the Republicans' turn to bludgeon Democrats. 
Democrats lost a lot of seats in 2010, in part because Republicans used 
the passage of the Affordable Care Act to politically harm Democrats. 
Now, once again, it is the Democrats' turn to politically bludgeon 
Republicans.
  Whether this bill passes or not, the fact that Republicans have 
walked out on a plank with a partisan piece of legislation that takes 
insurance from 23 million people across the country and, as every poll 
shows, is widely unpopular will be a political liability for 
Republicans.
  What if we decided to stop tossing healthcare back and forth? What if 
we decided to jointly own one-fifth of our economy? What if we decided 
to sit down and give a little bit, from our side to yours, from your 
side to ours? What if I said that I understood you cared about 
flexibility in these marketplaces, that I understood your desire for 
more flexibility for Governors and State legislatures under Medicaid? 
What if you said you understood our interest in providing long-term 
stability in these marketplaces, that you

[[Page 10382]]

understood our desire to try to get at some of the costs of the actual 
services and devices and prescription drugs that are sold? What if we 
sat down and fixed the things that aren't working, kept the things that 
are working, and held hands together and said that we are going to 
jointly own the American healthcare system?
  It would leave plenty of things to fight over. There would still be 
no shortage of disagreements that we could run elections on. Whether it 
be immigration or taxes or minimum wage, there will still be lots of 
things we could disagree on, but for as long as I have been in 
politics, this issue has just been thrown back and forth, to hurt 
Democrats, to hurt Republicans. In the process, we have injected so 
much uncertainty into the healthcare system and into the economy at 
large, that we make it impossible for private sector reform to take 
hold.
  Hospitals and healthcare providers have been doing really innovative 
things since the Affordable Care Act went into effect because they got 
a signal from the Federal Government that we wanted them to start 
building big coordinated systems of care, that we were going to reward 
outcomes rather than volume. So they started making all of these big 
changes, and then, about a year ago, they stopped because Republicans 
said they were going to blow up that model and pass something new. We 
frustrated innovation because we telegraphed that healthcare policy is 
just going to ping-pong back and forth between left and right. We hurt 
ourselves politically, we frustrate the private sector innovation, and 
get no benefit to us on the economy.
  My offer, and I think the offer from most of my colleagues, is 
sincere. If my Republican friends do choose to throw away this piece of 
legislation because it doesn't comport with the goals that Republicans 
have long said were at the heart of their effort to repeal this bill, 
there is an important bipartisan conversation about keeping what is 
working in our healthcare system and admitting together that there are 
big things that aren't working and fixing them together.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the most important three words in our 
Constitution are the first three words: ``We the People.''
  Our Founders chose to write those words in supersized font so that we 
could, from some distance away, know exactly what the mission statement 
was. Their goal wasn't to write a structure for government that would 
repeat the governments of, by, and for the powerful of Europe but to 
pursue differently a vision in which the will of the people would be 
enacted; that government would work not just for the benefit of the 
citizens at large but also empowered by the citizens at large. This is 
a vision we have been very concerned about as we see the influence of 
the concentration of money in American politics.
  Indeed, we have five members of the Supreme Court who don't 
understand the basic, fundamental nature of the first three words of 
our Constitution. They adopted a court case, Citizens United, which was 
the opposite of the vision of our Constitution. That vision was 
articulated by Thomas Jefferson, who said that the will of the people 
will be enacted only if each and every citizen has an equal voice. But 
Citizens United gives a dramatic, stadium-sized megaphone to the 
individuals who are the richest and most powerful in the country, at 
odds with that fundamental vision that Lincoln so well summarized as 
government of, by, and for the people.
  We have certainly seen the case of government by and for the powerful 
in the context of the recent TrumpCare bill--the Senate version 
thereof--crafted in secret by 13 of my colleagues from across the 
aisle, hiding from the press, hiding from the healthcare stakeholders 
and experts, hiding from their own citizens. In fact, during this last 
break, of the 52 Members of the Republican caucus, apparently--
reportedly--only a couple had townhalls because they were terrified of 
what their citizens would say about the bill they have been crafting in 
secret--the secret 13.
  This bill is also known as the zero, zero, zero bill--zero committee 
meetings, zero amendments considered in committee, zero months of 
opportunity for Senators to go back and consult with their citizens 
back in their home States.
  Then what do we find as a result of this secret process of government 
by and for the powerful? A bill to rip healthcare from 22 million 
Americans in order to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars to the 
richest Americans. In fact, if you want to summarize it, you can say 
that this bill gives $33 billion--not $33,000, not $33 million but $33 
billion--to the richest 400 Americans while ripping healthcare away 
from 700,000. That is the number who could be funded by that same $33 
billion. That would cover all of the Medicaid recipients in Alaska and 
Arkansas and West Virginia and Nevada. This has incredibly grave 
consequences for the peace of mind and the quality of life for these 
millions of Americans. It rips $772 billion out of Medicaid.
  We know the Medicaid expansion in Oregon has enabled 400,000 people 
to acquire healthcare in my home State--400,000. If they were holding 
hands, they would stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the State of Idaho, 
across the entire east-west breadth of my State.
  Think about how much of an impact this has on rural Americans. One 
out of three Oregonians in rural Oregon are on the Oregon Health Plan, 
Oregon's Medicaid Program. It has a big impact on our seniors--our 
seniors in long-term care.
  Oregon is a leader in helping families, helping individuals stay in 
their homes as their healthcare deteriorates. But when they can no 
longer stay in their home because of the extensive nature of their 
care, many then are, through Medicaid, able to go and get care--long-
term care--in a nursing home. That long-term care, paid for by the 
Oregon Health Plan, covers about 60 percent of the individuals in long-
term care, but in rural Oregon, it is much higher.
  I was in Klamath Falls at a nursing home. I was citing the national 
statistic, 60 percent, and the head of the nursing home said: Senator, 
here, it is virtually 100 percent.
  I looked at those residents down that long hallway who needed 
intensive nursing healthcare, and one woman asked why I was there. Her 
name was Deborah. When I explained it, she said: I am paid for by 
Medicaid. If Medicaid goes away, I am out on the street. That is a 
problem because I can't walk.
  It is not just a problem for Deborah. It is a problem for all of our 
residents in long-term care who need extensive nursing care. It is a 
challenge. It is a real challenge. It is a real problem for our 
mothers. One out of three women in maternity care are paid for by 
Medicaid. Don't we want our children to get a good, strong start in 
life? Don't we want maternity care from the moment a woman knows she is 
expecting a child? Don't we want that? Then why do so many of my 
colleagues support a bill to tear that care away from our expecting 
mothers?
  It is a problem for our older Americans, our older Americans whose 
rates would go way up. For example, a man who is 60 years old, earning 
$20,000 a year, who currently pays about $80 a month for healthcare--an 
affordable policy. Under the Republican TrumpCare bill, that would go 
to $570 a month.
  I challenge my colleagues, find me someone earning $20,000 a year who 
can pay $570 a month for healthcare. Find that individual and defend 
your plan on the floor of the Senate as to why that isn't equivalent to 
just taking healthcare away from that individual.
  Then, of course, we have the issue of preexisting conditions. People 
sometimes have an injury in high school football or maybe it is in 
softball or

[[Page 10383]]

gymnastics or in wrestling that they carry with them their entire 
lives. Maybe it is something that develops further on in life. Maybe it 
is asthma, diabetes, or an episode of cancer. Now they have a 
preexisting condition. Under our old healthcare system, prior to 2009, 
2010, they couldn't acquire insurance unless they were fortunate enough 
to get it through that job, which millions of Americans do not get it 
through their workplace. They were out in the cold, out on the ice.
  Now we have this Republican TrumpCare bill. They want to throw those 
citizens back on the ice who have preexisting conditions, not their 
friends who are wealthy enough to buy healthcare on their own or heads 
of corporations who get big benefit packages--not them, no, just the 
struggling working Americans.
  Don't we care about struggling working Americans? Aren't we a ``we 
the people'' nation, not a ``we the privileged'' nation? I encourage my 
colleagues to read up on the first three words of our Constitution and 
what it means.
  Then we have the plan my colleague from Texas has presented. It is 
referred to as the Cruz amendment. The Cruz amendment--the Cruz 
amendment for fake insurance. It works like this. It says, if an 
insurance company provides one policy with extensive benefits--that is, 
benefits essential to ordinary healthcare like maternity care and the 
ability to go to a hospital, the ability to get a broken bone repaired, 
the ability to get affordable drugs, just the basics of healthcare--
they have one policy with these essential benefits. They can offer 
policies that cover virtually nothing. These are known as fake 
insurance.
  We have a President who likes to talk about fake news virtually every 
day. Why do we have a President who hates fake news but loves fake 
insurance? Why do I have 52 colleagues here who apparently love fake 
insurance?
  Here is what it does. It means the young and the healthy get those 
policies because they cost very little, and they make a bet that they 
aren't going to get hurt and they are not going to get sick. That means 
that those who are older and those who have preexisting conditions have 
to go for the policy that has those essential benefits, but now because 
only the older individuals and the sicker individuals are getting that 
policy, it is way beyond reach.
  Earlier I described how a 60-year-old at $20,000 has a policy that 
increases seven times, from $80 a month to $570 a month. The Cruz 
amendment would make that much worse. It makes fake insurance for the 
young or the wealthy and unaffordable policies for those who are older 
and have preexisting conditions.
  Our President said the House bill is mean, but the Senate bill is 
meaner. The House bill would knock 14 million people out of healthcare 
within a single year. The Senate bill, that is 15 million people.
  The American Medical Association has long operated under the precept 
of, first, do no harm. Wouldn't that be a good principle for 
legislation on healthcare? Is it any wonder that the USA TODAY poll 
says only one out of eight Americans likes this Republican TrumpCare 
bill. We can turn to the PBS NewsHour poll, 17 percent. That is quite a 
small number of Americans who understand that ripping healthcare from 
22 million people in order to give hundreds of billions of dollars to 
the richest Americans is one of the biggest takings this country has 
ever seen proposed and one that so deeply and profoundly damages the 
quality of life for these Americans.
  Our Presidents--Republican and Democratic--over time have understood 
this. President Eisenhower said:

       Because the strength of our nation is in its people, their 
     good health is a proper national concern; healthy Americans 
     live more rewarding, more productive and happier lives.

  He continued:

       Fortunately, the nation continues its advance in bettering 
     the health of all its people.

  Today, on the floor of the Senate, we have a different philosophy, 
not the Eisenhower strategy of advancing the bettering of the health of 
all of our people but in fact the Trump policy echoed by so many of my 
colleagues that is about destroying the healthcare for millions of 
people, taking us back in time to a place where peace of mind was 
missing for millions of Americans because they couldn't either afford 
healthcare or because their policies didn't cover anything. Other 
Presidents over time have weighed in with very similar sentiments to 
that which President Eisenhower put forward.
  Let's hear it from the citizens back home. Kathryn, from Springfield, 
has battled cancer three times over the last 12 years. Kathryn says 
that during her last two bouts with cancer, in 2010 and 2011, she was 
``blessed enough to have qualified for the Oregon Health Plan'' and 
that without it she would not be here today.
  Indeed, healthcare coverage has been a blessing to so many. Let's not 
rip those blessings away.
  Let's go to Beth in Bend and her 34-year-old son who is living with a 
rare genetic condition and relies on the Oregon Health Plan to survive. 
In 2012, doctors found tumors along his spine and areas of concern in 
his brain and his lungs. They are benign now but could turn into cancer 
at any time. Beth's son's life depends on regular, expensive MRIs to 
monitor them. He is only able to afford those MRIs because of the 
Oregon health plan.
  As Beth says, ``If the ACA is repealed and replaced with TrumpCare, 
my son will most likely lose his current health insurance . . . the 
loss of access to affordable insurance is a potential death sentence 
for my son.''
  Medical professionals like Caitlin, a nurse in Portland, tell us how 
significant this is, and she writes:

       With the passage of ObamaCare, I saw people were finally 
     able to come and be seen by our medical teams. Often their 
     disease processes were so advanced that we would have to take 
     very extreme measures to try to halt or reverse these disease 
     processes.
       But as time has passed, we're able to catch things sooner 
     and people can actually go to primary care rather than 
     waiting until it's a matter of life or death and having to be 
     seen in the Emergency Department.

  I am struck by Liz from Enterprise, who works at a clinic and told me 
that the clinic has expanded in this very small, remote town in 
Northeast Oregon from 20-something employees to 50-something employees. 
It has doubled in size, which means an incredible improvement in 
healthcare. She went on to say that they have been able to take on 
mental health as well, which they never were able to do before. Why 
could they afford to do this? Because the uncompensated care dropped so 
dramatically that their finances improved, and they were able to hire 
more staff.
  Let's ask about John in Sherwood. John wrote about his grandmother. 
He lost his grandmother to Alzheimer's a few months ago, but thanks to 
the Oregon Health Plan, his grandmother was able to live in a nursing 
home and get the care she needed 24 hours a day right up until the end.
  As John says, ``I'm forever thankful for the work of President Obama 
and Congress for passing the ACA. If they wouldn't have passed this 
bill, my grandmother wouldn't have gotten the care she needed from 
those great men and women at the nursing home.''
  These stories go on forever. Over this last weekend, I did a series 
of townhalls in rural Oregon, parts of Oregon that would be painted red 
on a political map. I held those townhalls and then went to a series of 
other Main Street walks with mayors and small incorporated cities. What 
I heard everywhere I went--inviting the entire community to come to the 
townhall and talk--was enormous anxiety, enormous anxiety and 
disappointment that the leaders they are counting on here to make our 
healthcare system work better care more about giving more American tax 
dollars away to the richest Americans than they do about fundamental 
healthcare for struggling working families across our Nation.
  Let's listen to those individuals. I know most of my colleagues 
didn't go home and listen to their constituents. As I mentioned, it has 
been reported that only a couple of my Republican colleagues held a 
townhall, even though this bill would affect them so profoundly. Still, 
their voices are echoing through this building, through the

[[Page 10384]]

emails, through the phone calls, through the individuals who are coming 
and visiting our offices both here and back home. Let's listen to those 
voices. Let's be a ``we the people'' nation that works in partnership 
with the American people to make this world, this Nation, provide a 
foundation for every family to thrive.
  That means we have to take an oak stick and pound it through the 
heart of TrumpCare and bury it 6 feet under and then work together in a 
bipartisan fashion. Think of all we could do. We know that when you 
strip away reinsurance, you destroy the market for insurance companies 
to go into new areas and compete. Let's restore that reinsurance.
  We know that when the President holds on to the cost-share payments 
and will not say whether he is releasing them, our companies don't know 
how to price their policies, and they are dropping out of the exchanges 
across this Nation. County after county health insurance companies are 
fleeing because the President will not tell them whether he is 
releasing these cost-share payments. We can fix that.
  We know we have a meth and opioid epidemic across this country. I 
have heard my colleagues on both sides say we have to take this on in a 
more courageous, more substantial fashion. We passed authorizing 
legislation, but let's put funds behind that. Let's do that, and let's 
take on the high cost of pharmaceuticals.
  These four things we can do together. The country would love to see 
Democrats and Republicans working together to make our healthcare 
system work better. That is exactly what we should be doing in 
representing the citizens of the United States of America in a ``we the 
people'' democratic republic.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to once again discuss the ongoing 
effort to reform our Nation's Tax Code. Over the past several years, I 
have come to the floor often to make the case for tax reform by 
highlighting the many shortcomings of our current tax system and 
discussing the benefits we could reap by making the necessary changes.
  Over the last years while I have been serving as chairman or the lead 
Republican on the Senate tax-writing committee--both as ranking member 
and as chairman--I have made tax reform my top priority, and right now, 
I believe there is more momentum in favor of tax reform than we have 
seen in decades.
  To capitalize on that momentum, reform advocates like myself need to 
continue to make the case for updating and fixing our broken tax 
system. Toward that end, I intend to come to the floor often in the 
coming weeks and months to discuss various aspects of our tax system 
and make the case for reform. In my view, we need to go back to the 
drawing board and fundamentally rethink our entire tax system. This 
includes both the individual, as well as the business side of the tax 
ledger.
  Today, I want to talk specifically about our Nation's business tax 
system, with a particular focus on the corporate tax.
  Let's get the obvious out of the way first: The United States has the 
highest statutory corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. 
Looking at the effective corporate tax rates tells an equally gloomy 
story of the lack of American competitiveness. I will have more to say 
on that in a minute.
  I know some like to rail on corporate America and claim they aren't 
paying their fair share, but the facts tell a different story. 
Companies doing business in the United States are saddled with statuary 
tax rates that are higher than any other industrialized country. This 
isn't just a Republican talking point; Members and commentators from 
both parties and across the ideological spectrum have acknowledged that 
this is the problem.
  For example, just last year, former President Bill Clinton argued for 
a reduction in corporate tax rates, noting that he had urged for the 
corporate tax to be raised to 35 percent when he was President because 
``it was precisely in the middle of OECD countries. It isn't anymore.''
  Early in his Presidency, President Obama said: ``Our current 
corporate tax system is outdated, unfair, and inefficient.'' He also 
said that our corporate tax system ``hits companies that choose to stay 
in America with one of the highest tax rates in the world.'' I might 
add, he did nothing about it, though.
  In addition, my counterpart on the Senate Finance Committee, Senator 
Wyden, has introduced legislation that would reduce corporate tax rates 
by more than 10 percent.
  In a Finance Committee report in 2015 on international tax reform, 
put out by a working group cochaired by my friends and colleagues 
Senators Portman and Schumer, it was clearly stated that ``no matter 
what jurisdiction a U.S. multinational company is competing in, it is 
at a competitive disadvantage.''
  There are plenty of other examples of prominent Democrats who 
recognized the impact of our obnoxiously high corporate tax rate.
  I want to turn back to Bill Clinton's point, though, because it is an 
important one. We must always remember that businesses are, by and 
large, rational actors, making decisions based on what will help grow 
their business and what will cause their businesses to stagnate or move 
backward. Such decisions inevitably include where a company will do 
business and where it will be incorporated.
  According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and 
Development, or OECD, businesses contemplating investment and other 
similar matters--especially incorporation in the United States--must 
first come to terms with the largest combined corporate tax rate among 
OECD member countries, which is currently at 39.1 percent.
  Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle like to counter 
these inconvenient facts by acknowledging the difference between 
effective tax rates, which are rates after accounting for deductions 
and credits, and statutory tax rates. Of course, even when taking those 
differences into account and focusing solely on effective rates, the 
United States only falls from the highest to the fourth highest 
corporate rate among countries in the G20--and that is according to 
2012 data that doesn't yet capture recent tax reforms in the UK and 
elsewhere.
  In other words, whether we are talking about effective rates or 
statutory rates in the United States, we are talking about some of the 
highest corporate tax rates in the world, and, as the working group 
cochaired by Senators Portman and Schumer made clear, this translates 
into American companies constantly being put at a competitive 
disadvantage. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to recognize that 
this has had a major, negative impact on our economy and the ability of 
the American job creators to compete on the world stage.
  As a result of the astronomically high corporate tax rates in our 
country, we have seen companies--that, keep in mind, have duties to 
their shareholders--engage in inversions, earnings stripping, and 
profit shifting, all of which erode our tax base and drive away 
American ingenuity and innovation. These types of activities ship jobs, 
economic activity, intellectual property, and capital offshore, rather 
than keeping them right here in America. The primary driver behind most 
of these practices--practices that have been decried in the harshest 
rhetoric by some of our friends here in the Senate--is the desire to 
avoid or at the very least mitigate the impact of the U.S. corporate 
tax.
  While I am no fan of inversions or foreign takeovers or aggressive 
tax-planning techniques that shift profits around the globe in search 
of low taxes, and I don't want to see any unnecessary erosion of the 
U.S. tax base, I can hardly fault any company for simply responding to 
the incentives created by our business tax system and the competitive 
actions of other countries that have been lowering their corporate tax 
rates.
  Unfortunately, instead of recognizing the perverse incentives of our 
current

[[Page 10385]]

tax system, coupled with companies' duties to their shareholders, many 
of my Democratic friends--most notably, prominent officials in the 
previous administration--have derided the executives and board members 
making these decisions, claiming that they lack, in the words of our 
previous U.S. Treasury Secretary, ``economic patriotism.'' The truth is 
that when it comes to our business tax system, some of our friends have 
buried their heads in the sand.
  Let's take a quick stroll through recent history. In the 20 years 
between 1983 and 2003, there were just 29 corporate inversions in the 
United States. In the 11 years between 2003 and 2014--a period spanning 
both Democratic and Republican Presidencies--there were 47 tax 
inversions--nearly double the number in half the amount of time. A 
quick review of changes in other industrialized nations' tax schemes 
will show that while the United States has stubbornly maintained the 
same corporate tax rate for more than three decades, other countries 
have nimbly adapted to the growing competition in the global 
marketplace.
  I have spoken at length about inversions before, so I will not 
belabor the issue now. What I do want to say is that when I talk to 
board members and CEOs of some of the largest companies in the country, 
they tend to be unequivocal when asked why they feel pressure to 
invert. Almost uniformly, their answer is our outrageously high 
corporate tax rate.
  Personally, I think this is one of the reasons why my friends and 
colleagues who sit on committees that regularly engage in these topics 
have come to recognize the level of our corporate tax rate as the major 
problem that it is.
  When I talk to constituents in Utah and Americans across the country, 
I hear of stagnant growth in wages and income, concerns over lack of 
opportunities and jobs, and worries about whether their employers will 
continue to operate here in the United States of America.
  Of course, the problem with our corporate tax system isn't just that 
it incentivizes companies to move offshore or discourages businesses 
from forming here in the United States in the first place; the problems 
actually run much deeper.
  Since 1947, the average growth of inflation-adjusted GDP in the 
United States has been 3.2 percent. Unfortunately, in the 8 years of 
the Obama administration, the growth rate was an anemic 1.8 percent.
  I know that several of my colleagues would, in response to those data 
points, argue that much of that is due to the great recession that took 
place at the initial stages of President Obama's time in office; 
however, a quick review of the quarterly growth rates since 1947 will 
show that there are normally periods of growth following recessions as 
the economy rebounds and the values of assets normalize again. In the 
case of the great recession of 2008 to 2009, that normal rebound did 
not occur, and a big reason why is the downward pressure imposed by our 
outdated tax scheme. Let's remember that the recession ended in June 
2009--more than 8 years ago.
  Others still might argue that this is all academic. They might even 
be brazen enough to claim that when we talk about the corporate tax 
rate, we are talking about the problems of the rich and not the middle 
class. Again, anyone making such an argument would simply be ignoring 
the facts and could be considered an idiot. Make no mistake--the 
crippling corporate tax rate in our country has stifled growth and 
investment in American businesses. This doesn't just impact Wall Street 
investors or rich CEOs, it has a negative effect on the middle class 
and on lower income workers. That effect comes in the form of fewer 
jobs, less investment in America, and sluggish growth and productivity 
that fuels wage and income growth.
  Since 1953, real median family income in the United States--meaning 
that half of the country earned more and half of the country earned 
less--has grown at an average rate of 1.3 percent. Under the Obama 
administration, that same indicator--one of the best indicators of the 
true status of the middle class--grew at approximately half that rate, 
or 0.7 percent. The growth of the average hourly earnings of production 
and nonsupervisory workers during the Obama administration was half of 
the historic long-run average. What is more, labor force participation 
was set firmly on a downward trajectory throughout the Obama 
administration and has yet to recover.
  As you can see, there is clear evidence that the economy is not 
working well for many American workers and middle-class families. 
Anyone arguing that our current tax system is a benefit to the middle 
class is, in my view, sadly misinformed or being deliberately 
misleading.
  Over the years, I have seen many of my friends on the other side come 
to the Senate floor demanding new standards, higher wages, and 
increased protections for middle-class workers. Yet many of the tax 
policies they tend to support would have the opposite effect.
  There is almost universal agreement among economists that the 
corporate tax is the most inefficient tax in existence. In addition, a 
large percentage--some economists say as much as 75 percent--of the 
burden imposed by the corporate tax is borne by a corporation's 
employees. In other words, our high corporate tax rate isn't just a 
burden on faceless corporations or rich shareholders, the burden is 
disproportionately borne by the factory workers and scientists and even 
the janitors who work for corporations, large and small.
  A reduced corporate tax rate would allow American companies to 
compete with their international counterparts on a more level playing 
field. A reduced corporate tax rate would mean fewer businesses would 
move offshore, taking their jobs and investments elsewhere. A reduced 
corporate tax rate would incentivize more new companies to set up shop 
in the United States and lead more established companies to invest 
their capital and hire workers here rather than in lower tax 
jurisdictions found in places like Canada, the UK, Ireland, or 
elsewhere.
  Mr. President, our shared goal should be to make the United States an 
inviting place to locate a business, invest, hire workers, and create 
new ideas and products, but that will not be the case so long as we 
cling to our punitive corporate tax system.
  Now, of course, when it comes to tax reform, our focus needs to move 
beyond the corporate tax rates. We need to talk about making the 
individual tax system simpler and fairer and offer tax relief to the 
middle class and small, passthrough businesses. We need to talk more 
about fixing our international system to further improve the 
competitiveness of American job creators and prevent further erosion of 
our tax base. And we need to remove burdens on savings and investment 
that keep middle-class Americans from generating and accumulating 
wealth for the future.
  I am going to talk more about all of these topics and others in the 
coming weeks and months.
  All of the improvements that we can make on these tax issues will 
become key elements of an effective tax reform package. In addition, I 
believe they are all areas where Republicans and Democrats can find 
agreement if we are all committed to the same goal--growing our economy 
to benefit the middle class.
  As I have said here on the floor many times, tax reform does not have 
to be another partisan exercise. I hope my Democratic colleagues will 
opt to join Republicans in this effort. As they have acknowledged the 
problems with our current tax system, I sincerely hope they will want 
to work with us to find a way to fix that tax system.
  As I said, I will have more to say in the near future, but these 
issues--our outdated business tax system and profanely high corporate 
tax rate--will not simply go away. I personally am committed to fixing 
these problems and will work with anyone who is willing to join the 
effort in good faith.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page 10386]]


  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                             Net Neutrality

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon with 
my colleague, the Senator from Hawaii, who has been leading our efforts 
on coordinating a very loud and resounding voice on trying to stop the 
FCC from running over an open internet, and I thank him for his 
organization for today. I know we will be joined by our colleague, 
Senator Wyden from Oregon--and perhaps the other Senator from Oregon 
and several others--to talk about this important issue.
  We are here today to try to draw attention to one of those important 
economic issues before us: the need to preserve an open internet with 
strong net neutrality laws.
  We are facing a pivotal moment in the fight to preserve an open and 
fair internet. A strong and open internet is, without question, one of 
the great innovations of our time and one of the great job creators of 
our time. Yet the Trump administration stands poised to undo the 
bedrock principle of net neutrality in the face of evidence it would 
undermine our economy and undermine future job growth.
  The FCC has announced its intention to go against the demands of 5 
million American consumers and reverse what is an existing rule so that 
big cable companies and telecom providers can erect toll lanes; that 
is, if you want fast internet speed, you have to pay more. This would 
threaten the fundamental nature of our internet and the innovation 
economy.
  Last week, FCC Commissioner Clyburn and I held a townhall meeting on 
net neutrality in Seattle. More than 300 people attended, and not one 
was in favor of paying higher prices to their cable company for worse 
or inhibited internet services.
  Many people shared their personal stories about how an internet with 
toll lanes would affect them negatively. We heard from many small 
businesses and startups that they were afraid of losing business 
because they might have to charge higher prices to their customers if 
these important protections were reversed.
  I heard from people with health problems and their concerns about 
health emergencies while away from home. The absence of net neutrality 
rules would mean that a doctor in their small hometown could not get 
critical information to the medical practitioners who are dealing with 
a patient in an emergency so that they could get important lifesaving 
treatments. Whether you are a doctor examining a patient via 
telemedicine or in an emergency room in Seattle or a student in a rural 
community trying to access the internet to get information, take a test 
or do research, a fast connection is necessary. Your ability to have a 
fast connection is something you are more than just a little concerned 
about. Being artificially slowed down in favor of big companies that 
buy faster lanes would turn our economy in the wrong direction.
  Our economy is in the midst of a massive technological 
transformation. As technology advances, incredible opportunities and 
new jobs are created. Every business plan of every startup relies on 
the ability to get content to consumers.
  Largely as a result of innovation and the proliferation of hundreds 
of startups in the United States, the internet economy today is now 
worth $966 billion and accounts for almost 6 percent of our U.S. GDP. 
This is a higher percentage of the U.S. economy than many other 
industry sectors, including construction, mining, utilities, 
agriculture, and education.
  Net neutrality--meaning you have an open internet that is not 
artificially slowed down unless you pay a ransom--is important for 
small businesses and startups and entrepreneurs who rely so much now on 
an integrated business model where internet access, marketing, and 
advertising their products and services to reach customers is critical. 
We need an open internet. We need it to foster job creation, 
competition, and innovation for the almost 3 million Americans workers 
who already rely on the internet economy today.
  When net neutrality was implemented a year-plus ago, we were 
protecting and making sure there was no uneven playing field. 
Basically, because of the regulations, we were able to help small 
businesses and entrepreneurs thrive. But our internet providers are 
internet gatekeepers, and without net neutrality, they would seize upon 
the opportunity to change that.
  One slice of the internet economy--the app economy, which is growing 
every single day--consists of everyone who makes money and has a job, 
thanks to mobile apps powered by an open internet. Today, 1.7 million 
Americans have jobs because of this economy. Nearly 92,000 of those 
jobs are in my State of Washington.
  Over the past 5 years, the app economy jobs have grown at an annual 
rate of 30 percent. I don't know of another sector that is growing that 
fast. The average growth rate for all other jobs is about 1.6 percent. 
By 2020, the app economy could grow to over $100 billion. Why is this 
so important? Because we all know that these various applications and 
apps make our lives better. They make it easier. In a busy world, they 
are helping us do the things that are so important to us with more ease 
and more certainty.
  The internet economy is dynamic and supercharged in creating job 
growth. This phenomenon of economic growth trajectory would not be 
possible without the internet as a platform for economic activity. This 
is why it is so important that the FCC not, in the dark of night, put 
down a rule without public comment to try to stop and change this 
direction that has already been protected by past FCC Commissioners. 
This is why my colleagues and I are here today on a date when everybody 
is trying to raise awareness--because the FCC could act as early as 
August 18 to try to change these rules.
  It is important that we oppose any new FCC actions trying to 
dismantle an open internet. We need to make sure we are talking about 
the harm to consumers, the harm to innovation, and the fact that 
internet speeds for American consumers are important and consumers 
shouldn't be burdened by a cable company holding you at ransom to pay 
more just to get faster speeds.
  Consumers are already struggling with high prices. Cable bills rose 
39 percent from 2011 to 2015, eight times the rate of inflation. In 
2015, the average consumer cable TV bill was $99 a month; just a year 
later, the average consumer cable bill had risen by 4 percent to over 
$103. My guess is a lot of people listening to this now are probably 
thinking, boy, where are we today?
  One of the most popular arguments by the enemies of an open internet 
is that it suppresses investment and leaves consumers with poor 
broadband infrastructure. That is a false claim. Data shows that 
investment by publicly traded cable companies and big telephone 
companies was 5 percent higher during the 2-year period following our 
protection of an open internet. Clearly, people are continuing to make 
investment.
  I want to make sure people understand that we do not want to see a 
change in this policy. We do not want to see American consumers run 
over by large cable companies that are demanding higher rates. We want 
to make sure that we don't end up with a two-tiered internet system--
one for big companies who will pay and pay and pay for faster rates, 
and consumers who are left with a very slowed-down, challenging to use 
internet, which makes it hard for us to continue to innovate.
  I encourage the American consumer to go out and contact the FCC. Yes, 
your voice can be heard. The FCC has already received 5 million 
comments, and they have until August 17 to hear more. Today, we are 
asking everybody in America to say: Please don't slow down my internet 
connection. Don't hurt our economy; don't hurt American business. 
Invest in innovation, and keep an open internet for the future.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page 10387]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington for 
her leadership on tech and technology issues and, in particular, on net 
neutrality.
  I would like to amend one thing she said. She said that we got about 
5 million comments in favor of net neutrality on this question. It is 
true. Yesterday we had 5 million and change, but I just checked, and we 
are at 6.728 million, and more and more people are weighing in on this 
important issue.
  As of today, it is important to point out that net neutrality is the 
law of the land. We are not asking for a change in the way that the 
internet operates. We are asking for the internet, as we know it, to be 
preserved.
  What does that really mean? It means you have an arrangement with 
your ISP. You pay your internet service provider for access to the 
internet, and you get the whole internet. Your provider does not get to 
decide what you access. You do. Whether it is NBC or ABC, Hulu or 
Netflix or Breitbart or Google or Yahoo or Facebook or the New York 
Times or RedState or HotAir or whatever you want, you get to go there, 
and everything comes down from the internet at whatever speed it comes 
down. But without net neutrality, that arrangement could change.
  The free and open internet, as we understand it, is a premise of the 
way we use the internet. It is a premise of the internet economy. It is 
a premise of Silicon Valley. It has now become a premise of car 
companies and real estate companies and anybody who does business 
online that, of course, you wouldn't have to pay money to an ISP to 
make sure your website loads fast enough so that consumers can see it. 
But that freedom, that free and open internet, really is in danger.
  Here is what is happening: The FCC, the Federal Communications 
Commission, is trying to change the internet by ending the net 
neutrality rules that were put in place. If they succeed, your ISP will 
have the power to stop you from seeing certain kinds of content. They 
will be the ones that get to make decisions about what you can access 
and how fast--not you. It is a foundational change in the way the 
internet operates.
  Now, some people--including the internet company lobbyists and their 
CEOs--will say: Look, the companies aren't going to change the internet 
even if the law goes away. In fact, we are committing to voluntary net 
neutrality. That is what they say.
  But I want you to think about how likely it is that a publicly traded 
company will not at least explore the possibility of different business 
models, and here is the problem: There may be opportunities without net 
neutrality for them to make more money.
  Right now I have basic cable in my apartment. I don't have HBO. Back 
in Hawaii I have HBO and the whole deal, but in my apartment here I 
have more basic cable. I pay for a certain number of channels. I don't 
get access to the entire TV universe. I pay for packages. There is no 
reason under the law, should they repeal net neutrality, that an ISP 
couldn't give the liberal package, which you could pay $75 for, or the 
conservative package, which you could pay $75 for, or the NBC-related 
families package, which you could pay $120 for--or maybe it is free 
because it is part of a vertical, which is included in your ISP.
  The whole idea is that there is nothing preventing them--except these 
net neutrality laws--from deciding whom you get, where you get to 
visit, and how fast the downloads come. This is especially important, 
of course, in the entertainment space, when we are all streaming TV, 
news, movies, and even gaming online so the relationship between the 
person who creates the content and you is going to be intermediated by 
an ISP.
  If you have a great app idea, right now you just have to have a great 
app idea. If you have a great website, people can log on to your 
website and you are in business. If you have the next great website, if 
you have eBay or Craigslist or Amazon, but it is post-net neutrality 
and the FCC goes through with this, you will not need a bunch of 
engineers but a bunch of lawyers and business sharks to try to 
negotiate with the ISP to even get in the door.
  Students could have less access to online resources, including online 
classes. Realtors would be stopped from using online tools to sell 
their homes. Patients might not able to use the internet to communicate 
with their doctors or monitor their health. Musicians, photographers, 
entrepreneurs will use the tools everybody depends on to make a living 
or share their art online.
  I was talking to somebody I know in the tech community, and they were 
saying that this is a parade of horribles. None of this is going to 
come true.
  I asked: Why do you think that is true? Why do you think this is just 
some apocryphal scenario I am describing? If you were an ISP, why 
wouldn't you slice up the internet and sell it for more? If you are the 
one controlling the access to it and you are a publicly traded company, 
you have no duty to a free and open internet. You have a duty to 
maximize shareholder profits.
  If your board of directors comes to you and says: You know what, this 
whole ``you pay a flat fee and you get the whole internet,'' that is 
not the right business model. Look at these areas where ISPs are the 
only provider in many communities. The idea that the consumer has a 
choice in lots of rural communities, you have only one broadband 
provider in the first place.
  Why wouldn't a broadband provider slice and dice up the internet and 
charge you a la carte? They can get more money for this. It is not that 
they are bad people. It is that they are duty bound to maximize 
profits.
  Today, July 12, is the day of action. The internet is pushing back. 
Today we stand up to the FCC so the internet remains free and open. As 
we speak--I mean literally as we speak--thousands and thousands of 
people across the country by the minute are logging on to the FCC 
website to express themselves.
  I have to say, this has become a Democratic issue. This has become a 
progressive issue, but it wasn't so long ago that people in the 
conservative movement were worried about media consolidation and the 
conservative movement was saying: Hey, listen, I don't know who is 
going to own my media company, but I want to get to my websites to get 
my content at whatever rate it comes down. Don't tell me what 
information I get to have access to.
  Everybody uses the internet. Many people are spending dozens of hours 
a week on the internet via their phones, via their television, via 
their broadband connection at home, and the innovation economy that 
underlies our economic growth is really in jeopardy.
  I know it is an arcane process. I know most people probably haven't 
even heard of the FCC. To talk about net neutrality and lay all this 
jargon on you, it is concerning that the free and open internet is 
really in danger. We have this unique opportunity because unlike what 
happened a few months ago with consumer privacy, where very quickly 
this body reversed a rule that provides for privacy so your broadband 
providers can't resell your personal browsing data to a third-party 
advertiser or any other company--that happened very quickly and without 
any public input.
  Here is the really good thing about the FCC process. The statute 
provides for public input. We are in a public comment period, and July 
17 is the deadline. There is an opportunity for people to let their 
voices be heard. The internet should be in the hands of people, not in 
the hands of companies.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Hawaii, the 
Senator from Washington State, and I know the Senator from Oregon is 
going to be joining us very soon and taking this long, hot summer day 
in Washington and turning up the heat on the Trump administration and 
the big broadband companies.
  Today the internet is having a protest. More than 80,000 websites are 
participating in today's national day of

[[Page 10388]]

action on net neutrality to stand up for the fundamental right for a 
free and open internet.
  Today's action involves some of the internet's biggest names: 
Netflix, Twitter, Amazon, Snapchat, Mozilla, Yelp, Airbnb. It also 
includes many others. My own website and other Democratic Senators and 
House Members have joined in today's protests.
  Earlier today, right outside on the Capitol lawn, I gathered with 
many of my Senate and House colleagues, along with businesses and 
advocacy, consumer protection, nonprofit, and political organizations 
to send a singular message: We will defend net neutrality.
  Net neutrality is the basic principle that says that all internet 
traffic is treated equally. It applies the principles of 
nondiscrimination to the online world, ensuring that internet service 
providers--AT&T, Charter, Verizon, Comcast, among others--do not block, 
do not slow down, do not censor or prioritize internet traffic.
  Yet today, the internet--this monumental, diverse, dynamic, 
democratic platform--is under attack. President Trump and his FCC 
Chairman, Ajit Pai, are threatening to disrupt this hallmark of 
American innovation and democracy by gutting net neutrality rules. They 
have put internet freedom on the chopping block. We are facing a 
historic fight.
  If Trump's FCC gets its way, a handful of big broadband companies 
will serve as gatekeepers to the internet. We cannot let this happen. 
That is why millions of Americans are standing up and making sure their 
voices are heard at the Federal Communications Commission.
  They know the internet--the world's greatest platform for commerce 
and communications--is at stake. It is net neutrality that ensures that 
those with the best ideas, not merely the best access, can thrive in 
the 21st century economy; that a garage-based startup in Malden, MA, 
can have the same online reach and scope as a major tech firm in 
Silicon Valley.
  It is net neutrality that has made the Internet an innovation 
incubator and job generator for the entire Nation. It is net neutrality 
that has been the internet's chief governing principle since its 
inception.
  Consider that today essentially every company is an internet company. 
In 2016, almost half of the venture capital funds invested in the 
United States went toward internet-specific and software companies. 
That is $25 billion worth of venture capital funding in our country. 
Half of all venture capital went into that sector, this innovation 
sector that continues to transform not only our own economy but the 
whole world's economy. At the same time, to meet America's insatiable 
demand for broadband internet, U.S. broadband and telecommunications 
industry companies invested more than $87 billion in capital 
expenditures in 2015. That is the highest rate of annual investment in 
the last 10 years by the broadband companies.
  We have hit a sweet spot. Investment in broadband and wireless 
technologies is high. Job creation is high. Venture capital investment 
in online startups is high. That is what we want. We want both the 
broadband companies and all of these smaller companies--whose names 
escape us because there are tens of thousands of them--to have a chance 
to coexist and have the innovation continue, even as the large 
companies continue to invest in broadband expansion.
  It is the free and open internet that has allowed us to enter a new 
phase of the digital revolution--the internet of things era--where our 
devices, our appliances, and everyday machines now connect with one 
another.
  The digital revolution is a global economic engine, and net 
neutrality is its best fuel. Taking these rules off the books makes no 
sense. With these net neutrality protections in place, there is no 
problem that needs fixing. It is working right now perfectly.
  In May, Chairman Ajit Pai and the Republican FCC voted to begin a 
proceeding that will effectively eliminate net neutrality protections, 
allowing a handful of broadband providers to control the internet. 
Chairman Pai's proposal would decimate the open internet order and the 
net neutrality rules that are protecting the free flow of ideas, 
commerce, and communications in our country.
  Now the big broadband barons and their Republican allies say we need 
a light-touch regulatory framework. Let's be honest. When the broadband 
behemoths say ``light touch,'' what they really mean is ``hands off''--
hands off their ability to choose online winners and losers.
  We are not fooled when AT&T engages in alternative facts and says 
they support net neutrality and today's day of action. They don't 
support title II, and they don't support net neutrality. We must shine 
light on this kind of corporate deception.
  What the broadband providers really want is an unregulated online 
ecosystem where they can stifle the development of competing services 
that cannot afford an internet easy pass.
  Chairman Pai says he likes net neutrality but simply wants to 
eliminate the very order that established today's net neutrality rules. 
That is like saying you want to have your cake and eat it too. It makes 
no sense.
  President Trump and his Republican allies are waging an all-out 
assault on every front that they can on our core democratic values. 
Whether it is healthcare, immigration, climate change, or net 
neutrality, they want to end the vital protections that safeguard our 
families and hand over power to corporations and special interests. We 
know better.
  We need to make our voices heard. A political firestorm of opposition 
will protect our economy, protect our free speech, protect our 
democracy. We must protect net neutrality as a core principle in a 
modern 21st century America, in a modern America where the smallest 
company online can aspire to reach all 320 million Americans in a 
nondiscriminatory way, where the smallest company can raise the capital 
in order to accomplish that goal, where the smallest company doesn't 
have to ask for permission to be able to innovate in our society, where 
the smallest doesn't have to first raise the money to ensure they can 
pay to have access to this incredible economic engine of 
entrepreneurial expression that has been the internet for this last 
generation, where free speech, the First Amendment, this ability to be 
able to speak unfettered, uncontrolled by corporate America and whether 
or not you can afford to speak, is something that continues to be 
protected in our country.
  That is what net neutrality is all about. The principles of 
nondiscriminatory access is what gave us Google and eBay, Amazon and 
Hulu, YouTube and Etsy, Zulily, Wayfair, TripAdvisor, and company after 
company that knew they could access every single potential consumer in 
our country and could, as a result, raise the capital necessary to 
ensure that engine of economic entrepreneurial innovation could be 
deployed from their minds in changing fundamentally the economy of our 
country and the economy of the world.
  In 2017, every company is an internet company. Every company depends 
upon free and open access to the internet. That is what we have been 
transformed into in just the last 20 years.
  I was the Democratic coauthor of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. 
In 1996, not one home in America had broadband. Can I say that again? 
Just 20 years ago, not one home in America had broadband. But we 
changed the rules to create this chaotic entrepreneurial world where 
all of a sudden all of these companies whose names are now common 
household names could be created, transforming our economy.
  There is no problem. They are trying to fix a problem that does not 
exist.
  We need to give the next generation of entrepreneurs the same 
opportunity to innovate that the last generation had--not to get 
permission, not to ask: Pretty please, may I reach all 320 million 
Americans? No, ladies and gentlemen, that is not what this revolution 
is about. That is not what young people all across this country--with 
brilliant new ideas to further transform our American economy online--
want to have as an obstacle.
  What will happen now is you will have an idea, but if you can't raise 
the

[[Page 10389]]

money to pay for this fast-lane broadband access, that is going to 
throttle back your ability to be able to move in this agile way that 
the internet provides. Instead of agility, it will be hostility that 
you will be feeling as an entrepreneur, feeling you can't take the 
risk--you are not sure you can reach your customers; you are not sure 
you can pay the broadband company--rather than ensuring that you can 
reach all these consumers for your revolutionary idea.
  This internet day of action we are having across the country is going 
to raise from 5 million, to 6 million, to 7 million, to 10 million, to 
15 million, to 20 million, the number of Americans who are going to be 
saying to the Federal Communications Commission and to the U.S. House 
and Senate that something is fundamentally wrong with this FCC and its 
potential change of the internet--Open Internet Order.
  If they do move, we are going to court. If they do move, we are going 
to be taking this all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States 
of America because that is how important this issue is. It goes right 
to the fundamental nature of what has happened to our economy in the 
last 20 years. And that is all it took. We moved from the black rotary 
dial phone to a world where everyone is carrying a computer in their 
pockets. It happened just like that. It could have happened before 
that, but it wasn't possible because the broadband companies didn't 
even exist. There were just telephone companies and cable companies 
that did not have a vision of the future. Their vision of the future is 
a lot like their vision of the past before that law passed, which is, 
let's go back to total control by a small handful of companies in our 
communications cocktail, rather than thinking of the future, as tens of 
thousands, hundreds of thousands of smaller companies can be started up 
in dorm rooms and garages across our Nation.
  This is a dangerous and harmful plan the FCC has on the books today. 
Today's day of internet action will be increasing as each moment goes 
by between now and the day they make that decision at the FCC.
  Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I want to build on the last point my 
colleague--a great advocate and champion of net neutrality--made about 
the rule of law and about the need to go to court when there is utter 
disrespect and contempt for the rule of law, which is reflected in the 
prospective plan of the Chairman of the FCC to undo that agency's net 
neutrality rules. It reflects an astonishing lack of respect and care 
for that agency's rules--in fact, the rules that apply to all agencies 
under the Administrative Procedure Act.
  Chairman Pai wants to overturn a rule that was established after a 
factfinding--an elaborate process of comment and response--without 
going through that same process that is required under the 
Administrative Procedure Act, a fact-based docket that requires him to 
show that something has changed--not a little bit; something 
significant has changed--in the market since the Open Internet Order 
was established in February 2015. The burden is on the FCC to make that 
finding. That finding is impossible, which is why they are avoiding the 
attempt to do it.
  The fact is, the Open Internet Order was established based on 10 
years of evidence about how internet access service provides people 
with broadband. It has been upheld by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals 
twice over the last year. The thicket of law that the Chairman wants to 
simply leap over--it is not within his discretion to do.
  The most recent evidence shows that net neutrality has not inhibited 
network investment at all, in contrast to Chairman Pai's claims. 
According to statements this year by the internet service providers--
AT&T, in fact, is expanding fiber deployment and calling fiber a growth 
opportunity. Comcast is saying that it doubles its network capacity 
every 18 to 24 months. Verizon is announcing a new $1 billion 
investment in cable. That is why we are here saying we will not and we 
cannot allow Chairman Pai to succeed in this plan to gut neutrality at 
the behest of big cable companies.
  I am proud to speak today in support of the Day of Action to Save Net 
Neutrality and against the FCC proposal to undo the Open Internet Order 
because it is really a consummate pro-consumer measure. The Open 
Internet Order serves the best interests of consumers directly but also 
the best interests of competition in promoting innovation, new ideas, 
and insights--an open platform that is necessary for innovation and 
insights that benefit consumers, as well as the products and services 
that companies generally provide.
  The Open Internet Order created three bright-line rules: No blocking, 
no throttling, and no pay prioritization. These rules apply to both 
fixed and mobile broadband service, which protects consumers no matter 
how they access the internet, whether on a desktop or a mobile service. 
Consumers deserve equal access, an open platform--no walls benefiting 
the companies that may want their gardens walled in. The walls are 
against consumer interest, and breaking down those walls is what the 
open internet rule sought to do.
  It also has real First Amendment significance. In one of the most 
recently proposed megamergers--AT&T and Time Warner--clearly content, 
access, and neutrality are at stake. This merger gives the combined 
company, if the merger is approved, both the incentive and the means to 
throttle First Amendment expression. There have been reports that the 
White House will use this merger, in fact, to throttle the First 
Amendment rights of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner. This would be a 
direct threat to all First Amendment liberties.
  Using antitrust policy and power to diminish or demean the rights of 
free expression would be a grave disservice to this country, as well as 
the rule of law. That is why I have written to the nominee for the 
Department of Justice Antitrust Division chief, the Assistant Attorney 
General for Antitrust, Makan Delrahim, and asked for a meeting so he 
can ensure us that, in fact, antitrust policy will be independently 
enforced, that these reports do not reflect his view or the 
administration policy. I want him to assure us that this merger will in 
no way be used to influence or impede any media outlet.
  But access and an open internet are principles that go beyond the 
enforcement of antitrust law; they are principles enforced by the FCC 
for the public good. That is why this Day of Action to Save Net 
Neutrality is so critically important, because the grassroots movement 
here is what will save the day. The grassroots and consumer-driven 
impetus to make sure that the internet remains a free and open platform 
for consumers and innovators, not a walled garden for wealthy 
companies, is what we seek today.
  That is why I am proud to stand with other colleagues who have spoken 
and to continue this battle and to say to all of our colleagues that we 
will go to court, because the rule of law and the Administrative 
Procedure Act are not technical, abstruse, arcane, unimportant rules; 
they are at the core of fairness and administrative regularity, not 
just regulation, the rule of law.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor to my colleague from Oregon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, let me just 
commend my friend from Connecticut on a very thoughtful statement. He 
has worked on these issues for many years since his days as attorney 
general in Connecticut. He is, in my view, the Senate's best lawyer. So 
it is great to have a chance to team up with him and our colleagues.
  I think this issue can really be summed up in a sentence, and that is 
this: Without net neutrality, you do not have a free and open internet 
because the essence of the internet--and I will explain what we have 
today--would simply not be the same.
  Today--and this is what net neutrality is all about, in a sentence--

[[Page 10390]]

after you pay your internet access fee, you get to go where you want, 
when you want, and how you want, and everybody is treated the same. 
From the most affluent person in America to those who are walking on an 
economic tightrope every single day, they all can use the internet to 
get access to those fundamental opportunities that are so essential to 
increasing the quality of life for our people. This, for example, is 
how a young person will have a chance to learn. If they are in a small, 
rural community in Colorado, Oregon, or elsewhere, this is how they get 
access to the kind of information that affluent kids get, who might 
live in Beverly Hills or Palm Beach or in any one of a number of 
communities where there are affluent people. This is what puts that 
youngster on the same plane as the affluent person. This is how, for 
example, those who are searching for jobs can go to the net and quickly 
get access to information where they will have a chance to get ahead.
  The internet--and a free and open internet--is particularly important 
to our startups, the innovators, and the small businesses that we are 
all counting on to have a chance to grow big. When you talk, 
particularly, to the small tech startups, they will say: Our goal is to 
be Google or Facebook. Innovation is what makes it possible to have 
those kinds of dreams. If you are starting small, with real net 
neutrality, as I have described it, you have the same chance to succeed 
as everybody else in America.
  Now the challenge here is that very powerful interests--the cable 
companies, for example--want to change that. They want to change what I 
described as net neutrality. They would like to set up what they call 
priority lanes, special lanes, or toll lanes, where, if you pay more, 
you can get access to more. You can get access to more content, and you 
can get access to data and information more quickly.
  What this really does is that it means those other people I was 
talking about--that startup trying to come out of the gate and be a 
success in the marketplace, students, and people who need information 
about healthcare and jobs and the like--are not treated the same way as 
the people with the deep pockets. All of a sudden their access to data 
and information is going to be different. It might be slower. Maybe 
they will not get it at all.
  The big powerful interests aren't going to tell everybody in America 
that they are against net neutrality. They will not be holding rallies 
saying: We have gotten together to oppose net neutrality. They will not 
be showing up in Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, or anywhere else and 
saying: We are against net neutrality. The reason they can't is because 
the public overwhelmingly supports net neutrality, as I have described 
it.
  They are going to say things like this: They are for net neutrality, 
but they just don't want all this government associated with what they 
have. They will be for voluntary net neutrality.
  I know the Presiding Officer of the Senate has young children as 
well. I can tell you that we are about as likely to make voluntary net 
neutrality work as we are to get William Peter Wyden, my 9-year-old 
son, to voluntarily agree to limit himself to one dessert with his 
deciding whether he has met his limit. It is not going to happen.
  Voluntary net neutrality isn't that different than what we have had 
in a lot of instances before we had real net neutrality. The big cable 
companies and others were always looking for dodges and loopholes, and 
they found ways to tack on fees and the like because that has always 
been their end game. Boy, it is a lawyer's full employment program 
because they have the capacity to litigate this.
  So this idea that people are going to hear a lot about in the next 
few weeks--that they are really for net neutrality, but we will just 
make it voluntary--I want people to understand that the history of 
those kinds of approaches is not exactly sterling. I think it is about 
as likely to be successful as limiting my kid to voluntarily holding 
back on dessert.
  I also want to make clear what our challenge is going to be about 
because the Federal Communications Commission--Senator Blumenthal 
talked about it and others--is going to be making decisions on this 
before too long. We know where the votes are. This is going to be a 
long battle, but one of the reasons I wanted to come to the floor today 
is to say that this is another one of these issues that is going to 
show that political change doesn't start in Washington, DC, and then 
trickle down to people. It will be bottom-up, as more and more 
Americans find out what is at stake here.
  A few years back, I would say the Presiding Officer of the Senate--
and I see my colleague from the Finance Committee here, as well--and my 
colleagues will remember the PIPA and SOPA bills. These were the bills, 
PIPA and SOPA, that were anti-internet bills. As with so much, people 
can have a difference of opinion, and the sponsors said: We have to 
fight piracy. We have to fight piracy, people ripping everybody off 
online. To fight piracy, we will use these two bills to kind of change 
the architecture of the internet, particularly the domain name system, 
which is basically the phone book of the internet.
  I looked at it, and I said: We are all against piracy. We are against 
people selling fake Viagra, or whatever it is online, but why would we 
want to wreck the architecture of the internet in order to deal with 
it? There are other kinds of remedies.
  So I put in a bill with a conservative Republican in the other body 
to come up with an alternative approach, and I put a hold on PIPA and 
SOPA. Here in the Senate, at that time, 44 Senators were cosponsors of 
that bill. That is an army--out of the 100, 44 Senators.
  Everybody said: You know, Ron is putting a hold on it, and, well, he 
is a nice guy and, you know, he is from Oregon.
  Everybody smiled, and I said: OK, I understand that you think this is 
going to be a slam dunk, but I think I will tell you that you should 
know that there are more Americans who spend more time online in a week 
than they do thinking about their U.S. Senator in 2 years, and they 
aren't going to be happy with a whole bunch of powerful interests 
messing with the internet, just as we are doing with this situation 
where people want to unravel real net neutrality.
  So a vote was scheduled on whether to oppose my hold--in effect, lift 
my hold--on this flawed bill, and 4 days before the vote, more than 10 
million Americans called, texted, tweeted, and logged in to say to 
their Senator: Do not vote to lift Ron Wyden's hold.
  About 36 hours after Americans had weighed in, the Senate leadership 
called me, not very happy, and said: You won. We are not going to have 
a vote. Your hold has prevailed.
  I bring this up only by way of saying that it is going to take that 
same kind of grassroots uprising for Americans who want to keep real 
net neutrality, which is what you have after you pay your internet 
access fee, and you get to go where you want, when you want, and how 
you want, and everybody is treated equally in those efforts. For all of 
us who want to keep that, we need to understand that we are in for a 
long battle. We know where the votes are at the Federal Communications 
Commission, but that is just the beginning. That is just the beginning.
  So now is the time to make your voice heard. Go to 
battleforthenet.com so your voices can be heard. Make sure that Donald 
Trump's FCC Commissioner knows your view that the internet is better 
and stronger with real net neutrality protections. Americans have only 
until July 17 to do this.
  I have already been speaking out in other kinds of sessions. So I 
think I will leave it at that.
  I wish to close by saying again that without real strong net 
neutrality, which is what we have today, we will not have a free and 
open internet for all Americans to enjoy. So I come to the floor to say 
this is going to be a long battle. Nobody thought we had a prayer to 
win the fight to protect the internet that was PIPA and SOPA, and I am 
sure a lot of people are saying that this is another one where the 
powerful interests are going to win.
  I say to the Senate again: Not so fast. You are going to see the 
power of

[[Page 10391]]

Americans speaking out. I urge all the people of this country who are 
following what goes on in the Senate today and in the days ahead to be 
part of this effort, because I think if they do, if we show that 
political change isn't top-down but bottom-up, it is going to be a long 
battle, but we will win, and our country will keep a bedrock principle 
of the free and open internet, which is real net neutrality.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from Texas.


                         Healthcare Legislation

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we continue to discuss the Better Care 
Act, which is an alternative bill that we will propose next week and 
vote on, which takes the disaster known as ObamaCare which for millions 
of Americans has led to sky-high premiums and unaffordable deductibles, 
if they can even find an insurance company that will sell them an 
insurance product--we will propose a better care act, as we call it, 
not a perfect care act but a better care act.
  It would be even better if our Democratic colleagues would join us 
and work with us in this effort, but as we have come to find out, they 
are unwilling to acknowledge the failures of ObamaCare. So we are 
forced to do this without their assistance. It would be better if it 
were bipartisan, if they would work with us, but they have made it very 
clear that they are not interested in changing the broken structure of 
ObamaCare. What I predict is that what they would offer is an insurance 
company bailout, throwing perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars at 
insurance companies in order to sustain a broken ObamaCare that will 
never work--no matter how much money you throw at it. So people will 
continue to suffer from the failures of ObamaCare unless we will have 
the courage to step forward and to say we are going to do the very best 
we can with the tough hand we have been dealt to help save the American 
people who are being hurt right now.
  Basically, there are four principles involved. One is we want to 
stabilize the individual insurance market, which is the one that 
insurance companies are fleeing now because they are bleeding red ink. 
They can't make any money, and they are tired of losing money so they 
basically pull their roots up and leave town, leaving customers in the 
lurch.
  Secondly, we want to make sure we actually lower insurance premiums. 
Under the original discussion draft bill that we introduced about a 
week or so ago, the Congressional Budget Office said we will see 
premiums go down as much as 30 percent over time. Now, I wish I could 
say we were going to be able to have an immediate effect on those 
premiums, but the truth is this is much better than our friends across 
the aisle have offered us with the offer to basically sustain a broken 
ObamaCare system.
  The third thing we want to do is protect people who might have their 
health insurance hurt or impeded by preexisting conditions. We want to 
maintain the current law so people are protected when they leave their 
work or when they change jobs.
  The fourth is, we want to put Medicaid on a sustainable path. 
Medicaid is one of the three major entitlement programs, and now we 
spend roughly $400 billion on Medicaid in this country. Our friends 
across the aisle don't want to do anything that would keep that from 
growing higher and higher and higher, to the point where basically the 
system collapses. We believe that is not the responsible choice. What 
we propose is to spend $71 billion more on Medicaid over the budget 
window and to work to transition those States that have expanded 
Medicaid and offer their people a better option in the private 
insurance area, but I just want to mention that I have shared a number 
of stories about, for example, a small business owner in Donna, TX, who 
was forced to fire their employees so they could afford to keep the 
doors open and provide health insurance for the remaining people. You 
have to ask: What in the world could lead us to a system which would 
discourage people from hiring more folks and basically put them in a 
position where they had to fire them in order to make ends meet? But 
that is what the employer mandate did under ObamaCare. If you have more 
than 50 employees, you are subject to the employer mandate. You get 
punished unless you make sure your employees are covered with 
insurance, and many times it is unaffordable so it had the perverse 
impact of small businesses saying: We can't afford to grow the number 
of people who are working in our business or we are going to need to 
shrink it in order to avoid that penalty. Stories like this remind me 
of just how important our efforts are to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
  The status quo is not working. In fact, every year ObamaCare gets 
worse for the millions of people in the individual market in 
particular. It is important that ObamaCare is not just about insurance. 
ObamaCare is about penalties that are being imposed on businesses that 
hurt their ability to grow and create jobs. That is one reason I 
believe that since the great recession of 2008, where ordinarily you 
would see a sharp bounce up in the economy, that the economy has been 
largely flat and has not been growing, in part, because of the 
penalties, mandates, and regulations associated with ObamaCare.
  Not only has ObamaCare made health insurance more expensive while 
taking away choices, it also has compounded fundamental problems with 
important safety net programs like Medicaid. I wish to share a story 
from an emergency room employee in Lake Granbury, TX, who wrote to me 
about the alarming trend she has noticed in the hospital where she 
works. She says, because fewer and fewer physicians will see a Medicaid 
patient, she has seen an influx of these Medicaid patients who 
ostensibly have coverage coming to the emergency room for their primary 
care. As she points out, this is not a good situation for patients and 
hospitals. In my State, according to the latest survey of the Texas 
Medical Association that I have seen, only 31 percent of doctors in 
Texas will see a new Medicaid patient. That may sound crazy, but let me 
explain why. Because Medicaid basically pays a physician about half of 
what private insurance pays when it comes to see a patient, many of 
them simply say: Well, I can't afford to see a lot of Medicaid 
patients. I need to balance that or at least make sure I see enough 
private insurance patients to make sure I can keep the doors open and 
meet my obligations. What happens when fewer and fewer doctors actually 
see Medicaid patients is, people end up showing up in the emergency 
room for their primary care because they can't find a doctor to see 
them. The truth is, medical outcomes based on many studies that have 
been done in recent years are that Medicaid coverage in those instances 
can be no worse and no better than not having insurance at all. 
ObamaCare was put in place ostensibly to avoid reliance on emergency 
rooms for access to care, but as we all know, ObamaCare hasn't lived up 
to many of its promises and unfortunately making stories like this one 
commonplace.
  I mentioned this earlier, but just to see the trend line, in 2000, 60 
percent of Texas physicians accepted new Medicaid patients; today that 
number is 34 percent. I think I may have earlier said 31 percent. It is 
actually 34 percent, due to lower rates of provider reimbursement, 
leaving places like Lake Granbury in the lurch and causing them to have 
to turn to the emergency room for their primary care as a last resort.
  Every 2 years, Texas doctors fight with the Texas legislature to 
raise payments for the Medicaid system, but the reality is, there is 
not enough money to go around, even though it is the No. 1 or No. 2 
budget item in the Texas legislature's budget every year, and it is 
growing so fast it is crowding out everything from higher education to 
law enforcement and other priorities.
  Across the country, Medicaid spending has ballooned out of control. 
In Texas, 25 percent of the State's budget, as I indicated, is 
dedicated to this program, 25 percent of its overall budget--usually 
No. 1 or No. 2.
  So we have to be honest with ourselves and the people we represent 
that

[[Page 10392]]

this situation is not sustainable. We owe it to the millions of people 
to make sure the people who really need it--the fragile, elderly, 
disabled adults and children--that it is there for them, not only now 
but in the future. That is why we have been discussing ways we might 
strengthen the sustainability of Medicaid to ensure that families who 
actually need it can rely on it, and they don't have the rug pulled out 
from under them. This requires doing some hard work of reforming the 
way States handle Medicaid funding.
  For example, Medicaid, as is currently applied, States are only 
allowed to review their list of Medicaid recipients once a year, but a 
lot can happen in a period of a year. Somebody can get a job, and they 
may be no longer eligible based on the income qualifications for 
Medicaid. If they can only check once a year, then people remain on the 
rolls, even though they may no longer qualify. Regardless of whether 
somebody gets a job or moves or passes away or no longer needs 
Medicaid, they are still in the system, and there is nothing the States 
can do about it. We would like to change that. While it sounds like a 
simple matter, when the average Medicaid patient costs the State more 
than $9,000 each and as high as almost $12,000 per elderly individual, 
it adds up.
  One of the things we saw that ObamaCare did in the States that 
expanded Medicaid coverage is that those States decided to cover single 
adults who are capable of working. This bill would also allow States to 
experiment with a work requirement as part of the eligibility for 
Medicaid. We are not mandating it, saying they have to do it, but if 
the State chooses to do it, then they can do so. We need to give the 
States the flexibility they need so they can use the Medicaid funding 
they have more efficiently so more people can get access to quality 
care.
  I want to be clear: 4.7 million Texans rely on Medicaid. Of course, 
those rolls tend to churn based on people's employment and their family 
circumstance, but it is not going anywhere. We want to make sure we 
preserve Medicaid for the people who actually need it the most. We are 
working to make it stronger, more efficient, and, yes, more 
sustainable. I guess some people live in a fantasy world, where they 
think we can continue to spend money we don't have and there will never 
be any consequences associated with it. The fastest items of spending 
in the Federal budget are entitlement programs including Medicaid. 
Right now we are at $20 trillion. We have done a pretty good job--I 
know we don't get much credit for it--we have done a pretty good job of 
controlling discretionary spending, but the 70 percent of mandatory 
spending, including Medicaid, has been going up, on average, about 5.5 
percent a year. That can't happen in perpetuity. Right now, we know we 
have $20 trillion, roughly, in debt--$20 trillion. It is frankly 
immoral for those of us who are adults today to spend money borrowed 
from the next generation and beyond because somebody ultimately is 
going to have to pay it back, and it is going to have real-world 
consequences.
  We know that since the great recession, the Federal Reserve has kept 
interest rates very low through their monetary policy, but we know as 
well that as the economy tends to get a little bit better and 
unemployment comes down, they are going to begin inching those interest 
rates up little by little, which means we are going to end up paying 
the people who own our debt, our bondholders, more and more money 
strictly for the purpose of giving them a return on their investment 
for the debt they buy. This is an opportunity for us not only to put 
Medicaid on a sustainable path, to do the responsible thing, to give 
the States ultimate flexibility in terms of how they handle it, it is 
also a matter of keeping faith with the next generation and beyond when 
it comes to this unsustainable debt burden.
  I hear people talk about slashing Medicaid despite the fact that the 
Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicaid spending will grow 
by $71 billion over the next 10 years. Only in Washington, DC, is that 
considered a cut, where spending next year exceeds what it is this year 
and the next and so on, and it goes up by $71 billion. Yet you will 
hear people come to the Senate floor and say that is a cut and that we 
are slashing Medicaid. It is nothing of the kind.
  To me, the choice is clear. Do we want to continue with the failures 
of ObamaCare or do we want to do our very best to try to provide better 
choices and better options?
  Do we want to continue to allow the status quo, which is hurting 
families, putting a strain on doctors and our emergency rooms and 
hospitals like I mentioned in Lake Granbury or do we actually want to 
address the fundamental flaws of our healthcare system?
  I wish we could do something perfect, but certainly with the 
constraints imposed by the fact that our Democratic friends are not 
willing to lift a finger to help, and given the fact that we have to do 
this using the budget process--those are some pretty serious 
constraints. We basically have to do this with one arm tied behind our 
back, but we are going to do the best we can because we owe it to the 
people we represent. I encourage our colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle to try to take a fresh look at this and figure out how we can be 
part of the solution, not just to compound the problem.
  There is one thing I haven't mentioned that I am particularly excited 
about in the Better Care Act; that is, for States like Texas that did 
not expand Medicaid to cover able-bodied adults in the 100 to 138 
percent of Federal poverty level, in the Better Care Act, we provide 
them access to private health insurance coverage and access for the 
first time. About 600,000 Texans--low-income Texans--who, for the first 
time under the provisions of this bill, will have access to a tax 
credit, and States, using the Innovation and Stability Fund and 
something called the section 1332 waivers, will be able to design 
programs which will make healthcare more affordable in the private 
insurance market.
  One reason people prefer the private insurance market to Medicaid is 
for the reason I mentioned earlier, that Medicaid reimburses healthcare 
providers about 50 cents on the dollar compared to private health 
insurance. This actually will provide them more access to more choices 
than they have now, certainly. Certainly, for that cohort of people 
between 100 percent of Federal poverty and 138 percent of Federal 
poverty in those States that didn't expand.
  I am excited about what we are trying to do here and its potential. 
Again, to stabilize the markets, which are in meltdown mode right now 
and we all know are unsustainable, our friends across the aisle will 
say: We will talk to you if you take all the reforms off the table, 
which translates to me: We will talk to you about bailing out a bunch 
of insurance companies but doing nothing to solve the basic underlying 
pathology in the system. So we are going to do that in our bill, the 
Better Care Act.
  Secondly, we want to make sure that we do everything in our power to 
bring down premiums. I know the Presiding Officer cares passionately 
about this. This may well be the litmus test for our success. Under the 
discussion draft we released earlier, the CBO said that in the third 
year, you could see premiums as much as 30 percent lower, but we would 
like to see even more choices and premiums lower than that and more 
affordable.
  The third thing our Better Care Act will do is to protect people 
against preexisting conditions. Right now, people sometimes refuse to 
or are afraid to leave their jobs in search of other jobs because, if 
they have preexisting conditions, then they cannot get coverage with 
the new insurance companies for a period of time. That is called the 
preexisting condition exclusion. We would like to protect people 
against that eventuality so that people do not have to be worried about 
changing jobs or losing their jobs and losing their coverage.
  Fourth, as I have taken a few minutes to talk about here today, we 
want to put Medicaid--one of the most important safety net programs in 
the Federal Government--on a sustainable

[[Page 10393]]

path, one that is fair to the States that expanded Medicaid under the 
Affordable Care Act and to those that did not. I think any fair-minded 
person who is looking at what we have proposed here would agree with me 
that it is not perfect but that it, certainly, fits the name that we 
have ascribed to it. It is a better alternative than people have under 
the status quo.
  I urge all of our colleagues to work with us in good faith to try to 
improve it.
  Here is the best news of all, perhaps, to those who would have other 
ideas. We do have an opportunity to have an open amendment process, and 
sometimes that does not happen around here. People say: Here it is. 
Take it or leave it. You cannot change it. All you can do is vote for 
it or vote against it.
  That is not what we are going to do. We are going to have an open 
amendment process. As long as Senators have the energy to stay on their 
feet and offer amendments, they can get votes on those amendments. I 
cannot think of a better way to reflect the will of the Senate and to 
come out with the very best product that we can under the 
circumstances.
  We are on a trajectory next week to begin this process and will have, 
probably, some very late nights and early mornings come Thursday and 
Friday.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment today to talk 
about the ongoing efforts by the Senate Republicans to take away health 
insurance from millions of Americans by repealing the Affordable Care 
Act.
  I was here on the floor just a couple of weeks ago reading letters 
from my constituents about how they have benefited from the ACA and 
what TrumpCare would mean for them based on what we had seen of their 
bill so far. Since then, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
have continued forging ahead in their effort to repeal the ACA, in 
spite of overwhelming opposition. Indeed, nearly every major healthcare 
organization representing patients, doctors, nurses, and hospitals, 
among others, is opposed to this misguided effort, and that is on top 
of the millions of Americans who know firsthand how devastating 
TrumpCare would be for them and their families.
  Senate Republicans are working on tweaks to convince their colleagues 
to vote for this disastrous bill. Unfortunately, their so-called 
``fixes'' are not improvements. That is because, in my view, TrumpCare 
is fatally flawed and cannot be fixed. My constituents know better and 
have continued to write and call--even stopping me in stores and on the 
streets--to express their opposition and fear, quite frankly, of all 
versions of the Senate TrumpCare bill.
  For example, my Republican colleagues are looking to add a provision 
that would bring us back to the days when insurance companies could 
deny coverage or charge exorbitant amounts for those with preexisting 
conditions. The Affordable Care Act ended this practice once and for 
all, we hope, and I can't imagine why my colleagues want to bring back 
those discriminatory policies. However, the amendments that several 
Senators have proposed would do just that. They would allow insurance 
companies to sell plans on the marketplace with no protections for 
those with preexisting conditions, which would create a death spiral in 
the marketplace, so that the very people who need health insurance the 
most would be priced out entirely.
  Just last week, I heard from Anne in North Smithfield, RI, about this 
very issue. Anne said:

       I am the parent of a childhood cancer survivor. The last 11 
     months of my life have been fighting alongside my warrior, my 
     hero, my 9-year-old osteosarcoma survivor, Julia. She loves 
     unicorns, horses, the beach, and going for walks. Due to no 
     fault of her own, she hasn't been able to walk for the past 
     11 months.
       I am writing to ask for your support to ensure that all 
     children fighting cancer have access to affordable, quality 
     healthcare. If enacted into law, the current proposal for the 
     healthcare bill will have devastating impacts on the hundreds 
     of thousands affected by childhood cancer. Without quality 
     health insurance and access to treatment, my child would not 
     have survived.

  Anne went on to explain that the Republican efforts to undermine 
preexisting conditions protections would be devastating for childhood 
cancer survivors. Even parents who get their insurance through their 
employer would be at risk. Anne pointed out that nearly half of 
families of children with cancer will experience gaps in coverage 
because one or both parents often need to stop working or reduce their 
hours to care for the child.
  Further, TrumpCare erodes other critical consumer protections by 
allowing annual and lifetime limits on care.
  Anne continues her message:

       Additionally, childhood cancer patients must be assured of 
     access to essential health benefits without the threat of 
     lifetime or annual caps that would effectively price patients 
     out of lifesaving treatments. Two-thirds of childhood cancer 
     survivors will develop serious health conditions from the 
     toxicity of treatment. My child's future is already uncertain 
     enough. We should not have to worry about annual or lifetime 
     caps on coverage.

  I agree with Anne. What use is healthcare coverage that expires just 
when you need it the most? Why would anyone think it makes sense to 
sell a health insurance policy for thousands of dollars that doesn't 
actually cover anything--or nothing--when you need it? This is a step 
in the wrong direction, and I continue to urge my Republican colleagues 
to reverse course.
  I would also like to talk about what this bill would do to those 
suffering from opioid addiction, a public health crisis that has taken 
a tremendous toll on our country and particularly on my home State of 
Rhode Island.
  I, along with many of my Democratic colleagues, have been talking 
about how the Senate TrumpCare bill would pull the rug out from many of 
those who are suffering from substance use disorders, like opioid 
addiction, by decimating Medicaid, which is how many people suffering 
from the opioid crisis access treatment.
  News reports suggest that Republicans are considering adding a fund 
for opioid addiction treatment as another so-called fix to the 
TrumpCare bill. While we absolutely need more Federal funding to expand 
access to drug treatment--in fact, I have been urging Republican 
leaders to do just that for years--what they are proposing cannot make 
up for the bill's nearly $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid with a $45 
billion opioid fund. The math simply doesn't work.
  Second, short-term drug treatment programs do not provide a full 
spectrum of healthcare coverage over the long term, like Medicaid or 
other health insurance coverage. The Medicaid expansion under the ACA 
has provided the security of reliable healthcare coverage and long-term 
stability to help people with chronic conditions such as substance use 
disorders seek treatment and turn their lives around. TrumpCare takes 
that away.
  In addition, people with opioid addiction suffer from other mental 
health conditions at twice the rate of the general population and 
higher rates of physical health conditions as well, which would still 
go unaddressed in this so-called fix. We will be setting people up for 
failure if we provide immediate drug treatment services but cut access 
to the other mental and physical healthcare services they need.
  An opioid fund alone will not solve this public health crisis and, in 
fact, would be a drop in the bucket compared to how the rest of this 
bill would worsen the crisis.
  The cuts to Medicaid under the Senate TrumpCare bill are beyond 
repair. The Senate TrumpCare bill fundamentally changes the structure 
of the Medicaid Program, making massive cuts, representing a 35-percent 
cut over the next two decades. Simply put, this will end the Medicaid 
Program as we know it, which will hurt not only those suffering from 
the opioid crisis but also seniors, children, and people with 
disabilities. We may see Republicans try

[[Page 10394]]

to spread out this harm over more years to hide the damage, but do not 
be fooled. Whether they make massive cuts to Medicaid in 2021 or 2022 
or even 2026, for that matter, the cuts will be devastating.
  In short, no fix can undo the damage this bill will cause. This bill 
is a massive tax break for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of 
everyone else. No amendment or tweak to the bill will change that.
  Sharon from Wakefield, RI, wrote to me just a couple of days ago and 
summed this up very well. She said:

       I do not support the so-called American Health Care Act 
     because it is not a health care plan, it is a tax cut for the 
     rich. I am 67 years old, and I have a mild version of 
     muscular dystrophy, and I have Medicaid. Since the GOP wants 
     to end Medicaid, I am asking you to vote NO on the bill.

  Republicans must abandon this effort and come to the table to work 
with Democrats on a new path forward. Let's have productive 
conversations about how we can improve access to care and bring down 
costs. Let's harness this interest in improving access to drug 
treatment and work together on those efforts. But, coupled with the 
TrumpCare bill, those efforts will not mitigate the damage this bill 
will inflict on my constituents and those across the country.
  I hope those on the other side of the aisle who have expressed 
misgivings will oppose TrumpCare in all of its forms so that we can 
work together on a bipartisan solution and attempt to do something 
positive for our constituents.
  With that, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
up to 10 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, there was an interesting press 
conference earlier today in which I joined with Senator Heitkamp, 
Senator Capito, and Senator Barrasso on a common piece of legislation 
that will help address climate change. That does not happen often, so 
it was a good sign.
  This is not a comprehensive solution. It may not even make much of a 
measurable difference, but it will make some difference. It will help 
drive America's technological edge, and it will help, as it gets 
implemented, reduce our carbon emissions. It was very good to be 
working with those Senators.
  The fundamental problem we face with carbon capture and utilization 
and the reason so little of it now happens is economics. There is a 
flaw in the market economics related to carbon capture utilization and 
sequestration. Here is the flaw: There is no business proposition for 
stripping out the carbon dioxide, and in a market economy, if no one 
will pay for something, you don't get very much of it.
  Lindsey Graham and I flew up to Saskatchewan to see Boundary Dam, a 
carbon capture plant at a coal-powered electric generating facility 
where they are removing the carbon dioxide by running the exhaust from 
the plant through, essentially, a cloud of aminos. They are able to 
sequester closing on 80 percent of the carbon, and they use it to pump 
out and into nearby oil fields to pressurize the oil to facilitate 
extraction. Up in Saskatchewan at Boundary Dam, they have proved that 
the technology works, and where they are, with a little financing help 
from the Province, the economics work also.
  Unfortunately, not every coal-burning plant is on an oil field where 
the carbon dioxide can be used for extraction. Other than the facility 
in Saskatchewan, there is not a lot going on, on this continent. The 
Illinois facility collapsed, the facility in the South just collapsed, 
and there is one in Texas that is going on. But the bill the four of us 
got together on--which would be to create a tax credit paid for each 
ton of carbon that is captured and utilized or sequestered--could 
really make a difference. Knowing those credits are out there is the 
kind of reliance industry needs in order to invest in the technologies 
to make this happen.
  Of course, a real market for carbon reduction technologies ultimately 
requires putting a price on carbon emissions. We can fiddle around with 
payments for reduced carbon, but ultimately a price on carbon is the 
sensible economic solution. I think that is pretty much universally 
agreed by economists. Everyone agrees that carbon dioxide emissions are 
not a good thing. Everyone also agrees that carbon dioxide emissions 
are free to emitters now, so we get a lot of them.
  A harmful thing that is free to the emitter is called, in economic 
terms, an externality. It is an externality because the cost of the 
harm is external to the price of the product. A basic tenet of market 
economics is that the cost of a harm should be built into the price of 
the product that causes the harm.
  It is basically an economic version of being polite. If you throw 
your trash over into your neighbor's yard instead of paying for your 
trash collection, well, your neighbor has to clean up your mess and you 
are being really rude--a bad neighbor.
  In essence, that is what the fossil fuel industry has been doing with 
their carbon dioxide emissions for years--not paying to clean them up, 
dumping them all into our common atmosphere and our common oceans, 
making their neighbors pay because they don't want to pay for their own 
waste.
  Like that bad neighbor, they have come up with various excuses: Oh, 
it would be too expensive for us to pay for our trash collection. Or, 
our trash is actually good for your yard; it kind of composts it a bit. 
You will love it. It is better for you to clean it up.
  Then there is my personal favorite: If you make us take care of our 
own waste, we will beat you up--politically, at least, which is why the 
fossil fuel industry spends so much money on politics, just to be able 
to make that threat credible. And around here, boy, is it credible. It 
explains virtually fully our failure as an institution to address this 
patently obvious problem that our own home State universities are 
telling us is real. From Utah to Rhode Island, the universities we 
support and root for know and teach climate science.
  Anyway, I have a carbon price bill that would cause a technological 
boom in carbon capture and carbon utilization because, at last, there 
would be a reason to pay for it, and the free market could get to work. 
American ingenuity could get to work. With that market signal and with 
funding from revenues that the fee would generate, we could actually 
extend the life of existing coal plants being shuttered by competition 
from natural gas, by stripping their carbon dioxide emissions so that 
they actually didn't do the damage that they are doing now, they 
stopped throwing their trash into their neighbors' yard, and they paid 
for trash collection. The technology needs to be there and the 
economics need to be there, and then it can be done.
  We really ought to pass the carbon fee bill. I would add that the 
carbon fee bill also creates a lot of revenue. We, I think, have agreed 
that revenue ought not go to fund the government--not to make Big 
Government--but there are other things we can do with it that would be 
very helpful. One would be to make coal country whole for the economic 
losses coal country has sustained.
  Remember Huey Long's old slogan: ``Every man a king.'' We could make 
every miner a king--with a solid pension, retirement at any time, full 
health benefits for life for the family, a cash account based on years 
worked, a voucher for a new vehicle, a college plan for their kids. It 
all becomes doable if we pass a carbon fee and use the revenues to help 
coal country. Otherwise, nothing will change.
  Coal country will just keep suffering as natural gas keeps driving 
coal out of the energy market. There is no mechanism now to remedy that 
inevitability. People will suffer. There is a remedy right there--a 
carbon fee--that can

[[Page 10395]]

help fund and encourage the development of the technologies so that we 
can strip the carbon dioxide out of the emitting powerplants and so 
that we can go into these coal countries where pensions and benefits 
have been stripped by bankruptcy, by the collapse of this industry, and 
make those folks whole again.
  Give them their dignity. Let them retire now. It is not their fault 
that the coal industry has collapsed. They worked hard. They did 
dangerous work. They went down in the mines. They worked big equipment. 
It is a dangerous occupation to be a coal miner, and it is entitled to 
respect. Retire any time, full health benefits for you and the family, 
a cash account to help, a new vehicle voucher, a college plan for the 
kids, to make sure they are well-educated--you could do a lot of those 
things. You could help those people pass a carbon fee and make every 
coal miner a king.
  In the meantime, I am willing to find funding to flip the social cost 
of carbon--the way we did in our bill, announced today--and create a 
positive fee, a tax credit for carbon capture and carbon utilization. I 
am willing to work with Republican colleagues to find a way to pay our 
nuclear fleet for the carbon-free nature of its nuclear power.
  It is crazy to be closing safely operating nuclear power facilities 
just because they get zero economic value for the carbon-free nature of 
their power. The carbon-free nature of their power has value. The 
carbon-free nature of power has significant value. That is why we are 
offering in our legislation a tax credit of $30 to $50 per avoided ton 
of carbon dioxide emissions. That implies that an avoided ton of carbon 
dioxide emissions is worth $30 to $50.
  If nuclear power avoids that, I am willing to work with my Republican 
colleagues to figure out a way so that our nuclear fleet can enjoy the 
actual economic advantage of the carbon-free power they produce.
  We close a nuclear plant so we can open a natural gas plant which 
pollutes more than the nuclear plant because the economics are so 
fouled up that the nuclear plant gets no value for carbon-free power 
and the natural gas plant pays no costs for the harm of its carbon 
emissions. It is economic madness.
  We know that carbon-free nature has value. We know that the carbon-
free nature of nuclear power has value. We just will not pay for it, 
and plants close due to that market failure, and jobs are lost, and 
power is lost, and new investments have to be stood up in polluting 
plants to make the difference. It is crazy.
  In closing, the Heitkamp-Whitehouse-Capito-Barrasso bill, the FUTURE 
bill, to provide a tax credit for carbon capture utilization and 
sequestration in powerplants, in factories, and in a variety of 
applications, is small. It is in some respects a gesture, but 
everything begins with small steps and small gestures. I am proud to be 
a part of it, but I want to remind my colleagues that there are also 
big win-win ways that we can solve the larger problem. I look forward 
to working together to accomplish just that.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                 Calling for the Release of Liu Xiaobo

  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I stand here today on behalf of a hero of 
freedom and democracy in the People's Republic of China. Liu Xiaobo and 
his wife Liu Xia are the faces of liberty in China. They have 
sacrificed comfort and normalcy to chart a path toward political 
liberalization. For that, they have been detained, imprisoned, and 
abused.
  In 2008, Liu Xiaobo coauthored ``Charter 08,'' a manifesto that 
shined a light on the Communist Party of China and its totalitarian 
abuse of power. Though many brave souls signed their names and their 
fates to that document, Dr. Liu's name was at the very top. For this 
reason, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He also received charges of 
``inciting subversion of state power'' and an 11-year prison sentence. 
It is impossible to neglect the stark irony: a man dedicated to 
nonviolence, imprisoned for promoting peace.
  Motivating Dr. Liu's tremendous courage and self-sacrifice was a 
determination to remember what the People's Republic of China 
desperately wants the world to forget: Tiananmen Square. A poet, 
author, and political scientist, Dr. Liu was, in 1989, a visiting 
scholar at Columbia University, but when the pro-democracy protests 
broke out in Beijing in June of that year, he raced back to China to 
support them. He staged a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square in the 
midst of the historic student protests and insisted that they would 
remain nonviolent in the faces of the tanks, which the Chinese military 
deployed to smash them.
  In 1996, the party subjected him to 3 years of ``reeducation through 
labor'' for continuing to question China's one-party system.
  In 2008, on the eve of the 100-year anniversary of China's first 
Constitution and the 30-year anniversary of Beijing's Democracy Wall 
movement, Dr. Liu dedicated his work on ``Charter 08'' to the martyrs 
at Tiananmen Square.
  Today, 8 years into his unjust imprisonment, Dr. Liu needs our help 
more than ever. Last month, it was revealed that Dr. Liu has contracted 
an aggressive, late stage form of liver cancer. Although PRC 
authorities ``released'' him ``on medical parole,'' both Liu Xiaobo and 
Liu Xia linger without freedom. Even worse, Liu Xiaobo is dying. His 
condition is critical, and we are running out of time to act on his 
behalf.
  Although Chinese authorities compelled the Lius to sign an affidavit 
allegedly attesting to their satisfaction with the medical care they 
have received in China and their wish to remain there, Liu Xia has 
communicated to their attorney their desire to spend Liu Xiaobo's final 
days in America. PRC doctors insisted that Dr. Liu was too ill to 
travel, but medical experts from the United States and Germany--one of 
them being Dr. Joseph Herman of the MD Anderson Cancer Center of the 
University of Texas--visited Dr. Liu and attested to the contrary. 
Issuing a joint statement, they agreed that Dr. Liu ``can be safely 
transported with appropriate medical evacuation care and support.'' 
They then issued this stark warning: ``However, the medical evacuation 
would have to take place as quickly as possible.''
  The urgency of this situation goes beyond Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xia's 
livelihood is inextricably linked to the ability of the two of them to 
leave China. Due to his imprisonment, Liu Xiaobo has been unable to 
receive his $1.5 million in prize money from the Norwegian Nobel 
Committee. The holdup of transferring the funds is merely routine: a 
signed form from Dr. Liu and an open bank account with his name on it. 
But China has prevented these technical steps from progressing. If Liu 
Xiaobo dies without receiving this account, Liu Xia will be left 
destitute with no money. I shudder to think what a life would hold for 
the wife of China's boldest political prisoner.
  Only one man stands between a dying man's wish and his wife's 
livelihood and freedom: Xi Jinping. Although no one action can undo the 
turmoil that the Lius have suffered over the past 28 years, it is not 
too late to do the right thing and to allow this man and his wife to 
spend their last days together according to their wishes.
  It wouldn't be the first time that Xi has made a similar decision. 
Earlier this year, he agreed, after consultations with the Trump 
administration, to release an imprisoned Houstonian, Sandy Phan-Gillis, 
who was incarcerated on false charges. Although nothing could bring 
back the 2 years of separation from her family, she and her family are 
now reunited--something I spent considerable time urging and 
encouraging and was grateful to see come to pass.
  Lest Xi forget, even Kim Jong Un, the dictator in North Korea, 
allowed Otto Warmbier, a young American college student from Ohio--in 
the prime of

[[Page 10396]]

his life before torture and abuse left him in a coma--to return home 
for his final hours. Surely, Xi can show the same degree of humanity 
shown by Kim Jong Un.
  Indeed, toward that end, the bill that I have introduced numerous 
times to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in honor of 
Liu Xiaobo is an instrument of leverage that can help produce his 
freedom. In 2015, I came to this floor and asked on three separate 
occasions for unanimous consent to pass my bill to rename the street in 
front of the Chinese Embassy after Liu Xiaobo. Over and over again, 
sadly, Democratic Senators stood up and objected, stymieing the effort. 
Each time I advocated on behalf of Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia, my 
colleagues expressed procedural concerns: This is counterproductive. 
Doing so will only antagonize China.
  Well, some of us are less concerned about antagonizing Chinese 
Communist dictators.
  My fellow Senators assured me that they have negotiated the release 
of many political prisoners behind the scenes. Well, that is wonderful, 
and I encourage them to do so now in the few days and weeks Liu Xiaobo 
has ahead.
  Even so, despite repeated Democratic objections--repeated Democratic 
obstructionism--ultimately, the U.S. Senate was able to pass my bill by 
voice vote in the 114th Congress, and the reason at the time was 
evident: China's stubbornness--wrongly imprisoning a Nobel Peace 
laureate--required public action to force the issue. The end goal 
should be clear. It is not merely to rename a street, but rather to use 
the action to shine light on the Lius and to pressure the PRC to do the 
right thing.
  No Member can explain the success of this tactic better than my good 
friend Senator Grassley, the senior Senator from Iowa, who led a very 
similar effort in 1984 to rename the street in front of the Soviet 
Embassy after Andrei Sakharov, the famed Soviet dissident. Senator 
Grassley led that effort under Ronald Reagan, and when the street was 
renamed, it meant anytime a Soviet had to write to their Embassy, they 
had to write Sakharov's name. It meant anytime you had to pick up the 
phone and call the Embassy and say ``Where exactly do I find this 
Embassy?'' they had to address and highlight the dissident.
  For the PRC, they do not want to highlight Liu Xiaobo because he is a 
powerful voice for freedom and against tyranny. Just as it worked 
against the Soviet Union, as Reagan demonstrated, public shaming, 
shining light, telling the truth can bring down the machinery of 
oppression. So, too, can public shaming--shining light--secure Dr. 
Liu's freedom.
  As we stand here today, we don't know if Xi is going to allow Dr. Liu 
to come to freedom, to live out his last days in peace, and to receive 
the Nobel Peace Prize that he was so justly awarded. If Xi does the 
right thing, we can all commend the action. But if not, I am announcing 
my intention to continue to press this bill, to seek its passage again 
in this Congress, just as the Senate passed it in the prior Congress. I 
intend to press forward and seek passage of this bill.
  If Dr. Liu is not released--if he dies in China, still under their 
oppression--I intend to continue to fight until the day when the street 
is named in front of the Embassy and the Chinese Communists can bow 
their heads in shame at their injustice. If they don't want to be 
publicly shamed, there is an easy path: Don't commit shameful acts. 
Truth has power. Sunshine and light have power.
  I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--Republicans and 
Democrats: If there is an issue that should unite us all, it is that a 
Nobel Peace laureate speaking out for peace and democracy should not be 
wrongly imprisoned in Communist China. That should bring us together--
and the full force of the United States.
  I commend President Trump for leading on this issue, and I am hopeful 
that China will see its way to doing the right thing.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         Getting Our Work Done

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, as we know, yesterday the majority leader 
announced that he plans to delay the start of the August recess by 2 
weeks. He stated that this delay is necessary in order to ``complete 
action on important legislative items and process nominees that have 
been stalled by a lack of cooperation from our friends on the other 
side of the aisle.'' Those are the majority leader's words.
  I have no problem with the leader's decision. I will happily stay 
here an additional 2 weeks. I will stay 3, 4, or even 5 weeks as long 
as we have a plan to address the serious issues that face this Nation.
  My friends, when the Senate completes its work this week, we will 
have considered a whopping total this entire week of three nominations, 
one of them being a noncontroversial district judge nominee on which 
the majority leader was forced to file cloture. That cloture vote was 
unanimous, 97 to 0. Yet we were still forced to burn postcloture time--
30 hours--before being allowed to vote earlier today on his 
confirmation--a vote that was again unanimous at 100 to 0. What? That 
is the way we are doing business in the Senate? I will repeat. The vote 
to stop debate was 97 to 0 after 30 hours. After we burned 30 hours, 
then we were allowed to vote earlier today--a vote that was again 
unanimous at 100 to 0. Why?
  We have a war on. We have men and women in harm's way. We have 
nominees stacked up, and so we are spending an entire week with three 
nominees. So with an incredible act of another chapter in ``Profiles in 
Courage,'' rather than say, OK, we will stay here Friday, we will stay 
here Saturday, we will stay here Sunday, but by God we are going to do 
the people's business--we are not doing the people's business.
  I can't go through all the machinations between the Democratic leader 
and our majority leader, and I can't go through all the tos and fros 
and all of that, but I am supposed to go back and speak to a high 
school civics class and say: I am happy to be here. I have had a very 
tough week this week in the Senate, my young friends who may want to be 
engaged in public service someday, and we voted on a district judge 97 
to 0. Thirty hours later, we were allowed to vote on his nomination, 
and the vote was 100 to 0.
  That is what the Senate is supposed to do? There was no reason why we 
needed to take 3 days on this nominee.
  I say to my friend the Democratic leader and I say to the Republican 
leader: This type of obstruction has gone on long enough, and it has to 
stop.
  As I said, I am happy to stay here for the entire August recess to do 
the work the American people sent us here to do, but we must first have 
a plan of what we are going to do and how. What are we to say to the 
American people if we stay here for several weeks, have no legislative 
plan, and accomplish nothing? We have been in for 6 months now. What 
have we done? We have done Gorsuch, and we have done Gorsuch, and we 
have done Gorsuch, and we have repealed some regulations--all of it 
with my party in control of all three branches of government. I am not 
proud to go back to Arizona and talk about that record of 
nonaccomplishment.
  Right now, we have no consensus on how to repeal and replace the 
failed policies of ObamaCare. I can't tell you the number of hours I 
have heard the same arguments go around and around and around and 
around. As far as I know, there is no consensus on how to best fund the 
government, no plan to do a bipartisan budget deal, and no path forward 
on appropriations bills. This is disgraceful.
  What I am asking for is simple. If we are going to stay here to work, 
then let's get some work done. Why aren't we working now? Why aren't we 
working tonight? There are nominees in the

[[Page 10397]]

Department of Defense who are before this body, and we are in a war, 
and what are we doing? We are doing a vote on a district judge that we 
took 30 hours--30 hours--to discuss.
  If we are going to stay here, let's get the work done. Let's come in 
early, stay late, negotiate a healthcare bill, and process nominations 
to make sure the administration is adequately staffed so the executive 
branch can function. Let's renew FDA user fees to streamline the 
regulatory process for lifesaving prescription drugs. Let's fund the 
Veterans Choice Program to ensure our veterans are able to access care 
in their communities. Let's address the debt limit before we default on 
our payments. Let's debate, amend, and pass the fiscal year 2018 
National Defense Authorization Act. Perhaps, most importantly, let's 
get to work on the budget so we can begin moving individual 
appropriations bills to fund the government and not have to resort to a 
continuing resolution or omnibus.
  To those who may be watching, the fact is that a continuing 
resolution and an omnibus means that we have two choices--yes or no. We 
don't have an amendment. We don't have a way to improve it. We are 
talking about trillions of dollars, but we are going to wait until we 
are right at the edge of the cliff, and then my distinguished friends 
and leaders on both sides will say: You have to vote aye; you have to 
vote aye because the government is going to be shut down. I am tired of 
that choice. We know it is coming. We know the cliff is here. So what 
did we do this week? We spent 30 hours discussing a district judge--30 
hours debating a district judge. Is that the right use of American 
taxpayers' dollars?
  Have we no shame?
  The Senate Armed Services Committee successfully reported out the 
fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act 27 to 0, supporting 
$650 billion for the base budget for national defense and an additional 
$60 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations. At these levels, the 
national defense budget would be $91 billion above the Budget Control 
Act spending cap. To put it another way, there was unanimous, 
bipartisan support for an increase in defense spending of the Budget 
Control Act, capped by more than a quarter of this body--more than a 
quarter of this body, on both sides of the aisle. In one sense this 
consensus isn't surprising because after years of budget cuts under the 
BCA sequestration, our military faces a serious crisis. As we ask them 
to do more and more in an increasingly dangerous world, Congress has 
failed to provide our men and women in uniform with the training, 
resources, and capabilities they need.
  I will repeat that. Congress has failed to provide our men and women 
in uniform with the training, resources, and capabilities they need.
  However, simply passing an authorization bill at higher defense 
spending levels will not solve the funding problems for our military. 
We know we must pass a bipartisan budget deal to undo the Budget 
Control Act caps and set an agreed upon budget top line to allow the 
appropriations bills to move forward. Absent a bipartisan budget deal, 
we will be stuck with another continuing resolution, which, I might 
add, will be below the BCA budget caps for defense, or, worse, we will 
be facing--guess what--a shutdown of the government.
  Has it been that long since we had the last shut down?
  I have come to this floor several times already this year demanding 
that we start negotiating a budget deal. We are 2 months away from the 
start of the fiscal year. We know that a budget deal must be done. The 
failure to begin negotiations means we are knowingly driving toward an 
outcome that will fund our military at levels below the Budget Control 
Act caps.
  I don't understand why we haven't started. It is not because we think 
the BCA levels are acceptable. It is not because we believe there is a 
way to responsibly fund the government without adjusting the BCA caps. 
Even our leader, Senator McConnell, has publicly stated that we will 
need to adjust the caps. This leads me to believe that there is only 
one reason why we are stalling negotiations on a budget deal and 
forcing the government and our military to start the year on a 
``continuing resolution'' and that is one word, and that word is 
``politics.''
  The same tactic that the Democratic leader is employing on nomination 
stalling is being applied to a budget deal. I find that to be shameful.
  There is plenty of blame to go around. The White House has also been 
surprisingly absent. Their own budget submission asked for defense 
spending above the budget control caps and repeal of the defense 
sequester, but none of that--none of that--is possible without 
negotiating a bipartisan budget deal. Yet we have heard nothing from 
the White House--nothing. Any budget deal that would pass both the 
House and Senate and be signed by the President will be extremely 
difficult to negotiate. That is why we should have started long ago, 
and we must start now.
  I have been ready and willing all year to begin working. My door and, 
I know, the majority of my colleagues' doors are open to any Senator, 
Republican or Democrat, but what we really need is for a select group 
of key Members to come together with leadership's blessings to begin 
negotiating.
  Unless and until this body gets to work on a bipartisan budget deal, 
we will continue down the path we have been on for years, lurching from 
crisis to crisis, with no strategy for how to meet our budget 
responsibilities or fund our national security needs.
  My friends, colleagues, and fellow Americans, we must summon the 
political courage to do the hard work the American people expect of us 
to do a budget the way we are supposed to--a budget that is sufficient 
to meet the complex threats of today's world. Our brave servicemembers 
who are facing those threats every single day deserve no less.
  Finally, every year for many years now, I have taken my time on the 
Fourth of July to have the honor of spending that national holiday in 
Afghanistan with the men and women who are serving in the military with 
courage, sacrifice, and skill. As part of our activities there, we have 
a townhall meeting with several hundred of the men and women in uniform 
who are serving. My friend Lindsey Graham, who occasionally has a good 
idea--once every decade--asked the group: How many of you are here not 
for the first time? Almost everybody in that room raised their hand.
  He said: How many of you have been more than twice? Two-thirds of the 
men in that room raised their hand.
  He said: How many of you have been here multiple times? A good number 
of them raised their hand.
  The point is that they are out there serving time after time after 
time, away from their homes, away from their families, working more 
than maybe 2 weeks in August. And what are we doing? What are we doing 
for them?
  There are a lot of things they need, and there are a lot of things we 
need to give them. Yet, somehow, we can't see our way clear--
Republicans and Democrats--to sit down and do the right thing for these 
men and women--to do the right thing so they can win.
  We now have a new President, a new National Security Advisor, and a 
new Secretary of Defense. I don't agree with this President very often, 
but I do know that this President is committed to rebuilding the 
military and a winning strategy. The strategy for the last 8 years has 
been ``don't lose.'' I know that General Mattis and General McMaster 
are people who want to win, and they have a strategy to win, and we 
have to be of assistance to them to provide the men and women with what 
they need to win.
  So I ask my colleagues, with passion, that we sit down and figure out 
the budget deal, move forward with it, and not spend a week like we 
just spent this week with 30 hours in order to confirm one district 
judge.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page 10398]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________