Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to drug testing of unemployment compensation applicants.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last week congressional Republicans finally unveiled their proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is a law passed by Congress a little over 6 years ago with the express goal of expanding the number of Americans with the protection of health insurance. It has been successful. We have the lowest percentage of uninsured Americans in history. What it means is that through offering Medicaid to those in low-income categories, offering help to pay premiums for those in middle-income categories, and offering choices in the insurance exchange, we have really changed health insurance in America in 6 years.

Now Americans realize that when they take a look at their actual health insurance policy, it is worth something. It may be hard to remember--but we should--that only 6 years ago, if you happened to have a child with a preexisting condition and you were not lucky enough to have your insurance through your employer and you went out on the open market, you were in for a rough ride. Many health insurance companies would not insure a family with a child who had a history of diabetes or surviving cancer. We changed that. We said that no health insurance company in America can discriminate against a person or family because of a preexisting medical condition. Is there one of us who lives in a family which doesn't have a relative, a close relative, with a preexisting condition? That was an important reform that was part of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare.

We also came to realize they were selling health insurance to people with some fine print that made a difference--lifetime limits on coverage. Well, I have $1 million coverage. That sounds great, until the next diagnosis or the next accident. Now, $1 million doesn't seem like such a large amount of money, and God forbid you end up with a chronic illness.

One of my constituents came by to visit me 2 weeks ago. She was a guest of one of the Members of Congress during the President's speech to the joint session. She was diagnosed a few years ago with an unusual disease, one that is life-threatening at any given moment. She told me that in the past 3 years, she has spent more than $700,000 on medication--$700,000--and that will be a burden she faces for the rest of her life.

If her health insurance had a limit on how much it paid, there would reach a point where she couldn't buy the medicine she needs to save her life. We did away with that, and we said: You can't discriminate against people by putting these limits. We also said: When it comes to charging premiums, you can't discriminate against a person applying for health insurance solely because they happen to be a woman.

There has been a lot of controversy over that in the House in their debate over the last week or so, but what we said basically is that when it comes to insurance risk, put everyone in together, make this a bigger pool of people seeking health insurance so insurance can be profitable and affordable at the same time.

We also said: When it comes to the premiums charged on health insurance--and I call attention to all of us over the age of 50--we said you cannot discriminate in premiums you charge in health insurance. There can't be a disparity of more than 3 to 1 for the most expensive health insurance policy to the least expensive. We also said, in addition to that, if you have a child, son or daughter, graduating college and looking for a job but has no healthcare benefits, keep them on your family plan until they reach the age of 26. I have been through that. Most families have.

I had a recent college graduate, no longer with student health insurance, and I said: Jennifer, do you have health insurance?

Dad, I feel just great.

No father wants to hear that answer. So we changed the law.

When it came to Medicare, under the Affordable Care Act, we said: We are going to eliminate the gap in coverage for prescription drugs for seniors. They used to call it the doughnut hole. It made no sense. It was something only Congress could dream up. We closed it and said: We are going to give seamless coverage to Medicare prescription drugs. That was part of the Affordable Care Act.

We put in incentives for people providing medical care to find ways to give us good quality care and reduce the cost. What was the net result? The slowest growth in hospitalization premiums for employer- based healthcare that we have seen in modern times.

When they put this new model for healthcare against the Medicare Program--that is a program for seniors and disabled--guess what. It bought 10 years of solvency for Medicare. That

meant a program that is critically important for 60 million Americans had 10 more years of solvency.

Did this program have problems? Of course it did. When you take on the healthcare system of America, you are not going to get it completely right the first time. I believed--and many others did--that as important and valuable as that vote was, we had to be prepared to return to this program to make sure we addressed problems as they would arise.

For example, there is nothing in the Affordable Care Act of substance when it comes to controlling the price of pharmaceuticals--prescription drugs.

Well, I can tell you what has happened. Blue Cross Blue Shield in Chicago came to see me, and the CEO said: Blue Cross Blue Shield is now paying more for prescription drugs than we are paying for inpatient hospital care. The cost of drugs has gone through the roof. The net result of that, of course, is the cost of healthcare goes up too. The Affordable Care Act should have addressed that but did not.

We also had to find a way to make sure there was health insurance available all around the United States. Some companies jumped in; some jumped out. Many of us believe we should have a single-payer plan available in every part of America so you could choose for your family a Medicare-type plan if you wish. Otherwise, you would go to a private health insurance company, if you wish. It is your choice.

The Republicans opposed the Affordable Care Act. In the House, they voted against it 57, 58 times--I lose count. Then came the day when they had the majority in the Senate, in the House, and in the White House--the answer to their prayers. Now, once and for all, they can get rid of the Affordable Care Act. They have the votes, but then there was a problem.

People across America started asking: If you repeal it, what will happen next? Will I still be able to get health insurance? Will I be protected if I have a preexisting condition? Will there be limits on what the policy covers?

Well, they hadn't quite thought that far ahead to look for the substitute, to look for the replacement. So they went to work in a matter of 5 or 6 weeks and created what is now being considered by the House of Representatives--the Republican replacement plan.

The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan office that takes a look at our bills and legislation and puts a score on them. How much is it going to cost? What is it going to do?

We waited for Congressional Budget Office scores over and over again when we wrote the Affordable Care Act. They would come in and say: Nope, you have to go back to the drawing board. You have to change this and change that.

Well, just this week, they came out with the score on the Republican replacement plan, the one to replace the Affordable Care Act. They took a look at it, and here is what they told us.

To start off with, the Republican replacement plan throws people off health insurance coverage. How many? Remember when President Trump said the GOP healthcare bill would have ``insurance for everybody''? Under TrumpCare, the new Republican plan, TrumpCare, 14 million people would lose their health coverage next year. By 2026, 24 million people will have lost their healthcare coverage.

Is this what we were looking for in the replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, to say to 24 million Americans, you will no longer have health insurance coverage? Think about the outcome of that. Think about someone with a chronically ill child or someone who faces a chronic illness themself with no health insurance.

Think about a working person who has no health insurance where they work. At least they had coverage through Medicaid and perhaps through the insurance exchange with a subsidy. Now they are losing it.

Think about those same people without health insurance. They will still get sick and will still go to the hospital but will be unable to pay. Incidentally, their bills they can't pay, we pay. Those bills are passed on to everyone else.

So the first plank of the Republican TrumpCare, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is to eliminate health insurance for 24 million Americans. In addition, the Republican TrumpCare plan significantly raises premium costs on seniors.

According to the official Congressional Budget Office estimate, the bill will ``substantially raise premiums for older people.'' How does that happen? Well, in addition to cutting back on the financial assistance for seniors to buy health insurance, TrumpCare would allow insurance companies to charge older people significantly more than the Affordable Care Act. Remember the limit, the 3-to-1 limit on premiums that we built into the Affordable Care Act? TrumpCare says: No, make that 5 to 1. So it means, if you are over the age of 50, buying health insurance, your premiums can go up dramatically, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There is another thing too. As we take more and more people off of health insurance coverage, it really, in a way, dampens the incentive for affordable healthcare so the costs are not contained as they are today, and the solvency of Medicare--which we said was 10 years more, remember that--they reduce it by 4 years.

What the Republican TrumpCare plan has done is it threatens the solvency of Medicare. Is that what we were looking for on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act? I don't think so.

TrumpCare also raises costs for lower and middle-income families. By repealing the cost-sharing subsidies and lowering the bar on health plans, the Congressional Budget Office says that lower and middle-class families shopping in the individual market should expect to see--and I quote from the report--``substantially increasing out-of-pocket costs.''

The bill also defunds Planned Parenthood, which was to be expected. We expected it in many bills. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defunding of Planned Parenthood would ``affect services that help women avert pregnancies . . . most likely residing in areas without other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations.'' The Congressional Budget Office projects that 15 percent of those people--again, these are lower income women in medically underserved areas of America--would lose access to care.

Also, TrumpCare, at the same time it does this--eliminates health insurance for 24 million, raises the premium costs, and defunds Planned Parenthood. For good measure, TrumpCare also provides tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America. Is that what we were looking for? Was that part of the bargain? Those making over $1 million a year in income will get a $50,000 tax cut from the TrumpCare bill. The wealthiest one- tenth of 1 percent get a tax cut of nearly $200,000.

Finally, while cutting taxes for the very rich, TrumpCare also slashes $880 billion in Medicaid spending over the next 10 years. Medicaid is a vital healthcare program. Most people think about Medicaid--oh, that is health insurance for the poor. It is. But who are the poor? Overwhelmingly in numbers, they are children and their moms who are in low-income groups. That is the biggest number, but the biggest expense for Medicaid isn't kids and their moms. It is grandma and grandpa. It is our families and parents who are in an assisted care home who have Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to get by.

These cuts by the Republicans and TrumpCare to Medicaid will be felt by families across the board. In addition, it means that those who represent States like mine and the Presiding Officer's, with rural populations that have small hospitals that depend on patients paying something when they come through the door--many of them are paying through Medicaid, and if Medicaid is reduced, the payments to the hospitals are reduced.

That is why the Illinois Hospital Association warns us against TrumpCare. The Illinois Hospital Association says it will threaten the hospitals of my State. They will not be receiving the Medicaid reimbursement. They believe that up to 90,000 jobs at these hospitals will be lost in Illinois. I will tell you, as a downstater, those are some of the best paying jobs in the community. Many of my small towns trying to keep businesses or attract businesses brag up their hospital, as they should, and now TrumpCare threatens the future of these hospitals.

Medicaid is a vital healthcare program for 65 million Americans-- seniors, persons with disabilities, children, and low-income families nationwide, 3 million of them in my State. TrumpCare would devastate the program. By 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 14 million fewer people would have Medicaid.

The Affordable Care Act took a lot of good steps toward improving healthcare for seniors. Before the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured adults ages 50 to 64 rose substantially--growing from 3.7 million in 2000 to 8.9 million in 2010. Insurance companies were rejecting more than one in five applications from individuals between the ages of 50 and 64.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the rate of uninsured adults ages 50 to 64 dropped 47.4 percent, from 11.6 percent to 6.1 percent. The largest reduction in the uninsured rate occurred in the States that chose to expand Medicaid.

The Affordable Care Act also prohibited insurers from denying coverage, as I said earlier, to people with preexisting conditions. It limited how much insurers can charge older enrollees, closed the doughnut hole, and made important preventive services available for free, such as colonoscopies and annual checkups.

Let's look at what the TrumpCare program--the Republican program-- does to seniors. It allows insurers to charge older people significantly more than younger people, it reduces tax credits to seniors who pay their premiums, and it would devastate the Medicaid Program, which helps to pay for two out of every three seniors in nursing home care.

There is another thing I want to make a note of. Many years ago in the Senate, back at that corner desk, sat a Senator from Minnesota named Paul Wellstone, a Democrat. Over here on the aisle sat Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a Republican. For years they argued that we should include in every health insurance plan in America coverage for mental health, and the insurance companies fought them. Because many mental health conditions are chronic and long-term and may, in some cases, be expensive, they didn't want them. But Wellstone and Domenici had family members who struggled with mental illness, and they said we need to include this in every health insurance plan. Thank goodness they finally prevailed. Every health insurance plan in this country has to treat physical health issues and mental health issues the same, thanks to Wellstone and thanks to Domenici.

In addition they added something that many of us overlooked: It said mental health and substance abuse treatment. What does that mean? It means that if some member of your family is addicted, your health insurance plan can help pay for the help they need to get rid of their addiction. For a lot of people it was the only place for them to turn, and it worked, and thank goodness it did, because we are at that moment in American history where because of opioids, heroin, and fentanyl, we have dramatic increases in addiction.

Now what is going to happen under the TrumpCare approach when it comes to mental illness and substance abuse treatment? Are we going to require--mandate--every health insurance plan to include mental health treatment as well as substance abuse? Over and over we hear from our Republican friends: We want competition. We want choice. We want to eliminate mandates.

They can take that approach, but we are going to lose coverage for 24 million Americans. If they take that approach, we are going to be offering health insurance plans that aren't there when families need them.

We had a roundtable discussion in Rockford, IL, last Friday. When I go to these communities, I bring in people who are administrators of the hospitals, the doctors, the nurses, the clinics, the substance abuse treatment centers. To a person, they oppose TrumpCare. Every single one of them said that it is the wrong thing to do at this moment in time. It will leave people more vulnerable. It will leave families with health insurance that is worthless when they need it. Those are the bad old days we finally escaped 6 years ago, and now Republicans want us to return to this competition-choice access to healthcare. I have access to a Rolls Royce dealership, too, but I am not going to be buying a Rolls Royce because I can't afford it. If you give a person access to health insurance that they can't afford, you are not giving them anything.

What we tried to do with the Affordable Care Act is to make sure we gave people not only access but protection with health insurance. From the beginning, the Republicans have said: Let's repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now they have found that replacing it is a lot harder than they ever expected.

I said from the beginning, as well, if the Republicans are willing to take repeal off the table, I am going to pull up a chair. If they want a bipartisan approach, an honest approach to making the Affordable Care Act better, let's sit down and talk. Sign me up. If the goal is to give more people good health insurance that they can afford to protect their families, if the goal is to find ways to give us better healthcare, quality results at a lower cost, I want to be a part of that conversation. But if the goal is to deny health insurance coverage to 24 million Americans, count me out. That to me is a step backward in time.

What comes next? If the Republicans do this to the Affordable Care Act, what is next--Medicare? Well, we happen to know the Secretary of Health and Human Services believes in privatizing Medicare. I don't. I think that is a step in the wrong direction, and it will reduce the protection of Medicare. But if they will do this to the Affordable Care Act, then can Medicare or Social Security be far behind?

It is important that we maintain our values when it comes to critical programs that America and its families count on.

I hope the House of Representatives defeats TrumpCare, puts it out of its misery, and then invites all of us to come together on a bipartisan basis to talk about what we really need for healthcare in this country.

I find it incredible that there is no major medical group in America today that supports TrumpCare--none, not one. All we have is some conservative think tanks that believe this is a wonderful model. But the people on the ground--the administrators in the hospitals, the doctors, the clinicians, the nurses, the people in the healthcare clinics--all tell us TrumpCare is a disaster. It is a step in the wrong direction. It is going to decrease coverage and increase costs. That is not something that America needs for its future.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about another rule the Republicans want to overturn instead of working with Democrats to create jobs. This rule outlines when State unemployment agencies can drug test applicants for unemployment benefits.

Today there are roughly 7.6 million Americans who are unemployed, and over 2 million of these unemployed Americans are collecting unemployment insurance. About 150,000 of these people live in Illinois.

Unemployment insurance benefits provide a lifeline to many workers and families who are struggling to make ends meet. If this resolution passes, my Republican colleagues will succeed in preventing hard- working Americans from receiving these benefits, and they will succeed in making it more difficult for unemployed Americans to find work.

This past August, the Department of Labor finalized a rule that explains when State unemployment agencies can subject unemployment benefit applicants to a drug test. The rule clarifies which occupations regularly conduct drug testing, as established by the Department of Labor, to help State programs that conduct drug testing.

This rule makes sure States have the guidance they need to implement drug testing requirements in a fair and legal

mariner, but if this partisan CRA is signed into law, it will undo a bipartisan compromise that was created to ensure equitable access to unemployment benefits.

Unemployed Americans have paid into the unemployment insurance program, and they are entitled to receive that insurance when they lose their job to circumstances beyond their control. By supporting blanket drug testing of unemployment insurance applicants, my Republican colleagues are targeting hard-working Americans who in many cases have fallen on hard times.

And let me be clear, this will make it more difficult for them to receive the benefits they have earned.

Millions of Americans around the country voted for leaders who would fight for the working class. Repealing this rule will be another broken promise to those families.

Drug testing is also expensive. In 2011, the Texas Legislative Budget Board estimated it would cost Texas $30 million over the course of just 1 year if they moved forward with a universal drug-testing policy for unemployment benefits.

When States have conducted drug testing of applicants for other government programs, like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, very few claimants have tested positive for drug use.

My Republican colleagues say that this resolution will help save taxpayer money, but overturning the Department of Labor's rule will lead to millions of wasted taxpayer dollars on drug tests that come back negative.

This resolution isn't about saving money. It is about paving the way for lawmakers who want to drug test every American who has to file for unemployment insurance; yet these same lawmakers aren't calling for drug testing Americans that claim other Federal benefits, like tax credits or deductions on their tax returns.

I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to remember: the Department of Labor's drug-testing rule is about real people who depend on unemployment insurance to live in America.

They need these benefits to put food on the table, to make a rent or mortgage payment, or to pay for gas to allow them to continue their job search.

When people become unemployed, it is often a result of company downsizing or outsourcing American jobs, not drug use. We should not and cannot unfairly stigmatize these workers and make it even more difficult for them to get back on their feet after becoming unemployed by undoing this regulation.

I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, today we consider another bill requested by large corporations. But, I have to wonder, of all the things the American public want, why is a revision to the Securities and Exchange Commission rules--Section 701 to be precise--the priority for this week?

We've been here for three months now. House Republicans set the agenda. They lead this governing body. Why do they keep bringing us bills that are the priorities of corporate

America? In the past few months, Congressional Republicans, who decide which bills get considered have brought forward a hodgepodge of corporate requests.

Here are some of the bills that are now law:

1) Republicans passed--and the President signed--a law to protect corporate firms from having to disclose labor violations--like wage theft--before winning government contracts (H.J. Res. 37).

2) Republicans made it easier to drug test people receiving unemployment compensation (H.J. Res 42).

3) House and Senate Republicans--and the President signed--H.J. Res. 86 which allow Internet Services Providers to sell your browser history.

4) Republicans enacted a new law making it easier to dump coal debris near rivers and streams (H.J. Res. 38).

5) Republicans stopped efforts to help governments around the world avoid corruption. H.J. Res. 41 removed the requirement that corporations disclose resource payments to foreign governments. This is a crushing blow to democracy activists working in fragile nations.

6) And, a law preventing state governments from setting up retirement plans for residents who do not have a work-based plan (H.J. Res 66).

So, in the three months we've been back, these laws, removing competition, disclosure, and consumer privacy, are the priorities of Republicans who set the agenda. These are all asks of corporate America--

1) don't punish us for polluting streams,

2) let us sell your internet browser history,

3) let us make money drug testing laid off workers receiving unemployment due them and do not make us disclose our payments to foreign governments when we drill for oil or minerals.

When I talk to my constituents, they don't ask for any of these. They say, ``Where's the jobs bill?'' My constituents say, can't we raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour? They say, our roads and bridges need work. Let's raise the gas tax a bit and invest in infrastructure. They say, we want to increase our skills; let's invest in pre-school, Pell grants and community colleges.

Let's put people, not corporate wish lists-- first.

But, nope, today we are asked to vote on a bill that makes it easier for private companies to provide options--like stocks--rather than compensation to their employees.

This bill makes it easier for firms to offload some of their options to their employees without disclosing financial information to them. While I'm glad to see companies reward employees with stock and other compensation in addition to salaries, workers should be told the value of the compensation they receive. Not some IOU that they cannot cash in any time soon.

With this bill, H.R. 1343, it is possible that employees would be promised stock options which could be worth less than promised, or even, completely worthless. So, employees could decide to forego a salary increase--or accept lower pay--in order to receive more stock options, yet, those stock options could be worth way less than expected. And the market to sell them could be non-existent.

Why should employees receive less information than that of any other minority shareholder? Employees should be able to receive information on the financial position of the company so they can make an educated decision about whether to invest in securities.

If an employee is trusted enough to run the day-to-day aspects of the business, they should be trusted enough to receive full disclosure about the company's financials. It's not difficult to allow participating employees to sign non-disclosure agreements. It can't be because these disclosures are an additional burden on the firm. These companies prepared these types of disclosures to receive the Rule 701 Exemption from the SEC in the first place.

I'm also concerned about the mismatch in power between the corporations and their employees. I am very concerned that employees can be more susceptible to pressure to take options instead of salary increases. For example, we could ask George Maddox. George was one of the 21,000 people who worked at ENRON. After working at ENRON for 30 years, he had 14,000 shares of company stock. It was valued at $1.3 million. Then ENRON collapsed, and he had literally nothing. All his retirement was in ENRON stocks.

If you haven't watched the movies ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room recently, I'd urge you watch it again. You could also read Bethany McLean's book by the same name. One image has consistently stuck with me. A staff rally where leadership extolled the virtues of the firm. Leaders whipped employees into a frenzy to buy ENRON stock even as the leaders knew it was worthless. In fact, corporate leaders had already their stock. Yet, they were urging employees to buy!

ENRON had a strategy of buying companies and then pressuring the new employees to buy ENRON stock to keep the stock price inflated. And since ENRON usually fired 10 percent of workers every year, workers felt pressured to buy stock to show a commitment to the firm.

I don't think the supporters of this bill are doing this for nefarious reasons. I'm sure they find my reference to ENRON hyperbolic. They might also say that it's irrelevant since ENRON was a public company and we are talking about private companies.

So, let's talk about Palantir Technonologies. This $20 billion company convinced top-tier engineers to accept below-market salaries by promising them generous stock options. But some employees who accepted this bargain, hoping to make money on selling their shares, cannot sell them. The only buyer of their stocks is Palantir Technologies themselves--or a buyer approved by Palantir Technologies.

Palantir is not a small firm. Palantir is the third biggest American tech startup, behind only Uber and AIRbnb. It was also founded in 2004, which makes Palantir as old as Facebook. Which is a long time to wait to cash in your options.

Pushing employees to own more of employer's stock exposes workers, like George Maddox, to put all their retirement eggs in one basket-- what we call ``concentration risk.''

I just can't support a bill that gives employees fewer protections than investors. I can't support a bill that encourages employees to possibly forego cash in their paychecks in exchange for some unverified investment option. We should not make it easier for employers to pressure workers to choose options over salary without adequate disclosures.

I ask this Congress to stop doing the bidding of corporate America until we address the priorities of American families and workers. We should increase wages and access to affordable housing, provide clean air and clean water, and protect our privacy

Vote no on H.R. 1343.

I would like to include in the Record an article from BuzzFeed News regarding ex-Palantir employees struggling to sell their shares:

[From BuzzFeed News, Oct. 28, 2016]

Ex-Palantir Employees are Struggling To Sell Their Shares

``Demand has evaporated'' for the shares that make up the

bulk of Palantir's pay packages, and the company's CEO seems

aware of financial angst among his staff.

Former employees of one of Silicon Valley's most valuable

startups are struggling to cash out of the stock options that

formed a major part of their pay packages.

As it grew into a $20 billion company, Palantir

Technologies convinced top-tier engineers to accept salaries

considered meager by Silicon Valley standards, pairing the

relatively low wages with generous stock option grants. But

some former employees who accepted this bargain, banking on a

future windfall, are now complaining that the market for

their stock has gone ``completely dead.''

The complaints add to pressure on Palantir CEO Alex Karp,

who has long contended that the company would avoid the

public markets. This week, Karp acknowledged publicly that he

was ``positioning'' Palantir for an initial public offering,

as part of efforts to reward cash-starved employees.

This reversal didn't come out of the blue. A chorus of

complaints has arisen in a private Facebook group for

Palantir alumni, with many former employees expressing

concern and regret over their inability to sell their shares.

In September and October, two former employees promoted

possible opportunities to join together to sell a block of

shares, including an unsuccessful attempt to organize a sale

in China.

Numerous other former employees shared personal stories:

Some said they needed the cash to buy a house or pay down

debt, while another said they took out a loan to fund the

process of turning the options into shares. One said it was

``infuriating'' trying to sell their shares in a ``crap''

market.

Compared with last year, when the stock was highly sought

after, demand among big investors for Palantir shares has

recently gone cold, two brokers who specialize in startup

shares told BuzzFeed News.

This chill reveals more about the fickle and sometimes

inscrutable nature of markets for startup stock than it does

about the business health of Palantir,'' which makes money by

analyzing data for government and corporate clients But it

has stirred frustration among current and former employees.

A complaint about Palantir's below-market compensation was

the most upvoted question in an internal question-and-answer

session in the first part of this year, with 259 votes from

employees, an internal document reviewed by BuzzFeed News

shows. ``Our cash compensation + bonuses are below the market

for tech and our equity growth has slown significantly,'' the

question, posed anonymously by an employee, said. ``The total

comp is not competitive; even more so due to the

illiquidity.'' The questioner continued, ``Are we planning to

change our compensation model?''

Palantir did move to address such concerns in April,

announcing it would raise salaries for many employees by 20%

and offer to buy back a portion of employee shares.

But on Wednesday, Oct. 26, in another move that seemed

aimed at placating employees and investors, Karp gave the

strongest indication yet that an IPO could be on the

horizon--though it is hardly a certainty. ``We're now

positioning the company so we could go public,'' he said from

the stage of a tech conference hosted by the Wall Street

Journal in Laguna Beach, California. ``I'm not saying we will

go public, but it's a possibility.''

An IPO would provide a payday to major investors, including

Palantir co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel. ``Of course I

want my investors to be happy,'' Karp said, ``but the primary

people I care about are the wide-eyed people at Palantir who

are working day and night.''

A Palantir spokesperson declined to comment.

With a $20 billion valuation, Palantir is the third biggest

American tech startup, behind only Uber and Airbnb. It is

also by far the oldest of that elite group, meaning its

workers have waited a long time for their stock-option

payday. Founded in 2004, Palantir is as old as Facebook--

which went public in 2012. In tech years, it is a generation

older than Airbnb, founded in 2008, and Uber, which was

founded in 2009. The much younger Snapchat, which was founded

in 2011, is reportedly laying plans for an IPO early next

year that could cause its valuation to leapfrog Palantir's.

Stock options have long been central to compensation at

Palantir. A 2015 template for a Palantir offer letter gave

new hires the ability to choose among three different pay

packages, with lower cash salaries corresponding to higher

amounts of stock options. ``It is our hope and belief that

these options will ultimately constitute the bulk of your

overall compensation,'' says this internal Palantir document,

which was reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

To illustrate the potential value of the options, the offer

letter template invites new hires to imagine a scenario in

which Palantir's valuation were to grow to $50 billion, or

$100 billion--or even $200 billion. ``Although the values in

the table below are hypothetical and inherently uncertain, we

want to emphasize our belief in Palantir's potential to

become a $100 billion company,'' the letter says. .

While it waits for this dream to materialize, the company

has sought to ease financial angst among its employees. It

held a ``liquidity event'' this year that gave current and

former employees an opportunity to sell a fraction of their

shares. But Palantir also indicated it wanted to curb share

sales done outside of its official channels, warning that

selling to outsiders could make staff ineligible for future

liquidity events.

That outside market hasn't exactly been humming with deal

activity anyway. Trading in private company shares is opaque

and fragmented, and data is hard to come by. But the two

brokers who spoke with BuzzFeed News said Palantir's prolific

fundraising--the company has raised more than $2.5 billion in

capital, according to data provider PitchBook--may have

dampened investor appetite. A number of big investors who

would want a piece of Palantir already have one, they said.

In May, BuzzFeed News revealed some of the setbacks

Palantir has experienced as it seeks to expand beyond its

roots as a government contractor and woo major corporations.

The article, based on internal documents and insider

interviews, reported that Palantir had lost some blue-chip

corporate clients, was struggling to stem staff departures,

and had recorded revenue that was a fraction of its customer

bookings.

At the conference Wednesday, Karp was asked about those

customer losses, which included Coca-Cola, American Express,

and Nasdaq. ``We date heavily before we marry,'' he answered.

Even before the article was published, members of the

private Facebook group for Palantir alumni voiced concern

about selling their shares in the so-called secondary market.

BuzzFeed News is withholding the names of former employees to

protect their privacy.

``Any 2nd market shares going on right now? My broker

disappeared,'' one former employee posted in April.

``There are still periodic deals happening,'' another

replied. ``One that I know of right now, but it's full

already.''

``Yeah, the demand has evaporated,'' another said.

More recently, however, some of the posts took on an urgent

tone, as sales appeared to grow scarcer. Options are

contracts to buy shares at a certain price; to use them, the

owner must pay this price in addition to applicable taxes--

which can amount to a large bill. What's more, options expire

at a certain point if they're not used, adding time pressure

to the equation.

In the public market, owners of options can easily sell a

portion of their holdings to cover the tax bill and the

exercise price. But this strategy is much trickier in the

private market, and there was some debate in the Facebook

group over whether Polar would even allow it.

In September, one former employee asked the group whether

anyone was ``coming up on their 3-year expiration,''

soliciting advice on ``approaches people are taking given the

less-than-stellar private market.''

Among the replies, one former employee reported taking out

``a personal loan to meet my exercise deadline.''

Another wrote: ``I'm in the same boat: 3 years coming up in

April, market is crap, and I probably don't have the

resources available for a loan. The fact that it's so

difficult to sell is infuriating and I'm wishing that I'd

taken the `high' salary option (which TBH wasn't that high to

begin with).''

``On the same boat,'' wrote another. ``Hoping to buy a

house next year and really couldn't wrap my head around

throwing so much money in addition to the stress and work

needed to process.''

The former employee who started that thread apparently

didn't receive much solace. In response to a later post,

which asked whether there were ``any secondary market sales

brewing,'' this former employee wrote, ``Sorry to be the

bearer of bad news, but the market is completely dead at the

moment.''

This person then quoted an unidentified broker as saying,

``There is absolutely nothing moving in Palantir. People who

have bought through us are trying to sell now. I don't see it

changing without the company changing their tone on an IPO.''

Others in the thread shared snippets of information they

said they had heard from brokers. According to one, a broker

``told me that there are a few `price insensitive' sellers

satisfying what little demand exists.''

Another former employee wrote: ``I'm interested in joining

any sales going down too, I've got a year to pay off a hefty

debt with the proceeds.'' The person added a neutral face

emoji.

With buyers scarce, one former employee tried looking

across the Pacific.

``I spoke to someone that brokers sales in China, they said

they might be willing to get something together if there's

enough of us,'' they wrote above a link to a Google Doc that

asked others to report information about their holdings

One of the repliers questioned whether this process would

actually turn into a sale--potential investors might just be

``fishing for information on prices''--and another cautioned

the original poster against ``acting as an agent for a group

of sellers.'' (The poster said the query was ``just intended

as an interest check.'')

In the end, none of that mattered. ``Not likely to go

anywhere in the next couple of months,'' the former employee

who posted the opportunity wrote later. ``Sorry if I got

anyone's hopes up.''

Early this month, another member of the group posted about

an opportunity to sell options through EquityZen, a startup

that arranges small transactions of private company shares.

This former employee advised others to contact the EquityZen

CEO, providing the CEO's email address. But less than 12

hours later, another former employee replied to say that the

deal ``has been already submitted,'' meaning the opportunity

had passed.

``Dang,'' another member wrote.

Discussions in the group about news related to Palantir

often come back to a familiar theme. In September, for

example, the Department of Labor accused Palantir of

discriminating against Asian job applicants, a claim Palantir

later rejected as ``flawed and illogical.'' In a thread

discussing the allegations, one former employee found a

financial angle.

``I sure hope this isn't an expensive lawsuit for them to

defend,'' this person wrote. ``I don't claim to understand

how the legal system works in cases like this, but geeeeez

this doesn't bode well for any of us looking for liquidity at

a fair price over anytime soon.''

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 99 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of two important measures. First, the resolution provides for consideration of H.R. 428, the Red River Gradient Boundary Survey Act. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, and provides for a motion to recommit.

In addition, the resolution provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 42, providing for congressional disapproval of a rule issued by the Department of Labor with regard to drug testing. The rule provides 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, and provides for a motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 428 is a product of months of negotiation between the States of Texas and Oklahoma and the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Tribes in my district. I am happy to have been able to work with my friend Mr. Thornberry to come up with a fair and equitable solution which all interested parties have agreed to.

As you may know, the Red River serves as the State line separating Oklahoma and Texas. Over time, the river has moved, as much as a mile in some areas, causing landowners' properties to be affected. Instead of working to resolve this, for nearly a century, the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, has been unwilling to survey a small portion of the Federal land along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River between Oklahoma and Texas. H.R. 428 would direct the survey to be completed, using the gradient boundary survey method that was mandated by the Supreme Court, so that ownership of the land, which has been under dispute, can be effectively resolved.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides for the consideration of another Congressional Review Act resolution, which would overturn a Department of Labor rule related to drug testing for those applying for unemployment insurance.

In 2012, the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act made a number of reforms to the unemployment insurance program, including overturning a 1960s-era Department of Labor ban on the screening or testing of unemployment applicants for illegal drugs. The 2012 provision allowed, but did not require, States to test unemployment insurance applicants who either, one, lost their jobs due to drug use or, two, who were seeking new jobs that generally required new employees to pass a drug test. Unfortunately, after 4 years and a now finalized rule, States are no closer to being able to implement this sensible policy. Instead, because of the Department of Labor's overreach, three States which have enacted necessary State law changes to implement this commonsense policy are actually now precluded from moving forward with this sensible, bipartisan policy.

Mr. Speaker, most States already limit unemployment insurance benefits or individuals who refuse to take or fail an employer drug test or who have previous employment issues with drugs. We should empower States, employers, and prospective employees who are looking for work and overturn this onerous regulation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the rule and the underlying legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Obviously, the gentleman and I have some disagreement here, but let's talk for a minute about the form of what we are doing.

The gentleman is correct in that this rule covers two different pieces of legislation that don't have anything substantive in common. However, the legislation itself will be debated separately. We will have one debate on the Oklahoma-Texas issue, which involves the boundary between those two States and the tribal interests that are also intimately part of that. We will have a separate debate on the rule. That is the appropriate way to proceed. There is no reason to have a separate rule for each one of these debates, but it is appropriate, as the gentleman suggested, to have two different debates because they are two different subjects.

I am going to disagree with him--and I am probably being parochial in this sense--for, if you live in Oklahoma, we actually think the border between Oklahoma and Texas is pretty important. This is an issue that, frankly, was dealt with legislatively last year. This body did not vote out the bill. I actually opposed it last year because it did not take care of the tribal interests involved and they had not been suitably dealt with. We amended the bill. Actually, I should say it was brought up, but it was not taken up by the Senate. We changed it, but we kept working for many months. Chairman Thornberry is the person who deserves most of the credit here of trying to bring the parties together.

Also, just by way of explanation so everybody is clear, this does not settle the issue. This doesn't force anything on the Federal Government or the two States or the tribes. It simply creates a common database. The two States have been asking for a complete survey of the contested area for many years. The BLM has refused to do that. You simply can't sort through this problem of a shifting border--set well over a century ago--with conflicting tribal interests if you don't have a common set of data here. So that is all that is being done here.

I can assure you that, certainly, the tribes in question would not have consented to go forward if they had thought they were having a solution imposed on them. What they think they are getting is a database that will allow them to determine exactly what their interests and rights here are and, hopefully, negotiate that with the two States in question; but, if necessary, they will litigate the issue.

So we see this as a reasonable effort to bring parties together where there is a great deal of confusion through nobody's fault. And we think the BLM has been lax here and, frankly, may well be claiming things beyond its authority. But the survey, again, will hopefully take care of that. So I hope that eases the concerns that people have.

In terms of the drug rule, we see this as an issue where Congress made its intent in 2012 very clear, that is, we wanted States to have options to make these decisions for themselves. We think the Department of Labor rule made that more, rather than less, difficult.

We can argue over the merits of any individual treatment of people that have used illegal drugs or what the appropriate testing measure is or whatever. I happen to think those decisions are best made at the State level where you have got interested parties that are more knowledgeable about local conditions than us dictating a one size fits all. So we just simply disagree on that.

Finally, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) mentioned some concerns about the speed with which we are acting and also the form with which we are acting. The form, frankly, is basically dictated by statute.

The Congressional Review Act dictates the manner in which we can bring these items on rules to the floor, the timetable which we can operate under. If we alter that over here, then, frankly, we lose privilege status in the Senate and the chances of succeeding actually diminish pretty greatly.

We think, in this case, the issues are pretty clear. These aren't really things that need to be amended. We need to decide whether or not the regulation is appropriate or not. If you think it is, you should vote in favor of keeping the regulation as it is and against this effort.

If, on the other hand, you would like to see decisionmaking devolve down to the States and where we think better decisions will be made, then, you should vote in favor of the rule and the underlying legislation.

So, again, I don't think these issues are overly complex. I do think this is an important time to deal with them. Again, we have a limited period of time on the Congressional Review Act. We have a certain format. We think we are abiding within both that timeframe and that format.

On the Oklahoma-Texas border issue, it is a knotty issue. It has been around for decades. There have been multiple efforts to deal with it. Most of them have faltered because we have not had the various parties arguing from a common database as to what their positions are. We have asked the Bureau of Land Management repeatedly to survey the affected area. They decided they didn't want to do that.

In this case, Congress says: Look, we have two sovereign States and three sovereign Indian tribes here that have a concern. We want them to be able to work it through. We want them to draw on a common set of data. So we are going to essentially make sure that that happens and hopefully we can avoid a protracted court case between the States and the Indian tribes and actually resolve an issue that needs to be had.

There are literally thousands of people along this border that are not certain whether or not they own the land that they have actually been farming, in some cases, for generations. There are three Indian tribes that have historic rights to this land that predate, frankly, the existence of Texas as a State and certainly the existence of Oklahoma as a State. They want to make sure their mineral rights issues and their land issues are appropriately handled, and they want to preserve their rights going forward if they want to litigate. Again, they need this kind of data to make those sorts of determinations.

I commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry). I, again, look forward to working with my good friend from Florida (Mr. Hastings) on these issues.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Actually, I listened with a great deal of interest to the debate from my friends on the other side. None of it had very much to do with the rule or with the underlying legislation that we are going to discuss shortly, so I don't pretend to be an expert on the issues.

I do point out, simply in passing, that it really is up to the President of the United States as to whose advice he or she wants to take. Frankly, you know, to say that there aren't ``political people on the National Security Agency,'' with all due respect to a Chief of Staff that I admire profoundly, I think Leon Panetta is one of the great Chiefs of Staff to ever serve any President, but I would tell you that he is a pretty political guy. He was in this body, and one of his jobs was to help make sure the President of the United States was reelected. So there was a political dimension to what he did.

I don't know Mr. Bannon. I have never met him. I don't pretend to be familiar with him or his thinking. I do know that he is a valued adviser to the President of the United States. And if the President of the United States is going to seek advice from somebody--and it may be in these areas of national security--frankly, personally, I would prefer them to be part of the National Security Council, simply to have the educated debate of some of the very best professionals that we have and so that their opinion, when they advise the President, is fully formed. Again, I see this as the President's decision, not some enormous departure.

On occasions, Mr. Axelrod, who was not a chief of staff who was primarily a political counsel, did sit in on national security meetings at the request of the President. So, again, we can have this argument. I am not sure it is particularly relevant to the legislation. But at the end of the day, I want anybody advising the President of the United States--and he gets to make that choice--to get the best information they can possibly receive so that that advice is well-informed.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), who is here to offer some important thoughts about some of the issues that are involved in the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just want to point out for the record, Mr. Speaker, that actually this rule that we are trying to repeal, the measure we are trying to instate, doesn't force drug testing on anybody; and that is not going to happen in any State, unless the people in the State decide that that is something they want to do. I am quite content to let people in any State make that decision.

I think in my State, I am pretty certain that the people who I am privileged to represent would be very upset if they thought somebody was receiving unemployment compensation while they were on drugs, because they think

that is going to make it pretty hard for that person to ever get back into the workforce, and they want to be able to identify that. They don't want to incentivize it.

Other people may have a different opinion, and that is legitimate. It is a big country. That is why our Founding Fathers adopted a Federal system, so I wouldn't begrudge another State that saw it differently.

What we are trying to avoid here is a one-size-fits-all or this body and any administration dictating to every State what they ought to do.

Frankly, I would suggest that my good friend's remarks suggest that is the concern, that they actually want to decide in Oklahoma what we would do. We are not trying to decide in Connecticut what our friends would do. We are just thinking this ought to be down to the States.

That was the intent of Congress. When this was written, it was to empower the States to allow them to pursue policies they thought were appropriate. Frankly, if they do that and they pursue different policies, which they may well, we may actually learn something out of this. Again, that is part of the genius of our system, having 50 different laboratories out there.

But let's not have a bureaucracy decide that it will circumvent the will of the Congress of the United States and write a rule that is clearly meant to undo the intent of a legislation that was passed across this floor with bipartisan support.

Again, we just disagree on the issue, but, for the record, we are not trying to impose our beliefs. We are trying to let every State do what that State thinks they ought to do.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly prepared to close if my friend is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out again that, while my friend is correct, we have two different pieces of legislation under a single rule, and those legislations, as my friend points out, are not particularly related. As a matter of fact, they are not related to one another in any way. Each piece of legislation will receive a separate debate and a separate vote on the House floor. There was simply no reason to have two rules when one would suffice for two bills that basically need to come into the same format, in our view.

I also point out that, when we are talking about the vote under the Congressional Review Act, we are actually following a form prescribed in statute, and we are moving at a pace that the law dictates and that, frankly, is necessary in order to retain the privileged status of the legislation in the United States Senate. So nothing unusual here, other than we are actually being pretty productive and undoing a lot of rules that, frankly, we think were misguided and rushed into the final days of the last administration.

My friends are free to disagree with that, but I think the issues are pretty clear, pretty easy to decide, and don't require a great deal of amendments.

On the Oklahoma-Texas issue, and that is something I know a little bit about since it affects my district, last year, when we considered this legislation, we actually did have an amendment. It was my amendment, and my amendment that probably made it unacceptable in the Senate. But I was indulged by my chairman of the Rules Committee, and for the very important reason that we actually make sure that the tribes have an opportunity to be at the table. In this case, they do.

Mr. Thornberry has worked very hard, and so there is no dispute between the delegations in Oklahoma, the delegations in Texas, the interests of the various Indian tribes. Everybody agrees that we need a common set of information, a common survey that we can all trust to, frankly, work out the differences here that have multiplied over a century as the border has literally shifted. So that is the appropriate thing to do. We don't need a lot of amendments on that.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to encourage all Members to support the rule. H.R. 428 is a fair and equitable solution which all interested parties have agreed upon and which can provide certainty that many landowners have sought along the Oklahoma-Texas border.

In addition, H.J. Res. 42 undoes a regulation that should have never been made in the first place. By preventing implementation of this regulation, we can ensure that those actively looking for work are provided with the support necessary to reach that goal.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to take a point of personal privilege. This is the last time my good friend and my staff member, Mr. Waskiewicz, will be on the floor with me. He has been with me for 6\1/2\ years. He has made a smart career move and is moving on to the Budget Committee, a more august position.

But I have had the good fortune, as I know my friends have and we all have, to have very many wonderful staff members over the years. I have never had a better staff member than Steve Waskiewicz, never had a better friend, never had a harder worker, never had anybody who was more selfless in putting the interests of our office and the constituents whom we are privileged to represent ahead of all else. So I want to commend and thank him publicly and on the record for his wonderful service.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the so- called healthcare bill coming out of the House of Representatives which has been supported by the President.

We just yesterday got the report from the Congressional Budget Office which analyzes this legislation and its impact on Americans. What we find in great detail and with great clarity is that this TrumpCare legislation is a huge tax windfall to the wealthiest Americans at the expense of affordable healthcare for tens of millions of our fellow citizens. It is time the Senate begin to pay attention to what is happening in this legislation.

Someone might look at this and now call it not ``TrumpCare'' but ``Trump doesn't care'' because what we find out is that in the very first year, in 2018, 14 million Americans will lose their health coverage--14 million in the very first year this is implemented. Those are moms, dads, kids, people of all ages--our fellow Americans. Just 2 years after that, beginning in 2020, we are going to see 21 million of our fellow citizens lose their access to health coverage. Let me be clear. When we say they lose their access to affordable care, we are talking about compared to what they have right now under the Affordable Care Act, under ObamaCare. So in the year 2020, 21 million Americans who have access to affordable care through the Affordable Care Act are going to lose it, and within 10 years, that will rise to 24 million of our fellow citizens.

Not only are those millions of Americans going to lose their health care in the early years of this new plan, people are going to see their premiums spike in the individual market. We have heard understandable complaints about the increase in premiums in the Affordable Care Act exchanges. There are commonsense things we can do to fix it. Many of us have put forward proposals to do that, but this will actually dramatically spike up to 20 percent premiums in those markets in the early years. Who gets especially hard hit? Well, older Americans. Americans between 47 years old and 64 years old, before they are old enough to receive Medicare but when they are old enough to be potentially experiencing many healthcare issues.

In fact, if you look at the Congressional Budget Office report, and I know people sometimes gloss over the fine print, but table 4 indicates that if you are a 64-year-old with an income of $26,000 a year, your premium is going to increase from $1,700 a year to a whopping $14,600 per year. That is in the Congressional Budget Office report, but you know what, AARP, they believe it. They are on full alert, letting Americans throughout the country know how damaging this will be to older Americans who will, all of a sudden, see their premiums, their copays, and their deductibles going through the roof. It is going to become absolutely unaffordable for those older Americans to get health insurance.

On top of that, despite what we all know is an opioid crisis in the country, an epidemic of substance abuse and addiction, despite that, this TrumpCare bill actually eliminates the Medicaid funding specifically to deal with opioid addiction. I know many members of the Senate and the House have been going back home, going to all parts of their States, urban areas, suburban and rural areas, to talk about the scourge of opioid addiction, and many have been talking about the fact that the Senate was able to work to increase funding to address those addiction issues, but this House bill, this TrumpCare bill, actually eliminates the Medicaid Program for opioid abuse and addiction.

The list of horribles goes on and on. They claim you are going to be able to get coverage--no problem if you have preexisting conditions or whatever. The reality is, let's say you have a job, let's say you lose your job, let's say you lose your income because you lost your job, you only have 63 days to turn around and get insurance, which may not be affordable. If you are not able to find your insurance, an affordable insurance plan in those 63 days, when you finally do, they are going to charge you a 30-percent penalty. So you lost your job. You have no income so you can't afford insurance. Yet, when you are finally in a position to do it, they are going to charge you a penalty of 30 percent.

The more you dig into this TrumpCare legislation, the more things like that you find out. It is really important that the American people know what is in it as we debate this important issue.

Women's health. The TrumpCare bill directly goes after women's access to affordable healthcare, including their defunding of Planned Parenthood. I think all of us know that in many parts of our country, Planned Parenthood clinics are the only viable source of healthcare for women who are looking for cancer screening, breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, and other preventive healthcare measures.

As we read this report from the Congressional Budget Office that just came out yesterday, we are getting a better idea of why the House of Representatives was so eager to rush this through the committees-- rushed it through the Ways and Means Committee, rushed it through the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House--because apparently it is a lot easier to vote for a piece of legislation when you don't know the consequences. Apparently it is easier to say yes to this bill when you don't know that it will deny healthcare coverage to 24 million Americans, spike premiums over the next couple of years, eliminate other important coverages for our fellow Americans, but people don't have that excuse anymore.

They tried to rush it through. They got it through those two committees. Willful ignorance allowed them to have those votes and it passed those committees, but now we have, from the

Congressional Budget Office, a comprehensive and thorough analysis of the impact on our fellow Americans. It hurts. It hurts a lot. Now, I recall, and I think the American public recalls, that during the campaign on ``60 Minutes,'' Candidate Trump said:

I'm going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it

costs me votes or not. Everybody is going to be taken care of

much better than they are taken care of now.

Well, you tell that to the 14 million Americans who are going to lose their health insurance in 2018. You tell that to the 64-year-old who would be paying $14,000 in premiums a year, up from $1,700 under the Affordable Care Act. You tell that to people who are suffering from opioid abuse in all parts of our country when the Medicaid Program no longer has to provide coverage for substance abuse.

That is not taking care of ``everybody.'' That is leaving tens of millions of Americans behind. That was during the campaign. Here is what we heard from President Trump in January, this year. He is going to provide ``insurance for everybody.'' That is just not so, unless what you are saying is we are going to offer you a totally unaffordable insurance plan.

By the way, if you happen to have enough money, you can pay for it. It is kind of like saying to somebody: You know what, that Rolls Royce or that Lamborghini, that is available for purchase, but most of us just don't have the money to afford that kind of purchase. In that theoretical sense, you may argue that health insurance is available, but the Congressional Budget Office did not look at theories. They looked at facts. They looked at the impact on real Americans and concluded that 14 million would lose their access in 2018, rising to 24 million over the next decade.

Despite the fact that on March 9 President Trump tweeted that ``it will end in a beautiful picture,'' that is not a beautiful picture for tens of millions of Americans who will be left behind by this series of broken promises, broken promises and betrayal from President Trump. As he campaigned around the country, he promised coverage for everybody, affordable coverage. We would all love it.

Now we have the hard facts. So it was quite a spectacle to see the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, trying to run away from the facts in the Congressional Budget Office report. He got up and said, you know, he does not really believe the Congressional Budget Office report.

Well, the reality is that Tom Price, when he was Congressman Price, when he was the chairman on the House Budget Committee, along with Senator Enzi, helped pick the current Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Keith Hall. I know that because I was the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. I was part of the interview process. You know, they let us come along, but the reality is, at the end of the day, he was picked by Secretary Tom Price.

Here is what Tom Price said about the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. He said:

Keith Hall--

That is the Director--

will bring an impressive level of economic expertise and

experience to the Congressional Budget Office. Throughout his

career, he has served in both the public and private sector

under Presidents of both parties and in roles that make him

well suited to lead the Congressional Budget Office.

He goes on to praise the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. I know the Presiding Officer and our colleagues have experience understanding how important it is to have a nonpartisan referee in the Congressional Budget Office. Otherwise, it is anything goes. Senators get to make up their own facts. I know we have a White House and a President that has invented the term ``alternative facts'' and ``alternative reality'' and ``alternative universe,'' but here in the Congress, we have prided ourselves in knowing there is some referee on the field when it comes to the Congressional Budget Office. We don't agree with every single conclusion they have, but we don't work to discredit them. It really is a discredit to the Secretary of HHS that having praised and picked the current Director of CBO, he would now attack that institution simply because he does not like the results of their analysis.

I would not like the results either because they show how devastating TrumpCare is for the American people. It shows what a total betrayal of the President's promises TrumpCare is to the American people. It is not just the Congressional Budget Office analysis that has reached that conclusion. He is going to also go after AARP because they are on full alert, and they are calling all their members to say this is a really bad bill for tens of millions of Americans, especially older Americans, people in the range of 47 years old to 64 years old, before they get on Medicare.

The American Hospital Association and hospitals in all parts of our country, and especially rural hospitals, areas Candidate Trump campaigned heavily in, are letting their members know the devastating consequences of this TrumpCare bill. The American Medical Association, the people who are providing health care to our fellow citizens, they are letting people know how damaging this will be.

So we have a wide array of Americans who are in the position, and it is their job to provide health care to the American public, who say: Whoa, this is harmful to your health. This is a danger to the healthcare of the American people. It is not simply the numbers, it is also the people and faces behind those numbers.

From Maryland, I got a note from Jenny from Salisbury. That is in Eastern Maryland. That is a rural part of our State. She said:

I have a rare progressive lung disease. With good care I

may live 30 more years. Without it, I may live 5 or 10, sick

and disabled. I remember high-risk pools and preexisting

conditions exclusions. I need the ACA. I may die without it

and I am afraid for my life.

Here is Gail from Annapolis:

I'm very concerned with the repeal of the Affordable Care

Act. It helps the disability community. Our adult daughter

who has a severe cognitive disability will be relying on

Medicaid for health services after my husband retires this

summer at age 70 with a second-time recurrence of lymphoma. I

don't know what you can do, but this is a concern as aging

parents find their special-needs adult child may not have

coverage as she loses her family's ability to support her

healthcare.

The letters go on and on from all parts of Maryland and all parts of the country. What adds insult to injury is that all these Americans are going to be harmed, the 24 million who will lose their healthcare coverage, those who will experience spikes in their premiums and copays, the older Americans--47 to 64--who are going to see gigantic increases in their costs so they are not going to be able to afford healthcare anymore, those in rural areas and urban areas in all parts of our country who are suffering from opioid abuse but Medicaid is no longer going to cover it. All of that harm is being done to tens of millions of our fellow citizens in order to give this huge tax break to the wealthiest Americans and special interests, including insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry.

The Congressional Budget Office report is pretty clear--$590 billion in tax cuts. Do you know what the top one-tenth of 1 percent income earners will get in terms of tax cuts? An average tax cut of $200,000. Millionaires will get an average tax cut of $50,000. There is even a provision in here that says to insurance companies: We are going to subsidize the bonuses you pay to CEOs. You are now going to be able to deduct the multimillion-dollar bonuses you pay to your CEOs. We are going to do that so that fewer people can have health coverage.

We get rid of the fee on insurance companies that helps to provide access to millions of Americans.

It is simply grotesque that we see this legislation getting as far as it has. We know why they tried to move it so quickly without a Congressional Budget Office report--because this report is devastating. It should be the final nail in the coffin of TrumpCare, and we should all, frankly, be a little embarrassed by a proposal that provides $590 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and some of the most powerful special interests at the expense of healthcare for so many of our fellow citizens.

We have to say no to this plan. We have to say no to TrumpCare. And let's get about doing our business. There are some issues we can deal with, with the Affordable Care Act, but you don't destroy it while giving these tax breaks

to the wealthiest Americans in order to do our job.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to H.J. Res. 42 today, a bill in search of a problem. Back in 2012, Congress passed legislation to extend temporary unemployment insurance as our country worked to recover from the recession. That legislation included a bipartisan compromise that allowed States to drug test people applying for unemployment compensation if they were fired from their previous job for drug use or they were pursuing employment in a field that regularly required drug testing for safety reasons. The Department of Labor was charged with determining those occupations.

This guidance is critical because courts have twice ruled against States who implemented blanket testing for TANF benefits. Without probably cause, they ruled that such testing violated constitutional rights. By overriding the Department of Labor's rule, States are left in confusion.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle might argue that the authority to drug test is important to help save money in the program. There is no clear evidence that this is the case. There is also no convincing evidence of rampant drug use among beneficiaries. States have engaged in drug testing for TANF recipients with remarkably few results. In Oklahoma in 2015, nearly 90 percent of those required to take a drug test had a negative result for drug use. In fiscal year 2014, Utah's drug testing returned just 18 positive results. As of 2016, only 0.1 percent of all applicants for Tennessee's cash assistance program tested positive.

We all acknowledge an opioid crisis in our communities. Instead of using resources to help people access treatment programs, we are debating creating costly drug testing programs that have failed to produce significant results in States where they have been tried. Over in the House, they are considering TrumpCare, which would erode drug treatment coverage. We should be working to address this tragedy, not spending time on wasteful and damaging measures like these. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, the value of companies doesn't always go up. It is not true that the stock market always goes up and only goes up. It would be nice if Methuselahs at Google and every other company in America could get stock options and end up millionaires, but the truth is the world doesn't work that way. That is why disclosure is very important. That is why there is nothing wrong and no one objects to employees being compensated with stock options, but those employees ought to at least know the value of those stock options.

If you give me a check and it has a monetary value, I can read it and I know how much it is. If you give me stock options and you don't tell me because you don't have to disclose how much they are worth, then that is not fair, and that is what we object to.

This bill simply allows companies to avoid disclosure to employees of what those stock options are worth. That is wrong, and that is why we oppose it.

Let me just start in terms of the context, Mr. Speaker. Today we consider yet another bill in favor of the moneyed interests. Today we consider another bill that basically helps out people who have a lot while so many Americans are struggling to get by and problems abound almost everywhere.

I have got to wonder, of all the things the American public want, why is a revision to the SEC's rule--section 701, to be precise--the priority for this week?

We have been here for about 3 months now. The Republicans have set

the agenda. They are in the majority. They get to decide which bills come up. Why do they keep on bringing up bills that only the moneyed interests want?

Mr. Speaker, in the past few months, congressional Republicans--I almost called them corporate Republicans--who decide which bills are the priority, have brought forth a hodgepodge of pieces of legislation. I will just review a few.

Republicans made it easier to drug test people receiving unemployment compensation.

Do you think the unemployed want that?

I doubt it.

Republicans have passed and the President even signed a law to protect corporate firms from having to disclose labor violations like wage theft before winning government contracts. I have got a feeling the employees were not calling for that.

House and Senate Republicans passed laws that allow internet service providers to sell your browser history. I don't think most folks on the internet today were clamoring for that gem, which I was proud to vote ``no'' on.

Republicans enacted a new law making it easier to dump coal debris near rivers and streams.

Republicans stopped efforts to help governments around the world avoid corruption.

H.J. Res. 41 removed the requirement that corporations disclose resource payments to foreign governments, which is a crushing blow to democracy activists working in fragile nations.

Mr. Speaker, this particular piece of legislation comes within a certain kind of context--a context where we are not talking about increase in pay, making people safer, making water cleaner, making foreign governments more honest. It is quite the opposite.

In the 3 months that we have been back in Congress, these laws removing competition, removing disclosure, and removing consumer privacy are all priorities of Republicans, who set the agenda.

Mr. Speaker, people who might be clued into this broadcast today need to know what the majority has been up to. It has not been up to business.

These are all multinational corporate interests that don't punish people for polluting, allow them to sell your internet browser's history, allow them to make money off of testing laid-off workers receiving employment compensation that is due them, and don't make corporate interests disclose payments to foreign governments when they drill for oil and minerals.

I just want the American people and Members to understand what is going on here, what is the larger context of this piece of legislation that we look at today.

When I talk to my constituents, they don't bring up any of this stuff. Mr. Speaker, they want to know: Where is the jobs bill? When are we going to get back to work? Somebody said we were going to work on real infrastructure, real fair trade. When is that going to happen?

Well, the people who are in charge around here, I guess they are going to get around to it at some point.

My constituents say: Can't we raise the minimum wage from something higher than $7.25 an hour, which is the Federal minimum wage? When is that bill coming up? Or, what about reconstructing our roads and our bridges and allowing us to raise a gas tax to invest in our Nation's infrastructure?

They say they want to increase skills. Let's invest in preschool, Pell grants, and community college. Let's put the people, not the corporate wish list, first.

Today we are asked to vote on a bill that basically makes it easier for private companies to provide options, like stocks, rather than compensation to their employees. As I have said, fundamentally, this may not be a bad thing if disclosure is made. This bill makes it not required. This bill makes it easier for firms to offload some of their options to employees without disclosing financial information to them.

While I am glad to see employers reward employees with stock and other compensation in addition to salaries, workers should be told the value of the compensation they receive. I don't think that is asking too much, Mr. Speaker.

With this bill, H.R. 1343, it is possible that employees would be promised stock options which could be worth less than promised or even completely worthless.

Employees could decide to forego a salary increase and accept lower pay in order to receive more stock options; yet, those stock options could be worth way less than they expected.

Why should employees receive less information than any other minority shareholder?

If an employee is trusted enough to run day-to-day aspects of the business, they should be trusted enough to receive full disclosure about the stock. Employees should be able to receive information on the financial position of the company so they can make an educated decision.

It is not difficult to allow participating employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, and it can't be because these disclosures are an additional burden on the firm. These firms prepare these types of disclosures to receive rule 701 exemption from the SEC in the first place.

So I am also concerned about the mismatch of power between corporations and their employees, and I am very concerned that employees can be susceptible to pressure. Let me do a quick example.

George Maddox was one of 21,000 people who worked for Enron. After working at Enron for 30 years, he had 14,000 shares of company stock valued at $1.3 million. When Enron collapsed, he had literally nothing, Mr. Speaker. All of his retirement was Enron stocks. If you haven't watched the movie ``Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room'' recently, I would urge you to watch it again. You could also read Bethany McLean's book by the same name.

One image consistently stuck with me: a staff rally where leaders extolled the virtues of the firm. Just as we heard on the other side of the aisle a moment ago, leaders whipped employees into a frenzy to buy Enron stock, even as leaders knew it was worthless. In fact, corporate leaders had already sold their stock while urging employees to buy. Enron had a strategy of buying companies and then pressuring new employees to buy Enron stock to keep the stock price inflated. Since Enron usually fired 10 percent of the workers every year, workers felt pressured to buy stock to show commitment to the firm.

I can't just support a bill that gives employees fewer protections than investors. I can't support a bill that encourages employees to possibly forgo cash in their paychecks in exchange for some unverified investment option. It is not right.

Mr. Speaker, I see you reaching for the gavel. I will include the rest of my comments in the Record. I urge a ``no'' vote on this particular piece of legislation until it allows for disclosures.

Today we consider another bill requested by corporations.

But, I got to wonder, of all the things the American public want, why is a revision to the Securities and Exchange Commission rules--Section 701 to be precise--the priority for this week?

We've been here for three months now.

House Republicans set the agenda.

They lead this governing body.

Why do they keep bringing us bills that corporate America wants?

In the past few months, Congressional Republicans, who decide which bills are priorities have brought forward a hodgepodge of corporate requests.

Here are some of the bills that are now law.

Republicans made it easier to drug test people receiving unemployment compensation (H.J. Res. 42).

Republicans passed--and the President signed--a law to protect corporate firms from having to disclose labor violations--like wage theft--before winning government contracts (H.J. Res. 37).

House and Senate Republicans passed laws that allow internet services providers to sell your browser history.

Republicans enacted a new law making it easier to dump coal debris near rivers and streams (H.J. Res. 38).

Republicans stopped efforts to help governments around the world avoid corruption.

H.J. Res. 41 removed the requirement that corporations disclose resource payments to foreign governments.

Which is a crushing blow to democracy activists working in fragile nations.

And, a law preventing State governments from setting up retirement plans for residents who do not have a work-based plan.

So, in the three months we've been back, these laws--removing competition, disclosure, and consumer privacy--are the priorities of Republicans who set the agenda.

These are all asks of corporate America--don't punish us for polluting streams; let us sell your internet browser history; let us make money drug testing laid off workers receiving unemployment due them, and; don't make us disclose our payments to foreign governments when we drill for oil or minerals.

When I talk to my constituents, they don't ask for any of these.

They say, ``Where's the jobs bill?''

My constituents say, can't we raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour?

They say, our roads and bridges need work. Let's raise the gas tax a skoch and invest in infrastructure?

They say, we want to increase our skills; let's invest in pre-school, Pell grants and community colleges.

Let's put people, not corporate wish lists--first.

But, nope, today we are asked to vote on a bill that makes it easier for private companies to provide options--like stocks--rather than compensation to their employees.

This bill makes it easier for firms to offload some of their options to their employees without disclosing financial information to them.

While I'm glad to see companies reward employees with stock and other compensation in addition to salaries, workers should be told the value of the compensation they receive.

With this bill--H.R. 1343--it is possible that employees would be promised stock options which could be worth less than promised, or even, completely worthless.

So, employees could decide to forego a salary increase--or accept lower pay--in order to receive more stock options, yet, those stock options could be worth way less than expected.

Why should employees receive less information than that of any other minority shareholder?

If an employee is trusted enough to run the day-to-day aspects of the business, they should be trusted enough to receive full disclosure about the stock.

Employees should be able to receive information on the financial position of the company so they can make an educated decision.

It's not difficult to allow participating employees to sign non- disclosure agreements.

And it can't be because these disclosures are an additional burden on the firm.

Because these companies prepared these types of disclosures to receive the Rule 701 exemption from the SEC in the first place.

I'm also concerned about the mismatch in power between the corporations and their employees.

I am very concerned that employees can be more susceptible to pressure to take options instead of salary increases.

For example, we could ask George Maddox.

George was one of the 21,000 people who worked at ENRON.

After working at ENRON for 30 years, he had 14,000 shares of company stock. It was valued at $1.3 million.

Then ENRON collapsed, and he had literally nothing.

All his retirement was in ENRON stocks.

If you haven't watched the movie ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room recently, I'd urge you to watch it again.

You could also read Bethany McLean's book by the same name.

One image has consistently stuck with me.

A staff rally where leadership extolled the virtues of the firm.

Leaders whipped employees into a frenzy to buy ENRON stock even as the leaders knew it was worthless.

In fact, corporate leaders had already sold their stock while urging employees to buy.

ENRON had a strategy of buying companies and then pressuring the new employees to buy ENRON stock to keep the stock price inflated.

And since ENRON usually fired 10% of workers every year, workers felt pressured to buy stock to show a commitment to the firm.

I just can't support a bill that gives employees fewer protections than investors.

I can't support a bill that encourages employees to possibly forego cash in their paychecks in exchange for some unverified investment option.

I don't think the supporters of this bill are doing this for nefarious reasons.

I'm sure they find my reference to Enron hyperbolic.

They might also say that it's irrelevant since Enron was a public company and we are talking about private companies.

So, let's talk about Palantir Technologies.

This $20 billion company convinced top-tier engineers to accept below-market salaries by promising them generous stock options.

But some employees who accepted this bargain, hoping to make money on selling their shares, cannot sell them.

The only buyer of their stocks is Palantir Technologies themselves-- or a buyer approved by Palantir Technologies.

Palantir is not a small firm.

Palantir is the third biggest American tech startup, behind only Uber and AIR B-N-B.

It was also founded in 2004, which makes Palantir as old as Facebook--which is a long time to wait to cash in your options.

Pushing employees to own more of employer's stock exposes workers-- like George Maddox--to put all their retirement eggs in one basket-- what we call ``concentration risk.''

I ask this Congress to stop doing the bidding of corporate America until we address the priorities of American families and workers.

We should increase wages and access to affordable housing, provide clean air and clean water, and protect our privacy.

We should not make it easier for employers to pressure workers to choose options over salary without adequate disclosures. Vote no on