Justice for Victims of Confidential Informant Crime Act of 2017

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I want to talk for a moment about something that is on the minds of anybody in this country who is making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 too much to have a subsidy to pay for your healthcare insurance and maybe are paying $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 of that salary for your insurance this year and who has heard from a lot of people that on October 1, the insurance companies are going to announce that your premium is going up. That is whom I would like to talk with today.

Specifically, let me use the example of a woman named Marty in Tennessee. She came up to me before Christmas at the Chick-fil-A on Charlotte Road in Nashville, and she stopped me while I was getting my mac and cheese at Chick-fil-A, and she said: My name is Marty. I am a self-employed farmer. A few years ago, my health insurance was $300 a month, today it is $1,300 a month, and I cannot afford that.

Well, in Tennessee, prices for health insurance for people who work and don't get any subsidy to help them buy their insurance and don't get insurance on the job, they don't get it from Medicare or Medicaid, people who work, the self-employed farmer, the contractor, the plumber, the songwriter, somebody who might be making $60,000, say--they are like Marty. They are paying $20,000 for their health insurance, and they cannot afford that.

I told Marty: I think we have a Christmas present for you. I think Congress, when we pass the omnibus spending bill, is going to include in it a set of policies we have that is going to lower your rates when they are announced on October 1 of next year, which is 2018.

Well, unfortunately, we had a continuing resolution at the end of the year, and Marty didn't get her Christmas present. Then I thought she might get a Valentine's present, and we went by Valentine's Day and did another CR, a continuing resolution.

Now we have until the end of next week to fund the government for the year we are halfway through. I am on the floor today, and I can say to Marty and to every plumber, songwriter, self-employed person in this country, someone who might be between jobs, that if the Congress will act, we can lower their rates next year for up to as much as 40 percent--40 percent. That is according to Oliver Wyman, one of the leading healthcare consulting firms in this country, which announced on Monday that a set of policies which we call Alexander-Murray-Collins-Nelson, which President Trump supports, which Congressman Walden, who is the chairman of the House committee in this area, supports, which Senator McConnell supports, which I support--we have broad support for this. This policy we have been working on for months, according to Oliver Wyman, over the next 3 years, assuming States take full advantage of all the options we are giving them, could lower rates by 40 percent.

What does that mean? That means that if you are paying $20,000 for your health insurance--you are that $60,000-a-year plumber--that is 40 percent of $20,000, which, by my math, is $8,000. So that would cut your insurance to $12,000, and you get down toward something you might be able to afford. Can you imagine anything more frightening than approaching next year knowing that you might not be able to afford health insurance for your family? You are thinking: Well, look, I am doing everything I am supposed to. The government has not gotten me on any kind of subsidy to buy health insurance. I am out here working. I am paying my taxes. Maybe I got a little tax cut that the Republicans put through last year, but the thing that is really a problem for me is my health insurance. If I am making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year, I cannot afford $15,000, $20,000, or $25,000 a year.

If you are a farmer in Iowa or a miner in Alaska or a songwriter in Nashville, you can't afford that, and you shouldn't have to, and you won't have to if Congress will act next week to accept the set of policies that I am about to briefly describe.

There are three things we propose to do. The most important is 3 years of reinsurance or the invisible risk pool. This is an idea that House Republicans have strongly supported and that Senator Collins and Senator Nelson have strongly supported here. It would allow more States to do what the State of Alaska has done. The Presiding Officer is from Alaska. Alaska took the very sickest people in Alaska and put them in one pool and called that the reinsurance pool and paid for their health insurance. When they did that, it so reduced the cost for everybody else that it lowered the rates for everybody else by 20 percent. What we are talking about is lowering the rate for everybody else by 40 percent if States take full advantage of what we are proposing next week. So reinsurance is the first thing--3 years of reinsurance at $10 billion a year.

The second thing is 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies. You have to stop and think about it a minute, but the cost-sharing subsidies pay for the reinsurance. Cost-sharing subsidies are payments that are made to insurance companies to pay for the copays and the deductibles for low-income people, and that allows the companies to reduce the premiums. When you reduce the premiums, you reduce the ObamaCare subsidies.

According to conversations we have had with the Congressional Budget Office, if we do 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies and 3 years of reinsurance at $10 billion, the cost-sharing subsidies more than pay for the reinsurance, if you base it on reality, which is, if Congress passes a law that costs $30 billion over 3 years for reinsurance and 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies, the cost-sharing subsidies pay for the reinsurance and leave $2 billion over to reduce the Federal debt.

The third part is a set of proposals that would give States more flexibility. This streamlines the section 1332 waiver in the Affordable Care Act. It makes some changes that permit the agency we call CMS to approve waivers from States, like the State of Alaska or Nebraska or Tennessee, which may say: We would like to spend our ObamaCare subsidy money in a different way, and we would like to add some of this reinsurance money to it. By doing that, that is how you achieve the 40- percent savings for the Nebraska self-employed farmer or the Nashville songwriter in their insurance policies.

So that is the set of proposals, plus within there is a provision for what we call a catastrophic policy, which is a policy that has somewhat higher deductibles but lower premiums, which people may choose to buy.

All of that policy has broad bipartisan support. I think the reinsurance provision--in the Republican discussions we have had in the Senate, almost everybody seems to agree that the only way we can have an individual market, which is the market for people who buy insurance on their own--people who don't get it from Medicare, people who don't get it from Medicaid, people who don't get it on the job--let's say you are between jobs or you are self-employed. You are the songwriter. You are the plumber. Those are the people whom we are focused on here. There are about 11 million in the United States, but there could be a lot more because all of us know what it is like to think, well, I might lose my job, or, I might change jobs, and what do I do for insurance in the interim? I have the so-called COBRA available, but it is very expensive. If I suddenly find I am losing my job or if I am changing jobs and I am worrying about insurance--that is the person we are talking about.

Where did these ideas come from? Did we just write them on the back of an envelope and give them to Congress? No. We went through a very serious process here in the Senate. Senator Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee--I am the

chairman--and I held four hearings last fall after Republicans failed to repeal and replace the ObamaCare law. We invited all Senators to participate. We had more than half the Senate come to our hearings and to our meetings with the witnesses. Out of that came the proposals to streamline the 1332 waiver--that is flexibility for States--and the need to pay for the cost-sharing subsidies temporarily, because people began to understand that they don't cost money, but they save taxpayer money because they reduce the need for Federal taxpayer subsidies. So that is where that came from.

The single most important idea that was not a part of the original Alexander-Murray proposal was reinsurance. In the House, they call it the invisible risk pool. Senators Collins and Nelson have championed it here. Representative Costello, Representative Meadows, and other people championed it over there. It was part of the Republican repeal-and- replace legislation in the House of Representatives. So the idea of 3 years of reinsurance really has come from both bodies and from both sides of the aisle. It is the most essential part of any long-term policy to create an individual market where people can buy insurance if they don't get it on the job or from the government.

This would give States half a billion dollars in the current year, 2018, to plan for their reinsurance pools. It would then create $10 billion over 3 years that States could use to help pay for their reinsurance pools, and they would use their 1332 streamlined waiver in the second and third year. So they could have a combination of State money, reinsurance Federal money, and ObamaCare subsidy money and hopefully, in that process, create their own way of helping to pay for the needs of the very sickest people in the State and, by taking them out of the insurance pool, lower the rates for everybody else over that 4-year period, according to the Oliver Wyman consulting firm, by as much as 40 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office has also reviewed the set of proposals I have just described. My staff has been working closely with them because we want to know what it costs if we are going to put it in the omnibus bill, and the preliminary feedback from the Congressional Budget Office is more conservative than the Oliver Wyman estimate. The Congressional Budget Office says that it would reduce premiums by an average of 10 percent in 2019 and 20 percent in 2020 and 2021 if States take full advantage of the 1332 waiver they have.

As you can imagine, State Governors and State insurance commissioners are delighted with this package. First, they like to see us do something in a bipartisan way to stabilize the health insurance market so people aren't scared to death that they may not be able to buy a policy next year, but second, they think it is sound policy. It is sound policy.

Much of this started when the President called me last August and said: Between now and the time we make a final decision on what to do about the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, I want to make sure that people aren't hurt. So he asked me if I would work with Senator Murray and see if we could come up with a bipartisan set of proposals that would stabilize the individual market. He called me several times about that, and we have worked together since then. That is when we came together with the original Alexander-Murray proposal.

Then we had a big disagreement here within the Senate, and we had our tax bill wherein we repealed the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. Republicans thought that was a good idea. It made people buy insurance they didn't want, and it was a tax on low-income people, so we got rid of it. Democrats didn't like that at all.

It is true that taking the individual mandate out, even though States could add it back if they want to, does increase the cost of insurance in the individual market. Despite that, this set of policies that I have described--State flexibility, the 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies, and the 3 years of reinsurance/invisible risk pools--those three policies, according to Oliver Wyman consulting, which is one of the leading health consulting firms in America, could lower rates to 40 percent lower than they otherwise would be. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that looks at things for us, it will lower them 10 percent in 2019 and as much as 20 percent in the next 2 years after that. Even if it is only 20 and not 40, 20 percent of $20,000 is $4,000 for Marty, the self-employed farmer in Nashville who stopped me at Chick-fil-A and said her insurance had gone from $300 to $1,300, $1,400 a month.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the report of the Oliver Wyman consulting company that says that the combination of policies I just described--reinsurance, cost-sharing subsidies, and the section 1332 waiver, which is the State flexibility--that those three policies will reduce rates by up to 40 percent.

Finally, I would ask the question, What if we don't do this? I am generally a very optimistic person. I am results-oriented, and you don't get results if you don't work across party lines and if you don't think you are going to succeed. So I always think we will succeed. This has been more difficult to do than it should have been.

I would like to suggest to my colleagues and to the American people that we should focus on October 1 of this year because that is the date when insurance rates for next year, 2019, will be announced all across the country. Insurance companies are working with insurance commissioners in every State to try to figure out what is going to happen, what the rates will be. They will be announcing rates on October 1, which is about a month before the next election.

There a lot of people who are going to be looking at that because, in my State of Tennessee, rates were up 58 percent this year, and that is for the plumber who makes $60,000 a year; the songwriter; Marty, the farmer; and the people I have been describing. There was a 58-percent increase. So they are going to be looking on October 1 to see whether they can even afford any insurance in 2019.

If we do what we are proposing here in the Alexander-Murray-Collins- Nelson set of policies, which has broad bipartisan support in the House and the Senate and the support of the President, if we do that next week, Marty, the self-employed farmer in Tennessee, will be able to see on October 1 that her rates will go down and that, if Oliver Wyman is correct, instead of her rates going up 58 percent the way they did this year, they will go down 40 percent over the next 2 or 3 years. That means she could afford insurance.

If we don't do it, rates will go up, and the individual market will probably collapse. It was near collapse a year ago. By collapsing, I mean there will be counties where people can't buy insurance at all. There will be 11 million people who are between jobs, who are self- employed, or who are working who literally cannot afford insurance, and they are not going to be very happy campers. They are going to blame every one of us, and they should. They are going to blame the President, they are going to blame Republicans, they are going to blame Democrats, and they are going to blame insurance companies because we have an opportunity next week to solve that problem in a bipartisan way, developed through a bipartisan process, incorporating ideas that virtually everyone who looks at them says make very good policy sense.

We have a couple of things to work through on ancillary issues, but those shouldn't cloud the fact that we can reduce rates by up to 40 percent for the working Americans who can't afford insurance--the insurance companies will announce that on October 1--or we can do nothing, and we can let the markets falter.

There will be some counties where you can't buy insurance at all, some counties where you can't afford insurance at all, and we will have people look at us and say: My goodness, why did we send them up there to do nothing about that?

I am optimistic. I think we can do it. I appreciate the hard work on both sides of the aisle. In many respects, it has been a very difficult negotiation. I appreciate the President's consistency over the past couple of months in supporting this and the Vice President's work. Senator McConnell has been very supportive of this, which makes it very helpful in terms of getting it into the bipartisan agreement next week.

I look forward to being able to say to my songwriters, self-employed business men and women, plumbers, and Marty, the farmer, that if they are making $60,000 or $70,000 in Tennessee, we put in place something that will lower their rates by 40 percent over the next 3 years.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, in the next few days, we will begin to debate this important bill on sex trafficking. This is something that, for whatever reason, the country turned its back on for too long. As the ways to communicate and the ways to offer so-called adult services grew, the government and law enforcement didn't have the new tools they needed to fight back.

This is a bill that Senator Portman and others have worked so hard on, on this side of the building. We are actually taking up the House bill. The principal sponsor of the House bill is Missouri Congresswoman Ann Wagner, with whom I have worked closely and who has been a good friend of mine--she and her family--for a long time.

When the House passed this bill overwhelmingly, Ann Wagner said that they ``sent a clear message to trafficking victims: you are not alone, and justice is no longer out of reach.'' It is hard to imagine a more lonely place, I would think, than someone who is being trafficked, some young woman, young child, boy or girl, who has fallen into the hands of traffickers and who, for drugs or whatever reason, has been sold into this or become dependent in a way that put them into this.

Congresswoman Wagner went on to say about this bill that ``FOSTA will produce more prosecutions of bad actor websites and more convictions and put more predators behind bars.'' She said: ``It will give victims a pathway to justice and provide a meaningful criminal deterrent, so that fewer businesses will ever enter the sex trade and fewer victims will ever be sold.''

The whole idea that people are being sold to be used in whatever terrible way someone else wants to use them is so offensive. The idea that we have websites that people can go to that have some description of some person who is helplessly in this system and how they would be used--that is something Congress should stand up on. By voting for Congresswoman Wagner's bill, the House has already done that.

On our side of the building, Senator Portman and others have worked so hard to draw attention to the fact that we need to find time to get this bill on the floor. Now we have a bill that has already passed the House, and all we have to do is pass that bill and send it right to the President, or we can make

some changes that Senator Portman and others may want to suggest, and then we can send the bill back to the House, where hopefully it can be dealt with in the same overwhelming way they passed it the first time. Then we can get this bill on the President's desk and do exactly what Congresswoman Wagner said this bill will do. It is time for us to do everything we can to end this.

We would be foolish to think that one piece of legislation will end this problem. By working with law enforcement, looking at trafficking, looking at locations like the intersections of major interstate highways, where it is easy to bring people, to pass people along to somebody else, to get them to where not only are they disoriented, but your actual contact with that person doesn't last very long before you give them to somebody else or sell them to somebody else who could use them in a terrible way--this needs to stop. I am confident the Senate will pass this next week, and I will just say that it is about time.

Funding the Government

Mr. President, also next week we are going to move forward on an appropriating process that has gotten way out of control. I am glad the leaders have decided to appoint a special committee to look at this. The Presiding Officer and I are on that committee. We will be looking at the budgeting process and looking at what has happened. Instead of bringing these bills to the floor one at a time and letting every Member of the Senate have an opportunity to amend any bill in any way they want to as long as it deals with spending and as long as you don't add new money--every amendment you want to come up with where you want to take some money here and spend it here instead and have a debate about why that should happen--that is what the Congress did for a couple of hundred years, and it is time we did it again. This idea that all the bills come together in one big, what we call an omnibus-- ``ominous'' might be a better word--an omnibus spending bill that includes everything, plus all the legislation that it can possibly carry, is not the way this process should work. It is the way this process is going to have to work this year because we missed all of those opportunities that are now behind us.

As soon as we get this done, we need to start on this year's process. We know what the top-line spending number is going to be. There is every reason to believe that this year's process could be a big step in the right direction, but some guidelines from that special House and Senate committee will do even more.

I would like to say, as the chairman of one of those appropriating committees--the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee--that one bill of the 11 left after the Defense bill is decided on--that one bill has about a third of all of the money to be appropriated of the discretionary money. Senator Murray, my counterpart on the other side, and I have worked hard on this committee for 3 years now. In the House, Chairman Cole and Congresswoman DeLauro, the chair and the ranking member on that side, have worked hard as well.

These are big decisions to be made. These programs matter, but some of them matter more than others, and part of our job should be and needs to be setting priorities, doing things that increase the commitment to the programs that are working and eliminate the programs or change the programs that don't work. Hopefully, we will continue to do more of that this year and even more of that next year.

Some of the programs touch the lives of so many Americans, such as apprenticeship programs. Medical research clearly touches the life of virtually every American and every American family. What we could do to develop a flu vaccine that actually hits the mark every year instead of misses the mark often, things we can do in special education--these are all parts of this one part of the bill that Senator Murray and I and Congressman Cole and Congresswoman DeLauro have been working on.

Frankly, everybody should have had a chance to work on this. I think we know a lot about these topics. I think that our debate is a good debate, but it is not nearly as good of a debate as if every single Senator got to be a part of working on this, not just the three dozen or fewer Senators who are on the Appropriations Committee.

There are a wide variety of programs here that need to be funded. I want to spend just a few minutes talking about some of the priorities that we are looking at that need to be part of this bill and create a sense that this is really a process that matters.

First, we are on track to increase the third straight year of significant increases for the National Institutes of Health and health research. What do they do? In the last decade, we failed most of the time to make any increase at all. In fact, 2 years ago, when I started chairing this committee and Congressman Cole started chairing the committee on the other side of the building, it had been 12 years since there had been a one-penny increase in health research. During that 12 years, we figured out so much more about the human genome. We figured out so many more ways to figure out how I am different from you and how you are different from me and how that makes a difference and how whatever is attacking my system we can fight back.

There was not one penny of an increase in 12 years. In fact, the research people said that we were 22 percent below, in research buying power 3 years ago, where we had been 12 years earlier. Young researchers who had never gotten a research grant before weren't likely to get one when they had less effective money to spend than they have had for over a decade. So hopefully that 22 percent--our goal would be to get most of that 22 percent back in 3 years. We have also already restored 13 percent of it. I hope we have a big number next week that gets us back to where we are--at least back to where we were in 2005 or so.

We made a commitment at the end of the last century to double, in a short period of time, the National Institutes of Health funding, and then somehow we thought we were done. We would be done anytime there is no more research to be done. We will be done as soon as we have developed a cure for cancer and found out what to do about Alzheimer's and determined what we can do to lessen heart attack risks and found the answer to every orphan disease, diseases that only a few people have. Let me tell my colleagues, we are a long way from doing that. In the last 3 years, we have tripled the amount of dollars going to Alzheimer's research. Without a cure for Alzheimer's or a way to slow down the onset of Alzheimer's, the projection is that by 2050, we will be spending twice as many tax dollars on Alzheimer's-related care and dementia-related care as we are spending now to defend the country. If I had said we would spend $1.1 trillion, I don't know about everybody who is listening, but in my case, it is pretty hard to get a handle on that. What does that really mean? How much bigger is that than $1.1 billion? Well, $1.1 trillion is twice what we spend to defend the country. Every military base everywhere in the world, every ship, every plane, every paycheck for every soldier, sailor, airman, marine; the National Guard, the Coast Guard; training dollars--that is about $500- and-some billion, approaching $600 billion. We would be spending twice that in today's dollars, in tax dollars--not what families would spend to try to deal with the tragedy of Alzheimer's but twice that in just tax dollars if we don't find something to do. A cure would be great. Just figuring out how we could determine early, in an effective way, that you were likely to get Alzheimer's and try to begin to delay the onset of Alzheimer's so it either doesn't affect you at all because some other health concern does or you get it a few years later. If we could delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years on the average, that $1.1 trillion in today's dollars--in 2015--would be reduced by almost half, by 46 percent. So knowing how to detect this--there have been some great studies going on that have been funded in better ways over recent years. This has continued.

I think what we are looking at in the Brain Initiative--the Cancer Moonshot, as Vice President Biden referred to it--diabetes--again, these diseases that maybe not very many people get are particularly the diseases that the National Institutes of Health needs to be doing research on because there is not much of an economic driver for private

sector research on a disease that almost nobody has. So a lot of the money that we put into NIH research we specifically try to put in there without any specific category, where we are saying: You take this money, and you do what you think needs to be done, and we are going to have oversight to talk about what you did. A bunch of Members of the Senate and the House aren't going to try to become the research deciders for the United States of America--and, by the way, for the world--when you do that.

In this bill, we are also looking at the crucial fight on the opioid epidemic. The President says it is a crisis, and he is right. It is the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the country today. It has exceeded car accidents as a cause of death in the country and in Missouri and in many other States.

The last two funding bills have put almost an additional $1 billion into opioids from where we were just 3 years ago, but the Presiding Officer will remember that in the last continuing resolution, some specific money--about $3 billion more--was given to this cause, and it is the job of our committee and then the Congress to decide how to spend that $3 billion.

We need more resources. There is no reason to think that the opioid addiction epidemic, leading to heroin and other drugs, is slowing down, so we need to do things that improve treatment and prevention efforts. Prevention, obviously, is better than treatment, but if prevention fails, we need better treatment systems than we have now.

We need to look for alternative pain medications that aren't addictive. I will say that in the 1970s and 1980s, I am told, in medical schools, they thought opioids weren't addictive. So we need to be sure that when we have an alternative that seems to be nonaddictive, that it really isn't addictive.

We need to think of the workforce needs and what happens when people become addicted to pain medicine and their pain doesn't go away, probably because their addiction doesn't go away. Then there is behavioral health that impacts so many families and so many communities.

If you are going to recover from opioid addiction, you have to have a place to go. Too many programs and policies say: We will work with you for 14 days. A lot of them say: We will work with you for 28 days--4 weeks. Not many people get this behind them in 28 days. So we are doing that.

In this bill, we are also looking at ways to support students and parents and teachers. Obviously, a safe environment--what can we do to provide more flexibility to schools to spend the money they currently have from the Federal Government to create a safer environment, and what can we do to increase the money available for that?

We need to be doing things that prepare people not just for college but for careers. If you can get a certificate that puts you to work in a job you love quicker than you can get a college degree that maybe doesn't do those two things--we ought to be thinking about whether our post-high school dollars are equally available to both college and other kinds of training.

We need to see that people have access to higher education. We are doing that by increasing funding for the Pell grant--this is not a loan; it doesn't have to be paid back--given specifically based on economic need and performance in school. You have to stay in school; you have to get passing grades. But in many colleges in my State of Missouri--in community college and in several of our 4-year schools--if you qualify for the full Pell grant, that is more than enough to pay tuition, books, and fees.

If you are putting yourself through school or if you are returning to school as an adult, if you are the first person in your family to graduate from college, year-round Pell means that if you have something working, you need to stick with it as long as you can, as quickly as you can.

Summer break is always well-intended. For 10 years Pell didn't pay for school in the summer; it does now, starting last year. This will be the first year that students and colleges and universities can really prepare for summer Pell. But if you don't break the rhythm you are in where things are working for you, you are much more likely to graduate from college than you would otherwise.

We need to be sure we prioritize funding for elementary and secondary education grant programs so that they are fair across the country, so that we are not only supporting STEM education, but we are also supporting IDEA for students with learning disabilities, an obligation the Federal Government has taken on itself.

We are going to have a chance next week to deal with this important, long-awaited bill on trafficking. I think there will probably be one vote that covers more things than it should on funding the government for the year we are already in. But, as I have talked about today, there are many reasons for Americans and American families to be focused on the job we do. Frankly, we need to spend our time figuring out how, in the future, the American people can watch the Congress more closely and watch the Congress openly debate the priorities of the government, which the government sets nowhere else quite the way it does when it decides how to spend the money we have been entrusted with.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the issue before the Senate, and I am very pleased the Senate is finally taking up this legislation. It has to do with stopping sex trafficking specifically--a growing scourge in our country and really a stain on our national character--which is girls, women being sold online.

The legislation is called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. It includes the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA. That has gone through a process here in the Senate. We had hearings on it. We had a markup. This is an issue many of us have been working on for many months--in fact, for the last couple of years--doing the investigations to come up with how to deal with this problem.

I am very pleased that we now have the opportunity here in the Senate to take up this legislation and begin the process of turning the tide, changing this horrific situation where, in this country, in this century, we actually have an increase in the trafficking of human beings--specifically women and children being trafficked online. I thought the speech earlier by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid this out very well. He talked about the fact that there has been an eightfold increase, in the most recent data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; that is, between 2010 and 2015, there was an eightfold increase in the incidence of trafficking. He also talked about the fact that this is growing because of this growth of the internet, that the internet--specifically this one website--has caused this increase that Congress has the ability to address through a change in a Federal law that can be targeted and focused and can make a huge difference in the lives of those who would be trafficked and undergo the intense trauma that results.

I am very pleased we are taking up this legislation. I thank Majority Leader McConnell for putting the bill on the floor.

I know we have an important omnibus spending bill coming up, and I know the Senate needs to focus on that, but first let's get this commonsense legislation passed. Let's take this opportunity to do something that is actually going to help immediately on this issue of sex trafficking.

I also thank Senator John Thune. He is the chairman of the Commerce Committee, which had the hearings and marked up this legislation. I also thank his colleague, Ranking Member Bill Nelson, for his work on this. We held a powerful hearing. I had a chance to testify there and testify about the work we had done in another committee investigating this issue. We heard from victims, and we heard from experts. At the end of the day, that vote in the Commerce Committee was unanimous-- Republicans and Democrats alike saying: We get it. We need to address this issue.

We have had a lot of collaboration on this over the last couple of years. I would say it has been a truly nonpartisan effort, not just a bipartisan effort, which is rare around this place. In particular, I would like to thank the coauthor of the legislation we are dealing with, and that is Richard Blumenthal, who, as a former prosecutor, understands these issues because he prosecuted sex trafficking cases.

I also thank Senator Claire McCaskill because it was Senator McCaskill and I who headed up the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which looked into this issue. We spent a year and a half studying it, and we were able to find out shocking information about what is going on online.

I also thank Senator John Cornyn, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator Ted Cruz. They are a group of Senators who were the initial cosponsors of this legislation and have helped us put this legislation together in a way that addresses the issue in a very focused and targeted way, so we are going to actually have the result we are looking for but without affecting what some were concerned about, which was the freedom of the internet. We all believe in the freedom of the internet, but we also know that committing these kinds of horrific crimes on the internet has to be something people are held accountable for.

I want to take a moment to recognize a couple of other leaders in this effort, one of whom is a Senator, and the other is his spouse, and that is Cindy and John McCain. I hope they are watching these proceedings over the next week as we take up this legislation, debate it, and I hope pass it on the floor of the Senate, because they have been very involved.

John McCain from the start, as one of the leaders on this issue here in the Senate, helped us put together the legislation. He was with me on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as we looked into this matter. John can't be with us here on the floor, but I know his presence is felt. I will tell my colleagues that it is felt by me, as well as the influence he has had on this legislation and on many of us in bringing up this issue.

One reason he brings up this issue a lot is that he has a spouse who is passionate about it and has spent a lot of time working on it. The McCain Institute has specialized on this issue of human trafficking, and Cindy McCain has been a tireless advocate globally on this issue. So I thank both Cindy and John for their inspiration. Again, I am confident that as we get it across the finish line here, they will be celebrating with us.

We have 68 cosponsors of this legislation now, and, again, for those who follow scorecards around here, that is unusual. We have a majority of Republicans, and we have a majority of Democrats. We have a situation here where everybody is affected by it in their States. They get it, and they understand that this is a Federal responsibility to change this law because it is a Federal law that creates this opening for websites to engage in this kind of behavior without accountability. They are effectively shielded from prosecutions or from lawsuits. This legislation takes away that shield.

We have heard from the FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; we have heard from Polaris, which runs the national tip line on human trafficking. All kinds of experts have told us that trafficking is not just increasing, but it is increasing because of the ruthless efficiency of the internet.

One website--backpage.com--is involved in the majority of online sex trafficking. One anti-trafficking organization has said that backpage is involved in about 75 percent of the online trafficking reports it receives from the public. Another organization, Shared

Hope International, says it is even more than that. So think about that. We have this increase in trafficking. It is primarily being caused by this movement from the street corner to the smartphone, as victims have told me back home, and there is one website that has the majority of this activity. That is what we studied.

As we looked into it further, Senator McCaskill and I were shocked to find out that not only is this activity going on on this website, but they were complicit in the sense that they knowingly facilitated criminal sex trafficking, including coaching users--people who were placing ads with them--to post clean ads so that they wouldn't indicate--which was very obvious in the initial ads that were presented--that these were underage girls. As an example, taking out words like ``schoolgirl'' or ``cheerleader''--they told them to do that so they could still place the ads; in other words, get the money for the ads. As you can imagine, this is a very lucrative business. So they were saying that they needed to clean it up. That practice covered up evidence of these crimes. It actually also made it harder for law enforcement to follow up on these cases. They did it for a very simple reason. They wanted the ads because they increased their profits, but obviously they had an incredibly detrimental impact, and still do, on women and children around our country.

I spoke earlier this week on the floor about Kubiiki Pride because she testified before us and she is also part of a documentary called ``I Am Jane Doe.'' If you are interested in this issue, check it out. It is on Netflix.

Kubiiki Pride told us this alarming story of a mom whose daughter goes missing. She can't find her. She was told to look on this site called backpage. She does, and she sees her daughter's photographs there--sexually explicit photographs.

She calls backpage and says: That is my daughter; she has been missing. She is 14 years old, and she is on your website. Thank you for taking down the ad.

Their response: Did you pay for the ad?

She said: No, of course I didn't pay for it. I am the mother.

They said: We can't take down the ad because you didn't pay for it.

That story tells us how evil these websites are.

Let me tell you another story about Yvonne Ambrose. Yvonne testified before the Commerce Committee, and you could have heard a pin drop when she was telling her story. Her daughter was 16 years old and she was trafficked on backpage.com. She was sold for sex on backpage.com at 16 years old. Yvonne got a call on Christmas Eve 2016, the call no parent ever wants to get. The call was from law enforcement saying that her daughter, Desiree, who was being trafficked at the time on backpage.com, had been murdered.

Yvonne is honoring Desiree's memory by getting engaged in this issue and helping us to pass this legislation. I appreciate her challenge and her grief. But she is also sure that this legislation is the thing that would have kept girls like her daughter from getting involved in this, because when she went after backpage to try to hold them accountable, she was told: I am sorry; they have immunity under Federal law.

That Federal law, by the way, is called the Communications Decency Act. It was put in place with good intentions to help protect the freedom of the internet. It protects websites from liability when users put something on their site, but it was never meant to protect criminal activity. It has been misinterpreted, in my view, by the courts, but it also needs to be clarified, because it is not as clear as it should be, and that is what our legislation does.

This legislation, by the way, was enacted back in 1996--22 years ago, when the internet was in its infancy. There needed to be something to help provide protection from liability. But, unfortunately, it has been used as a shield by these criminals to be able to sell women and children online without accountability.

The same law that was actually written back then was also focused, in part, on keeping indecent material--pornography--from going to children, ironically, and now it is being used to shield these traffickers. I know Congress did not intend that broad immunity, and I know we need to fix it.

By the way, the district attorneys around the country agree with us on this--prosecutors. They have asked us to change this law. Their associations have even been involved in this issue. Fifty State attorneys general have written to us, asking us to do this, including, by the way, some former State attorneys general who are now Members of this body.

In the most blatant call on Congress yet, we had a court in Sacramento, CA, say: You have to fix this law because, otherwise, we can't do anything to keep people from exploiting women and children online. A number of courts have said this and basically have called on Congress--welcomed us to enter into it. The one in California said: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by allowing trafficking.''

In other words, they are asking Congress to step in and do something.

That is what this does. It allows online sex trafficking victims to get the justice they deserve and it allows prosecutors to hold these websites accountable.

We do it with two very narrow changes. First, allowing these victims to get the justice they deserve by removing the broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad actors. In fact, we actually say that for the good actors, there is a Good Samaritan provision: If you want to clean up your website and get the offensive material off, you are protected.

Second, it does allow for the State prosecutors to go after these websites, which they can't do now. So it takes the Federal standard--it is not a new standard; it is Federal law, which is already a criminal act--and says, allow these State prosecutors, these State attorneys general, to prosecute these websites that violate these Federal laws.

It is incredibly important to pass this. We did it narrowly. We have a knowing standard here; in other words, to be affected by this, you have to knowingly be facilitating, supporting, or assisting sex trafficking. We did that because we wanted to be sure it was focused on this issue and not affecting the broader freedom of the internet.

We have a lot of support now. A couple of weeks ago the White House announced its support for this legislation. I mentioned that 68 Senators are now supporting it. It passed in the House of Representatives about 10 days ago with over 300 votes.

It has support from around the country, most importantly. All of the groups are focused on this issue of how to avoid women and children from getting caught in this web of human trafficking and then how to help them when they get out to provide for the important recovery efforts that are needed from the trauma of this. Those groups, of course, are strongly supportive.

Law enforcement has been terrific. The Fraternal Order of Police stepped up early on in strong support of this legislation. So have all of the other law enforcement groups represented here in Washington through their national offices. We appreciate their help.

We appreciate the fact that parents have been willing to come forward and tell these difficult stories, as was the case of Kubiiki Pride, as was the case of Yvonne Ambrose, whom I talked about earlier, and her daughter, Desiree. They told their stories from their heart in order to get Congress to wake up and do the right thing. We now need to do that.

This legislation is now before this body. We expect to have a vote next week on it. We need to do all we can to address this stain on our national character. We need to do all we can to provide these victims the justice they deserve. We need to do all we can to ensure that we stop the selling of women and children online.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor today for a number of reasons, but first and most pressing is to call on and ask the administration to extend deferred enforced departure status for a group of Liberians. This is a unique situation. Senator Jack Reed was on the floor in the last hour talking about it as well.

Both the State of Rhode Island and the State of Minnesota have a number of Liberians who didn't just come to this country--they didn't come to this country illegally--they came to this country decades ago. They came because of a civil war in their country of Liberia, and then after that war was basically resolved, they were allowed to stay. So they are all registered in this country, they are working legally in this country, and they are in a special status called deferred enforced departure.

Ever since George H.W. Bush, Presidents--Democrats and Republicans; George Bush, of course, President Clinton, and President Obama--every one has allowed them to stay.

As my colleagues can imagine, since this happened back in 1991, these are people who have been working in our country for decades now. I met one who is 65 years old. Some of them are now 70 years old. They have obeyed the law. They have paid their taxes. They tend to be working in a lot of--of course, consistently--working in our assisted living facilities in Minnesota. They are working in our hospitals. Some of them had healthcare experience in Liberia before they came to Minnesota. They are a thriving community that has integrated well into our State and into Rhode Island. We are a State where the unemployment rate is somewhere around 3 percent and even lower in some of the areas where this community is working. It would literally be a big jolt to our economy--and not to mention immoral--if they were suddenly deported and lost the legal status they have had for literally decades.

Unlike some of the other things we talk about with people who maybe just came here--and I worked so hard on the Dreamers, to get them a path to citizenship--this is a pretty unique situation. We hope the administration will be practical about this. That is why Senator Reed and I are working on this issue. We hope to get it resolved quickly since their status is ending on March 31, which is just a few weeks from now.

Liberians are the only group of people and it is the only country with deferred enforced departure--or DED, as it is known--which is a temporary legal status that requires the President to reauthorize it every 18 months.

One idea is that the President could reauthorize it, and then they could

look into it more. As we know, there is a lot going on in our country. There are a lot of changes right now within the Office of the Secretary of State and other things. So one idea would be that they could simply allow the program to continue for 18 months and then come to a conclusion on what they think they should do about it.

As I mentioned, in 1991, President George H.W. Bush first issued temporary protected status to Liberians in response to the nation's civil war. Since 1991, Presidents on both sides of the aisle have extended legal protection to Liberians in the United States under either TPS or DED--deferred enforced departure--because of civil wars, the Ebola outbreak, and other instabilities in their country. All Liberians covered by DED have been living in the United States since 2002. This isn't, as I said, new people coming in under that status; these are people who have been living here with that status for decades. As I mentioned, some are now in their seventies, and all of them have lived here legally. They have paid their taxes and contributed to our communities and worked at our employers. If DED is not extended by March 31, they will lose their legal status and work authorization and face deportation.

Minnesota, as I mentioned, has one of the largest Liberian populations in the country. Many of these people are business owners. They are teachers. They are healthcare workers. According to one organization, nearly 40 percent of Liberians in Minnesota work in our nursing homes as nursing assistants and other support staff. Imagine if we took thousands of people away just like that on March 31, because they wouldn't have legal status to work at the nursing homes where they have worked for decades.

I have also called for action on the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act--a bill that Senator Reed has introduced every Congress since 1999--and I have cosponsored this bill. The bill would actually provide permanent protected status, including a path to citizenship, for those Liberians who have obeyed the law and have been here in this temporary status for decades.

That is not what we are asking for today. We understand and we hope that negotiations are ongoing so that we can have a more comprehensive immigration bill. We are simply asking the administration to continue with the 18-month status that was started back in 1991 by a Republican President.

I met with a number of members of our Liberian community yesterday. They are experiencing extreme fear right now that their livelihoods will be lost and their families will be ripped apart. I am hopeful that we will be able to resolve this, at least for that temporary 18-month period.

Support Our Military Spouses Act

Secondly, Madam President, on a different topic, I want to take a moment to discuss a bipartisan bill that I introduced this week that would help reduce the burden of relocation for military families.

When servicemembers relocate to comply with military orders, they and their families make sacrifices to help protect our Nation. Right now, there is a problem with the way the law treats some military spouses who make frequent moves, and the law, ironically, makes it even harder on them rather than easier on them.

Current law allows Active-Duty servicemembers to maintain one State of legal residence for tax and voting purposes even when military orders require them to relocate. That makes moving a lot easier. Unfortunately, this convenience does not apply to a servicemember's spouse unless they were living together at the same residence before they got married. In other words, if you were not living with your servicemember before you got married, you have to establish residency every single time your family gets moving orders from the military. From filing taxes to registering to vote, a military family then has double the paperwork and stress each time they move.

This is a loophole that must be fixed. Why would we make it harder for the spouses of those who are making a sacrifice by having their loved one serve overseas and not make it easier for them to vote and to pay their taxes and to basically be the citizen they deserve to be? That is why, on Tuesday, Senators Cornyn, Kaine, Kennedy, Manchin, and I introduced the Support Our Military Spouses Act--legislation that would ensure that spouses have the same residency protections regardless of their living arrangements before marriage. From titling a car, to filing taxes, to registering to vote, everything is a little easier when the law ensures that you can stay a resident of one State and that it is the same State as your spouse's. That is just common sense, and it cuts out a lot of redtape for military families.

The bill has the support of the Military Spouses Network, the Military Officers Association of America, and the Council of State Governments. This bill passed the House in July of 2017 with bipartisan support, and I am going to work with my cosponsors to get it done in the Senate.

We ask a lot of our military members and their families. When we can make life easier for them, we should. This is one simple thing we can do.

Honest Ads Act

Finally, Madam President, I would like to mention the sanctions that were just announced against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. It took 14 months, multiple indictments, and a poisoning in Britain, but the administration is finally imposing sanctions--the same sanctions that were passed by the Senate 98 to 2 and 419 to 3 in the House last year.

Sanctioning Russia for undermining our democracy is what we should do, but we must remember that it is not enough to protect ourselves from future attacks. There is no longer any doubt that our elections will continue to be a target for foreign adversaries. Intelligence reports make it clear that Russia used covert cyber attacks, espionage, and harmful propaganda to attack our political system.

Trump administration officials--not Obama officials, Trump intelligence officials--continue to sound the alarm that Russia is continuing its efforts to attack our democracy. The CIA Director said that he has seen no signs that Russia has decreased its activity and that Russia is currently working to disrupt the upcoming 2018 elections. National Intelligence Director Coats, who was once a Senator here, said that Russia is bolder.

It would be a mistake to think the sanctions passed today are all we need to do to address these warnings. They will no doubt help because if you do nothing, then you just embolden them to do more. It is the policy of the United States to defend against and respond to cyber threats to our democratic system, and we need to start acting like it. We need to be as sophisticated as those who are trying to do us harm.

We know that Russia attempted to hack into 21 States' election systems. In Illinois, they actually got into the voter data system. That is why Senator Lankford and I have led a bill to take an amount of money which is just 3 percent of one aircraft carrier and invest it in our States, to let them, on a decentralized basis, make their own decisions about the kind of equipment they want and to be able to upgrade it. Forty of our States have not upgraded their equipment in 10 years. Ten of our States do not even have backup paper ballots. What would happen if they were hacked, as they got so close the last time? There would be no way to prove what actually happened. You would have to vote again.

That is why we have Democrats and Republicans supporting this effort. Representative Mark Meadows, the head of the Freedom Caucus, is leading the bill that Senator Graham and I have--which is similar to the one I have with Senator Lankford--over in the House. Senator Coons from the Appropriations Committee has been a strong supporter of this effort, as have Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Graham, and a number of other people. This is a truly bipartisan effort because people understand that it is no longer going to be only traditional ways of warfare when we are attacked; it is going to be cyber. It is not going to be just election infrastructure. It is not going to be just government infrastructure. It is going to be our businesses, power companies--you name it. That is why we need to upgrade our cyber protection.

The last thing I would mention on this front, as we look to the next election and how we are going to protect our democracy, is the Honest Ads Act.

This is a bill I have with Senator McCain, also cosponsored by Senator Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. This is based on the fact that we know Russia spent millions of dollars buying ads. That was reflected in the indictment of 13 Russians and what they did and how they plotted to disrupt elections and to spend money on political ads. A number of these ads were even purchased in rubles.

What Senator McCain and Senator Warner and I are trying to do is simply apply the same rules already in place to protect Americans in our elections by making sure that we know who is paying for the ads and what those ads are. Who is paying for the ads--those are the simple disclaimers you see on the ads where they say, whoever the candidate is, I paid for this ad. Who discloses the ads--that is simply when any radio station or TV station--you can go into the station or see it online and see what the ads are. That is not true right now of some of the most sophisticated companies, if not the most sophisticated companies, in America, companies like Facebook and Twitter, which have made millions and billions of dollars, companies that are profiting off of political ads.

It is no different from when a newspaper or a TV station allows someone to buy an ad. They make money off it, so it is their duty to protect the citizens, to make sure that the ads don't contain falsehoods, that the ads are not criminal, that the ads are known to everyone. That is all we are trying to do, is to apply the same rules of the game to what you see when you see political ads on issues or candidate ads.

The FEC did something just yesterday--but it was very narrow--about candidate ads. So what you see on candidate ads and issue ads--that you also see those same disclaimers and, most importantly, the disclosure on ads that are on social media companies. And I use those words carefully--``media companies.'' Newspaper print and radio--we love them--are media companies. Facebook and Twitter--we love them--are media companies. We are not talking about recipes and cat videos. We are not talking about free stuff that people put up. We are talking about paid political ads that need to be treated the same.

While we are pleased that these sanctions have been put in place, while it is good that the FEC is narrowly trying to do something within their jurisdiction about disclaimers on candidate ads, we must pass the Honest Ads Act, because if we think it was bad last election when $1.4 billion was spent on election ads, try this next one out: Forecasts are that $3 billion to $4 billion is going to be spent on social media ads against candidates on issues, and there is no way to track it. It is just going to go out to your Facebook page. You are not going to know if it is true, you are not going to know who paid for it, and the ads will just vanish.

I think Americans deserve something better, and I ask my colleagues to support the Honest Ads Act.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, since the Republicans jammed through a massive corporate tax cut in December, hardly a day goes by that we don't read about a corporation using the savings to purchase its own stock. The average citizen may ask: What is that all about?

Well, when a company purchases its own stock, it is sort of artificially making less stock, buying it back, and raising the price of the shares. Why do they do that? There are two reasons, both to benefit the corporate CEOs but not the workers. First, corporate CEOs have a lot of the stock themselves, so they make money; second, they look better when the stock price goes up. But the stock price isn't going up because the company has sold more goods, been more productive, bought new machinery, or found a new product. The stock simply goes up because they have decreased the number of shares. It is a scam in a certain sense, helping corporate CEOs, helping shareholders--80 percent of the shares are held by the top 10 percent, so it doesn't really help average Americans, and that is including 401(k)s--but it doesn't help the worker.

We have heard many claims from our Republican friends: Pass this tax bill, and the workers will benefit. Well, unfortunately, now we see who is really benefiting. Just as we predicted, it is the corporate CEOs and the wealthiest of Americans.

Just recently, the total amount of share buybacks surpassed $220 billion this year. According to the market data firm, TrimTabs, share buybacks in 2018 averaged $4.8 billion a day--a day--double the pace for the same period last year.

For a few weeks, right after the President passed his tax bill, what happened? They had these companies announce bonuses for average workers. Very few Americans saw those bonuses--a lot of hoopla, but not much else. The bonuses--not wage increases, not new hires, but one-time annual bonuses--anyone who gets them, God bless them; there have just been so few. Those bonuses are being overwhelmed by a deluge of corporate share buybacks, which do not benefit the average worker, but benefit the CEOs and the heads of the companies.

According to an analysis by JUST Capital, only 6 percent of the capital allocated by companies from the tax bill has gone to employees, while nearly 60 percent has gone to shareholders--again, to the corporate CEOs who own those shares, the wealthiest of Americans who own the vast majority of shares. Ten times more capital is going to shareholders than to workers.

So this bill, which is poorly structured and aimed at the wealthy, ain't working. The more Americans see it--you know, there was an initial thrust: Oh, we like the tax bill. At first, it was unpopular as we talked about it here on the floor. Then, with these bonuses and the stock market going up, popularity went up a little. Now it is flattening out and even heading down. In the last three polls, fewer people liked this tax plan, and that is going to keep happening, my Republican friends, because they know what it was aimed at and you know what it was aimed at--the corporate CEOs who came to lobby you and the wealthy individuals who came to lobby you. It is no wonder the American people are starting to turn on the Republican tax bill. Polls have shown its popularity is underwater and trending downward, not up.

This idea that tax cuts would be a political panacea for Republicans come November is losing altitude fast. Remember, that is what our Republican friends said: Well, maybe people are upset with the President's tweets, and maybe this and that are not going so well; maybe they are not accomplishing that much, but now, with the tax bill, we will win the election.

Well, look at the Pennsylvania election where a Democrat won the district

that Trump carried by 20 points. This is the kind of district that our Republican friends need to carry. These are Republican suburbs in blue- collar Southwest Pennsylvania.

Early in the race, what did Republicans do? They tried running ads about the tax bill to help their candidate, Rick Saccone, during the first few weeks of February. These were the super PACs, the Koch brothers, and all the others who will benefit hugely from the tax bill. Somehow they believe that because they will benefit, everyone is going to think they have benefited.

They ran these ads, often paid for by the Kochs. Two-thirds of the ads mentioned taxes--two-thirds of all Saccone's ads, both by the Koch- like super PACs and by Saccone himself. The next week, 36 percent mentioned taxes. Guess what. After 2 weeks of these tax ads, our Republican friends tested it out, and they got rid of taxes as an issue. It wasn't working. It wasn't working with fairly well-off middle-class Pittsburgh suburbanites or blue-collar workers in Greene County and Westmoreland County and Washington County in Southwest PA, which are areas where people had voted for Trump.

It is eerily similar, folks, to the Governor's race in Virginia--the same thing. That was before the bill passed, but still, Republican candidate Ed Gillespie started his campaign on a tax plan similar to the Republican tax plan. He had to give it up because it wasn't getting traction.

The American people are smart about this. They know what is going on. They know the vast majority of this goes to the wealthy. They know the amount that is going to them is small. They know their tax break is temporary and the corporate tax break is permanent. Most of all, they know we have created a huge deficit. And how are some of our Republicans friends saying we pay for the deficit? Cut Medicare. Cut Social Security. Cut healthcare. That is not what the American people want.

Poll after poll shows healthcare is far more important to the American people than tax cuts. Do you know why? If you get a break on your taxes of $20 a week and your premiums go up several thousand dollars in a month or even several hundred dollars in a month, that little increase is wiped away. Our Republican colleagues, even in their tax bill, caused premiums to go up by monkeying around with healthcare.

The Republican Party needs to wake up and realize that by giving massive benefits to corporations and the wealthy, it is never going to be a popular issue for them in the election because it is a terrible policy for the average middle-class and working Americans. It gets to the contradiction at the core of the Presidency. The President talks like a populous but governs like a plutocrat. Let me repeat that. The President talks like a populous but governs like a plutocrat. He just got rid of a Wall Street executive--Gary Cohn--and now he is putting in as his economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who has favored the wealthy, Club for Growth policies--help the wealthy and all of America will benefit-- throughout his whole career. That is not how Trump ran. That is not what he tells working people when he goes to a big tent in Pennsylvania. But that is what he is doing. Sooner or later, it catches up with you. The Pennsylvania election showed it is catching up faster than our Republican friends would like. The President talks like a populous but governs like a plutocrat.

President Trump said that his tax bill would be a middle-class miracle, but the actual legislation is a miracle for the wealthy corporations and the richest 1 percent. As I said, part of the problem is that the President surrounds himself with the wealthy elite. Those are his advisers. These wealthy elites push for tax cuts for the rich and rhapsodize failed economic orthodoxies like trickle-down. That applies to Larry Kudlow. Here is a man who is a cheerleader for Bush- era economics. He ignored the housing bubble and actually recommended-- Larry Kudlow, the man who is now going to give the President economic advice--that Americans buy stock in the fall of 2008 when everyone else saw that the economy was about to collapse. Does anyone think Larry Kudlow is going to bring a renewed focus on improving the middle class? Forget it. He believes in the plutocracy. He has his whole career. That is who President Trump picked. He is getting rid of one and putting in another, like going from the frying pan into the fire.

By the way, I think the President loves having the big crowds of working-class people in those tents, but who are his real friends? They are the very wealthy. That is who he hung out with in New York. He cares what they think, and that is why his policies are so aimed at them.

My Republican friends, in a nutshell, this is the problem you face. Your rhetoric is all about helping working people, but your policies and the people developing them are all about helping corporations and the rich.

I am not against the rich or corporations. God bless them. Let's hope they do well. But average Americans need far more help than the top 1 percent and wealthy corporations. Give it to average folks. They need it. They are still struggling with paying for college, affording a vacation, helping their elderly mom and dad through a healthcare problem. They are who need the help, not the top 1 percent. But our Republican colleagues aim everything at that top 1 percent.

If we would only get rid of Citizens United, that awful decision that allows the wealthy to have such huge influence on the Republican Party, the super PACs--individual Members have super PACs funded by the wealthy. I wish we could get rid of it on both sides, Democratic and Republican. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Supreme Court is doing it.

The rhetoric of Republicans: Help working people. The policies of Republicans: Help the wealthy corporations and the rich. As we have seen in poll after poll and in recent elections, the American people are waking up to that reality.

It is hard to make a tax cut unpopular, but Republicans have managed to do it by designing a bill that will direct 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent and $1.5 trillion to the deficit and then threaten to cut Medicare and Social Security to make up the difference. My colleagues, that is a toxic combination, and Republicans will not be able to run on it because only a very few wealthy Americans support that agenda.

Russia

Mr. President, now on a different matter--Russia. A little more than a week ago, our friends in the United Kingdom--England, Great Britain-- suffered an attack on two individuals by a nerve agent. In a joint statement today, the leadership of the United States, the UK, France, and Germany agreed that Putin was behind it. To her great credit, Prime Minister May demanded an immediate response from Putin and promised appropriate countermeasures. She has already expelled 23 Russian diplomats, and I hope she takes additional action. Expelling 23 diplomats is strong action, but we need more.

Mr. Putin--he is a bully. I grew up in Brooklyn. There are a lot of bullies around Brooklyn. You have to stand up to them, or they will keep taking advantage of you. That is how a bully works.

Let's compare Prime Minister May's action to President Trump's. It is a study in contrast when it comes to Russia. Prime Minister May was quick and decisive about countering Russia's aggression. President Trump can hardly seem to utter a peep in criticism of President Putin-- a man who is trying to undermine the power of the United States, a man who is trying to undermine the very democracy of the United States, the beauty of America. It was on full display this week when, instead of personally defending our ally Britain, President Trump didn't say a word about the attack, directing everything through aides or statements.

President Trump warns all the time that ``we need to get smart'' about other countries taking advantage of the United States. I agree. I tend to agree with the President on China. China is taking advantage of us, and President Trump, to his credit, is doing more than the Bush or Obama administrations did. But guess who is taking advantage of us even more than China. Russia. They meddle in our elections, continue to sow division on social media through Russia-linked bots or building an intelligence machine to meddle in our elections again later this year. Putin constantly attacks our allies, our friends.

President Trump, when are you going to get smart about the threat Russia poses to the United States and our allies?

We in Congress, 98 to 2, the Democrats and Republicans together-- Leader McConnell and I worked this out. We voted to implement mandatory sanctions against Russia. Guess what, America. President Trump hasn't even implemented them. What is he afraid of? What is he hiding?

Hopefully, we will get an announcement today that maybe he is implementing sanctions after what Russia did, but that is not enough. As my friend from New Jersey has suggested, the President should further sanction Putin and anyone else involved under the Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act for this heinous attack in the UK.

We are still waiting for President Trump to direct our intelligence agencies and the State Department to use the resources we have provided them to combat Russian cyber attacks. We have heard from officials who are in charge of cyber security. They have gotten no direction from the White House, no orders to do anything. We are still waiting for actions to harden our election security, and we are still waiting for President Trump to utter one word of public criticism for what Putin is doing to the United States and democracies around the world.

I say to President Trump: Your silence speaks on this issue. Your silence speaks volumes to the Russian Government and America's other adversaries, as well as our friends and allies. Finally, it speaks volumes to the American people. More and more Americans are asking: Why is President Trump so afraid to take on probably our No. 1 menace, Russia? What is he hiding? What is going on? Why?

It is ringing in America's ear. The President is not going to escape it.

I yield the floor.