To designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at 719 Church Street in Nashville, Tennessee, as the "Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse".

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

I rise in support of this legislation, H.R. 375, which names the Federal building and U.S. courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, after the late Senator Fred Thompson.

Senator Thompson had a long and extraordinary career in many roles that included actor, lobbyist, private attorney, and radio show host. But he is best known and respected not for his hawking of reverse mortgages but for being an assistant U.S. attorney, a congressional staffer, and, lastly, a U.S. Senator representing the State of Tennessee. Senator Thompson was a graduate of Memphis State University and Vanderbilt Law School. Senator Thompson got his start in public life in 1967, when he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, Tennessee.

During his time in that office, he met U.S. Senator Howard Baker from Tennessee who became a lifelong mentor to Senator Thompson. After managing Senator Baker's successful U.S. Senate campaign in 1972, Senator Thompson moved to Washington, D.C., where he was appointed counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee investigating the Watergate break- in and famously helped shape the direction and tone of those hearings.

I think that he will be known as one who helped Senator Baker in formulating that age-old, timeless question: ``What did President Nixon know, and when did he know it?'' It is ironic that today, Mr. Speaker, people are asking about our current President, President Trump: What did he know, and when did he know it?

I will tell you, President Trump stood right there at the rostrum of the House last week and said that the Republican health insurance plan would have insurance for everybody, the insurance would be far less expensive and far better than what we have today. But we see now that that was incorrect, as the Republicans have, on a Monday, I guess at some point before the day ended, introduced their repeal bill of the Affordable Care Act.

We are here talking about Senator Thompson today, but I just can't help asking: When did President Trump know that the Republican plan was going to throw 20 million people off of the Affordable Care Act depriving them of insurance? When did he know that? What did he know about this plan? Because not a whole lot of people around here knew of the plan until it was released because it was shrouded in secrecy, and it was released and a hearing scheduled to mark it up, to mark up the legislation with no hearings taking place on the underlying legislation.

So no CBO score, no congressional hearings about it, introducing it in a cloud shrouded in secrecy, and, boom, it is dropped on the American people at a time when you are trying to distract attention from other questions about what President Trump knew about Russia, Russian hacking, and those kinds of questions. What did he know about the GSA hotel that the taxpayers own that he is leasing and now he is the lessor and the lessee of that hotel that belongs to the American people? What did he know and when did he know it? Those are questions that the American people have. We intend to get down to the bottom of it on this side. I hope that we will have some help on the other side.

I do want to say that I support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I think the American people would be horrified to learn that of the 30 million people who were able to attain health insurance coverage and access to the healthcare system as a result of passage of the Affordable Care Act, many of those, a substantial number of those, will be thrown off of the rolls and deprived of the ability to have access to the healthcare system because of this new replacement bill that has been filed, which, as I said before, has not been scored.

We don't know how much the Medicare solvency issue is going to cost. We don't know how much it is going to cost. We don't know how much it is going to cost the taxpayers. We don't know how many people will lose their jobs because, after all, it stands to reason if you are serving 30 million more people, that means you have brought a whole lot of people into the healthcare delivery business, people who are working, people who have jobs, people who have husbands, wives, parents, and children who are depending on them for support, and you are going to tell them that their jobs are at risk.

Yes, they are, with this new law that has been half-baked introduced and fast-tracked to become law without people really knowing about it. This is something that people need to know about, people need to get out and exclaim their opposition to because it is going to hurt a lot of people.

The way that this bill changes the Affordable Care Act is it makes it unaffordable for most Americans to be able to afford the insurance that they have gained as a result of passage of the Affordable Care Act. The premium subsidies are recalculated. Instead of based on a sliding scale which is an indication of need, this Republican plan is going to replace that and calculate the amount of the premium subsidy based on age.

Now, what does that do, especially when you consider that some elderly people are more well-heeled than others? They can afford insurance, and they can afford to front the policy cost in return for the tax subsidy that they get. But what does that do to the younger people? So it is good news for some older people who are well-heeled. They will be helped by this Republican plan. But the average wage earner is going to be hurt--the younger people--because it is going to be more expensive for them.

But then I have some bad news for the elderly people, also. Insurance companies under this new plan will be able to charge the elderly five times more than they will charge a younger person. That differential had been abolished in the Affordable Care Act, but the Republicans are bringing it back. Who is going to pay? It is going to be those same elderly people. You put it in one hand, and you take it out of the other. All of the elderly people in America, regardless of how much money you earn, should be concerned about that.

Prioritizing health savings accounts over these premium subsidies is going to provide a great big tax cut to the wealthy. You can't get away from that. It is going to hurt the working people of this country. It is going to be a tax giveaway to the wealthy. I am sad to hear and to see this plan, and all of you should be, also.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle), my friend.

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

I just can't get out of my mind, Mr. Speaker, those words of President Trump that everybody would have insurance and that it would be far less expensive and far better than what we have today.

The Republicans have campaigned incessantly for the last 7 years on repeal and replace of the Affordable Care Act, which they derisively referred to as ObamaCare. We are going to repeal it and we are going to replace it on day one is what they all said.

And here we are at day 45, something like that, and we have had nothing but one scandal after another; but we have finally now gotten to the House Republicans revealing what they have shrouded in secrecy for so long over the last 7 years. It sputters out without much ado, trying to sneak it in, trying to keep it undercover so that the American people won't realize what is being done to them.

I can tell you that what is being done under those covers is not worthy of my comment descriptively at this time, but I will say that it is an illicit, illegitimate situation that is taking place because you are taking from a group of people who are in need and you are giving more to individuals who have and who don't need.

In this country we are all in the same boat together. That is what the Affordable Care Act did. It was an aspiration for health care for everyone. It wasn't perfect. It is not a perfect bill. It needs some repairs done, if you will, some enhancements. We have never had the cooperation from the other side of the aisle to do anything to enhance that foundation that was already laid.

Nobody can argue with the fact that 30 million people who did not have health care access and now having it is a bad thing. Nobody can argue that. They could argue that: Well, the way that it was done was bad. They say that we rushed it through without any input from them, but there were literally dozens of public hearings and markups. The bill, all 1,000 pages, was available for everyone to be able to read.

They talk about reading the bill. Well, there are so many bills coming through right now that they don't want people to take the time to read them. That is why they introduce them late in the day and then they schedule markups for them without even putting them in front of the committee for a hearing. No airing out of the bill and what it does.

Why are they holding this and hiding it from the American people?

It is because they are trying to get away with something that is going to be bad for the people. That is why.

They knew that their changes, their repeal and replacement bill, if properly vetted, if the American people had an opportunity to learn what is in it, they knew it would not be popular. That is why they hid it from the public. That is why they are not having any hearings on it. They just want to proceed straight to a markup; pass it out of the committee; put it on the floor of the House; pass it out of the House with little debate; send it over to the Senate for a rubber stamp, they hope; and then on to President Trump, who, as I said, when did he know that this bill that he was going to be presented with perhaps did not provide coverage for everybody and was not far better in coverage than the Affordable Care Act? When was it that he learned that?

The American people want to know a whole lot. There is a whole lot to investigate about President Trump and his campaign. There is a whole lot to investigate about this repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act with an inferior product, one that is slanted to the rich and hurts the working people of this country.

Then it guts the Medicaid program, which millions and millions of people depend on to keep grandma and granddaddy and momma and daddy at the nursing home. Medicaid helps to make nursing home care affordable.

But under this healthcare repeal legislation that the Republicans have filed, they are going to cut Medicaid. They are going to use the expansion of the Medicaid program which enabled 10 million people to gain coverage that they could not afford, and they are going to cut that. At the same time, they are going to cut the other part of the Medicaid program which provides for people to be able to have their loved ones properly cared for at the nursing home, instead of down in the basement or upstairs in the spare bedroom.

So, get ready, ladies and gentlemen, for that inevitability if this legislation passes. Get ready for your loved ones to have no place to go, no nursing home facility to take care of them, because they will not be able to afford it and you will not be able to afford it.

Who will suffer most?

Momma and daddy and granddaddy and grandma. They are the ones that get the care that is so needed for the elderly.

So in this bill, where they are going to cut 20 million people off the healthcare rolls, they are going to cut momma and daddy from the nursing home by cutting the Medicaid program and turning it into a block grant program and turning it over to the States.

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

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Georgia for yielding. I certainly thank him for being a cosponsor of my bill.

I should start, however, by thanking Chairman Shuster, and Ranking Member DeFazio, who have moved this bill so quickly.

The bill is called the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017. This is a real motherhood bill. Mr. DeFazio, Mr. Johnson, and Barbara Comstock have all joined me as cosponsors.

H.R. 1174 requires locations that are either federally owned or leased to provide designated private and hygenic lactation space for nursing mothers. As I will indicate, no new space in buildings or expenditures is contemplated.

Last Congress, I offered this bill as an amendment to the Public Buildings Reform and Savings Act of 2016, and I was pleased to have it pass the House.

Space for lactating women is already required for Federal employees. We are really not talking about a new kind of benefit. Certainly, there is no new money. The reason that this is not new is because Federal employees already have lactating space under the Affordable Care Act.

So I have to ask my good friends on the other side: As you try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, do you propose to erase this motherhood provision as well? Will you preserve it?

My bill extends the lactating space requirement to include not just employees, but visitors and guests of Federal facilities across the Nation. H.R. 1174 also does not require additional Federal funds or space to be mandated at all. Since Federal employees already have this space, I look forward to visitors to Federal buildings also making use of this space. In our country, new mothers often come to visit Federal buildings, not only those who work in Federal buildings.

The reason this is such an important bill is that the benefits of breast milk are so well documented: antibodies and hormones that boost babies' immune systems, lower risks of asthma, diabetes, respiratory infections, and other diseases among breastfed babies.

There are benefits also for nursing mothers. Research has shown that there are lower risks of diabetes and even cancer as a result of breastfeeding. Speaking of motherhood, the Republican healthcare plan would even make maternity care significantly more expensive.

Now, this, of course, is a bill that is very easy to support, but when we think of its links to other important legislation, I ask that there be sincere consideration given to whether or not at this moment in time my good friends across the aisle want their legacy to be: We actually repealed your health care.

I don't think they are going to be able to do it.

My Republican friends have no experience with structural reform. If you look at all the structural reform in our country, beginning with the New Deal, none of it was done by Republicans. Whether you are talking about the administrative agencies that are so important to all that we do in this country, Medicare, Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whatever you have in mind, these are structural reforms that Republicans

have, if anything, opposed, as they opposed Social Security, for example.

So here what they are trying to do is to unravel, take away health care, and then put something in its place. They have no experience doing anything like it. Anybody who has looked closely at it has to doubt, as I do, that they can do it.

Look what they will be doing. In my own district, the District of Columbia, we have cut in half the rate of uninsured.

Are Republicans going to give me a guarantee that that cut will remain if they replace the bill with the markup that is going on as we speak?

Ninety-six percent of District of Columbia residents have health coverage today. That is comparable to other advanced countries in the world. As we know, most countries in the world already afford this kind of coverage. That makes the District, according to whoever is doing the counting, number one, number two, or number three in the Nation in health care provided to our residents. I am very proud of that. I am going to fight like mad to keep it.

Mr. Speaker, many of us had healthcare townhalls over the recess. We saw what happened at the townhalls on affordable care that my good friends on the other side also had. They met a revolution from their own constituents. We didn't have that problem in our townhalls. Some of the stories that residents brought forward are truly heartbreaking, so I want to leave you with one.

A woman who came to testify at my healthcare townhall, her name is Markita. Markita's grandmother was a D.C. Public Schools cafeteria worker for most of her career. She retired early. She retired before she had Social Security or Medicare. She was suffering from diabetes and a stroke, but she was so prideful that she never let anyone know that she had to slice her pills in half just to get by. Now she is under the protection of the Affordable Care Act. Markita's grandmother is healthier and can afford her medication. She is no longer splitting her pills in half.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to correct the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), who opined that this bill was not scored correctly.

We are talking about space already designated for Federal employees. The intent of the bill, and I am the author of the bill, which could never have gotten through committee if it involved the expenditure of funds. Yes, sometimes these lactation rooms will be dedicated to lactation, but that doesn't mean they are exclusively designated to lactation.

And the whole notion that some Federal buildings don't have such space means they are in violation of the Affordable Care Act, which requires that they have such space, even if it is not space that is exclusively used for the few women who are lactating or nursing.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1174, the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017, introduced by my good friend, Eleanor Holmes Norton. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

What happened 43, 44 years ago during the Watergate hearings with that seminal question that everyone keeps asking, ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' and in the words of Yogi Berra: ``It's deja vu all over again.''

People are asking that question today, and it rings more loudly today than it did back then in 1973, 1974, ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' about a lot of issues.

But this issue of the Affordable Care Act and whether or not you are going to repeal it and replace it with something better or you are going to repeal and replace it with something worse, what did the President know, and when did he know it?

Because it is clear now to everybody who has had the opportunity to look at this offering that the Republicans have put forward, you are going to be worse off today than you were when the Affordable Care Act was implemented because 20 million of the 30 million people who are on coverage now will be off coverage if this thing passes.

This Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017, which was introduced by my colleague and friend, Congresswoman Norton, which I am so pleased to be a cosponsor of, is a bill from a mother herself who knows the needs of other mothers. This is bipartisan. I am so happy that this bill is passing today, but I will tell you, I can't help but think of the 20 million people who are going to lose their coverage. A lot of those people are women and children, even some babies. They are going to lose coverage because the Republicans are kicking them off under their plan. They will be a healthy part of that 20 million people who lose their coverage. It is unfair. It is not right. It is un- American.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on my side?

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), my friend, opposes the bill because the CBO scoring process, which came up with a no-cost estimate for this bill, the contention is that that CBO study was insufficient. Well, I am sure that my colleague and friend from South Carolina will agree with me that with no CBO scoring for this congressional Republican healthcare repeal bill that they have put forward, then we are certainly not in a position to proceed further with a fast-track legislating process, as this bill seems to be on. They are going to mark it up with no hearings.

When we were dealing with the Affordable Care Act, we held 79 hearings over 2 years, heard from 181 witnesses from both sides of the aisle, and posted the bill online for 30 days. The CBO scoring actually showed that this bill was going to save money, as opposed to cost.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleague from South Carolina to be in opposition to his own party's healthcare repeal bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the kind gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I was looking at my congressional calendar, and I noticed that this year we are working in Washington, D.C., more than we have under the past 5 years of the rein of the Republicans. We have been the most do-nothingest Congresses on record for many years, and so this year we will be working. But I am baffled as to whether or not it is because the Republicans don't want to go home and face their constituents in a townhall meeting about the Affordable Care Act repeal bill that they have filed. We will be here in session now for another 4 weeks before the public has a chance to hear from their Representative when they return home for an extended time. But on the flip side, that gives everybody time to prepare for those upcoming townhall meetings which need to be held to explain what they are trying to do to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I have one more point that I needed to make about this abolition, this abolishment of the Affordable Care Act plan that has been submitted. A foundation of their plan is the demise of the individual mandate that requires people to purchase insurance, so they are claiming that that is a matter of freedom.

Well, the fact is that when everyone is required to have insurance, it reduces the cost for everyone else. So it was a cost-saving measure that has worked with the rise in premiums being at the lowest level in decades. The affordable care has worked to cut the cost of health care.

But what they are doing when they abolish that individual mandate is they are also going to penalize people who decide to drop their coverage and pick

it up later. Or if you miss one payment because you missed work, missed a paycheck or something like that, you missed 1 month and have to reinstate, then you are going to pay a 30 percent penalty on your insurance. That is highway robbery.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 375) to designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at 719 Church Street in Nashville, Tennessee, as the ``Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse''.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 375.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 375 would designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse.

I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) for her leadership on this legislation.

Senator Thompson was respected for his work as a lawyer, an actor, and as a United States Senator. This legislation is a fitting tribute that I am honored to bring to the floor today.

Fred Thompson first made a name for himself as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1969 to 1972. That experience brought him to the national stage in his subsequent position as special counsel on a number of Senate committees, most notably as minority counsel with the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Watergate Committee.

It was then-Counsel Thompson who helped frame Senator Howard Baker's now famous question, ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' in regards to the Watergate controversy. Thompson himself asked an even more important question related to the existence of taped conversations in the Oval Office--tapes that led to President Nixon's eventual resignation.

After returning to the private practice of law in Nashville, Thompson represented the chairperson of the State Parole Board who unearthed a cash-for-clemency scheme involving the then-Governor of Tennessee. This case was eventually made into a book and into the film ``Marie.'' Fred Thompson was cast to play himself, which launched his acting career. Throughout the 1990s, Fred Thompson appeared in supporting roles in some of the decade's biggest movies, including ``Days of Thunder,'' ``The Hunt for Red October,'' and ``Die Hard 2.''

In 1994, Fred Thompson ran for political office for the first time and was elected to fill the remaining 2 years of Vice President Al Gore's Senate term. He was re-elected in 1996 to a full 6-year term and served as chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs until his retirement in 2002.

That didn't slow Senator Thompson down. He returned to acting and won the role of New York District Attorney Arthur Branch on the hit NBC show ``Law & Order'' between 2002 and 2007. It was in 2007 that Senator Thompson returned to politics by announcing his candidacy for the United States Presidency. Although his return to the political realm was unsuccessful, Senator Thompson's popularity did not wane. He returned to acting on screen and on TV, wrote a memoir, and appeared often to comment on politics. Tragically, in 2015, Senator Thompson died from a recurrence of lymphoma.

Senator Thompson was a man of many talents. Through it all, he never lost his roots as a Tennessean. Given Senator Thompson's dedication to the law and public service, I believe it is more than fitting to name this courthouse and Federal building in Nashville after him.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support H.R. 1174, the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act. I thank my colleague for introducing it. It was unanimously supported--thank you, Mr. Chairman--in committee and in full committee. As expected, it is going through because people understand this is a commonsense bill, so I am happy to support this once again.

I know you were discussing H.R. 375 earlier. I did want to return to the bill to designate the Federal building and courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, to my good friend, Fred D. Thompson. That building will now be named after him appropriately.

Fred Thompson was a larger-than-life character, a true patriot, and a great wit who believed in and lived the American Dream in starring roles on stage, screen, and national politics. He served as a Senator for 8 years, and then later he ran for President. Originally he was here in Congress serving as a counsel where, of course, we had that famous line: ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' That was a line that he was well known for.

What he was also often not given credit for was what a profoundly good lawyer he was. He had come to the attention of people in Tennessee by Lamar Alexander when Howard Baker came and asked now-Senator Lamar Alexander to take a role in the Watergate hearings, he said: No; you want to have Fred Thompson there. He asked his friend Fred Thompson to come and serve in that role.

Fred then became an actor because when they went to write a movie about a woman who had been dealing with corruption in Tennessee politics, and Fred had been her lawyer, they couldn't find someone to play Fred, and they came and asked him: Could you play yourself? He said: Well, I guess I could. That is how he became a character actor and a larger-than-life character there. Some of his famous lines there: ``Stack `em, pack `em, and rack `em.'' In ``Die Hard'' I believe that one was.

In movies, he starred with Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Bruce Willis, Sissy Spacek, and so many others. After he came here to the Senate, he humorously said: ``I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.'' So this is somebody who took his job very seriously but never took himself seriously and continued to have that great wit.

My husband and I were very privileged to know him and learn from him and spend many a good day and delightful time and evening with him and his wife, Jeri, his family, his children, and his many friends and admirers. We are so grateful for and appreciate his celebrated service and justly celebrated service to our country. This building will be a great memorial in a State that still very much reveres him.

I was privileged to be able to attend his service where hundreds and hundreds of people from Tennessee came to honor him, from country singers to people who stood by the side of the road as we drove to his funeral service, saluting him and thanking him for his service. This is somebody who in today's politics is sorely missed by all of us, and certainly most by his many friends, his family, and his scores of fans. God bless the Honorable Fred Thompson.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to be able to have this building now be a legacy to his great service and being a great attorney and lawyer for this country.