A PLUS Act

Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Aging Committee, I am delighted to introduce, with my good friend and former ranking member, Senator Claire McCaskill, the Senior$afe Act of 2017, a bill that would help protect American seniors from financial fraud. I'm pleased that Senators Isakson, Casey, Tillis, Klobuchar, Wicker, Shaheen, Capito, Tester, Barrasso, Donnelly, Heller, and King have joined us in sponsoring this bill.

According to the GAO, financial fraud targeting older Americans is a growing epidemic that costs seniors an estimated $2.9 billion annually. Stopping this tsunami of fraud is one of the top priorities of the Aging Committee. Last Congress, we held several hearings examining an endless variety of financial abuses targeting our nation's seniors. These range from the notorious IRS phone scam that burst onto the scene in 2015, to the incredible ``drug mule'' scam, where trusting seniors have been tricked by international narcotics traffickers into unwittingly serving as drug couriers, and then find themselves arrested and locked-up in foreign jails. The common denominator in these schemes involves innocent seniors falling prey and being tricked out of their hard-earned savings.

Sadly, not all scammers are strangers to their victims, in too many cases, seniors are exploited by someone they know well. Sometimes, that abuse is perpetrated by ``friends'' or family members who are handling the victim's affairs informally. Other times, the abuse is committed under color of a fiduciary relationship, such as a Power of Attorney or guardianship.

No matter the scheme, one factor is common to all--the fraudsters need to gain the trust and active cooperation of their victims. Without this, their schemes would fail. That is why it is so important that seniors recognize as quickly as possible the red flags that signal potential fraud.

Unfortunately, many seniors do not see these red flags. Sometimes they are

too trusting or are suffering from diminished capacity, but, just as often, they miss the signs because the swindlers who prey on them are extremely crafty and know how to sound convincing. Whatever the reason, a warning sign that can slip by a victim might trigger a second look by fmancial service representatives trained to spot common scams, who know enough about a senior's habits to question a transaction that doesn't look right. In our work on the Aging Committee, we have heard of many instances where quick action by bank and credit union employees has stopped a fraud in progress, saving seniors untold thousands of dollars.

Let me give you an example. Last year, an attorney in the small coastal city of Belfast, ME, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for bilking two elderly female clients out of nearly a half a million dollars over the course of several years.

The lawyer's brazen theft was uncovered when a teller at a local bank noticed that he was writing large checks to himself on his clients' accounts. When confronted by authorities, he offered excuses that the prosecutor later described as ``breathtaking.'' For example, according to press reports, he put one of his clients into a nursing home to recover from a temporary medical condition, and then kept her there for four years until the theft of her funds came to light. Meanwhile, he submitted bills for ``services,'' sometimes totaling $20,000 a month, including charging her $250 per hour for 6 to 7 hours to check on her house, even though his office was just a one-minute drive down the road.

In another example, in 2015, a senior citizen in Vassalboro, Maine, was looking to wire funds from his account at Maine Savings Federal Credit Union to an out-of-state location, supposedly to bail out a relative who was in jail. Something about this transaction did not sound right to the credit union employee. She asked the customer, and he said he had received a call from an ``official'' at the jail--but that ``official'' had instructed him not to speak to anyone about this. The ``official,'' of course, turned out to be a con artist.

Fortunately, the credit union worker recognized this as a scam, and her quick thinking saved her customer from falling victim and losing his savings.

These stories demonstrate the critical nexus that financial institutions occupy between fraudsters and their victims. Their employees, if properly trained, can be the first line of defense protecting our seniors from these criminals. Regrettably, various state and federal laws can inadvertently impede efforts to protect seniors, because financial institutions that report suspected fraud can be exposed to litigation. The Senior$afe Act encourages financial institutions to train their employees, and shields them from lawsuits when they make good faith, reasonable reports of potential fraud to the proper authorities.

There is no doubt that financial fraud and scams targeting seniors is a growing problem that we must act on. Last November, the Aging Committee heard testimony from Jaye Martin, the Executive Director of Maine Legal Services for the Elderly, who told the Committee that her organization has seen a 24 percent increase in reports of elder abuse in just one year. Many of these cases involve financial fraud.

In a letter describing her support for the Senior$afe Act, Ms. Martin says that:

In a landscape that includes family members who often wish

to keep exploitation from coming to light because they are

perpetrating the exploitation, the risk of facing potential

nuisance or false complaints over privacy violations is all

too real. This is a barrier that must be removed so that

financial institutions will act immediately to report to the

proper authorities upon forming a reasonable belief that

exploitation is occurring. These professionals are on the

front lines in the fight against elder financial exploitation

and are often the only ones in a position to stop

exploitation before it is too late.

Our bill is based on Maine's innovative Senior$afe program, a collaborative effort by Maine's regulators, financial institutions, and legal organizations to educate bank and credit union employees on how to identify and help stop financial exploitation of older Mainers. This program, pioneered by Maine Securities Administrator Judith Shaw, also serves as the template for model legislation developed for adoption at the state level by the North American Securities Administrators Association, or NASAA. The Senior$afe Act and NASAA's model state legislation are complementary efforts, and I am pleased that NASAA has endorsed our bill.

I am pleased that our bill has received bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. Last year, the House Financial Services Committee approved a version of the Senior$afe Act by a vote of 59 to zero, and it passed the full House by voice vote in July. In the Senate, the Senior$afe Act was cosponsored by a quarter of the Members of this body, balanced nearly evenly on both sides of the aisle, and was discharged out of the Banking Committee. Unfortunately, just one member of this body blocked it and prevented it from becoming law.

Besides receiving broad support in Congress, our bill has the support of a wide range of stakeholders, ranging from the State securities administrators and insurance commissioners to advocates for seniors.

Combating financial abuse of seniors requires regulators, law enforcement and social service agencies at all levels of government to work collaboratively with the private sector. The Senior$afe Act encourages financial institutions to train their employees, and shields them from lawsuits when they make good faith, reasonable reports of potential fraud to the proper authorities.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, as a fifth-generation Montanan and product of Montana public schools from kindergarten through college, husband to an elementary school teacher, and father of four children, I understand how important a first rate education is to our kids' future. That is why I am reintroducing the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success, or A-PLUS, Act this Congress. This measure will help expand local control of our schools and return Federal education dollars where they belong: closer to the classrooms. By shifting control back to the States, individual and effective solutions can be created to address the multitude of unique challenges facing schools across the country. Through these ``laboratories of democracy,'' Americans can watch and learn how students can benefit when innovative reforms are implemented on the local level. This bill would give states greater flexibility in allocating federal education funding and ensuring academic achievement in their schools. With A-PLUS, States would be freed from Washington- knows-best performance metrics and failed testing requirements. Should this legislation be adopted, states would need to adhere to all civil rights laws and work towards advancing educational opportunities for disadvantaged children as well. States would be held accountable by parents and teachers because a bright light would shine directly on the decisions made by State capitals and local school districts. With freedom from Federal mandates comes more responsibility, transparency, and accountability on States. It would also reduce the administrative and compliance burdens on state and local education agencies, and ensure greater public transparency in student academic achievement and the use of federal education funds. Increasing educational opportunity in Montana and across the country isn't going happen through federal mandates or one-size-fits-none regulations. We need to empower our States, our local school boards, our teachers, and parents to work together to develop solutions that best fit our kids' unique needs. That is precisely what my A-PLUS Act does. Washington is the problem-- and we have the solutions in Montana and in states across the country. The A-PLUS Act goes a long ways towards returning the responsibility for our kids' education closer to home and reduces the influence of the Federal Government over our classrooms. I want to thank Senators Cruz, Perdue, Johnson, Lee, and Rubio for helping reintroduce the A-PLUS Act this Congress. I ask my other Senate colleagues to join us in empowering our schools to serve their students, not DC bureaucrats, and support this important piece of legislation.

Mr. President, small businesses are the backbone of America. They generate more than half of the country's private GDP and support millions of families. In Montana, small businesses are innovating, offering new products and services, and creating jobs.

The business community relies on the Internet to access the global marketplace. In rural states like Montana where it is costly to provide internet access, consumers and businesses depend on small businesses to provide connectivity. Without small broadband providers, many Montanans would not have the internet access that most of us take for granted.

Burdensome regulations like the FCC's net neutrality rules are strangling our small businesses and preventing growth and investment. The enhanced transparency requirements in particular require small businesses to disclose an excess amount of information including network packet loss, network performance by geographic area, network performance during peak usage, network practices concerning a particular group of users, triggers that activate network practices, and the list goes on. Small companies operate with a small team of employees and do not have a team of attorneys dedicated to regulatory compliance. Small businesses simply do not have the bandwidth to take on additional regulatory burdens.

That is why I am proud to introduce the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act of 2017 with my colleague Senator Manchin. The bill provides a temporary small business exception to the net neutrality enhanced transparency requirements. There is broad support in the record for this exception, including support from the American Cable Association, Rural Wireless Association, Competitive Carriers Association, Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, CTIA--The Wireless Association, Rural Broadband Provider Coalition, WTA-- Advocates for Rural Broadband.

Providing relief from burdensome disclosure rules will allow small businesses to focus on deploying infrastructure and serving their customers rather than spending time on regulatory compliance. I ask my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring this much needed legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise to speak of legislation I am introducing today--the Transportation Investment Recalibration to Equality Act, or the TIRE Act. The TIRE Act would suspend the Davis- Bacon prevailing wage requirement on all transportation-related infrastructure contracts. This would free up billions more in taxpayer dollars to be spent on jobs and on projects.

For those who are not familiar, Davis-Bacon is a Depression-era law that requires contractors on Federal construction projects to pay workers no less than the so-called local prevailing wage. Now, since its enactment over 80 years ago, the Department of Labor has been unable to devise an effective system for determining prevailing wages.

In fact, a 2004 Department of Labor inspector general report revealed that Federal wage reporting surveys, which are a key metric used to determine prevailing wages, are fundamentally flawed. Of all the wage report surveys reviewed by the IG, 100 percent contained flaws. Let me say that again: 100 percent of all the surveys were flawed.

In addition, some of the wage surveys have not been updated since the 1980s. The bottom line is that every time Davis-Bacon applies to a Federal project, less money is going to construction and more money is going to meet onerous wage requirements. According to the Beacon Hill Institute, Davis-Bacon forces taxpayers to pay 22 percent above the market rate for labor on Federal infrastructure projects.

This is largely the result of disproportionate union participation in flawed wage surveys that skew Federal decisionmaking. Now, despite representing only 4 percent of the construction industry, unions are able to leverage their clout with Federal bureaucrats to inflate more than 60 percent of prevailing wages--talk about benefitting a few at the expense of the many.

Here is some perspective on what it means in real dollars. In 2016, the Federal Government spent $23 billion on Federal construction projects, and 2.1 billion of these dollars was spent on above-rate labor costs.

Again, $2.1 billion of the $23 billion spent was on above-market-rate labor costs. This means that nearly 10 percent of all Federal construction spending last year went to inflated contracts. Not only does this translate into less construction funding going to actual construction, but according to George Mason University, it results in roughly 30,000 lost construction jobs.

So we lose both on the projects and the jobs that are created. More broadly, it discriminates against small businesses that don't have the resources to meet onerous Federal reporting and compliance requirements. Now, while it may be well-intentioned, Davis-Bacon ends up eliminating decent-paying construction jobs and hampering infrastructure spending.

I have often talked to State and local officials who will say that if you have two bridges across the same river, even if they are just 100 yards or 200 yards or a mile apart with the same underlying costs--or what should be the same underlying costs--if there are Federal moneys involved in one and no Federal moneys involved in the other, the one with Federal moneys will cost significantly more, and a big portion of that is because of Davis-Bacon requirements.

Now, in this body, we have to look for issues to bridge the partisan divide. It turns out that one of these issues is bridges, roads, dams, and other infrastructure projects. Fixing our Nation's crumbling infrastructure is a top priority for many in Congress, and the new administration has touted a large infrastructure package as one of its agenda items.

However, despite the bipartisan consensus on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for infrastructure investment, visions for the road ahead actually diverge. With a projected pricetag north of $800 billion for highways and bridges alone, every Federal dollar needs to be spent as efficiently as possible.

The TIRE Act will return wage determinations for Federal transportation projects where they belong, and that is the market.

Mr. President, by 2020, it is estimated that 65 percent of all jobs will require at least some form of postsecondary education and training. The National Skills Coalition estimates that nearly half of all job openings between now and 2022 will be middle skill jobs that require education beyond high school, but not a four-year degree. While the number of students pursing postsecondary education is growing, the supply of skilled workers still falls short of industry demand. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 5.5 million U.S. jobs are currently vacant, in part, because of a shortage of qualified workers.

Our current Federal higher education policy must be improved to help solve this problem. Pell Grants, needs-based grants for low-income and working students, can only be awarded towards programs that are over 600 clock hours or at least 15 weeks in length. These grants cannot be used to support many of the short-term occupational training programs at community and technical colleges and other institutions that provide skills and credentials employers need and recognize. When it comes to higher education, Federal policies need to support the demands of the changing labor market and support career pathways that align with industry demand. According the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, shorter-term educational investments pay off--the average postsecondary certificate holder has 20 percent higher lifetime earnings than individuals with only a high school diploma.

Today, I am pleased to introduce with my colleague, Senator Portman, the Jumpstart Our Businesses by Supporting Students or JOBS Act. The JOBS Act would close the ``skills gap'' by expanding Pell Grant eligibility to cover high-quality and rigorous short-term job training programs so workers can afford the skills training and credentials that are in high-demand in today's job market. Since job training programs are shorter and less costly, Pell Grant awards would be half of the current discretionary Pell amount. The legislation defines eligible job training programs as those providing career and technical education instruction at an institution that provides at least 150 clock hours of instruction time over a period of at least 8 weeks and that provides training that meets the needs of the local or regional workforce. These programs must also provide students with licenses, certifications, or credentials that meet the hiring requirements of multiple employers in the field for which the job training is offered.

The JOBS Act also ensures that students who receive Pell Grants are earning high-quality postsecondary credentials by requiring that the credentials meet the standards under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, are recognized by employers, industry, or sector partnerships, and align with the skill needs of industries in the States or local economies. In Virginia, the Virginia Community College System has identified approximately 50 programs that would benefit from the JOBS Act including in the fields of manufacturing, architecture/ construction, energy, health care, information technology, transportation, and business management and administration.

The JOBS Act is a commonsense, bipartisan bill that would help workers and employers succeed in today's economy. As Congress works to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, I hope that my colleagues ensure that Pell Grants are accessible for individuals participating in high- quality, short-term occupational training programs that are leading to industry-recognized credentials and certificates.

Mr. President, as a fifth-generation Montanan and product of Montana public schools from kindergarten through college, husband to an elementary school teacher, and father of four children, I understand how important a first rate education is to our kids' future. That is why I am reintroducing the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success, or A-PLUS, Act this Congress. This measure will help expand local control of our schools and return Federal education dollars where they belong: closer to the classrooms. By shifting control back to the States, individual and effective solutions can be created to address the multitude of unique challenges facing schools across the country. Through these ``laboratories of democracy,'' Americans can watch and learn how students can benefit when innovative reforms are implemented on the local level. This bill would give states greater flexibility in allocating federal education funding and ensuring academic achievement in their schools. With A-PLUS, States would be freed from Washington- knows-best performance metrics and failed testing requirements. Should this legislation be adopted, states would need to adhere to all civil rights laws and work towards advancing educational opportunities for disadvantaged children as well. States would be held accountable by parents and teachers because a bright light would shine directly on the decisions made by State capitals and local school districts. With freedom from Federal mandates comes more responsibility, transparency, and accountability on States. It would also reduce the administrative and compliance burdens on state and local education agencies, and ensure greater public transparency in student academic achievement and the use of federal education funds. Increasing educational opportunity in Montana and across the country isn't going happen through federal mandates or one-size-fits-none regulations. We need to empower our States, our local school boards, our teachers, and parents to work together to develop solutions that best fit our kids' unique needs. That is precisely what my A-PLUS Act does. Washington is the problem-- and we have the solutions in Montana and in states across the country. The A-PLUS Act goes a long ways towards returning the responsibility for our kids' education closer to home and reduces the influence of the Federal Government over our classrooms. I want to thank Senators Cruz, Perdue, Johnson, Lee, and Rubio for helping reintroduce the A-PLUS Act this Congress. I ask my other Senate colleagues to join us in empowering our schools to serve their students, not DC bureaucrats, and support this important piece of legislation.