A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to "Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness".

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the most important words in our Constitution are the first three words, ``We the People.'' With those words, our Founding Fathers laid out the vision, the principles, and the foundation for our new Nation's government. It would be, as President Lincoln so eloquently described, ``a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' It would not be a government by and for the privileged. It would not be a government by and for the powerful. It would not be a government by and for the elite, and it certainly would not be an authoritarian government.

I believe it is more important than ever for us to recommit ourselves to that vision, a vision of a nation that measures successes, not at the boardroom table but at the kitchen tables of hard-working Americans across this land, the vision of a nation that derives its power and authority from the people.

In order to do that, we must resist President Trump's dangerous tilt toward authoritarianism. Throughout his candidacy and now within the walls of the White House, President Trump has viciously and repeatedly attacked the media. He has inflamed people's anger toward immigrants, toward religious minorities, toward refugees, and he has undermined or attacked individuals who publicly stand up to him and the shortcomings of his policies. These are four strategies used by authoritarian leaders from time immemorial to consolidate power. These are strategies that are incompatible with our constitutional ``we the people'' construction of government, and we must call out and resist these strategies.

President Trump's authoritarian leanings were there from the beginning. Like many figures throughout history, he rode into office as much on a cult personality as on the merits of his policies. It started with the nicknames and the unrestrained insults, calling opponents crooked and lyin' and phony, calling critics dumb as a rock, incompetent, crazy, or dishonest. He escalated the calls to toss out or hurt protesters at his rallies. At one point, he promised to pay the legal bills of a man arrested for punching a protester at a rally in North Carolina. Then there were the ``lock her up'' chants that he repeated himself, calling for imprisoning a political opponent. Threatening to throw your opponent in jail if you win is a strategy usually seen only with dictators.

Mr. Trump himself best summed up his populist cult personality when he said at one campaign event: ``I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?'' The scary thought is that he was probably not so far off the mark. This aggressive and unswerving loyalty is a challenge to our ``we the people'' democracy.

Let's take a look at Senior White House Policy Adviser Stephen Miller's declaration on Face the Nation last month. He said: ``Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the President to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.''

That is an interesting statement to make: The President's powers will not be questioned. What a bold, un-American, authoritarian statement to make because here in America, our Nation, our national government, is premised on the concept that we can challenge our leaders. It is not only a privilege, it is a responsibility. Yet Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked this fundamental American principle and those who exercise it.

Take, for instance, his attack on freedom of the press. Demosthenes, an ancient Greek statesman, orator, and legal scholar of the third century B.C. once said: ``There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots--suspicion.''

What Demosthenes was saying is that in a democracy we don't take the statements of our political leaders simply at face value. We test those statements against the facts to find our way to the truth. In the United States, a free and open press is how we exercise that suspicion and find our way to the truth.

Thomas Jefferson believed that. He said: ``Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press.'' Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press.

Benjamin Franklin echoed that belief when he said: ``Freedom of speech is ever the Symptom as well as the Effect of a good Government.''

John Adams wrote: ``The liberty of the press is essential to the security of the state.'' It is so essential, in fact, that the Founding Fathers enshrined our commitment to a free and open press to the very First Amendment to the Constitution, that ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'' Yet what we have seen time and again from President Trump is an endless attack against the fourth estate, against the press. He said: ``The media is very unfair. They're very biased.'' He complained on FOX News last August.

He attacked the New York Times in that same interview, not for the first or last time, saying: ``You look at The New York Times, I mean the fail--I call it `The Failing New York Times.' ''

Apparently any news story critical of the President is now ``fake news.'' He tweeted in February: ``Any negative polls are fake news.''

And when asked about leaks from the intelligence community during last month's press conference in the East Room, he said: ``The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.''

His staff has gotten into the action, too, pushing at one point the Orwellian term, ``alternative facts.'' During an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Kellyanne Conway said: ``Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts,'' and, in the administration, ``we feel compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there.''

The White House has taken their fight with the media so far as to block access to outlets they disagree with, banning outlets such as CNN, POLITICO, the New York Times, and Los Angeles Times from an off- camera press briefing last month.

But of all of President Trump's relentless attacks against the media, the most disturbing to me was when he tweeted in February: ``The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!''

President Trump, I have a message for you: A free and open press is not the enemy of the American people. A free and open press is the salvation of our democratic Republic. It is an essential warrior in our Republic against fake news, charlatans, and those who would use fake news and attacks on the press to advance authoritarian government.

I thought my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, made a very apt analysis when he said that suppressing free speech is how dictators ``get started . . . when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press.'' Senator McCain went on to say: ``If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press.''

So this is a major concern, this attack on the media, and particularly an attack on news organizations that work to vet their reporting before they

share it with the American people. In other words, we are in the ironic situation that the very groups under attack by President Trump are the groups that work hardest to get true facts, actual facts, vetted facts, carefully fact-checked information to the American people. That is the foundation for a national dialogue: carefully vetted information so that we know when we read it, it is reliable. That is the type of news we need more of in this Nation.

Mr. Trump's authoritarian tactics aren't just limited to his war on the media. His second approach is to attack and scapegoat immigrants, religious minorities, and refugees ever since he stood in the lobby of Trump Tower and said:

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their

best. . . . They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime.

They're rapists.

Since then President Trump has made it his mission to turn the American people against Mexican immigrants, to make them the enemy. He has talked about the ``bad hombres'' flooding across our southern border, stealing our jobs, committing crimes, and murdering American citizens. In his mind, the people coming from Mexico are all dangerous, violent cartel members transporting an endless supply of drugs across our country in order to ruin America. But this storyline is completely at odds with the facts. First, drug cartels do not ship their products into our country through the backpacks of immigrants.

Recently I traveled with a congressional delegation to the U.S.- Mexico border to examine this issue. The experts on the border told our delegation that drugs come into the United States through freight, in trucks, and through tunnels--not through backpacks. What this means is that a proposal to build a wall, whether it is 20 feet high or 30 feet high, will be absolutely useless in diminishing the flow of drugs into our country.

I will tell you what else they told us. They said that an end zone defense does not work against drugs. If you want to stop the flow of drugs, you have to work carefully with regard to everything from the moment they are being manufactured or shipped into Mexico until they migrate north. That means you have to work in close cooperation with the security agencies of Mexico, with the police, and with the intelligence agencies of Mexico. That cooperation requires a very close coordination between respected partners, and disrespecting the partners of Mexico is the best way to damage the ability to intercept drugs that are coming into the United States.

We also know that the underlying premise of there being a flood of Mexican immigrants coming into our country is false. A 2015 study from the Pew Research Center found that between 2009 and 2014, there was a net outflow of 140,000 Mexican immigrants from the United States. They were migrating from the United States to Mexico, a net outflow. A more recent Pew Study determined that the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in America has declined by more than 1 million since 2007. If you take the span during the Obama administration, there was an outflow, not an inflow--the exact opposite of the story line the President is presenting.

What about those violent crimes being committed by undocumented criminals? The data does not support the President. In fact, the New York Times reported that ``several studies, over many years, have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States.'' Between 1980 and 2010, among men aged 18 to 49, immigrants were one-half to one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated as those born in the United States.

When you look closer, the attacks on immigrants fall apart, as I have pointed out, but that is what authoritarian leaders do. They create a false enemy, and they use the perception of that enemy to generate hate and fear. They use that hate and fear to consolidate power. It is our responsibility as citizens, as the press in the United States, and as legislators to resist this authoritarian strategy of President Trump.

Another of his strategies is to attack religious minorities in our country and abroad. Take for instance his pledge on the campaign trail for a ``total and complete'' shutdown on Muslims entering the United States. As we know, Mr. Trump followed up on this approach after the election by asking Rudy Giuliani to help fashion a legal Muslim ban.

During a FOX News interview, Mr. Giuliani said:

Trump called me up. He said, Put a commission together.

Show me the right way to do it legally.

To attempt to meet constitutional muster, Trump aimed his ban at immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Rudy Giuliani went on to say in that same FOX News interview:

What we did was we focused on, instead of religion,

danger--the areas of the world that create danger for us,

which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly

legal, perfectly sensible. And that's what the ban is based

on.

But, as William Banks, the director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University, observed, ``Since 9/11, no one has been killed in this country in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from any of the seven countries.''

The President's own Department of Homeland Security recently reported that citizens from the countries listed in the Muslim ban are ``rarely implicated in U.S.-based terrorism.'' In fact, the report concluded that individuals who died in the pursuit of or who were convicted of terrorism were far more likely to be U.S.-born citizens than to be immigrants.

Here is the great irony and the tragedy of President Trump's effort to demonize Muslims: Instead of protecting the United States, he is damaging the security of the United States. His attacks feed perfectly into and therefore strengthen ISIS's recruiting strategy of claiming that the United States is at war with Islam. Video of his speeches and public statements, especially Trump's call for a Muslim ban, has already been featured in ISIS's recruiting tools. In addition, it weakens the Muslim leaders we are seeking to partner with in taking on ISIS. It undermines those leaders' support from their own countries in their cooperating with the United States.

Trump's strategy does double damage to American security, and I wish his impact against religious minorities stopped there. I wish it stopped long before there because it is incompatible with the fundamental premise, the fundamental values of the United States of America, which is religious freedom. Yet, throughout the course of his campaign, he gave voice time and again to the views and opinions of White nationalists and anti-Semites. He did not directly attack the Jewish community, but his White nationalist rhetoric and actions have had the effect of doing it indirectly. When he needs news or information, he turns to the White nationalist Breitbart News--a fake news source which has infamously attacked American Jews with stories like ``Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew'' and another one that attacked Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post, which read: ``Hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned.''

But President Trump does not just tap into the Breitbart White nationalist themes; he brought the former executive chair of Breitbart, Steve Bannon, into the White House as his chief strategist and then appointed him to the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. This individual has no business being anywhere near the Capital of the United States and certainly not on the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. Bannon is a man who has not only been embraced by White supremacists for his views, but according to testimony from his ex-wife, he has said he does not want his children going to school with Jewish kids and had once asked a school administrator why there were so many Hanukkah books in the library.

If you think this theme has not had a real effect on our country, you are wrong. When Donald Trump was elected, the KKK and other White nationalist groups celebrated. They felt free to come out of the shadows. They felt bold enough to hold an annual White nationalist conference right here in Washington, DC, at the Ronald Reagan Building, steps from the White House, because they finally felt like they had one of their own in the Oval Office.

These nationalist groups are so emboldened that we have seen more

than 100 bomb threats called in to Jewish community centers around the country since January. We have witnessed the desecration of Jewish headstones in cemeteries in St. Louis and in Philadelphia.

Last month the President, speaking to a roomful of State attorneys general, said he condemned these threats. I applaud him for condemning them. But then he turned around and said: ``You have to be careful, because the reverse could be true.'' What did he mean by that? Commentators have suggested that the President meant by ``the reverse could be true'' that the bomb threats, the Swastika graffiti, and the desecration of Jewish burial sites might actually be the work of Jewish Americans to generate criticism of President Trump. There is no evidence of that, and I certainly do not believe it to be true. What I do believe is that a ``blame the victim'' tactic is reprehensible and in itself an anti-Semitic strategy.

The President has also dedicated a significant amount of time to trying to make the country fear refugees, to demonize refugees. Many of us grew up in a world in which Lady Liberty's words of ``give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'' stirred our hearts because, unless you are 100 percent Native American, you are tied in through your parents, your grandparents, your great- grandparents, your ancestors. You are tied to those who immigrated to the United States, who came here, often fleeing persecution, often fleeing famine. This Nation gave them a place to stand and in which to build a new life and thrive and hand down a better, stronger nation to their children. That is a property of our history. That is a value deeply rooted in our hearts.

The President, instead, has dedicated his energy to attacking refugees, those, like our ancestors, who came here, fleeing persecution and fleeing famine, especially Syrian refugees, who are fleeing for their lives in search of a safe haven. He has falsely claimed they represent a ``great Trojan horse'' that threatens the safety of Americans. Mr. Trump says these victims of war have to be subjected to extreme vetting because we have no idea who these people are or where they come from. The fact is that we do know who they are. We know exactly where they come from because before they can come here as refugees, they already go through extreme vetting. It takes 18 months to 2 years of vetting, on average, before refugees are given tickets to come to the United States of America, and if at any point during that 18 to 24 months something does not add up, they do not get the tickets.

Now, if ISIS or another terrorist organization wants to get people who are dangerous into our country, they do not go through an 18- or a 24-month vetting process. No. They come on tourist visas or student visas or business visas. Going through the refugee process would be the worst possible way to do it.

As an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute reminded us in October of 2015, of the 784,000 refugees who have been resettled in our country since September 11, 2001, 3 have been arrested for planning terrorist activities. None of them got past the planning phase, and only one of those three was talking about potential attacks here in the United States. The others were talking about sending money and weapons to al-Qaida. In other words, no one has been injured by those 784,000 refugees.

These are just some of the pieces of the President's authoritarian strategy to demonize groups, to create hate, to create fear, and to try to consolidate power. As a result of his activities, we have seen waves of hate crimes and violence and bigotry sweep across our Nation.

Latino and Latina students in our schools and in our classrooms have been forced to confront classmates' bullying and taunts, chants of ``build the wall'' and ``go back to your country,'' and graffiti sprayed on walls to ``build the wall higher.''

We have heard reports of verbal and physical attacks against people of the Muslim faith.

A woman at San Jose University lost her balance and choked when a man attempted to rip off her head scarf.

A Muslim student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus reported having a knife pulled on her.

A Muslim teacher in Georgia found left on her desk a note that read that a head scarf is not allowed anymore and that she should hang herself with it.

Within the last 8 weeks, four mosques around the country have been burned to the ground.

Just recently, a man in Kansas went into a bar, hurled ethnic slurs at two Indian engineers, and shot them, killing one and seriously injuring the other.

As I mentioned earlier, since January, there have been more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish community centers.

Throughout history, we have seen this tactic used by an executive here, an executive there, by a dictator here, a dictator there, in country after country, to characterize minority communities as a threat to be feared in order to make the body politic afraid, to make them angry, and to make them willing to support authoritarian exercise of power.

What is our job? It is our job to expose this strategy, to call attention to this strategy, to address the myths that are used to instill fear and the falsehoods that are used to instill hatred. It is our job to oppose this authoritarian game plan in every way possible.

The third leg of President Trump's authoritarian attacks are ones that go against public opposition to him and attack the protests of the people of the United States. What was the President's response after millions of people in cities all around the country--and all around the world, for that matter--joined the women's march to stand up for the fundamental values of peace, tolerance, and equality? His response was a rebuke and a dismissal. He tweeted:

Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression

that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote?

Well, President Trump, they did vote, and they all voted overwhelmingly for your opponent, by a 3 million-vote margin.

We saw similarly disparaging responses from Republican lawmakers like the Facebook post from a State Senator in Mississippi who said:

So a group of unhappy liberal women marched in Washington,

D.C. We shouldn't be surprised; almost all liberal women are

unhappy.

After countless citizens around the country began showing up at townhall meetings to make their voices heard, what was his response? He dismissed these engaged citizens as ``so-called angry crowds,'' and then he tweeted: ``Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to make America great again!''

I have held a lot of townhalls since January, many of them filled beyond capacity with regular citizens who are deeply distressed by what they are seeing in our country. At one townhall, more than 3,500 people showed up. We had so many people that the hundreds of folks who couldn't get in had to stand outside the building in the cold, listening. We took a speaker and put it in the window so those outside could hear, and they watched through the windows.

This is ``we the people'' government. This is American citizens saying: Your strategy, President Trump, is not OK. Your strategy to divide us into factions in America and to pit one faction against another, to demonize groups, to incite hate is just wrong.

I find it truly disheartening to see the President attacking citizens exercising their voice, which is often the most basic civic duty.

President Jefferson said there is a mother principle for our government, and the mother principle is that the actions of the government will only reflect the will of the people if each and every citizen has an equal voice. We know, in the modern day of campaign financing, some citizens and, indeed, often some noncitizens--that is, massive rich corporations--have a very loud voice compared to the average citizen. So citizens, to compensate, are saying: We are going to show up. We are going to take our time and our energy and we are going to join together and we are going to send a lot of emails to Capitol Hill, a lot of letters to Capitol Hill, but we are also going to show up in the parks and the streets to

march in order to say this strategy, this authoritarian strategy, or this strategy to take away healthcare from millions of Americans is absolutely unacceptable. And the President somehow is living in a fantasy world where he thinks they are paid? I don't think so. I don't think this last weekend, when 800 people showed up at Redmond, OR, to my townhall, that a single one of them was paid--not a single one.

When we look across the country and we see the 7-year-old who wanted to be at a townhall because he doesn't want us to cut funding for PBS in order to build a wall, he wasn't paid, or the Muslim immigrant who risked his life for our Nation in Afghanistan as a military interpreter and now wants to know ``Who is going to save me here,'' he wasn't paid.

American citizens are using their voice as designed in our ``we the people'' Constitution, but in the mind of our President and in the words of his adviser, Stephen Miller, his powers are very substantial and will not be questioned, not even by the citizens and voters of this great Nation.

Well, they are being questioned, massively, by citizens raising their voices in every possible way.

American citizens everywhere are deeply disturbed by what they are seeing unfold in our Nation. They fear we are headed down a dark and dangerous path that will betray the founding principles of our ``we the people'' government, and they have every right to be anxious and concerned.

There have been allusions made by a number of experts to Mr. Trump's actions and the early days of Vladimir Putin's regime and especially his relentless war with the media. All of these are reasons citizens are fired up, raising their voices to oppose the authoritarian tactics of this administration.

While the President seeks to dismiss the legitimacy of these voices, I stand here today to praise those Americans for standing up, for taking on their responsibility as citizens to create a powerful, courageous chorus, a public stand against the authoritarian strategy of President Trump--his strategy of attacking the media, his strategy of attacking immigrants, his strategy of attacking refugees, and his strategy of attacking religious minorities.

A friend sent me a message the other day saying:

I'm more devastated daily. I can't believe the Republicans

are not stopping this, saying something. How can this be

happening? Don't the Republicans see what's happening? I weep

for my kids.

Millions of Americans across the country are feeling those same fears. It is up to all of us here, imbued with the awesome responsibility to speak for and represent the people of this Nation, to stand up against advancing authoritarianism. It is right for us to fight for a free, open democratic republic, with a ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.''

Mr. President, 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, last Thursday was a sunny, cold day in Chicago, but I looked forward to it because there was an event that I wouldn't miss. We have a hospital there known as the Rehab Institute of Chicago. It is one of my favorites, and we have some great hospitals. The Rehab Institute of Chicago literally focuses on people who have had serious accidents, strokes, injuries and who are trying to get rehabilitated so they can function and walk.

I really got to know this hospital years ago when I had a town meeting in Chicago and talked about our returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of them were coming home with serious injuries from roadside bombs and the types of injuries that can change your life.

A man came up to me, and his name was Ed Edmundson. He was from North Carolina. I was kind of surprised that he was at a Chicago town meeting. He explained to me that he heard about the town meeting because he had a son named Eric who was a disabled veteran and was at the Rehab Institute of Chicago. It turns out that Eric was seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, and during the course of the surgery afterward, there was an accident. The net result of it was that he had very limited mobility and he could no longer speak.

Eric, if I remember, was about 23 years old. He was married and the father of a little girl. Well, the VA did the best for him, and they finally came to his mom and dad and said: We can't do anything more. We need you to pick out a motorized wheelchair for Eric because he needs to be in a nursing home. His father said: He is 23 years old. He is not going to a nursing home. We are not quitting. His dad then set out to find the best hospital in the United States and came to the conclusion that the Rehab Institute of Chicago was the place.

So he came to invite me to come up and meet Eric at the hospital, which I did a couple of days later. Eric was there with his mom and dad, and he started the rehab. I went back to see him a week or so later to see how he was doing. His mom said, as I came into the room: Eric has a gift for you. I thought: A gift for me? The gift was that Eric, with a little help, was able to stand on his own feet. It was a breakthrough. Some people had said it would never happen again.

His dad said to me that Eric planned on Memorial Day to put on his full dress uniform from the Army and walk out of the front door of that hospital with a little help and show folks that they shouldn't have given up on him. They asked me if I could be there. I said: I will move Heaven and Earth; I will be there. I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of people there--the mayor, elected officials, and every TV camera in Chicago--as Eric Edmundson walked out of the front door of the Rehab Institute in Chicago.

You never forget those moments, do you? Here is a young man who risked his life for America, came back gravely injured, and through his father and mother's determination--and his own strength--he found the best place for treatment. This rehab institute does research to find ways that give people who have spinal injuries and other injuries another chance.

Well, last Thursday they opened up the new Rehab Institute of Chicago, and it is renamed. It is the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. It is not a hospital. They call it an AbilityLab, and the reason is that they try to integrate research with actual doctors, clinicians, and patients all in the same place--not separate universities and hospitals and so forth. It is a bold idea. It is a new concept, but if anybody can pull it off, it is Dr. Joanne Smith, who heads up now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.

Do you know what I learned as I got out of the car to give the speech and to cut the ribbon at this new research facility? I learned that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, had just announced his new budget. Do you know what was included in his new budget? A new spending line for the National Institutes of Health. That agency is the premier medical research agency in the world, and we are lucky to have it right here in the United States. We are lucky that Congress has given more money to NIH for biomedical research last year. Senator Blunt, a Republican of Missouri, who heads up the subcommittee with Senator Murray of Washington, planned on giving more this year, and we are still trying.

Do you know what President Trump suggested for next year's budget for the National Institutes of Health? He suggested cutting their appropriation by $5.8 billion. It is a $32 billion appropriation. Cutting it by $5.8 billion will bring the level of biomedical research in the United States of America down to the lowest point it has been in 16 years. That is President Trump's idea of a priority--the most dramatic cut in biomedical research in the last 16 years.

I announced it when I did the ribbon-cutting speech. First, I thanked all the folks at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Dr. Smith, and Shirley and Pat Ryan. I told them if there is ever a time both political parties ought to come together and tell this President that you are just flat-out wrong, this is it. This is it because the medical research that is taking place in the National Institutes of Health is not just for those who are sick today but for those who may be diagnosed later today or tomorrow.

You know what the most frequently asked questions will be when you get that heartbreaking diagnosis? Doctor, is there anything you can do for me? Is there a medicine? Is there a procedure? Basically, is there any hope? If the NIH, or the National Institutes of Health, isn't properly funded and isn't doing its job, that answer is not always going to be a good one.

Young medical researchers don't get rich, but they love what they do. To keep them on the job doing what they should do with all of their talent and

all of their skill and all of their education, we have to promise them that we are going to continue to fund medical research in a serious way, without the peaks and valleys.

President Donald Trump does not understand that. Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, who came up with this terrible budget, doesn't understand that. To them, they are just numbers on a page. We will just cut biomedical research to the lowest level in 16 years.

A few minutes ago I had a visit from some folks from Chicago, IL. They were with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. They come to see me each year. You will see them around the halls wearing their orange ties and orange scarves. They came to talk about multiple sclerosis, which for many of my close friends is a disabling disease they fight every day. It is a disease of the central nervous system. It interrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and the body. Symptoms range from numbness to tingling, to blindness and paralysis. The progress, severity, and specific symptoms of MS of any one person can't be predicted.

The good news is that we are engaged in research that can make a difference, research that gives us hope. They talked to me about Donald Trump's cuts to the National Institutes of Health. I told them I was going to do everything in my power to restore that money so that the research continues.

Incidentally, there is another issue. It isn't just fighting the disease and doing the research. It is what is happening to the cost of the drugs that these people need to maintain their lives and that give them hope. In 2004 the average wholesale price of available MS disease- modifying therapies was $16,000. By 2013, the average price had gone up to $61,000. In 2017, the average price is up to $83,600. All of the top 10 specialty medication classes, which include MS, increased in spending, and all had increases in the price of medication. Some of these drugs have been on the market for years, and now the pharmaceutical industry is driving the costs up across the board.

When we talk about healthcare in America, it is interesting how little time we spend talking about the cost of pharmaceuticals. But how wrong we are. When the head of Blue Cross in Chicago came to see me, she said: Senator, I will bet you didn't know last year Blue Cross Blue Shield spent more money in their hospitalization plans for pharmaceuticals and medications than they spent for inpatient hospital care for those who were covered--more money on drugs than inpatient hospital care.

So what did the Affordable Care Act, which is being debated, do about the price of pharmaceuticals? Almost nothing. What does the new Republican replacement plan do about the cost of pharmaceuticals? Almost nothing. Why? Why is there this hands-off attitude when it comes to an integral part of the cost of healthcare and an integral factor in the dramatic increases in the cost of healthcare? Because pharma has friends in high places.

Watch your television sets. There are two things to watch for, if you still watch television. The first thing is to watch for all the drugs that are advertised on television. Do you know how many countries in the world allow drugs to be advertised on television? Two. And one of them is the United States.

You see all these drugs being advertised that are going to allow you to be liberated, freed, and cured, and this and that and the other thing. Then, they run through all the disclaimers. This is the one I like the best: Be sure and tell your doctor if you have had a liver transplant: Oh, Doc, did I fail to mention I had a liver transplant?

That is the kind of thing they put on television. Why does a pharmaceutical company spend all that money advertising on television? They make money off of it.

Here is how. Americans walk into their doctor's office and say: I just saw this ad for this drug, and I think it is exactly what I need. Too many doctors, instead of taking 10 minutes to explain why it isn't the drug you need, take 1 minute to write out the script. So expensive drugs make it on the market and justify the advertising on television. That is one of the grim realities of what we are facing.

When it comes to the drugs and their pricing, we know what is happening. They are running up the costs of drugs on individuals, and they can't afford it any more. I just met with some of these MS patients, and one of them told me she had gone now for weeks without medication because, she said: Senator, it is $6,000 I just don't have.

Well, we can do better than that. We should do better than that as a nation. We ought to make certain that we don't get swept away with the pharmaceutical companies and their advertising. Those are the other things you are going to see on television now. They are really beautifully done ads. They are talking about all of us wanting to survive and how the pharmaceutical industries are finding, through their research, good drugs to help us survive. I don't quarrel with that premise. That is right, but it turns out many of them are spending more money on advertising than they are on research. So this is big business. It is big profits. They are trying to protect them. It is driving up the cost of healthcare. People like my friends with multiple sclerosis are wondering how this will end and whether they will be able to pay for the treatment they desperately need.

If this means anything to those who are listening to this debate, if it means something to you or your family, you need to speak up-- Democrat, Republican, Independent, Trump voter or not--you need to let this administration and this Congress know that medical research is a priority to you. If it is not, hold on tight because Donald Trump's budget is about to rip the heart out of the National Institutes of Health.

Whatever his ambition, whatever his goals, whatever his tweets, I could care less. When it comes to medical research, he is in for a fight.

TrumpCare

Mr. President, the Republicans promised, if they took a majority, the first thing they would do is get rid of ObamaCare. He is gone. It has to be gone too. Fifty-seven times--maybe more--in the House of Representatives, they voted to abolish ObamaCare. It didn't mean anything. He was still President then. He was going to veto whatever they passed, but they did it over and over and over. It was an article of faith, and they beat their chests and went across America saying: Get rid of ObamaCare.

Then the dog caught the bus. They got the majority in the House and the Senate, and all of those threats and promises about ObamaCare became reality. Then something else happened. People started saying to the Republican majority: And then what? What are you going to replace it with?

Well, it turns out for 6 years they have been writing speeches about abolishing ObamaCare instead of for 6 years writing plans and bills to replace it. So they slapped together a replacement plan, sent it over-- I say that because it only took them a couple of weeks. They sent it over to the Congressional Budget Office, which is kind of like the umpire here, the referee, to take a look at it.

The Congressional Budget Office gave a report on the Republican replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act. This is what it said: Under TrumpCare--ObamaCare to TrumpCare--under TrumpCare, 24 million Americans will lose their health insurance; 14 million in the first year--24 million Americans out of a nation of what, 350 million, 360 million. That is a pretty large group.

We know what happens when people lose their health insurance. They still get sick. When they get sick, they go to the emergency room when it is too bad, and the emergency room takes care of them. Then the hospital, because the person does not have health insurance, chalks up the cost of that health to charity care and passes it along to everyone else with health insurance.

Under TrumpCare, seniors, rural communities, and lower and middle- income families will see their premiums and out-of-pocket costs soar, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Under TrumpCare, Medicare's solvency will shrink by 4 years. Medicare, you remember, is the program primarily for seniors started back in the 1960s to make sure that when you got to a point in life, age 65, you may not be working, no longer have insurance through your

employer, the government Medicare plan would cover you.

Has it worked? Ask 60 million Americans who count on it. Yes. What about the results? Since the 1960s, people are living longer. We know Medicare works, but the cost of healthcare has been going up, and we worried about its long-term solvency. It turns out the Affordable Care Act, which we passed, brought some savings to healthcare and added 10 years of solvency to Medicare.

Now, the Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and it will reduce the solvency of Medicare by 4 years--4 years sooner Medicare will go insolvent. The fiscally conservative Republican Party has come up with an answer, which leads to sooner insolvency for Medicare. Under TrumpCare, $880 billion in Federal Medicaid funding to States will be eliminated. What does it mean? Well, let me tell you the story of Judy.

Judy works at a motel in Southern Illinois. She is in her sixties. She is a hard-working lady. There is not a lazy bone in her body. She works in the hospitality room where you get the free breakfast at the motel. She is the one who smiles and cleans off the table and makes sure you are happy. I got to know her. Judy asked me about all of this stuff going on with affordable care. I asked her: Would you mind working with my office? Let's see what we can do for you.

It turns out that Judy, as hard as she works, makes a very low income. She qualified for Medicaid, which meant health insurance that did not cost her anything because her income was so low. She couldn't believe it. For the first time in her life--for the first time in her life she had health insurance--Medicaid--providing her health insurance. It was a good thing too because just shortly afterward she was diagnosed with diabetes. Now comes the proposal from the Republicans to remove so many people across America from Medicaid. Where does that leave Judy? Back where she started, working hard, with diabetes, a low income, and no health insurance. Terrible things can happen to you if you have diabetes and don't have some medical home or a doctor you can count on.

That is the reality of what TrumpCare will mean to Judy in Southern Illinois. One trillion dollars will be cut from programs that serve low- and middle-class families so the Republican approach can cut taxes for the wealthiest people in America. I am not making that up.

They are raising the premiums for working families to pay. They are cutting off seniors and others from Medicaid coverage so they can give tax breaks to the wealthiest superrich in America. It is going to cost us healthcare jobs across America. Downstate Illinois, those are good- paying jobs. The Illinois Hospital Association says we are going to lose them.

This Republican bill, TrumpCare, is bad for seniors, bad for middle- class families, bad for people with disabilities. It is not very good for kids. Half of the kids in America are born under and taken care of by Medicaid. It is bad for the States, bad for just about everyone who is not healthy or wealthy. Yet the House Republican leadership is intent on moving forward with TrumpCare this week.

The President came to the House Republicans yesterday and said: If you don't support me on this vote, I am coming after your districts to defeat you.

This approach is going to increase premiums for seniors in one of the most fundamental ways. We said in our bill that we voted for that you could not have a disparity in premiums more than 3 to 1. So the premiums charged to a 20-year-old and the premiums charged to a 60- year-old could be no different than a 3-to-1 margin. The Republicans changed that and made it 5 to 1.

That is why the American Association of Retired Persons opposes TrumpCare and why seniors across the country are waking up to the reality that they are in for a jolt when it comes to the premiums they have to pay.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, has said: ``This is not a bill I could support in its current form . . . it really misses the mark.'' As Senator Collins noted, this bill does not come close to achieving the goal of allowing low-income seniors to purchase health insurance.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, said:

The CBO score was, shall we say, an eye-popper. . . . Can't

sugarcoat it. . . . Doesn't look good.

Senator and Dr. Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana, said that. He went on to say:

That's not what President Trump promised. . . . That's not

what the Republicans ran on.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said:

I'm afraid that if [House Republicans] vote for this bill,

they're going to put the House majority at risk next year. .

. . Just from a practical standpoint, I don't think this bill

is going to reduce premiums for working Americans. . . . I

think it's going to cost coverage for many Americans.

Why do we want to rush this process? It took us more than 2 years to write a bill, and it is still a bill that needs more work. I voted for it. To think that they can replace it in a matter of weeks, with this slap-dash approach, is not fair to America. It is not fair to people who count on health insurance for peace of mind and coverage when they desperately need it.

I see my friend on the floor. I am going to close. I released a report today, and it is one I am going to share across the board in Illinois before our delegation votes this week. This bill in Illinois means that 311,000 people I represent would lose their private health insurance. By 2020, the average enrollee in Illinois would see their health insurance costs increase by over $3,000--by 2026, almost $5,000.

The impact is particularly severe for Illinoisans ages 55 to 64. They would see their costs of premiums increase by over 50 percent. Illinois hospitals, they are against it too. They know that a lot of downstate hospitals and inner-city hospitals can't survive this Republican replacement plan.

I will close with a letter from Christine McTaggart of Watseka, IL. Here is what she said to me: ``I wake up every day since the election fearing that a complete repeal will happen and for me that translates into a death sentence.''

Christine was originally diagnosed with stage IIIb inflammatory breast cancer in September of 2012. Given this type of aggressive cancer, her prognosis was poor. She went through 16 cycles--16--of chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy, 33 radiation treatments, failed reconstruction and chronic tissue issues, and thyroid cancer as well.

After all of that, in 2014, she learned her breast cancer was back. This time in her bones, stage IV. In her letter to me, Christine McTaggart of Watseka wrote:

When the Affordable Care Act became law, I had no idea my

life would come to depend on policies such as pre-existing

conditions not excluding you from coverage . . . and lifetime

maximums being eliminated. If ACA were repealed, I would no

longer have coverage as my chronic ongoing treatment has far

exceeded the old lifetime maximums. . . . I would have to

choose between bankruptcy for treatments I cannot afford and

rolling the dice, waiting for death.

She ends with this:

I thank you for your tireless advocacy on this issue. . . .

My life literally depends on it.

What we need to do is take repeal off the table, and this Senator will pull a chair up to the table. Let's make the Affordable Care Act work. Let's do it in a bipartisan way. Let's not look for a slam dunk for either political party. Let's try to do the right thing for America. We are not going to make the extremes in either political party happy, but if millions of Americans have health insurance and can find a way to pay for it, then we will do our job.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, I agree with my friend wholeheartedly. We are asking for a repair. It doesn't make any sense at all to go down the path of repealing until we make an effort to make this better and protect the people who are depending on us. With that, let's see what happens. We are all willing to sit down and work on both sides of the aisle to help improve it.

Opioid Abuse Crisis

Mr. President, I rise today because of the crisis we have with the country's opiate addictions--prescription drugs--in the Presiding Officer's wonderful State of Alaska, the State of West Virginia, and every other State in the Union.

West Virginia has the highest drug overdose death rate in the Nation due to prescription drug abuse. Just in 2016, West Virginia reported 818 overdose deaths, which is 4 times the number that occurred in 2001 and is a nearly 13-percent increase just from 2015, when it was about 607. More than 700 West Virginians died from an opioid overdose last year, and 42,000 people in West Virginia, including 4,000 youth, sought treatment for illegal drug use, but they failed to receive it. There is no place for them to go.

The Presiding Officer and I have spoken about this, and I appreciate his willingness and openness to look at how we cure that. I have a bill called the LifeBOAT Act, which the Presiding Officer has been so graciously looking at. It is something that I believe would give us the funding mechanism, and it won't be a hardship. It also gives exemptions for people who have chronic pain from cancer and all the chronic illnesses that are out there. Basically, the opiate drugs that are sold on a day-to-day basis by the millions and millions--it is a one-penny revenue source, one penny per milligram. That would give us the funding mechanism we need in order to continue to have expanded services for addiction.

I have been involved in public service for quite some time, and 20 years ago, I would have thought anybody who has fooled with drugs, whether legal prescription or illicit drugs--it would be a criminal act and they should go to jail for it. Well, we have put people in jail for consumption for the last 20 years, and it hasn't cured one. So I have come to the conclusion, basically, in looking and talking to the experts, after we have had two decades of evaluating this, that it is an illness, and an illness needs treatment. We don't have the treatment centers, so we are letting people go untreated, and that is basically sinful in this country.

There are 2.1 million Americans who abuse or are dependent on opioids--2.1 million. I think to get the scope of how bad the situation is, and this epidemic, when you think about how over 200,000 people have died since 2000--200,000--any other catastrophic cause of death in this country would be of pandemic proportions, and we would do whatever it costs in order to get the National Institutes of Health to find a cure. We would. But with this, we kind of sit back idly.

According to the CDC, three out of four new heroin users abused prescription opiates before moving to heroin. It is a segue for people to move right into tougher, stronger, powerful drugs.

Heroin use has more than doubled among young adults ages 18 to 25 in the past decade, and 45 percent of the people who used heroin were also addicted to prescription opiate painkillers. Between 2009 and 2013, only 22 percent of Americans suffering from opioid addiction participated in any form of addiction treatment.

Think about the enormity of this epidemic. The United States of America, our great country, makes up only about 4.6 percent of the world's population; yet we consume 80 percent of all opiates produced and consumed in the world. How did it happen? The Presiding Officer and I grew up in a time when this wasn't prevalent, but how did it happen?

I will tell you one thing: We have to cure it. It is ravaging and destroying every part of this great country. We are taking so many productive people out of the workforce because they are addicted. If you talk to your police and law enforcement anywhere in this country, they will tell you that 80 to 90 percent of all of the calls they make in the form of justice are due to opiate or drug use. It is horrible what it is costing us in real time, in real dollars, in real people's lives.

There is another bill I have out there, too, and I call it last chance. It really deals with this. If we know we have a problem--we have people whom we don't have in the workforce because three things keep you out of the workforce: You are either addicted or convicted or lack of skills. You have an addiction; you have been convicted of a crime, so you have a record; or you have a lack of skills or a combination of the three.

I can tell you that the addiction and conviction usually go hand in hand. People who are addicted often have a larceny or maybe even a felony on their record, and it is so hard for them to get back into the workforce. If you get them in a treatment center, there is no carrot to say: Stick with this because you are going to be clean.

It takes a lot of fortitude for a person to stay with the program when they have such an addiction and a craving. But if they know that at the end of that 1 year in a treatment center, there is a chance for them to expunge their record if it wasn't a violent crime, if it wasn't a sexual crime--but it was probably grand larceny, because usually they will steal from their family, and then once the family gets tough with them, they will steal from any type of extended family, and then they will steal from the neighborhood or anywhere they can get the money to support their habit.

What my bill says is that after 1 year in a certified treatment program, they complete another year of mentoring, helping other people get off and stay off and maybe not start, then they are able to, with their sponsors--people who say: Yes, they have completed this program; yes, they have mentored for 1 year--they can go before the arresting officers and the sentencing judge to see if they can get that expunged to give

them a clean start. It is the Clean Start Act. I call it last chance, but officially it is called the Clean Start Act. It is one way to get this workforce in America producing again because if not, the only thing they have waiting for them is a minimum wage job, and the skill sets most of them have are going to go unused and unproductive. So these are things we are working on.

When you look at the misuse and abuse of opiates and what it costs our country, think about this. This was in 2013, the last figures I have--an estimated $78.5 billion in lost productivity, medical costs, and criminal justice cost. In 2013, it cost our country $78.5 billion. So we are paying for it. It is like ``Pay me now or pay me later.'' We are paying for it.

That one penny on every milligram of opiates that are produced and consumed in this country would raise about $1.5 to $2 billion a year. I would hope it would raise none, but it would raise that much because of the amount of consumption we have. We consume 80 percent of all of the world's opiates. With that, we can start creating treatment centers and curing people.

For the past year, I have been coming to the Senate floor to read letters from West Virginians and those struggling all throughout our country with opioid abuse. They all mention how hard it is to get themselves or their loved ones into treatment. Sometimes it takes months, and sometimes it never happens. Most of the time, it never happens. This problem stems from a lack of a system to help those who are looking for help. We need permanent funding. We talked about that. That is why I introduced the LifeBOAT Act.

Today I am going to read a letter from a mother from West Virginia-- she is no different from a mother from Alaska, I can assure you--who lost her daughter to drug abuse after she struggled to get her into treatment facilities she desperately needed. This is Leigh Ann Wilson's story.

On behalf of the families who have lost their children to

addiction, I ask that any health law reforms contain a

serious effort to ensure effective addiction treatment for

all who need it, whatever it takes.

Just yesterday, the Boston Globe published a special report

about my daughter, Taylor Leigh Wilson.

Leigh Ann's daughter is named Taylor Leigh Wilson.

My youngest child was one of West Virginia's promising

young people, a former Girl Scout, Cabell Midland High School

graduate and Marshall student who wanted to turn her love of

books into a career as a librarian. But drugs destroyed her

life despite her willingness, and months of effort, to get

treatment.

Taylor's overdose was the first--

You have to listen to this because you are just not going to believe what happened in Huntington, WV, on this day.

Taylor's overdose was the first of 28 that would be

reported in Huntington in the span of five hours on Aug. 15,

2016. The horror of that afternoon made national news. Then

the reporters left. Our nightmare, though, was just

beginning.

Taylor and I would spend the next 41 days trying to get

help. We drove door to door in search of inpatient treatment

beds to isolate her from the heroin world. All we found were

waiting lists; out-of-state centers that wouldn't take West

Virginia Medicaid; and doctors who discouraged Taylor from

inpatient treatment, saying she could do without it.

Then Taylor put her name on Prestera's waiting list for

Suboxone, a drug proven to reduce withdrawal symptoms. No one

told her how long she might have to wait. Though evidence

suggests that the combination of counseling and prescription

drugs to reduce cravings can be very effective, our lawmakers

have restricted the availability of this medication.

On September 28, 2016, Prestera Center called to inform me

that Taylor had been accepted into the Suboxone program.

That was September 28, and, as I told you, this overdose happened on August 15.

On September 28, Prestera Center called to inform me that

Taylor had been accepted in the suboxone program. I had to

tell her that she had overdosed and died 3 days before. The

next February I got a call from Prestera Pinecrest following

up on Taylor's application for recovery housing and to see if

she was still interested.

Before she passed away, Taylor herself told the Boston

Globe reporter that the real story that needs to be told is

why there are no treatment beds when our state has a crisis

epidemic.

Your State, my State--almost every State in America has this.

Why must it be so hard to get addiction treatment in a

state with the nation's highest drug death rate--818 deaths

last year, most of them from [legal prescription drugs]?

Think about how this epidemic has gotten to this proportion. We have a drug that is put on the market by the FDA. This is an organization, a Federal agency, that is supposed to make sure that we have for consumption a safety net built into it. So the FDA gives their stamp of approval: This is a product that can be used, and it should be of help. Then it goes to the DEA to find out who is allowed to dispense it without any type of education or any type of work to make sure that there is competency in our doctors who are prescribing it--or I might say overprescribing it. Then it goes to the doctor, who is the most trusted person outside of our family, who says: This is going to help you. This is good for you. This is what we are talking about--what is killing West Virginians and Americans every day.

If you need heart surgery, you have insurance providers around the State that would compete for your care. That is what she is saying. There is someone there; for any other treatment or any other need for treatment of any illness, we can find help, but not for this.

This has been such a silent killer that I know--and my family included. Everyone I talk to--anybody I talk to knows somebody in their immediate family or extended family or a close family friend. All of our young interns here know the same. They know people. But we keep it quiet; especially if it's in our family, we keep quiet because it is embarrassing. We don't want anybody to know that we have failed as a family structure. Something fell apart for this to happen. Why would someone have to turn to drugs when they have a loving, caring family? We just don't understand, so we keep quiet about it.

It isn't a Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative cause. This is a killer that has no boundaries; it attacks everybody. That is what I am saying. When you see a mother who is doing everything she can to get her daughter somewhere just to save her life and can't get her in--we are talking about this one penny: What is a one-penny tax, Joe? I can't vote for any new taxes.

I am not asking you to vote for a tax. I am asking you to look any of your constituents in the eye and say: We have a program that is lifesaving for you or your family member. God forbid if you ever need it, but we have it.

We don't hesitate to put taxes on cigarettes. We didn't hesitate. Everybody voted for taxes on cigarettes. Everybody has voted for taxes on alcohol. I am asking for one penny--one penny to save thousands and thousands of lives in America. I guarantee that there will not be one person to vote against it--a Republican or Democrat who would not vote for something that is going to put permanent funding for treatment centers in the most needed areas in America and saves people's lives.

There aren't enough resources to accommodate the addiction

problem in the heroin capital of the United States, Taylor

[herself told] a reporter. If no one changes it this whole

city will go under.

Let me tell you what this city of Huntington is doing right now. I met with them last week when I was home. They are going to have a center of excellence starting with Marshall University, the city of Huntington, Calvert County, and the entire organization. All the policymakers are working together because this is something they are fighting every day. This center of excellence is built around this. We know we have a problem. We have people overdosing. We are trying to save lives. We are trying to get them clean, and we are trying to get them back into the workforce.

The center of excellence is going to start at conception for a mother who may be using and conceives a child. How do we get her clean? How does she have a healthy baby versus a drug-addicted baby?

We have Lily's Place down there, and what they are doing in neonatal care is unbelievable. They are trying to get this baby weaned off the addiction that the mother passed on in her pregnancy. Then we want to make sure that mother goes back home with the baby in a clean home because, if not, the cycle will continue. This is what the center of excellence is going to do.

The success we think we are going to have, starting at ground zero in Huntington, WV, will be able to be shared all over the country because they are going to take a holistic approach. You just can't say: I am going to treat the addict. I am going to treat the cause. It goes further than that. These children are being born to a drug-infested mother and a father or a person who is paternal or into a family that is still drug-infested. It does nothing but perpetuate the cycle. This is what we have to stop if we want to save the country.

Here is what I tell children, and I will tell all of our young interns. I go to schools and talk every day. I tell them that there is not another country that will take on the United States of America militarily. No one compares with the greatest military that the world has ever known, that history has ever recorded, the United States of America. It is not going to happen. Nobody can take on this great economy of ours--the greatest economy in the world, $19 trillion, almost $20 trillion GDP. The closest economy we have next to us is China, with an economy that is about half of ours, $10.5 to $11 trillion. Then it drops off the scale with Japan and then Russia. Russia is at $2.5 to $3 trillion. No one compares to the United States of America for the economy and military might we have as a superpower-- the only superpower left in the world, the United States of America. We are the hope of the world, the United States of America.

I tell them: They don't think they have to fight you. They don't have to take over our economy. They think we will give it to them. They think we will give it to them because we have a lack of skill sets. Our education attainment is not as high as what they are doing, and our addiction problem means we will not be clean enough to be able to perform. They will just sit back and wait because time is on their side. They can sit back and wait for us to turn it all over. And you might be the last generation that lives in our country as the only superpower, the United States of America. God, I hope that doesn't happen, but we have to fight this. We just can't continue to keep talking about it.

We have a good piece of legislation. Think about this: I introduced this bill a year ago--introduced it to honor Jessie Grubb and her mom and dad. Her dad served in the State legislature with me. We have been friends for a long time. Jessie was 30 years old. She was a promising young girl. She got sexually molested when she was in college. She came home, hid it from them, was depressed, got started on--they gave her some pain pills, some drug suppressants so she could cope with it. She got addicted. She overdosed a few times. She was trying to cure--she was 30 years old. She had gone to Michigan. She was in treatment. She had been clean for 6 months. She was a runner, an athlete. She was doing her first marathon.

She had a hip injury, and she went to the hospital. When she went to the hospital, her mom and dad went up there. So here was the mom, the dad, and the girl; they went to admissions. She said: I want you all to know, I am so proud that I am a recovering addict, and I am 6 months clean. I want to make sure you all know that. The parents reiterated it.

She goes into this, and there are no laws--nothing. They ask her all different types of questions: Are you allergic to penicillin--whatever it may be? They make sure that her chart is marked right, so that another attending physician or another attending nurse or the night shift or whatever looks and sees that they can't do that because it says she is allergic to that or they shouldn't give her this because of her condition.

She goes in and she gets treated and she has an infection. They want to treat the infection, so they put a port in to treat the infection because that is how she would be treated with that.

The discharging physician did not know she was a recovering addict. He saw a healthy young lady with an injury and knew that she was going to have pain, so he prescribed her some pain medication. He prescribed her 50 OxyContin on the afternoon she was discharged, and she overdosed and died by 1 in the morning.

Jessie's Law basically says that if the guardian or parent and if the patient both come in and identify their problem and they want you to mark their charts accordingly, that should be done. Pretty simple, right?

Let me tell you what has happened. For 1 year it has been stalled because of HIPAA privacy laws. All this was going on; 1 year was up, and I called David. They had written me a letter that said: Do you think anything will ever happen?

So we went back again and started working on it. Here's what we did to change it. I said: David, we are going to have to take the parents or guardians off of it. If the patient themself asks for that, freely and willingly asks for that, we think that will pass muster, and all the different interest groups out there that are so concerned will basically accept that.

So we have that piece of legislation called Jessie's Law. God forbid, if someone has a constituent or a loved one and it is not known, they can lose that child, just like that.

These are all things that we are dealing with after the effects of addiction. Huntington, WV, and Marshall University are going to take on an effort that I think is heroic: How do we start from the beginning, conception, and make sure that child doesn't grow up to be an addict, make sure that family can get clean enough, and make sure they can be given the responsibility to care for that child so that they can grow up not in an addicted environment? That is what we are trying to do. We are at ground zero.

I am hopeful for this great country and this new generation that we are counting on that they can keep themselves clean and still continue to be the hope of the world, and they truly are.

With that, 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, the House is still on schedule to vote tomorrow on a reform of one-sixth of the American economy that the American public has not seen. This is, frankly, unprecedented--this rush job, this attempt to jam through a massive rewrite of the American healthcare system, intentionally done so fast that the American public cannot keep up with what is a truly disastrous piece of legislation. It is a train wreck. It is a dumpster fire. I cannot come up with enough words to describe how bad this legislation is going to be for the American public.

Bill Kristol, who is an icon of the conservative movement and who has been arguing for the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act since it was passed, tweeted out this:

This healthcare bill does not, A, lower costs; B, improve

insurance; C, increase liberty; D, make healthcare better. So

what is the point?

Frankly, many Americans, many healthcare professionals, and many consumers are asking the same question: What problem does this bill solve?

Whatever you want to call it--the American Health Care Act, TrumpCare, RyanCare--what problem does this bill solve other than a political problem?

Clearly, Republicans have a political problem. They have promised, for the last 6 years, to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now they have control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, and they feel pressured to make good on that promise.

It does solve a political problem for the Republicans. The passage of this bill in the House or the Senate would allow my Republican friends to say: We told you we were going to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and--doggone it--we did it. But it does not solve any other problem in the American healthcare system. It makes the existing, remaining problems even worse. The Republicans know this because, for 6 years, we have heard criticism--relentless criticism--that the Affordable Care Act was rammed through the process, that it was passed without Members' knowing what was in it, that it was shoved down the throats of the American people. Well, imagine our surprise when the replacement to the Affordable Care Act is being pushed through at absolutely light speed compared to the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

So we look at what happened when the Affordable Care Act was passed, and the HELP Committee that I sit on, the Finance Committee in the Senate, the Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee held dozens of hearings--dozens of committee meetings. The Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate alone debated hundreds of amendments and accepted 130 Republican amendments to the Affordable Care Act.

This time around, the HELP Committee isn't even going to have a meeting on the replacement. The committees in the Senate aren't going to have anything to do with this bill. The substitute language that Speaker Ryan has filed likely will not even get a CBO analysis before it is jammed through the House tomorrow. Why is that? Because Republicans are so fearful that the American public will have the time to take a look at this and realize what it is.

I don't often say that Bill Kristol is right, but he is right when he says that this bill doesn't lower costs, it doesn't improve insurance, increase liberty, or make healthcare better, so what is the point?

Here are three really simple ways to understand this bill. This bill is all about higher costs for consumers, all about less care for Americans, all in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. These are the three prongs of TrumpCare: higher costs, less care, and tax cuts for the rich. You don't have to spend a lot of time deep inside this bill to figure out what it is all about.

So costs go up, CBO says 15 to 20 percent, just in the first couple of years for a number of reasons, but primary amongst them is the fact that the help that you are going to get to afford insurance just dramatically decreases. For low-income Americans, here it is: You get $1,200 less if you are 27, you get $1,100 less if you are 40, and if you are 60, you get really hosed. If you are 60, good luck affording insurance. Your subsidy goes down by $5,800. It gets even worse than that because this bill allows for the insurance companies to discriminate against older Americans by jacking up the ratios that you can charge older Americans versus younger Americans from 3 to 1 to 5 to 1, so the average low-income, sixtyish-year-old in this country will be paying about $15,000 more out of pocket for healthcare.

What problem does that solve? Talking to people in Connecticut, I didn't hear a lot of my constituents who are in their fifties and sixties say: Let me tell you the problem with the American healthcare system. I am paying way too little. I need to be paying--if I could be paying $13,000 more, that would scratch me where I itch.

Nobody says that the problem with the healthcare system today is that costs are too low. It is the opposite. Costs are too high. Yet the first prong of TrumpCare: higher costs. That is not me saying it; that is CBO saying it.

I will give my colleagues the exception to this because let's lay all of our cards out on the table. CBO does say that if you are young, healthy, and relatively affluent, you might get a lower rate. Let's be honest about that. So if you are young, healthy, and you are affluent, you might get a lower rate. But that is a sliver of the population compared to all of the people who are going to be paying higher rates, especially older people and especially low-income people, because the subsidies don't change if your income goes up, and because of the discrimination made legal in this bill, older people have to pay more.

So, basically, another way to think about this in terms of how costs are going up is the more you need healthcare, the less help you get. If you are low-income and you are older, you get less help. If you are younger and higher income, comparatively, you get more help from this bill. Again, that is not attacking a problem that I hear about very often. People who need more help tend to need more help.

Here is the second chart. All of this is done in order to give a big tax cut. So here is the amount of tax cuts in this bill for people making $10,000; here is the amount for people making $20,000 to $30,000; here is the amount of the tax cut one gets if you are at $50,000 to $60,000. We see a trend line. It is about the same amount if you are making $10,000 up to about $200,000. The amount of tax cut you get from this bill in that range is zero. But if you are making $200,000 or more, well, here is where the money is, up to the point where people who are making the highest incomes in this country get over $1 million in tax cuts.

It repeals some tax provisions in the Affordable Care Act that were used to finance the subsidies, but all of those tax provisions affect the very top income level earners. So there is a tax cut in this bill, but it gives you zero if you make less than $200,000 a year. It gives you a lot if you are making more than $200,000 a year.

Here is the last chart: less care. Here is what CBO says will happen if the Affordable Care Act remains. This is a really important line to look at here because part of the narrative, part of the explanation for this piece of legislation is that, in Paul Ryan's words, ObamaCare is in a ``death spiral,'' and Donald Trump says it is ``collapsing.''

The Congressional Budget Office--which is run by a man who was handpicked by the Republican caucus in the

House--the Congressional Budget Office says: No, actually, it is not collapsing; it is not in a death spiral. If we do nothing and allow the Affordable Care Act to remain--yes, over 10 years, the number of people without insurance will go up by a little bit, up to 28 million, but the death spiral happens if you pass TrumpCare. There is a death spiral coming into the American healthcare system. There is a humanitarian catastrophe that is about to hit us, but it only happens if you choose to pass this piece of legislation that is pending before the House of Representatives today.

Now, I hear this legislation can't pass the U.S. Senate because my Republican colleagues understand this. So I am not necessarily talking directly to my Republican colleagues here because I trust that they understand the collapse of the American healthcare system that occurs when, in a very short period of time, you create 24 million more uninsured people.

But, remember, Donald Trump said during the campaign that no one was going to lose healthcare. Republicans in the House said that everyone who is on healthcare today will get to keep it. CBO says that is not even close to true. In the first 2 years, 14 million people lose care, and eventually those who are uninsured goes to 52 million. The Presiding Officer knows this, and my Republican colleagues here know this.

This 52 million, it is not that they are totally outside of the American healthcare system. If there is an emergency, they go to an emergency room, and the emergency room covers their care. That is the most inhumane way to run a healthcare system, to wait until you are so sick, so ill, that your cancer has ravaged your body so badly, you have to show up in the emergency room, but they will get that care--often the most expensive care--and we will all pay for it. Part of the reason that CBO says that rates will go up is because this 52 million gets their care from emergency rooms. The emergency rooms and the hospitals pass that cost along to private insurers, and everybody's premiums go up.

Here is another way to think of this. I know these numbers tend to get a little hard to digest, a little hard to understand as they get thrown around. Here is what 24 million people losing healthcare looks like. How many people is 24 million? Twenty-four million is the entire combined population of Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. This isn't a minor shift in the number of people who will not have healthcare. This is a seismic change. The entire population of 17 States loses healthcare over the course of 10 years if this bill is passed.

By the way, let's be honest about who these people are. Yes, many of them will be people losing healthcare in the private marketplace. CBO says people who have private insurance will lose it because of this bill, either because their cost-sharing goes up and they can't afford it or because their employer might not offer it any longer. But a lot of this is in the Medicaid population, and you have to make a decision. The Medicaid population is, by and large, poor people, disabled people, elderly Americans, a lot of children, a lot of kids. The Members are going to have to make a decision about whether their conscience will be OK with 24 million. Most of them are pretty sick and disabled and pretty young--if you are OK with that many people losing coverage.

So Paul Ryan is right; it is a three-pronged approach. The three prongs are higher costs, less care, in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. It doesn't solve any problem that exists today in the healthcare system, except for maybe, as I mentioned, that very narrow issue of young, healthy, affluent Americans. They will probably do a little bit better here. But everybody else does worse.

By the way, here is what CBO says is the reason why those young, affluent healthy Americans do better--because you kick old people off of insurance. The only reason that premiums stabilize in years 3 and 4 and 5, according to CBO, is because this bill jettisons millions of older, relatively sicker Americans off of healthcare. So as you just kick old people off healthcare, then it gets a little bit cheaper for the younger people who remain.

So even the small percentage of Americans who, from a monetary standpoint, do a little bit better under this bill, they only do better because individuals who really needed care lose it under this approach.

This bill is moving really, really fast. It is moving really, really fast. Its impact is absolutely stunning. My hope is that it gets stuck somehow, that Senators of goodwill recognize, as Bill Kristol did in his tweet, that this bill doesn't actually solve any problems. Maybe they recognize that it looks an awful lot like the Affordable Care Act. For the Speaker's reputation as being a big ideas guy, there are no new ideas in this legislation. It is essentially just the Affordable Care Act dialed down from 10 to 3.5, making healthcare unaffordable for everybody. The subsidies are still there; they are just much less. The individual mandate is still there; it just applies it in a different, more cruel way. Instead of paying a penalty when you lose coverage, you now pay a penalty when you lose coverage and try to sign up again. It is the same concept; it is just the penalty applied at a different place, and the insurance requirements are there.

So there are no new ideas. If you were ideologically opposed to the Affordable Care Act, there is no reason why this solves any of your problems. And from a practical consideration, it raises costs, it doesn't improve insurance, and it kicks a lot of people off healthcare.

My final thought is this: I know this issue of healthcare has become probably the most partisan, in part because there are some real important philosophical questions at the heart of this debate. I don't apologize for the fact that I do believe that healthcare should be looked at as a human right. I really think that in this country, we give you access to education; we should give you access to healthcare as well. You are living in the most powerful, most affluent country in the world. You probably shouldn't die because you are not rich enough to afford access to a doctor. It seems like something we should be able to do for you. So there are some serious ideological differences because I know a lot of my Republican colleagues don't view it that way. They view healthcare as a commodity much more so than I do. But we have shown the ability to work together on healthcare and on some pretty controversial pieces of it.

At the end of 2016, just 2 months ago, we passed the 21st Century Cures Act. That wasn't easy. That was $6 billion of additional spending on medical research in this country. It included legislation that Senator Cassidy and I wrote--the Mental Health Reform Act--that had some tough reforms on our insurance markets requiring insurance companies to cover more mental illness. We had to work through some very tough issues with Senator Cornyn, who opposed our legislation until we worked out issues he had, and then he became a supporter and champion of it. We had to work through some difficult issues, but we passed a big healthcare bill at the end of 2016, with Republicans and Democrats supporting it. Frankly, in the end, some progressive Democrats voted against it and some conservative Republicans voted against it. It wasn't without controversy even until that final vote. But we have shown the ability to be able to work together, so why don't we do the same thing here?

I submit there are still big problems in the healthcare system. The Affordable Care Act didn't solve every problem out there, and even some aspects of the Affordable Care Act have to be amended, have to be changed. But let's work together on ways to keep what is working in the Affordable Care Act and make improvements to the parts that aren't working as well. Let's move into territory that we haven't covered yet, like drug prices, and do something about that.

Donald Trump, the President of the United States, gave a speech earlier this week in which he told Americans that if you pass this legislation, drug prices will come ``way, way, way down.'' That is his quote, that drug prices will come ``way, way, way down.'' That is not in this bill. TrumpCare doesn't have anything that controls drug prices. Drug prices are not coming way, way, way down, but

we could work together to try to make sure that happens. We could have a tough conversation about what we are willing to pay when it comes to drugs, whether we are willing to let the rest of the world free ride on the contribution of the United States to global research and development. That would be a very important discussion to have. I bet it wouldn't get all 100 of us, but it would allow for Republicans and Democrats to work together.

Instead of ramming this bill through this process, through the reconciliation process, which means you can do it without a single Democrat supporting it, let's sit together and try to work out a bipartisan approach to improving our healthcare system.

I know why Speaker Ryan is pushing this bill through so fast. He knows it doesn't solve any problems that exist in the American healthcare system. He knows that the only problem it solves is a political problem--a political problem created by the promise that Republicans and this President made to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But because they are doing it so fast, so ham-handedly, the replacement is going to result in disaster for Americans. That is not me saying that. That is the Congressional Budget Office. That is Bill Kristol. That is Republicans and Democrats all across the country.

Whatever happens tomorrow in the House of Representatives, the Senate will have a chance to be the adults in this conversation. Senate Republicans will have a chance to take a big step back and start over, and they can start over in a partisan way, or they can start over by reaching out to Democrats and saying: Let's try to work this out together. We may not get to that point where we have a bipartisan agreement, but, boy, it would be nice if my Senate Republican colleagues would at least try because if they don't, then Paul Ryan is right--there will be three prongs to what will be called TrumpCare, if it isn't already: higher costs for consumers, less care for Americans, all in order to finance a giant tax cut for the rich. This isn't what the American people thought they were getting, and we have a chance in the Senate to do so much better.

Mr. President, 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, this week the Judiciary Committee has been considering the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

I think it has been a remarkable opportunity for the country--indeed, the world--to see not only somebody who is obviously very intelligent but very articulate and very committed to the basic principles that created this country, which were shaped in the framework of the Constitution.

Sometimes people forget that judges aren't legislators and legislators aren't judges and that we do have separate responsibilities. Indeed, the separation of powers between the President and the legislature and the judiciary is very important and for a good reason.

Judge Gorsuch has done a tremendous job for the last 2 days handling questions from both sides of the aisle with humility and with clarity.

I told him that I had hoped he would consider Chairman Grassley's proposal that we have a camera in the Supreme Court courtroom.

Years ago, when I was on the Texas Supreme Court, we decided to have a single camera--which nobody, really, frankly noticed--in order to document and record the proceedings in the Supreme Court of Texas. It didn't turn into a sideshow. It wasn't the O.J. Simpson trial. People didn't misbehave because they were on camera. But it was a great opportunity for people to see their government and their elected officials in action.

Given the performance of Judge Gorsuch over the last couple of days and the benefits that accrue to the country as a result of learning more about his qualifications, his temperament, and his principles when it comes to judging, I hope more people will want to see that. We could all learn from it.

That would be good for our country, it would be good for the judiciary, and I think it would be good for America's standing in the world. We are in a vast minority of countries in the world when it comes to having an independent judiciary, and that is essential to our form of government and to who we are as Americans.

The country has learned a lot about Judge Gorsuch in the last few days. His career has been marked by a dedication to the law. In his decade on the bench interpreting the law, he has developed quite a record. As a matter of fact, he said that he had decided to participate in the decision of about 2,700 cases, and he has been reversed once. I find that remarkable. It is really almost hard to believe. He is clearly no extremist.

Some of our Democratic colleagues try to argue that he is not for the little guy but, as he so ably points out, he is for whoever the facts and the law say should win in a case. He doesn't view it as his role to put his thumb on the scales of justice and to predetermine a case or the outcome before the facts and the law have been applied. In short, he is not a politician. It would be totally inappropriate for a judge, given the fact that they are given lifetime tenure and they don't have to stand for election in front of the people--it would be entirely inappropriate for the judge to say: If I am confirmed, I will rule on this contentious issue this way or that way. That is not what judges do. That is what politicians do. That is why, when we stand for election, we go out and campaign and we tell people: This is what I believe in, and if you elect me, this is what I am going to do when I am elected into office. That is entirely appropriate for members of the legislative and executive branch because if the American people don't like what we are doing, they can fire us in the next election or, conversely and hopefully, if they like what we are doing, they will return us to office.

So as the judge pointed out, he said that judges actually would make ``rotten legislators,'' those are his words, not mine, because their job isn't to write the laws, it is to interpret them. They don't stand for election. They are not in intimate contact with the constituencies we all represent. Importantly, as I said at the outset, he did affirm his strong support of the separation of powers. Again, I think it is really important for everyone to acknowledge the different roles performed by different actors in our form of government. Legislators play one role, executive officers, the Presidents, and Governors in our State system play another role, and then the judiciary plays an entirely different, important but limited, role in our government.

One of our colleagues was complaining about the judge's decision in a case and that the so-called little guy lost in the case. Well, the judge said,

while he didn't necessarily like the outcome, he felt bound by the facts and the law that Congress had actually passed to render a judgment as he did in that case. I pointed out, were it otherwise--were the judge untethered to any sort of deference to precedent, that he would basically be a loose cannon and making political decisions or deciding what the outcome would be before he worked through the facts and laws to determine what the appropriate outcomes should be. I pointed out, and the judge confirmed, that if in interpreting a statute, which the court did in that case, if Congress doesn't like the outcome, then it is within Congress's power to change the law, to change the statute which would mandate a different outcome in a future case.

He pointed out, appropriately, that the role of the judiciary is for neutral and independent judges to apply the law in the people's disputes. So he is aware of the limits and the important role of the judiciary in our form of government. He also made clear his judicial philosophy is based on nothing more and nothing less than a faithful interpretation of the text of our Constitution and laws. Now, sometimes you hear people talking about, well, we have a living Constitution. To me, that suggests there is something wrong with applying the text of our existing Constitution, which was passed through constitutional amendment or originally when the Constitution was ratified by the States.

It kind of raises an interesting question. If a judge isn't bound by the text of the Constitution or of a statute, what can he use? Does he use his own value judgments? Does he use his own policy preferences? Does he use his political agenda in order to do his or her job? Obviously, I hope we would all agree that would be inappropriate.

Judge Gorsuch has also talked about the role of judicial courage, meaning following the law and the facts wherever they may lead, even though the judge, as a personal matter, may not agree with that or that may not be his personal preference. I know it sounds hard for those of us living in a political world, but actually judges do every day put their personal policy preferences aside and decide cases on the facts and the law. I believe it would be wrong of them and I believe a violation of their oath of office for them to do otherwise. What happens when there is a nominee like this who is so outstanding, so articulate, and so principled? Some of our colleagues across the aisle said: We are going to ask him some hypothetical questions. We are going to smoke him out and see if he will take the bait and prejudge some of these cases on controversial areas that will come before his Court or some other court. The judge--and I would expect nothing less--said it would compromise the independence of the judiciary and would be unethical for him to prejudge the outcome of some future case that might come before the Supreme Court. If you can imagine this, how would you feel if in a case before a court, the judge had already made a commitment to the outcome and you ended up on the short end of the stick? You wouldn't feel that was justice at all. You wouldn't feel that was fair at all. That is what the judge was doing in declining to head down that path to prejudge cases. In doing so, he followed the example of a number of previous nominees, people such as Justice Ginsburg and Justice Kagan, both nominated by Democratic Presidents. Knowing he can't answer, our colleagues have claimed they have no clue how Judge Gorsuch would perform his job and have used that as a pretext to oppose someone who is eminently qualified, but Judge Gorsuch has given them all they need. They have all the information they need in order to make an informed decision. He pledged to hear all sides of the case, to look at the merits, based on the law in question, and then and only then to come up with an unbiased and fair, impartial decision.

Can he do it? Well, the best evidence of ``can he do it'' is ``has he done it'' and the answer to that is yes. He has a decade of time on the bench, with hundreds of decisions, filled with millions of words, done in exactly the way he said he would do, to decide cases, based on the merits, in an unbiased and independent fashion.

So we have his record to judge him by, and his record is impeccable, which is the reason some of the critics have to go down this path of asking him hypothetical questions he can't ethically answer or otherwise claiming to be in the dark about his qualifications, temperament, and philosophy of judging.

It should come as no surprise that lawyers and academics and judges all across the political spectrum have spoken out in favor of the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch, agreeing that he is an independent jurist, with integrity and the right temperament, intellect, and experience to serve on the Supreme Court.

He was introduced to the committee by both of his home State Senators, the junior Senator, a Republican, and the senior Senator, a Democrat, who called Judge Gorsuch a man with ``a distinguished record of public service'' and ``outstanding integrity and intellect.'' I couldn't agree more.

Neal Katyal, a Solicitor General under President Obama, also spoke glowingly of Judge Gorsuch and provided a strong endorsement of his qualifications to serve on the bench. He was one of the first on the other side of the aisle to urge the Senate confirmation of Judge Gorsuch, citing his independence, his integrity, and his superb qualifications. The bipartisan recognition of Judge Gorsuch's fitness for this high office is nothing new because a decade ago, 10 years ago, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by voice vote, essentially unanimously. Not one Member of the Senate opposed his confirmation, and the truth is, nothing has really changed since then. So you would think that if some of our colleagues across the aisle thought he was good enough to be confirmed as a circuit judge to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, that they could have something they could point to if they were inclined to vote no, something that happened within the intervening 10 years, but I have to tell you, there is not much there for them, if anything. In fact, his opinions have rarely elicited dissent, and he has a rare record of reversal which I think is remarkable.

In truth, he is a great jurist, and that is clear by the evolving reasons coming from our friends on the other side of the aisle as to why they had some concern. First, we heard some Senate Democrats would fight a nominee who isn't in the mainstream. Well, Judge Gorsuch passed that test with flying colors so they moved on. Next, they said they would oppose him because of his refusal to answer questions about issues that would come before the Court. As I said, not only do the ethics rules prohibit him from doing that, but the tradition set by Justices Ginsburg and Kagan rightfully dictated that he refuse to do so during the hearing. Now we hear from our Democratic colleagues that his vote must be delayed because of an ongoing FBI investigation that is completely unrelated to him. I think that is just an indication of how desperate they are to come up with a reason, any reason, to oppose this judge's confirmation.

Watching Judge Gorsuch this week, it is clear our Democratic friends are finding it hard to come up with a reason to oppose his nomination. Indeed, they are struggling to do so, and they are desperate for an excuse to oppose him, but they are not going to find a good excuse or a good reason.

I hope our colleagues will help us confirm this good man, this good judge for this office. I know our politics, when it comes to judicial confirmation, have become very contentious, but it wasn't always that way. Back when President Clinton was in office, before President Bush 43, judges were confirmed routinely by an up-or-down vote of the majority of the U.S. Senate. Indeed, Justice Scalia, whose seat will be filled by Judge Gorsuch, was confirmed overwhelmingly. I think it was by 97 votes, if I am not mistaken. Justice Ginsberg, somebody from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, was confirmed with 96 votes or thereabouts. So I hope it is a time we can get back to the traditions of the past, which means not filibustering mainstream nominees, as some of our colleagues across the aisle have threatened to do even before the hearing began.

I would ask them this. If you can't vote for somebody like Judge Gorsuch, you are not going to be able to vote for any nominee from a Republican President because there simply isn't anybody better qualified by virtue of his

experience, his education, his training, and his temperament for this job. I hope they will reconsider.

I am happy to support his confirmation and urge all my colleagues to do so as well. If they can't vote for his confirmation, at least allow us to have an up-or-down vote, without setting the bar at 60 votes, but making it a majority vote in the U.S. Senate, which has been the tradition in this body for many, many, many years, excepting the last 8 years during the George W. Bush administration.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).