Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for as much time as I may consume.

Mr. President, this is my final speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I have come to the floor many times, as we all have. We come to the floor to cast our votes on bills and amendments. We come here to discuss and debate the issues that are important to our States and to the country. We introduce and explain legislation. We talk about our States and what we learned on our latest visit to a community health center, a farm, or a small business. What we don't talk about all that often is the work of all the men and women on our staffs who make all of this possible.

I have been fortunate to have had a dedicated, hard-working staff both in Washington and in Minnesota, and I have no doubt that they will go on to do great things and to serve our Nation well.

I am also very lucky to have a wonderful family who has stood by me throughout the good times and the tough times of being a Senator. As Senators, we have packed schedules. There are late nights. There are difficult votes on divisive issues and a lot of time invested in better understanding the challenges our constituents face every day. All too often, that important work doesn't leave enough time for our families. I am grateful for my wife, my children, and their spouses, who stood by me and who have helped me to do my work effectively.

Finally, as I leave the Senate, I take great comfort in knowing that my successor, Senator-designate Tina Smith, has a well-earned reputation for being a smart, diligent, hard-working public servant, and I have no doubt that Senator Smith will serve Minnesotans and all Americans exceptionally well.

When most people think about politics, they think about arguments-- the arguments they have around the dinner table, the arguments they have online, and most of all, the arguments we have here in Washington. That is a big part of the reason why a lot of people just don't like politics.

Often, the debate here in Washington can sometimes seem arcane and tough to understand. Other times--especially in recent years--it can be so bitter that it doesn't even feel like we are trying to resolve anything, just venting our spleens at each other. I get that. I get why people want us to stop arguing and start doing stuff.

But since I am leaving the Senate, I thought I would take a big risk and say a few words in favor of arguments. After all, there is no single magic solution that can bring all 100 of us together because there is no one set of values that brought all of us here in the first place. I think many of my colleagues have heard me talk about what brought me to politics and what makes me a Democrat, and it is my wife Fran.

When she was 17 months old, her father, a decorated World War II veteran, died in a car accident, leaving her mom widowed at age 29 with five kids. There was one sibling younger than Franni, Bootsie, who was 3 months old. Franni's family made it--barely, but they made it--thanks to Social Security survivor benefits. Sometimes they had to turn the heat off in the winter. This was in Portland, ME. Sometimes--often-- they were hungry because there wasn't enough food. But they made it.

Franni and her three sisters all went to college on combinations of scholarships and Pell grants. At the time, a full Pell grant paid for about 80 percent of a public college education, but today it only pays about 35 percent.

When Bootsie went to high school, my mother-in-law got a GI loan for $300 and went to college. She got three more loans, graduated from college, and became an elementary school teacher. And because she taught title I kids--poor kids--all her loans were forgiven.

My brother-in-law went into the Coast Guard and became an electrical engineer.

Every member of Franni's family became a productive member of society and a member of the middle class.

They tell you in this country to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but first you have to have the boots. The Federal Government, through Social Security survivor benefits and Pell grants and the GI bill and title I, gave my wife's family the boots. That is why I am a Democrat. That is why I am a Democrat.

Over the years, I have heard Democrats and Republicans talk about their own values, the things they believe brought them to politics, the things that make them care about what happens here. I have learned so much from listening to the arguments we have in this country and the arguments we have here in this Chamber. I have learned from Republicans. I have learned to respect but not always agree with their opinions, and I have learned how their backgrounds can lead them to reach, in good faith, a conclusion that I never could have imagined. And, of course, I have learned so much from my fellow Democrats.

But the person I learned the most from is someone who isn't here. For 12 years, the seat I currently occupy was held by Paul Wellstone. As I have said before, Paul was a tireless, passionate champion for working families--for working families in Minnesota and across the Nation. He fought for veterans, for farmers, and for those who simply needed a voice.

Paul was my friend. Paul had a saying that I think perfectly represents the values and the principles for which he fought. He used to say: ``We all do better when we all do better.'' That was Paul's creed. What Paul meant by that is that the whole country--the working poor, the middle class, and the well off--the whole country does better when each and every one of us is able to contribute to and participate fairly in our economy and in our democracy.

I think Paul was right, but not everybody does. Some people's values are different. Some people believe that those at the top are there for a reason and that they shouldn't have to concern themselves with what is going on in the lives of people who haven't been so lucky or even so accomplished. Some people believe honestly--honestly, legitimately, believe--that not everyone deserves to have the same standing in this country. They believe that your standing as a citizen should depend, in part, on where you were born or what you believe or whom you love or what you do for a living. Some people believe that at some fundamental level, we are all in this on our own. I don't agree with any of those values, but I respect that some people hold them, and that is why arguments matter.

When we argue, whether it is across the fence with your neighbor or on a cable news show or here on the floor of the Senate, it can help us sharpen our ability to articulate what we want and challenge us to examine our own views with a more critical eye and help highlight the choice for the American people, because, after all, in a democracy, the people get to choose.

As I prepare to leave the Senate, I have been thinking a lot about my values and Paul's values--the values we share with many of my colleagues here in the Senate and many of the progressive activists I have met and worked alongside of in Minnesota and around the country. That is because, regrettably, the policies pursued by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans today could not stand in a starker contrast to the principles Paul championed and the values I have fought for during my time here in the Senate.

The values being advanced by the President and his allies in Congress simply don't represent my belief that our economy, our democracy, and our country work best when they work for everyone. Indeed, the values propelling the Republican agenda today are about consolidating political and economic power in the hands of corporations and the very wealthy.

Just take the tax bill Congress passed this week. At virtually each and every step of the process, Republicans drafting this bill chose to embrace the failed trickle-down policies of the past, crafting an enormous--an enormous--giveaway that benefits their corporate campaign backers and wealthy donors. For instance, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, by 2027, 83 percent of the benefits in the Republican tax bill will accrue to the top 1 percent of income earners; that is, people who make more than $912,000 a year. Eighty-three percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent. Do we really need any other data point? Well, here is one: At the same time, the Republican tax bill would increase taxes on 35 million low- and middle-income families.

During his inaugural address, President Trump vowed that ``the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.'' But the Republican tax bill represents a slap in the face to those forgotten men and women. I guess the President forgot about them.

Make no mistake, the Senate-passed version of the Republican tax bill was deeply flawed, but when Republicans later attempted to reconcile differences between the House and Senate bills--a process that took place behind closed doors--even more favors were doled out to Republican donors and to special interests. New rules were created to give real estate developers like President Trump and his son-in-law the ability to pay less tax on passthrough income. The top individual rate, which applies to millionaires and billionaires, was cut to 37 percent-- a rate lower than either the House or Senate versions of the bill. And provisions in the original bills that were designed to stop foreign corporations from avoiding taxes by shifting their profits overseas--a practice known as earnings stripping--were dropped altogether.

The problem in this country is not that the wealthy aren't doing well enough. After all, the top 1 percent of the country's population controls nearly 40 percent of its wealth. The problem is that too many working families have been left out of the economic growth that the top 1 percent has enjoyed in recent years. But rather than use the tax reform bill as an opportunity to help those working families, Republicans have instead decided to shower corporations and wealthy donors with tax breaks and special favors.

The tax bill didn't just come out of the blue--quite the contrary. This tax bill comes on the heels of countless Republican attempts to shred policies that offer protection to working families and the environment. But corporations and wealthy donors who support my Republican colleagues believe that these policies stand in the way of their profits.

Take healthcare, for example. Despite President Trump's campaign promise that ``We're going to have insurance for everybody,'' when his administration attempted to deliver on that promise, House Republicans devised and passed a bill that would have resulted in 23 million fewer people having health insurance, including 14 million people who rely on Medicaid. Facing unprecedented public outcry, Republican Senators eventually proposed a narrower bill--one that didn't repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act outright but instead undermined some of its foundational provisions. But this narrower Senate bill still would have left 16 million more Americans uninsured, all while spiking premiums by 20 percent, according to CBO.

The American people continued to fight, demanding that the Senate kill the bill. Thanks to the incredibly hard work of organizers and activists, including the American Medical Association and everyday Americans, that is exactly what happened. Republican attempts to repeal the ACA failed, but it seems my Republican colleagues have not learned their lesson.

Finding themselves unable to sustain an open assault on the Affordable Care Act, they instead included a measure in the tax bill that will repeal an essential component of that law--the individual mandate. As a result, 13 million fewer Americans will have health insurance in the years to come. But that doesn't matter to President Trump and his allies, who claim they need to repeal this central pillar of ObamaCare in order to pay for the massive tax cuts that their wealthy donors demand.

Those same wealthy donors also demand that Republicans turn a blind eye to climate change--an existential threat to humanity. Climate change is not just an environmental problem. Climate change stands to affect virtually every aspect of our lives, posing a great threat to public health, national security, our country's infrastructure, and our economy. Circumstances require that we take immediate action in order to protect the welfare of future generations.

Almost every Republican in Congress refuses to take the issue of climate change seriously. They continue to deny the underlying evidence and science behind it, even as Americans suffer the devastating consequences of their denial. This year alone, hurricanes ravaged Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and wildfires raged across the West, most recently in Los Angeles.

We know that climate change makes these extreme weather events worse, and this is just the beginning. What we are witnessing is the beginning of a new normal--a new normal that this country simply cannot endure.

It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to address climate change while at the same time growing our economy and creating jobs. During the Obama administration, the Federal Government increased research and development investments in clean energy technology, both through tax credits designed to incentivize investment and through the energy title that I was proud to help write in the farm bill, which allowed people in rural America to participate in the clean energy revolution. Those investments paid off. Since 2009, the cost of wind power has decreased by 66 percent, and the cost of solar power has dropped by 85 percent. But we need to do more.

I championed an energy efficiency standard that would require utilities to become more efficient. I led legislation to encourage energy storage, a game changer that allows wind and solar to be used when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. I pushed to deploy distributed energy that makes our grid more resilient and reliable.

Rather than join me and my Democratic colleagues in confronting the challenge of climate change by driving innovation, Republicans ordered a retreat. At the behest of the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests, Republicans have put forward nominees for key environmental posts who cut their teeth defending corporate polluters, not enforcing the laws that keep our air and water clean, and they have pushed an agenda that guts funding for science and innovation. The Republican strategy of denial and obfuscation isn't just an affront to the government; it is an affront to common sense.

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have never let science or common sense stand in the way of ideology. Time and again, they have acted to roll back evidence-based, commonsense protections put in place to improve the lives of minority or marginalized communities, including women and LGBT people.

For example, in October, the Trump administration announced a new rule that guts a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires health insurance plans to cover birth control free of charge--a policy that has benefited more than 62 million American women.

The ability to access affordable reproductive healthcare has a powerful effect on the choices that women and families make every day--choices about whether to finish college, buy a home, or start a business. Ensuring that women have access to contraception is vital to the economic security of our families, and that is why I filed a brief in support of the ACA's contraceptive coverage requirement when it was challenged before the Supreme Court.

Despite the millions of women who have benefited from the policy, and despite the science demonstrating that restricting access to contraception has negative health consequences, the Trump administration has eviscerated the policy.

In February, the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidelines that instructed schools on how to protect transgender students under a Federal law called title IX. LGBT students deserve to learn in an environment free from discrimination, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. But far too often, LGBT kids, particularly transgender kids, experience bullying and harassment. When that happens, those students are deprived of an equal education. That is why I led the Senate in calling on the Obama administration to issue those guidelines back in 2015. Nonetheless, the Trump administration decided to scrap that guidance--a callous and mean-spirited decision that sent a terrible message to LGBT children and their parents and took away a tool designed to protect our children. It is our responsibility, not just as Senators but as adults--as adults--to protect our children, not turn a blind eye when they face prejudice and cruelty.

Nothing that Republicans have done is more galling, nothing poses a greater threat to the fabric of our democracy than their deliberate and sustained attack on the right to vote. Let's start with the Supreme Court's disastrous 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a 5-to-4 decision in which the Court's conservative Justices effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act and eliminated a check on States with a history of discrimination at the polls.

After the Shelby County decision, States swiftly began to enact harsh restrictions on the right to vote, in many cases citing the myth of so- called voter fraud as justification.

Take North Carolina, for example. Just a few months after Shelby County, the State enacted one of the Nation's strictest voter ID laws. Without any evidence, the State described the new restrictions as necessary to prevent fraud. Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, those changes went into effect, keeping poor and minority voters from casting a ballot.

When North Carolina's restrictions were eventually challenged in court, the Fourth Circuit found that the primary purpose of the restrictions wasn't to fight fraud but to make it harder for Black people to vote. The court found that ``the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision.''

The fact that North Carolina's restrictions stand as a blatant example of race discrimination is undeniable, but the strategy behind adopting such harsh restrictions is even more insidious. The strategy here is designed to ensure that voters who don't agree with their candidates or their policies aren't able to vote against them.

Paul Wellstone's words are more important today than ever before: ``We all do better when we all do better.'' I believe that to my core. But the policies pursued by President Trump and his allies are not about lifting people out of poverty or about giving the politically powerless a louder voice in our democracy. These policies are intended to line the pockets of wealthy donors and to protect the power of those who already wield outsized influence in our democracy. That is a far cry from Paul's creed.

When I think about what has gone wrong here, when I reflect on how this country has strayed so far from the values that I believe a majority of Americans share, I have to say that I think there is something wrong with the way we are arguing, and it started long before 2016. Lurking behind each of those issues isn't just a difference of opinion or a difference of values. There is something far worse: a lie.

Take, for example, the Trump administration's efforts to suppress votes. Shortly after winning the Presidential election, then President- Elect Trump was confronted with the unpleasant fact that he lost the popular vote. He tweeted: ``In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.''

Let's be clear. President Trump lost the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes. What he claimed in that tweet was that nearly 3 million fraudulent votes were cast. In fact, he later claimed that between 3 and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote, citing no evidence.

There were 138 million votes cast in the 2016 Presidential election. State election and law enforcement officials found virtually no credible evidence of fraud, and no States--not one--recorded any indication of widespread fraud--none. But that didn't stop the Trump administration from quickly turning the President's tweets into policy. The White House created a new commission to investigate the President's wild and unsubstantiated claim--a commission led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a rightwing extremist who has made a career out of trafficking in the voter fraud myth and who was fined for repeatedly lying to a Federal court in voter ID litigation. When Kobach was asked whether he believed the President's claim that millions of people voted illegally, he said: We may never know the answer to that question. Really?

This episode could almost be considered funny if the ramifications weren't so deadly serious. Kobach's voter fraud commission requested sensitive information about voters--including names, dates of birth, party registration, and voting history--from all 50 States. This is information that could lay the groundwork for disenfranchising scores of eligible voters, which is why more than 40 States refused to comply with that request. At the same time, the Trump-Sessions Justice Department quickly dropped legal challenges to discriminatory voting practices in States, further signaling that protecting the right to vote will no longer be a priority of the Justice Department. It is all based on a lie--and not a lie President Trump came up with. Rightwing conservatives have been raising a false alarm about so-called voter fraud for years despite the fact that no credible evidence has ever been produced to demonstrate that it is a real problem.

Or take the Trump administration's attacks on LGBT rights. Again and again, lurking behind these polices are lies--the lie that advocates of LGBT rights want to trample on people's religious freedom, the lie that families led by a gay or a lesbian couple don't provide safe environments for children, the lie that allowing transgender people to use the appropriate bathroom opens the door to sexual assault. President Trump didn't invent these lies, but he and his administration proudly repeat them.

Or take the attacks on science, especially climate science. We now have enough evidence to conclude that climate change is real, and it is manmade. It is a threat to our Nation's security and is an existential threat to the planet. Defense Secretary Mattis knows this; yet, for years, so-called scientists who have been funded by industry have been hard at work in casting doubt on the well-established scientific consensus. Heck, a recent Washington Post report revealed that Trump administration officials have prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--our Nation's premier public health and research institute--from using the terms ``evidence-based'' and ``science- based'' in budget planning documents. President Trump didn't launch the war on science, but now he is leading the charge.

Or take healthcare. President Trump promised that everyone would have insurance, but an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office revealed that under the House Republican healthcare bill, 23 million fewer people would have had health insurance than are currently covered today--23 million people. To add insult to injury, the House bill would have hit the most vulnerable among us, and it would have hit them the hardest.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 14 million of the 23 million people who would have lost coverage

under the House Republicans' plan would have been Medicaid beneficiaries.

That is right. Despite candidate Trump's assurances that ``everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now,'' the Republican bill would have cut funding to Medicaid-- a vital safety net program that ensures that our seniors, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and families with children have access to the healthcare they need. On top of that, the Republican plan would have driven up the costs of premiums, with older and sicker people having experienced the deepest increases.

Indeed, the healthcare debate has long been predicated on lies--lies that ``well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does'' is provide abortion services, the lie that women rely on birth control only because they are sexually promiscuous, the lie that the Affordable Care Act is collapsing under its own weight when, in fact, the Trump administration and the Republicans here in Congress have been doing everything they can do to sabotage it.

Then there is the tax debate. Over the last year, Republicans have repeatedly claimed that they would advance policies that are designed to benefit middle-class families, not the wealthy. President Trump pledged not to forget the ``forgotten men and women of our country.'' Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury, promised that the Republican tax plan would help the middle class. He vowed that any tax cuts for upper income earners would be offset by getting rid of deductions that benefit the wealthy. That is what he said, that ``there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' Again, 83 percent of the benefits in the Republican tax bill go to the richest 1 percent. What he said is not true.

Just the other day, the White House Press Secretary claimed that President Trump, himself, will pay more because of this bill. We don't know exactly what the effect will be on his personal finances because the White House has refused to release his tax returns. They have claimed in another lie that he cannot release them because they are under audit. You can release tax returns while you are under audit. What we do know is that tax breaks in the Republican bill for real estate developers like President Trump and his family will save him millions upon millions of dollars.

I could go on and on.

Before I came to the Senate, I was known as something of an obsessive on the subject of honesty in public discourse, but as I leave the Senate, I have to admit that it feels as though we are losing the war on truth. Maybe it is already lost. If that is the case, if that is what happens, then we have lost the ability to have the kinds of arguments that have helped to build consensus--I see Lamar Alexander here; we have done that on the HELP Committee; I thank the chairman for when we have done that--or at least to have helped the American people make informed choices about the issues that affect their lives.

So what is to be done? Who will stand up and fight for a more honest debate--to insist that even though we have a different set of opinions, we cannot honorably advance our competing agendas unless we use the same set of facts? I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will stand up for truth. The thing is, I have spent enough time with my Republican friends over the last 8\1/2\ years to know that they are motivated by values just like Democrats. I just hope that they will fight for those values forthrightly.

At the end of the day, it is going to be up to the American people just as it has always been. We will always have the democracy we deserve, if not the government we want. It is going to take ordinary Americans deciding to become more informed consumers of political news and opinion and deciding that they are willing to be a part of the argument themselves instead of, simply, tuning out all of the noise. If they do, I know that we will get this country back on track.

In October, 15 years after we lost Paul, I took to the Senate floor to remember him and to celebrate his life. Paul understood better than anyone I know the meaning and the power of politics, and I think he would have a lot to say about where we find ourselves today.

Paul said:

Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money.

Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning.

Politics is about the improvement of people's lives.

Even in the face of everything that is happening today, I still believe in Paul's words: ``Politics is about the improvement of people's lives.'' I know those words to be true because I know that the American people still believe in justice and equality and opportunity, and I see evidence of that every day.

I saw it in January when more than 4 million people across the United States joined in the Women's March. They stood in solidarity with their mothers and sisters and daughters and wives.

I saw it later that same month after President Trump issued an Executive order that sought to ban travelers from Muslim-majority countries from entering our country. Hundreds of lawyers responded to the call to help. They rushed to airports and offered their services in support of affected families.

I saw it in May when a transgender boy in Wisconsin who was discriminated against by his school had the courage to take them to court, and he won.

I saw it in September when tens of thousands of Americans mobilized in opposition to attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and succeeded in killing the bill.

I also saw it at the ballot box when voters in Virginia and Alabama resisted the temptation to give in to anger and cynicism and, instead, exercised their right to vote.

``Politics is about the improvement of people's lives.'' The American people know that to be true, and they fill me with hope for our country.

Thank you.

Terrific. Terrific.

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

Mr. President, unlike most of my colleagues, the time I spent here in the Senate represents the sum total of my experience in elected office. For most of my life I approached politics and public policy from a very different perspective. I tried to be an educated citizen who understood how the issues being debated here in Washington affected me, my family, my neighbors, and those in my State and my country. I tried to be an advocate for the values I believed in-- honesty in public discourse, for sure, but also fairness, justice, and the idea that in America we are all in this together. I tried to be an activist, putting my voice and my energy behind candidates and causes that I cared for and about.

When I leave the Senate in a few weeks, I will continue trying to be an educated citizen, an advocate, and an activist. Over the last 8\1/2\ years, as I have had the privilege of serving the people of Minnesota, I also gained a new perspective on the issues we face and the way we here in Washington make decisions.

Before I go, I want to spend some time sharing some of what I have learned in a series of speeches focusing on the challenges I came to Washington to address--challenges that my colleagues will continue to wrestle with, challenges that will determine not just the political landscape we leave for the next generation of Senators but what kind of country we leave for the next generation of Americans.

Today I want to start by talking about education. Even at a time when our politics is more polarized and more poisonous than it has ever been, you would think that education is one place where Democrats and Republicans could come together to make progress. After all, while we do have significant differences on the details of education policy, nobody disagrees about the importance of getting it right. We all agree that education from pre-K through college and beyond is essential to providing our economy with a skilled workforce that is ready to innovate and lead us into the future.

Ever since I have been here, employers in Minnesota have stressed to me that they need employees with critical thinking and problem solving skills, with team work and creativity--tools that we need our children to be developing long before they enter the workforce. I am pretty sure that my colleagues hear this from employers in their States too.

Of course, education isn't just about our economy. It is about the most basic responsibility we have as human beings. Many of us who have served in the Senate have children and grandchildren, and we would do anything to be able to promise to them that when they grow up, they will be able to follow their dreams and take a risk on themselves to achieve more than we ever could. Many of us remember just how hard our own parents worked to keep that promise to us. All of us, Democrat and Republican alike, want to be able to make that promise not just to our own children but to every child in America, no matter where they grow up or what their family life is like or what obstacles they may encounter along the way.

We all want a country where every child has the opportunity to fulfill his or her God-given potential. We all understand that whether we can provide every child with a great education is the most basic measure of whether we are keeping that promise. Fortunately, the HELP Committee, which I had the honor of serving on since I first arrived in the Senate, has been led by public servants who share those values and a common commitment to delivering on that promise. Under Chairman Harkin and now under Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray, the HELP Committee has often been able to be an example of how Democrats and Republicans can work together to make progress.

When I first got here, the debate was focused on No Child Left Behind, which Congress had passed and President Bush had signed into law in 2002. Democrats and Republicans worked together on that bill back then because they all believed that it was important that our schools be held accountable for the results they achieved on behalf of all students. But by 2009, it had become clear that No Child Left Behind simply wasn't getting the job done.

A couple of weeks after I got to the Senate, I held a roundtable with principals at a school that had been turned around in a poor neighborhood by a great principal in St. Paul. One of the other principals told me that he referred to the NCLB tests as autopsies. I knew exactly what he meant. The kids were taking the tests in late April. The results didn't come back until late June or later--too late to let the results inform teachers' instruction of each child.

In Minnesota, therefore, most school districts added computer adaptive tests

in addition to the required NCLB tests--computers so the teachers could get the results right away and adaptive so that if a kid was getting all the questions right, the questions would get harder and if the kid was getting all of the questions wrong, the questions would get easier. That way, instead of measuring whether or not a student was appropriately proficient at grade level in reading and math, educators could find out exactly what grade level each student was at in those subjects--adaptive. NCLB, on the other hand, didn't allow a State to test outside of grade level. Schools and teachers were judged on whether a sufficient percentage of kids met this arbitrary standard. This became known as measuring for proficiency, and it created what teachers in Minnesota described to me as ``a race to the middle.'' It made them focus on kids just below or just above proficiency. So the ones just below would get above and the ones just above would stay above proficiency, and they would ignore the kid at the top because those kids at the top, no matter what you did, wouldn't go below proficiency. They would ignore the kids at the bottom because no matter what you did that year you couldn't get those kids to proficiency. So there was this race to the middle. Think about how perverse that is.

Think about a fifth grade teacher who takes a kid from a second grade level of reading to a fourth grade level of reading. Well, that kid didn't get to proficiency. So under No Child Left Behind, that teacher was a goat. But a teacher who helps a child grow by two grade levels in a single year is a hero. Teachers, principals, superintendents, school board members and parents all argued that it was time to stop measuring just for proficiency and to measure for growth or measure just growth, instead. This became quickly a central focus of the debate over how to reform No Child Left Behind, and it remains a pivotal debate when it comes to the future of our education system, which is why it was so shocking when President Trump picked a Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, who turned out to have no idea what the growth versus proficiency debate was even about.

It would be as if our children's future relied on the outcome of a football game and the President nominated a head coach who didn't know how many yards it took to get a first down. It was a deeply upsetting moment, not just because of what it revealed about Mrs. DeVos or the President who had picked her to be in charge of our Nation's education system but because these are the kinds of problems that we should be able to solve. There is nothing ideological about the debate. It is simply a matter of coming together and working in good faith to make things work better. A functioning democracy should be able to get stuff like this right, and sometimes we have.

For example, in the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act we were able to address some of the excessive testing that was burdening educators and students alike. Under the new law, schools would still have to test every year between third and eighth grade and once in high school, but each State would control the consequences of the test results and that would almost certainly mean fewer high stakes tests, less drilling, more time to teach and learn.

Meanwhile, the law included important priorities like strengthening STEM education, expanding student mental health services, increasing access to courses that help high school students earn college credit, and preparing and recruiting more and better principals to lead better schools. These are all things that I fought to include in that final law.

It also included a long overdue investment in early childhood education, but not enough--not enough. We know from study after study that a quality early childhood education returns between $7 and $16 for every dollar invested. That is because children who get a quality early childhood education are less likely to be referred to special ed and less likely to be held back a grade. They have better health outcomes. Girls are less likely to get pregnant in adolescence. They are more likely to graduate high school, go to college, and get a good job and pay taxes. And they are less likely to go to prison.

If we really want to address future deficits, we would be pouring money into training early childhood educators. Instead, in his budget in the Congress, the Trump administration proposed major cuts to early childhood education. We could easily put more money into these programs if we weren't giving enormous tax cuts to the wealthy and to powerful corporations.

We also need to make sure that as our kids get older, they can rely on quality afterschool programs. Last spring, I visited Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. During my tour of the school's afterschool program, I saw students rehearsing for a production of the ``Addams Family.'' I saw students getting critical academic support like tutoring and college prep. In fact, Roosevelt's successful afterschool programs contributed to their graduation rate going from less than 50 percent to over 70 percent in just 3 years. That is pretty incredible. That is why I fought to renew the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program in the reform of No Child Left Behind. It is a program that keeps schools open after school.

If we all agree that education should be a priority, we should be willing to put our money where our mouths are and fund these programs. I am proud that during the course of my time here, we have had a bipartisan commitment in doing just that. We made progress--not enough, but we made progress. Again, however, that progress was put at risk under this administration. That afterschool program was zeroed out in its proposed budget. What is more, this administration seems to be outright hostile to the idea that we have responsibilities to provide children with a quality public education.

I am proud of the work we have done to support and improve our public schools, but the Department of Education is now led by a Secretary with a long history of actively undermining public education. Secretary DeVos and her family have spent millions and millions of dollars advocating for an ideology that would steal funds from public schools in order to fund private and religious education.

Now, let's take a moment to talk about what that means. Secretary DeVos ran a political action committee called All Children Matter, which spent millions in campaign contributions to promote the use of taxpayer dollars for school vouchers. The argument was that these vouchers would allow low-income students to leave the public school system and attend private schools of their family's choice. Secretary DeVos has been pushing to expand vouchers for years, even though research clearly shows that voucher programs don't work. In fact, the academic outcomes for students who use vouchers to attend private schools is abysmal.

A New York Times article from February of this year reported on three different studies of large State voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. Each study found that vouchers negatively impact results in both reading and math. In fact, in Louisiana's voucher program, public elementary school students who started at the 50th percentile in math and then used a voucher to transfer to a private school dropped to the 26th percentile in a single year. Harvard education professor Martin West said this negative effect was ``as large as any I've seen in the literature,'' and he was talking about all literature, the entire history of American education research.

Secretary DeVos is a serious threat to our public school system and a threat to the quality of education in this country overall. I have pushed as hard as I can to protect our students from what this administration has been trying to do. I have sent the Secretary over a dozen letters this year on protecting students from harassment, helping defrauded students, and holding for-profit schools accountable. It is my hope that my colleagues will continue to be vigilant in overseeing the Department of Education and making sure our public education system is not dismantled.

Our public education system was designed to give all kids a real chance in life, but teachers and administrators often lack the resources they need to give the kids the opportunities they deserve. Every year, I push appropriators to increase funding for a number of critical education programs like early childhood, STEM, and professional development for teachers, and I hope my

colleagues will continue that fight to increase resources for these programs.

Improving our education system isn't just about funding and accountability. If we want to keep the promise of opportunity to every child, we have to recognize that some kids face obstacles others do not, and we have to do more to make sure they are not left behind. For example, particularly kids who grow up poor are far more likely to suffer what are called adverse childhood experiences, not just the stress of living in poverty itself but exposure to domestic violence, abuse or neglect, drug and alcohol abuse, the incarceration of a parent, the death of a sibling. All of those adverse childhood experiences affect brain chemistry and the ability to learn. If we want to improve education, we need to do a better job of helping these children overcome these traumas and a better job of addressing economic inequality so fewer have to deal with the trauma in the first place. This is another reason we need more high-quality, early childhood programs and more training for childcare providers so they can better support kids who have experienced trauma.

Here is another example, foster kids. It is not uncommon for foster children to have 10, 11, 12 sets of foster parents during their childhood. This wreaks havoc on their education. Sometimes foster kids fall through the cracks of our education system. If a child's new foster parents live in a different school district, the foster child is yanked out of school and sent to one in the new school district. Kayla VanDyke, who at the time was an incredibly impressive high school senior from Minnesota, testified before the HELP Committee that she had been in seven foster homes, and she did fall through the cracks. She missed fourth grade entirely. For foster kids, school is often the one constant in their life--maybe they have a teacher they really like or an extracurricular activity that means everything to them or maybe they have these things called friends. That is why I wrote a provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act to require school districts to work with child welfare agencies to make sure foster children who are changing homes are not forced to change schools. I would like to think that somewhere there is a foster child running cross-country or developing a passion for history because of a great teacher or doing homework with a good friend because of legislation I worked on, legislation that passed with a strong bipartisan majority.

Here is yet another example--kids in Indian Country. When I first came to the Senate, I asked for a seat on the Indian Affairs Committee. Serving on that committee, you are confronted with the tragic disparities from which Native people in our country suffer. One of them is the huge disparity in educational resources for Native kids compared to their peers. That inequity in education plays out in many ways, but you can literally see it in the school buildings some Native kids are forced to learn in. Indian school buildings are often unsafe, harmful to the health of children and teachers, and ultimately a barrier to the education of the students.

So going back to early 2009, I had been fighting for funding to fix the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School on Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. When I first visited the school, I saw exposed wiring, mold, roof leaks, rodents, uneven floors, poor lighting, and sewer problems. I learned the students had faced these horrendous conditions in their classrooms for years. It was deplorable and was a terrible place to learn, so I worked for the better part of a decade to rebuild that school. I sent my colleagues a series of powerful editorials about conditions at the school as written by the Minneapolis StarTribune. I raised this issue at what seems like countless Indian Affairs hearings. After a lot of work from the community, the Tribe, and the Obama administration, we were able to secure the funding to rebuild the Bug- O-Nay-Ge-Shig school.

I am thrilled so many bright, young students in Leech Lake will be able to feel safe and comfortable in a brandnew school, which will be opening this coming March, but this is one school, one reservation, and there are hundreds of schools like the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School that are not suitable for learning, and we need to do so much more for our Native kids.

In Indian Country, we know that historical trauma has a huge impact on our children. We have seen the ripple effects of intergenerational trauma, and we know it can lead to other types of trauma experienced in childhood.

That is why, when we look at these adverse childhood experiences, particularly within the Native community, we can't dismiss their effects on kids' ability to learn. Kids in Indian Country are woefully underserved when it comes to housing and economic opportunity. A report by Wilder Research states that this can ``threaten their educational success, health and mental health, and personal development.'' I am pleased Senator Heitkamp of North Dakota has been focused on addressing this issue.

One more example: LGBT students deserve to learn in an environment free from discrimination, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Far too often, LGBT kids endure harassment and discrimination. More than 30 percent of LGBT kids report missing a day of school in the previous month because they felt unsafe. You can't learn when you dread going to school, and when that happens, those students are deprived of an equal education.

In America, we have passed laws that guard against harassment in our schools on the basis of race, national origin, sex, and disability, but LGBT students continue to face bullying and intimidation without recourse. I have a bill called the Student Non-Discrimination Act that would merely provide LGBT students the same legal remedies available to other kids under our Federal civil rights laws. It says, schools would have to listen when a parent says ``my child isn't safe,'' and the school has to do something about it. It would ensure that LGBT kids have the same protections as every other child. I worked very hard to get this provision into the final law, and I was greatly disappointed it wasn't included, even though it got 52 votes on the Senate floor.

It is our responsibility, not just as Senators but as adults, to protect children and help them flourish, and I sincerely hope every one of my colleagues will take up this fight and work to get this across the finish line.

The last thing I want to mention on the subject of education is this. For a long time, we thought about learning as something that started when you went to kindergarten and continued until you got your high school diploma and either went off to college or went off to work. We now know education is a lifelong pursuit, but we also know we need to do more to make it possible for it to continue long after 12th grade.

College used to be an affordable and accessible step into the middle class for so many Americans. I always think of my wife Franni and her family. You see, when Franni was 17 months old, her dad, a decorated World War II veteran, died in a car accident, leaving her mom widowed with five kids. Neil, her brother, went into the Coast Guard and became an electrical engineer, but all four girls went to college, and they went on combinations of Pell grants and scholarships. You see, back then, a Pell grant covered about 80 percent of the cost of a public college education. Today, it is less than 35 percent.

So today kids have to work while they go to college. That is not new, but when I have done roundtables at colleges across Minnesota, many of them tell me they are working full time, in addition to going to school full time, which seems like it might make it harder to focus on your studies or to stay awake. That is why I have been working to bring down the cost of college, increase financial aid to students, and make textbooks cheaper. We need to help millions of Americans refinance their student loan debt at lower interest rates, and we need to help low- and middle-income students go to college debt-free. This is something we could easily be doing if we weren't giving giant tax cuts to the superwealthy and to powerful corporations.

It is important to remember, too, that young people don't necessarily need to start at a 4-year college to become successful in life or to build a secure middle-class lifestyle. In many career and technical programs, students complete their education after they have been employed in good jobs because they had the credentials to get those jobs--good jobs with benefits that promise a secure career. Some of

those benefits are often that company paying for the rest of your education--finishing, maybe, your associate's degree or your bachelor's degree or graduate school.

We need to overcome the assumption that career and technical schools are a ceiling to future success. They are a ladder to careers with good wages and benefits that can support a comfortable lifestyle.

There is a high demand for these workers now. That is because we have what is called a skills gap in this country. Every Senator has it in their State. It is one of the things I hear about frequently when I travel around Minnesota, especially when I talk to businesses. I hear about job positions employers can't fill because they can't find qualified workers or workers with the right skills. At the same time, I hear from students who are anxious to start a career but lack specific technical skills.

To remain competitive in today's global economy, we need a better trained workforce. That is why I introduced the Community College to Career Fund Act. The grants would help create public-private partnerships that support Learn and Earn on-the-job training programs. Employers would develop a workforce with the specific skills they need to grow their businesses, and everybody wins.

Here is how it works. You go to get a credential. That credential gets you a job. Then the employer will pay for you to continue your education as you continue to work and make a living. I have seen this time and again, and it works.

We also need to reauthorize the Perkins Career and Technical Education law, which includes support for public-private partnership training programs in K-12.

I think some of the things we need to do to make college more affordable and accessible and valuable for students are pretty clear. But let's be honest. The Trump administration--after nearly a year in office--has been going in a very different direction and has been working against the best interests of college students. One of the most unfortunate aspects of this is that predatory for-profit colleges have been able to get even more of a foothold in our higher education system since Secretary DeVos took over.

The good news when it comes to education is that America still has teachers and principals and school board members and superintendents who work hard every day to take responsibility for every student under their care and deliver on the promise of a great education. We still have parents and neighbors and coaches who look out for our children's well-being and who work to equip them with the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.

As anyone who has spent any time in a school lately can tell you, our kids themselves still have some pretty impressive potential. What is more, we still have people on both sides of the aisle in the Senate who care passionately about education and are willing to do the hard work of bipartisan legislating in order to improve our schools and keep that promise of opportunity for the next generation.

If the last 8\1/2\ years have taught me that progress on education is possible, even in a divided Washington, this past year has taught me that further progress isn't inevitable and that the progress we have already made may not be safe.

It will be up to my colleagues not to address just the policy challenges posed by an education system that faces a big transition and a budget that forces hard choices but also the political challenges of the moment. It is my hope and prayer that they will be up to the task. Our children's future depends on it.

Thank you.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I rise to deliver the second in a series of floor speeches that I offer as I close out my time in the Senate.

This afternoon, I want to talk about Americans' relationship with telecommunications and technology companies and what that means for their access to essential services and for their privacy.

When I entered the Senate in July of 2009, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me to serve on the Judiciary Committee. I pointed out that there are a lot of lawyers in the Senate and that I wasn't one of them, but he said he needed Members with my perspective on the committee. I wondered how my background could possibly serve me on Judiciary, but it did--almost immediately--when in December of that year, Comcast announced its intention to acquire NBCUniversal.

I happened to know a lot about the effects of media consolidation because I used to work in media. When powerful corporations are permitted to acquire other powerful corporations, it is the American consumers who are left facing higher prices, fewer choices, and even worse service from their telecommunications providers. I questioned why an already powerful company should be allowed to get even bigger and thus extract more leverage over consumers and the businesses reliant on its platform.

It was through my work on Comcast and NBCUniversal that I learned about the rising costs of internet, phone, and TV services, as well as the importance of preserving net neutrality. I also became interested in how giant telecommunications companies, as well as ever-evolving tech companies, were treating the massive troves of user data they were collecting on a perpetual basis.

I believe consumers have a fundamental right to know what information is being collected about them. I believe they have a right to decide whether they want to share that information and with whom they want to share it and when. I believe consumers have a right to expect that companies that store their personal information will store it securely.

I also believe all Americans deserve affordable access to high- quality telecommunications services--services they depend on to communicate with the world, get an education, and find a job. I believe the internet should remain the open platform for innovation, economic growth, and freedom of expression it has always been.

Perhaps it was the complex nature of these issues or even the financial incentive to turn a blind eye, but when I came to the Senate, very few Members of Congress were talking about corporate consolidation, commercial privacy, or net neutrality--issues that have gained much deserved attention in more recent years. Whatever the reason for other Members' hesitance, I felt it was incumbent upon me to get into the weeds on these issues so I could be a leader in the Senate and ultimately address the concerns of ordinary Minnesotans.

That is why, when the interests of the American consumers have clashed with the desires of powerful telecommunications and technology companies, I have always tried to put the public first and to fight on their behalf by shedding light on corporate abuses and using all the tools at my disposal to curb them.

Again, it is through my work on the Judiciary Committee--and, more specifically, my work on media and technology policy--that I believe my perspective from my previous career has been of most value.

Comcast's proposal to acquire NBCU immediately made me uncomfortable because I had seen their motives for this deal before. In 1993, during my 13th season at ``Saturday Night Live,'' the Big Three networks--NBC, CBS, and ABC--pressured Congress to change the rules that had previously prevented them from owning any of the shows they aired in prime time. The purpose of the rules had been to prevent the networks from prioritizing their own shows over others or otherwise harming competing programming.

Unsurprisingly, after the rules were repealed, the networks--contrary to their guarantees and assurances they had given Congress--began giving the shows they owned preferential treatment. At the time, ``Seinfeld,'' which aired on NBC, was not owned by NBC and had been produced before the rules had changed--was the No. 1 show on television, which made the Thursday night timeslot following ``Seinfeld'' the most valuable real estate on television. I watched as shows that eventually wound up in that premium location were all owned, at least in part, by NBC.

So when I became a Senator, one of the first major deals I opposed was Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal. As in the case of AT&T's current bid to buy Time Warner, this deal was about giving one company the ability to control both the programming and the pipes that carry it. I knew from my time in media that a combined Comcast-NBCUniversal would have strong incentives to favor its own programming over that of others and restrict competing distributors from accessing that programming. I knew these incentives would hurt competing content creators, inhibit the free flow of information, and ultimately harm consumers.

Unfortunately, I was not wrong. In the years after its acquisition of NBCUniversal, Comcast repeatedly violated the terms of its agreements with the FCC and the Department of Justice, favoring its own news programming over its competitors in Comcast's channel lineup and failing to live up to its promises regarding offering affordable standalone broadband, racial diversity in programming--they did not live up to their promises there--and online video distribution. Because merger conditions are extremely difficult and costly to enforce, competition and consumers were harmed in the process.

Comcast's behavior in the wake of acquiring NBCUniversal was one of the major reasons I then opposed its proposal to turn around and buy Time Warner Cable a couple years later. It was also one of the major reasons I believe that later deal was ultimately dropped after objections from the FCC and the Department of Justice.

For a long time in the Senate, it was a lonely battle. For over a year, I was the only Senator to oppose Comcast's proposals to buy Time Warner Cable--a deal that would have given the combined company 57 percent of the broadband market--but advocates and ordinary citizens raised their voices, and together we were able to stop the deal.

Most recently, I have led my colleagues in scrutinizing AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner, and I have once again called on regulators to move to block the deal for the inevitable harm it will cause to competition and consumers.

I have been proud to lead these efforts, and I leave here in a much different environment than when I arrived. I know there are strong voices in the Senate that will carry on the fight when I am gone.

These efforts to slow down and halt media consolidation are part of a very important, larger development we have seen in our country. In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the American public's-- and, in turn, Congress's--interest in combating corporate consolidation.

When I first entered the Senate, I wasn't sure most Americans understood what was at stake when these powerful companies wanted to combine. Vertical integration and antitrust laws sounded like obscure, almost boring, topics, but more and more Americans are getting educated about these issues, and more and more Members of Congress are working to get Washington focused on how they affect the lives of real people.

Just look at the fight for net neutrality. For many of the same reasons that I opposed Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal, I have long supported strong net neutrality rules to ensure that the internet remains a level playing field where everyone can participate on equal footing, free from discrimination by large internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.

Net neutrality preserves the internet as the engine for innovation that it has always been and allows businesses of all sizes to thrive-- even when they are up against the largest, most profitable corporations. Here is just one example I found useful in explaining net neutrality:

In 2005, three guys set up shop over a pizzeria in a strip mall in San Mateo, CA, where they launched the now-ubiquitous YouTube. Video- sharing websites were in their infancy, but these guys already faced competition from something that preceded it called Google Video, but Google Video wasn't very good. Because of net neutrality, YouTube was able to compete with Google Video on a level playing field. The giant internet service providers treated YouTube's videos the same as they did Google's, and Google couldn't pay them to gain an unfair advantage, like a fast lane into consumer homes.

They were treated the same, neutrally. The content was neutral--net neutrality. People really liked YouTube. They preferred YouTube to Google Video, and YouTube thrived. In fact, in 2006, Google bought it for stock valued at $1.65 billion. That is a nice chunk for three guys over a pizzeria in San Mateo.

It is not just tech companies and small businesses that rely on open internet. In a submission to the FCC in 2014, a coalition that includes Visa, Bank of America, UPS, and Ford explained that ``every retailer with an online catalogue, every manufacturer with online product specifications, every insurance company with online claims processing, every bank offering online account management, every company with a website--every business in America interacting with its customers online is dependent upon an open Internet.'' I have repeated this quote on the floor and at rallies time and time again over the years because I think it perfectly exemplifies the importance of this issue.

Preserving net neutrality is only controversial for the few deep- pocketed entities that stand to financially gain without it.

If FCC Chairman Pai ultimately has his way, we will be entering a digital world where the powerful outrank the majority, a world where a handful of multibillion-dollar companies have the power to control how users get their information, and a world where the deepest pockets can pay for a fast lane while their competitors stall in the slow lane.

For nearly 9 years, I have been calling net neutrality the free speech issue

of our time because it embraces our most basic constitutional freedoms. And ironically, the kind of civic participation that has aspired so many of us in recent months--and has effected real change, like in the fight for net neutrality and the successful efforts to save the Affordable Care Act--has depended in no small part on a free and open internet.

In 2015, the FCC's vote to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers under title II of the Communications Act didn't just mean good things for net neutrality; it also had important implications for consumer privacy. It gave the agency the authority and the responsibility to implement rules to protect Americans' privacy by giving consumers greater control of their personal data that is collected and used by their broadband providers. That was a big win. Republicans didn't see it that way. One of the first things they did this Congress was to repeal those rules, which was a huge blow to Americans' right to privacy.

For my part, I have long believed that Americans have a fundamental right to privacy. I believe they deserve both transparency and accountability from the companies that have the capacity to trade on the details of their lives. And should they choose to leave personal information in the hands of those companies, they certainly deserve to know that their information is being safeguarded to the greatest degree possible. This transparency and accountability should come from all the companies that have access to Americans' sensitive information. This includes internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T but also edge providers like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

In 2011, I served as chair for the inaugural hearing of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law--a subcommittee that I founded after it became abundantly clear that our Nation's privacy laws had failed to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies.

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms. They talked about whether the government was trying to keep tabs on the books they read or the rallies they attended. Over the last 40 or 50 years, we have seen a fundamental shift in who has our information and what they are doing with it. That is not to say that we still shouldn't be worried about protecting ourselves from government abuses, but now we also have relationships with large corporations that are obtaining, storing, sharing and in many cases selling enormous amounts of our personal information.

When the Constitution was written, the Founders had no way of anticipating the new technologies that would evolve in the coming centuries. They had no way of anticipating the telephone, for example, and so the Supreme Court ruled over 40 years ago that a wiretap constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Founders had no idea that one day the police would be able to remotely track your movements through a GPS device, and so the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that this was also a search that required court approval. All of this is a good thing. Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a living document. But we have a long way to go to get to the point where our modern laws are in line with modern technology.

My goal for the subcommittee was to help members understand both the benefits and privacy implications of emerging technologies; to educate the public and raise awareness about how their data is being collected, used, and shared; and, if necessary, to legislate to fill gaps in the law. When politics prevented legislation, I repeatedly pressed companies--many of them more than once--to be more transparent about how they were treating their customers' private information, including users' location data, web-browsing histories, and even their finger and face prints.

As consumer awareness has evolved, these companies have taken important steps to improve transparency of their use of Americans' personal information. But unfortunately, accumulating massive troves of information isn't just a side project they can choose to halt at any given time; for many of them, it is their whole business model. We are not their customers; we are their product.

Recently, we have seen just how scary this business model can be. In October of this year, the Judiciary Committee examined Russia's manipulation of social media during the 2016 campaign, and both the public and Members of Congress were shocked to learn the outsized role that the major tech companies play in so many aspects of our lives, based primarily on the mass collection of personal information and complex algorithms that are shrouded in secrecy. Not only do these companies guide what we see, read, and buy on a regular basis, but their dominance--specifically in the market of information--now requires that we consider their role in the integrity of our democracy. Unfortunately, this fall's hearings demonstrated that they may not be up to the challenge that they have created for themselves.

The size of these companies is not--in isolation--the problem, but I am extremely concerned about these platforms' use of Americans' personal information to further solidify their market power and consequently extract unfair conditions from the content creators and innovators who rely on their platforms to reach consumers. As has become alarmingly clear in recent months, companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have unprecedented power to guide Americans' access to information and potentially shape the future of journalism. It should go without saying that such power comes with great responsibility.

Everyone is currently and rightfully focused on Russian manipulation of social media, but as lawmakers, it is incumbent upon us to ask the broader questions: How did big tech come to control so many aspects of our lives? How is it using our personal information to strengthen its reach and its bottom line? Are these companies engaging in anticompetitive behavior that restricts the free flow of information in commerce? Are they failing to take simple precautions to respect our privacy and to protect our democracy? And finally, what role should these companies play in our lives, and how do we ensure transparency and accountability from them going forward?

Modern technology has fundamentally altered the way we live our lives, and it has given us extraordinary benefits. As these companies continue to grow and evolve, challenges like those we have recently confronted in the Judiciary Committee will only grow and evolve with them. So we must now muster the will to meaningfully address the tough questions related to competition, privacy, and ultimately the integrity of our democracy.

I will not be here to ask those questions. I will do what I can to find the answers from the outside, but it is my colleagues in the Senate who must prioritize them going forward. There is simply too much at stake. I know that they will do so with the help of a tireless advocacy community and the brilliant minds who have long contemplated these incredibly complex issues and ensured that lawmakers pay attention. And more importantly, they will do so with the support and encouragement of the American people.

I have witnessed significant highs and significant lows in the fight to protect consumers' rights, but the most important lesson I have learned along the way is that ordinary Americans can wield extraordinary power when they raise their voices. For this reason and despite significant setbacks in recent months, I know that it is the public's interests that can ultimately prevail.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President. I thank the Senator from Oregon, my friend, for his extraordinarily kind words. He, too, has been a leader introducing the first net neutrality bill back in 2006, before I came to the Senate.

I rise to talk about tomorrow's vote at the FCC on a proposal that would throw out the strong net neutrality rules Americans have fought so hard for. They are rules that ensure that all content on the internet receives equal treatment from broadband providers regardless of who owns it or how deep their pockets are.

Plain and simple, these rules are about ensuring that the internet remains the platform for innovation, economic growth, and freedom of expression, as it has always been.

As I reflect on my time in the Senate, there are, of course, moments that stand out as particularly significant. One such moment came in February 2015, when American consumers and businesses celebrated the FCC's landmark vote to preserve a free and open internet by reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers under title II of the Communications Act.

While I had long urged the FCC to ground net neutrality rules in the agency's authority under title II, it wasn't just the outcome of this vote that made such an impression on me then, or now, as I am looking back.

The FCC's 2015 vote came after the agency received nearly 4 million public comments, making it the then most commented on FCC issue by a factor of three. The vast majority of these comments urged the agency to enact strong rules protecting net neutrality, protecting the equal treatment of all content on the internet, which has been the architecture of the internet since the very beginning. Americans from across the political spectrum organized to ensure that their voices were heard, and they were. This was democracy in action.

Now, as Chairman Pai pushes forward to undo the open internet order, we have seen another awe-inspiring demonstration of grassroots advocacy. Millions of Americans from every corner of the Nation and background imaginable are joining the movement online and in the streets to ask the chairman to rethink his dangerous proposal and to preserve net neutrality.

When things get tough, as they have, time and time again in the last year, Americans have resisted in protest. It is these movements that make the difference. Just look at the Republicans' failed attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Ironically, the kind of civic participation that has aspired so many of us in recent months and has affected real change depends, in no small part, on an open internet. If the Chairman ultimately has his way, we will be entering a world where every voice might not matter, a world where a handful of multibillion-dollar companies have the power to bury sites offering alternative viewpoints or control how users get their information, a world where the deepest pockets can pay for a fast lane while their competitors stall in a slow lane.

See, it is because of net neutrality that people from across the Nation can connect with each other, share their ideas on the internet, and organize a community effort just like the Project Net Neutrality protests we have seen at Verizon stores across the country.

I have spent nearly the entirety of my time in the Senate pushing for strong net neutrality rules. I have always called it the ``free speech issue of our time'' because it embraces our most basic constitutional freedoms. Unrestricted public debate is vital to the functioning of our democracy. Now, perhaps more than ever, the need to preserve a free and open internet is abundantly clear, so we can't give up now.

Three years ago, the FCC sustained strong net neutrality rules, and millions of Americans voiced their support for them. The FCC must maintain and fully enforce the important court-tested rules that are already in place. Also, perhaps more importantly, the agency must respect the democratic process and the voices that made themselves so clear in 2014 and over the course of the last few months. There is just too much at stake.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, a couple of months ago, I felt we had entered an important moment in the history of this country. We were finally beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men's actions affect them. The moment was long overdue. I was excited for that conversation and hopeful it would result in real change that made life better for women all across the country and in every part of our society.

Then the conversation turned to me. Over the last few weeks, a number of women have come forward to talk about how they felt my actions had affected them. I was shocked. I was upset, but in responding to their claims, I also wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation because all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously. I think that was the right thing to do. I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that, in fact, I haven't done. Some of the allegations against me are simply not true, others I remember very differently.

I said at the outset, the Ethics Committee was the right venue for these allegations to be heard and investigated and evaluated on their merits; that I was prepared to cooperate fully and that I was confident in the outcome.

An important part of the conversation we have been having the last few months has been about how men abuse their power and privilege to hurt women. I am proud that during my time in the Senate, I have used my power to be a champion of women and that I have earned the reputation as someone who respects the women I work alongside every day. I know there has been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks, but I know who I really am.

Serving in the U.S. Senate has been the great honor of my life. I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a Senator--nothing--has brought dishonor on this institution, and I am confident the Ethics Committee would agree.

Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a Member of the U.S. Senate. I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving, while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party, but this decision is not about me; it is about the people of Minnesota. It has become clear that I can't both pursue the Ethics Committee process and, at the same time, remain an effective Senator for them.

Let me be clear. I may be resigning my seat, but I am not giving up my voice. I will continue to stand up for the things I believe in as a citizen and as an activist, but Minnesotans deserve a Senator who can focus with all her energy on addressing the challenges they face every day.

There is a big part of me that will always regret having to walk away from this job with so much work left to be done, but I have faith the work will continue because I have faith in the people who have helped me do it.

I have faith in the dedicated, funny, selfless, brilliant young men and women on my staff. They have so much more to contribute to our country, and I hope that as disappointed as they may feel today, everyone who has worked for me knows how much I admire and respect them.

I have faith in my colleagues, especially my senior Senator, Amy Klobuchar. I would not have been able to

do this job without her guidance and wisdom. I have faith--or at least hope--that Members of the Senate will find the political courage necessary to keep asking the tough questions, hold this administration accountable, and stand up for the truth.

I have faith in the activists who organized to help me win my first campaign and who have kept on organizing to help fight for the people who needed us--kids facing bullying, seniors worried about the price of prescription drugs, Native Americans who have been overlooked for far too long, working people who have been taking it on the chin for a generation, everyone in the middle class, and everyone aspiring to join it.

I have faith in the proud legacy of progressive advocacy that I have had the privilege to be a part of. I think I probably repeated these words 10,000 times over the years, Paul Wellstone's famous quote: ``The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard.'' It is still true. It will always be true.

Most of all, I have faith in Minnesota. A big part of this job is going around the State and listening to what people need from Washington, but more often than not, when I am home, I am blown away by how much Minnesota has to offer the entire country and the entire world. The people I have had the honor of representing are brilliant and creative and hard-working. Whoever holds this seat next will inherit the challenge I have enjoyed for the last 8\1/2\ years, being as good as the people you serve.

This has been a tough few weeks for me, but I am a very, very lucky man. I have a beautiful, healthy family whom I love and who loves me very much. I am going to be just fine.

I would just like to end with one last thing. I did not grow up wanting to be a politician. I came to this relatively late in life. I had to learn a lot on the fly. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't always fun. I am not just talking about today. This is a hard thing to do with your life. There are a lot of long hours and late nights and hard lessons, and there is no guarantee that all your work and sacrifice will ever pay off. I won my first election by 312 votes. It could have easily gone the other way. Even when you win, progress is far from inevitable. Paul Wellstone spent his whole life working for mental health parity, and it didn't pass until 6 years after Paul died.

This year, a lot of people who didn't grow up imagining they would ever get involved in politics have done just that. They have gone to their first protest march or made their first call to a Member of Congress or maybe even taken the leap and put their names on a ballot for the first time.

It can be such a rush, to look around at a room full of people ready to fight alongside you, to feel that energy, to imagine that better things are possible. But you, too, will experience setbacks and defeats and disappointments. There will be days when you will wonder whether it is worth it.

What I want you to know is that even today, even on the worst day of my political life, I feel like it has all been worth it. ``Politics,'' Paul Wellstone told us, ``is about the improvement of people's lives.'' I know that the work I have been able to do has improved people's lives. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

For a decade now, every time I would get tired, discouraged, or frustrated, I would think about the people I was doing this for, and it would get me back up on my feet. I know the same will be true for everyone who decides to pursue a politics that is about improving people's lives, and I hope you know that I will be fighting alongside you every step of the way.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise this evening in opposition to the tax bill before us. I think the problem in our country isn't that wealthy people in this country aren't wealthy enough; the problem is, the wealth gap has grown to the highest levels in my lifetime. This bill would make that wealth gap even bigger.

Senator Paul Wellstone often said: ``We all do better when we all do better.'' He knew the economy does better when there is a strong middle class and when working families have more money to spend. Unfortunately, the Republican tax bill does the opposite of what Paul Wellstone argued for. Instead of helping working families, it raises taxes on at least 14 million of them, and it uses this revenue to give $1 trillion to the superrich, all while adding $1.5 trillion to our national debt. This is, at its core, an awful bill.

When President Trump took office, he pledged that he would look out for the ``forgotten men and women,'' not the wealthy. This bill is a betrayal of that commitment.

I believe Congress should work on a bipartisan basis to make our Tax Code fairer and simpler for working families, and that is what I have advocated for since I joined the Senate. Democrats have made a good- faith effort to work in a bipartisan manner on a tax reform bill with Republicans, but Republicans have chosen, from the very start of this Congress, to take a purely partisan approach that has left Democrats entirely out of the discussion.

We all know this bill is being rushed through Congress so Republicans can claim a legislative achievement by the end of the year. That is not the way you get a fairer, simpler Tax Code. You get a fairer, simpler Tax Code by having hearings with outside witnesses.

You get a fairer, simpler Tax Code by giving Americans an opportunity to weigh in as it is being drafted, to review the bill, and to share their views. You get a simpler, fairer Tax Code by doing it in a bipartisan manner, not by excluding Democrats entirely from the drafting of the bill.

The fast-track process Republicans are using is just like the Republicans' equally partisan, equally secretive, and equally rushed attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare earlier this year. Americans deserve better.

In their effort to get this bill through before Americans realize just how damaging it is, many Republicans have made some misleading claims about it.

For example, Republicans often cite the fact that the bill would double the standard deduction that families can claim on their tax return. That is true, but they always seem to leave out the very important fact that their bill would also eliminate the personal exemption. The personal exemption is about $4,000 for each family member, so when compared with a $12,000 increase in the standard deduction, it means households with two parents and more than one child would be worse off under the Republican tax bill than under current law; for example, with two children.

Sometimes they argue that doubling the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 would offset the loss of the personal exemption, but under their plan families who most need the help would get hardly anything from the increase in the child tax credit, which is not refundable. So, for instance, a family living off a minimum wage earner would benefit by only about 75 more dollars under this bill's revised child tax credit, not the full $1,000 some Republicans promise, but the Republican bill would also now allow people earning up to $500,000 a year to claim the full tax credit of $2,000 per child. That is $500,000 a year, up from $110,000 as it is now. So that is $75 more per child for a minimum wage earner and $2,000 per child for someone making $500,000 a year. That is just not fair.

We hear from my friends on the Republican side that tax cuts always pay for themselves. Ask the people of Kansas about that. When Kansas cut taxes in 2012 and in 2013, State revenues plummeted, Kansas slashed university budgets, canceled highway projects, and had to borrow $1 billion to fund their public pension plan. Schools around the State started going 4 days a week. Teachers moved across the river from Kansas City, KS, to Kansas City, MO. From 2013 to mid-2017, the Kansas economy underperformed that of nearly all its neighbors and the United States overall in economic growth, private sector job creation, passthrough business formation, and labor force participation. Finally, corporations begged the legislature to raise their taxes, which they did, over the Governor's veto.

That is Kansas; take the whole country. Bruce Bartlett, Ronald Reagan's economic adviser, wrote a few weeks ago:

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the top personal tax

rate to just 28 percent from 50 percent, and the corporate

percent to 34 percent from 46 percent. Yet there was no

increase in the rate of economic growth in subsequent years,

and by 1990, the economy was in deep recession.

Tax cuts don't magically pay for themselves.

I would also like to highlight the Republican hypocrisy on budget deficits. For many years, Republicans have used budget deficits as an excuse to block important pieces of legislation. In fact, even now, we are in danger of stripping health insurance away from 9 million children because of difficulties finding offsets for reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program. Yet, when it comes to the tax bill, only a handful of Republicans have raised concerns about the fact that it would add $1.5 trillion to our national debt.

We know from experience that as soon as the ink is dry on this bill, Republicans will cite the rising national debt caused by this bill as a reason to cut key programs that millions of Americans use every day-- things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, job training, education, infrastructure, and affordable housing. In fact, under their budget resolution that Republicans adopted just 2 months ago, they laid out their plans for these reductions, which would include over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and $470 billion in Medicare cuts.

This bill would also trigger automatic cuts to some key programs. So in exchange for the bill's minimum tax cuts for some working families, starting in 2018, there would be an automatic 4-percent reduction in Medicare payments and a zeroing out of other key accounts--a zeroing out of the Crime Victims Fund, farm price support programs, and the social services block grant that provides funds to Meals on Wheels, youth counseling, and other important services for vulnerable people.

There are many better uses for $1.5 trillion. President Trump said he wanted to work with Congress on a $1 trillion infrastructure package to rebuild our roads, our airports, our ports, and to build broadband across America. I have said I would like to work with the President and my Republican colleagues on a comprehensive bill, but this bill would make it impossible to enact a $1 trillion infrastructure package the President promised and which we have really heard nothing about.

There are too many other flaws with the Republican bill to highlight them all now, but I would like to raise one that is particularly important to Minnesotans. The bill before us today would eliminate the State and local tax deduction. It is an important deduction because when people deduct the taxes they pay to their State and local governments, first of all, it prevents the double taxation of their income, and it enables our local communities to make investments in public safety and education, childcare, and infrastructure. According to the Tax Policy Center, 34 percent of Minnesotans claim the State and local tax deduction, with an average deduction of almost $13,000. Eliminating this deduction means a significant tax increase for those families and would make it harder for local communities in Minnesota to raise the revenue necessary to make vital investments.

I have heard outrage over the Republican approach to tax reform from a very wide range of my constituents. I have heard from Minnesota farmers about how it would undermine agricultural cooperatives, which are really important to Minnesota. I have heard from Minnesota students who are concerned it will force them out of graduate school. I have heard from Minnesota homebuilders and developers who say it would cut affordable housing construction in half. I have heard from Realtors who say the bill could crater the real estate market. I have heard from many ordinary Americans who say the bill is simply unfair.

Americans deserve a fairer, simpler Tax Code, not the debt-funded giveaway to the wealthy that Republicans are trying to force through the Senate today. That is why I oppose this bill, and I urge my colleagues to oppose it as well.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank Senator Leahy, my good friend.

New developments in the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the election have, once again, raised concerns about the accuracy of statements made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his appearance before the Senate. In light of the Attorney General's failure to tell the truth about not just his own interactions with Russian operatives, but also the extent to which he knew about Russian contacts by other members of the Trump campaign team, I call upon Attorney General Sessions to return to the Senate Judiciary Committee and provide us with a complete and accurate accounting of the facts.

There is no question that Russia--a hostile foreign power--meddled in our election. Russia carried out this attack in order to undermine confidence in American democracy, to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign for President, and to help Donald Trump. Our intelligence agencies have confirmed this to be true. But in order to keep our country safe and prevent an attack like this from happening again, the American people need to understand what happened, including whether members of the Trump campaign either participated in the Russian operation or turned a blind eye to it. We need to get to the bottom of this, and to do that, we need to know the truth.

Regrettably, Attorney General Sessions, our Nation's chief law enforcement officer, seems to have a real problem telling the truth about both his own interactions with Russians and those of the larger Trump campaign team. At his confirmation hearing in January, when I referenced a breaking report from CNN that there had been a ``continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government,'' I asked him, ``If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?'' This was a simple, straightforward question: ``What will you do?'' The implication was, would you recuse yourself? But rather than answer that question, then- Senator Sessions said: ``I didn't have--did not have communications with the Russians.'' That, of course, was not true. It was later revealed that Attorney General Sessions had met with the Russian Ambassador at least three times during the campaign. Only after two of those meetings were uncovered and disclosed--7 weeks later--did Attorney General Sessions announce his recusal from the Russia investigation.

After he was confronted with the truth, the Attorney General began to subtly change his story. His first answer, under oath before the Judiciary Committee in January, was that he ``did not have communications with the Russians.'' But after his meetings with the Russian Ambassador were exposed, Attorney General Sessions began to qualify his explanations. In a

statement issued on March 2, the day after his Russian contacts were revealed, he said: ``I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.'' But in July, the Washington Post published a report suggesting that the Attorney General did discuss campaign issues with the Russian Ambassador. According to the report, American intelligence agencies intercepted communications between the Russian Ambassador and the Kremlin in which the Ambassador described his conversations with then-Senator Sessions. The two men reportedly talked about substantive policy matters, including campaign-related issues.

In response to this report, the Justice Department issued a statement stating that Attorney General Sessions stood by his testimony and again claimed that the Attorney General did not discuss ``interference with any campaign or election.''

Each and every time new information comes to light about the Attorney General's contacts with the Russians, he has responded not by coming clean and admitting that his initial testimony was inaccurate but by shifting his story and moving the goalposts. The truth has a nasty habit of catching up with Attorney General Sessions.

Recently, unsealed court documents revealed that in early October, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian operatives during the campaign. The unsealed documents also revealed that Mr. Papadopoulos didn't just meet with Russian operatives during the campaign, he did so with the express goal of facilitating meetings between the Russian Government and other Trump campaign officials, including the candidate himself, Donald Trump. According to the court documents, Mr. Papadopoulos made no secret of his Russian contacts. He described his Russian meetings in emails to senior campaign officials, and according to Mr. Papadopoulos, he discussed his Russian contacts with then-Senator Sessions directly.

On March 31, 2016, Mr. Papadopoulos attended a meeting of the Trump campaign's National Security Advisory Committee--a group led by Attorney General Sessions, who chaired the committee and advised the candidate on foreign policy and national security matters. The court documents revealed that after Mr. Papadopoulos introduced himself to the group, he ``stated, in sum and substance, that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.'' Mr. Papadopoulos made that pitch while seated two seats to the left of Attorney General Sessions. We know that for a fact because then-Candidate Trump posted a photo of the meeting on Instagram. There is then-Senator Sessions, there is George Papadopoulos, and there is then-Candidate Donald Trump.

After the court documents were unsealed, reports about what happened at the March 31 meeting began to emerge. Reportedly, Mr. Papadopoulos spoke about facilitating a meeting between the candidate and the Russian President for a few minutes. Then-Candidate Trump reportedly ``listened with interest and asked questions of Mr. Papadopoulos.'' But according to an adviser present at the meeting, then-Senator Sessions reacted negatively to Mr. Papadopoulos's idea and reportedly ``shut [Papadopoulos] down.'' Attorney General Sessions is reported to have said: ``We're not going to do it'' and ``I'd prefer that nobody speak about this again.'' If those reports are accurate, they would signal that then-Senator Sessions reacted quite strongly to the suggestion that then-Candidate Trump should meet with President Putin. Such a strong reaction suggests that Attorney General Sessions would have remembered a conversation like that.

Mr. Papadopoulos wasn't the only member of the campaign to tell Attorney General Sessions about his Russian contacts. Earlier this month, Carter Page--yet another former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who is under scrutiny for his Russian contacts--testified to the House Intelligence Committee that he told then-Senator Sessions about a trip to Russia that Page was going to take in July 2016, where he met with Russian officials and state-owned businesses.

Nonetheless, time and time again, Attorney General Sessions has claimed under oath that he was unaware of any communications between Russians and members of the Trump campaign.

During his confirmation hearing in January, when I mentioned reports that there was a ``continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries of the Russian government,'' the Attorney General said that he was ``not aware of any of those activities.''

My good friend Senator Pat Leahy asked him in writing whether he had ``been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election.'' The Attorney General answered, simply, ``No.''

In June, Attorney General Sessions appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In his opening statement, he said: ``I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign.''

Senator Risch asked him: ``Did you hear even a whisper, or a suggestion, or anyone making reference within that campaign that somehow the Russians were involved in that campaign?'' Attorney General Sessions replied: ``I did not.''

Senator Joe Manchin asked him: ``Are there any other meetings between Russian government officials and any other Trump campaign associates that have not been previously disclosed that you know of?'' Attorney General Sessions said that he did not recall any such meetings.

Senator Kamala Harris asked him: ``Are you aware of any communications with other Trump campaign officials and associates that they had with Russian officials or any Russian nationals?'' Attorney General Sessions replied: ``I don't recall that.''

Just last month, during the Attorney General's most recent appearance before the Judiciary Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham asked him: ``Did anybody in the campaign--did you ever overhear a conversation between you and anybody on the campaign who talked about meeting with the Russians?'' This time, Attorney General Sessions replied quite carefully. He said: ``I have not seen anything that would indicate collusion with Russians to impact the campaign.''

But when I asked him to clarify his shifting explanations for his own interactions with the Russian Ambassador, Attorney General Sessions said that when he first heard about reports of a ``continuing exchange of information'' between Russians and the Trump campaign, that he was ``taken aback by this dramatic statement that I'd never heard before and knew nothing about.'' He said that ``a continuing exchange of information between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government . . . did not happen, at least not to my knowledge, and not with me.''

Describing his January testimony, he said:

[A]nd I said, I'm not aware of those activities. And I

wasn't, and am not. I don't believe they occurred.

Setting aside the convenient amnesia that Attorney General Sessions seems to experience when asked about his own interactions with Russians or those he witnessed, I find it disturbing that he went so far as to claim, as recently as October of this year, that he didn't believe that any meetings between Trump associates and Russians ever occurred.

Just think about the Trump campaign members we know to have met with Russians from publicly available information: Carter Page, former campaign adviser; Paul Manafort, former campaign manager and chief strategist; Michael Flynn, the disgraced former National Security Advisor, who in 2015 spoke at a party honoring Russia's state-owned television network, where he sat next to Vladimir Putin; Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser and son-in-law; and Donald Trump, Jr., the President's son. Each and every one of these former members of the Trump campaign have had unusual contacts with the Russians.

Nonetheless, just last month the Attorney General said:

I'm not aware of those activities. And I wasn't, and am

not. I don't believe they occurred.

I wanted to say to Attorney General Sessions: Listen, I understand that you are recused from the Russia investigation, but do you think that means you are not allowed to watch the news or read a newspaper? My God, what is going on here?

It is clear that Attorney General Sessions has an ongoing difficulty remembering his own interactions with Russians and the extent to which he knew about Russian contacts with other members of the Trump campaign. As the record demonstrates, Attorney General Sessions has misrepresented the truth about those contacts to Members of this body time and time again. The interference by a hostile power in our Nation's elections represents an attack on democracy itself, and the inability of our Nation's top law enforcement official to speak with a clear and consistent voice about what he knows of the Russian operation is disturbing.

Tomorrow morning, the Attorney General will appear before the House Judiciary Committee, where I am confident he will once again face questions about this issue. It is my hope that this time Attorney General Sessions will answer those questions honestly, but in light of his misrepresentations to Members of this body, Attorney General Sessions has an obligation to return to the Senate and explain himself.

Getting to the bottom of Russia's interference in the 2016 election is a matter of national security, and Attorney General Sessions owes the American people an explanation about what he knows. He needs to return to the Senate Judiciary Committee to set the record straight.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the importance of bipartisan action on healthcare, as the Senator from New Hampshire just did.

Over the past year, I have traveled all around Minnesota to talk with individuals and families and community leaders about healthcare. I have heard from mothers and fathers who have been worried about losing the healthcare their children need to access lifesaving services. I have heard from daughters who have been panicked about how to pay for their parents' long-term care and prescription drug costs. I have heard from hospital executives in rural areas, much like the rural areas in Arkansas, who have been concerned about how they are going to keep their doors open.

What is abundantly clear from all of these conversations is that Minnesotans want Congress to work together to build on the Affordable Care Act, lower healthcare costs, and support policies that work. That is why I believe, first, that Congress must act immediately to

pass bipartisan legislation to stabilize the individual market. Second, we must do all we can to support strong enrollment in our health insurance exchanges so that all consumers, regardless of their health needs, can find high-quality, affordable health insurance coverage. Third, it is time to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program. Let me take each of those in turn.

When Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee got to work and developed a bipartisan plan to stabilize the individual market. As a member of that committee, I participated in numerous hearings with witnesses who spanned the ideological spectrum, solicited input from State and national leaders, and worked in good faith with all of my colleagues to develop legislation that is truly a compromise bill.

This legislation, referred to as the Alexander-Murray deal, will contain healthcare costs for consumers, provide certainty to insurers participating in these markets, and provide States with the flexibility they need to develop innovative, local solutions. I am proud of what we were able to accomplish.

What I am most proud of is that this bill includes a provision that will reverse a decision by the Trump administration that would effectively punish Minnesota for pushing forward a bipartisan plan to stabilize the individual market--a bipartisan plan in our State legislature.

Last year, after our State experienced dramatic premium rate hikes in the individual markets, State leaders worked together in a bipartisan way to pass a reinsurance program to contain these costs, but the program's enactment was contingent upon approval from the Federal Government.

After months of foot-dragging, the Federal Government finally approved the State's reinsurance plan as part of the 1332 waiver proposal, but the Federal Government simultaneously cut Federal funding for MinnesotaCare, which is another program in the State that provides affordable health coverage to working families. Thus, our State had to choose whether to support a bipartisan proposal to stabilize the individual market and lower premiums for consumers or swallow hundreds of millions of dollars in lost Federal funding. It was an impossible choice that was completely unnecessary. That is why I set to work to fix it.

After weeks of productive negotiations, I am pleased to report that the Alexander-Murray deal will prevent the Trump administration from imposing these cuts on Minnesota. But my State wasn't the only one threatened by potential funding cuts. The Alexander-Murray bill would prevent such problems from occurring in any other State as well, and it would do much more.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this agreement would reduce the deficit by billions of dollars, lower premiums in 2019, and preserve coverage options for individuals and families. In short, it is not only good for Minnesota, it is good for the entire country. This bill is a bipartisan win-win-win.

Now our job is to pass this legislation into law. At the same time, we must do everything we can to drive up enrollment in the health insurance exchanges. Regardless of party, if we want to ensure that consumers have access to affordable, high-quality health insurance coverage, we have to get people to sign up for the coverage. More people equals better risk pools, which equals lower premiums. It is really that simple.

Look, the Trump administration has done everything in its power to undermine ObamaCare. It has halved the amount of time that people have to enroll in coverage, it slashed funding for outreach and enrollment efforts, and it deliberately misled consumers about the benefits of the ACA and individual requirements for coverage. But we have the power to combat these efforts.

Let's get people enrolled. Open enrollment started on November 1 and will end for most people on December 15. Minnesotans are lucky in that they have until January 14 to sign up for coverage. But everyone who doesn't receive coverage from their employer or through Medicare needs to sign up now, so I urge my colleagues to get their constituents to visit healthcare.gov and shop around and then enroll in coverage.

Lastly, it is time to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program, community health centers, and the National Health Service Corps. These have always been bipartisan programs. There is no reason this should be any different today.

The anxiety that people in Minnesota and across the country feel about their access to healthcare is not inevitable; it is the result of political decisions made here in Washington, DC. Let's prove to the country that we are not here to fight with each other, we are here to fight for them. Let's show them that we can get something done. Let's take action to protect healthcare and give our constituents, at long last, some peace of mind.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Like the Senator from Illinois, I rise to voice my opposition to the nomination of Bill Wehrum to serve as the Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Office of Air and Radiation oversees matters that are critical to human and environmental health, specifically, air and radiation but also climate change, air quality, and vehicle emissions.

If confirmed, Mr. Wehrum would be responsible for these immensely important issues, which require putting the health of our citizens above industry interests. Given this, I don't know why the Senate would confirm him for this position.

Mr. Wehrum has already served in this role in an acting capacity during the Bush administration. His confirmation was blocked by the Senate in 2006. His prior tenure shows that he will not fulfill the mission of the EPA to protect human health and the environment. In fact, he has a record of putting corporate profits before the well- being of citizens.

During his tenure in the Bush administration, Mr. Wehrum rolled back clean air safeguards that protect public

health on 27 occasions. His actions were challenged in court for not fulfilling the requirements of the Clean Air Act, and 27 times the court ruled against Mr. Wehrum.

One particular issue that he was involved in was mercury pollution. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has to reduce hazardous air pollutants like mercury, which is particularly harmful to children. Instead of protecting this population from mercury pollution, a neurotoxin, Mr. Wehrum decided to advance the interests of polluters.

During his tenure, Mr. Wehrum also led efforts to prevent EPA from addressing climate pollution. Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of regulating greenhouse gases, forcing the Agency to take action.

After the Senate blocked his nomination in 2006, Mr. Wehrum decided he would undermine the mission of the Agency on behalf of polluters. In his current role as a corporate attorney, he has sued the EPA multiple times on behalf of clients in the oil, gas, coal, and chemical industries to undermine protections that safeguard public health and the environment. He has used his current position to attack the renewable fuel standard, which requires biofuels to be blended with gasoline--something the big oil companies hate because it means serious competition for dirty oil. So as an attorney for the American Petroleum Institute--the trade association that represents ExxonMobil, BP, and a number of other oil and gas giants--Mr. Wehrum sued the EPA at least four times in an effort to weaken the RFS, the renewable fuel standard. This is deeply troubling, considering that if he gets this job, he will be in charge of administering the RFS, which will allow him to implement his clear agenda. He has done nothing to lead us to believe he would do anything but side with the giant oil companies.

The facts are clear. The RFS boosts energy security, it creates rural jobs, and it is better for the environment than oil. You are never going to see an ethanol spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Colleagues on both sides of the aisle agree that despite this bipartisan support, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has reduced advanced biofuel blending targets for 2018. Now, with Mr. Wehrum's nomination, I have even less confidence in this administration upholding Congress's intent on the RFS.

He also has a history of willful ignorance of science. When asked whether he believes that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main drivers of climate change, Mr. Wehrum stated that he believes it is an open question--an answer that runs contrary to the conclusion of 97 percent of climate scientists and runs counter to the ``National Climate Assessment'' that was released by this administration just last week.

Emissions from fossil fuel-fired powerplants are some of the main contributors to climate change. We know this. At the Office of Air and Radiation, Mr. Wehrum would oversee the repeal of standards that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, the Clean Power Plan. He would also be in charge of crafting a weaker replacement, if any.

Let me be clear. A weak standard is an affront to the public health and safety of future generations.

To overcome the challenge of climate change, we must transform our economy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If we don't, Americans and future generations will pay an unacceptable price. But rather than driving innovation and pushing us to overcome this challenge, the administration has ordered a retreat. You can see that retreat everywhere, in a budget that would gut funding for science and innovation, in an EPA that values industry profits over the welfare of the public.

The 23rd annual United Nations climate change conference is taking place right now in Bonn, Germany. Two years ago, 195 nations came together to sign the Paris climate agreement in a historic display of the power of collective human will, and they did it because of U.S. leadership.

Now contrast that to earlier this year, when President Trump ordered the United States to retreat. He announced that he was pulling us out of the Paris climate agreement.

Yesterday, Syria announced that it would ratify the agreement. They were the last remaining nation to not be a part of this agreement. We now stand alone as the only country in the world choosing not to be part of the global effort to combat climate change.

Let's be clear. The President has not only ceded leadership, but he has isolated the United States from the global community. He has put us in this dangerous situation simply to protect short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

Mr. Wehrum would exacerbate this administration's wrong-headed approach. He is anti-science, anti-public health, anti-environment. That is why the Senate blocked his nomination in 2006. The Senate recognized then that he wasn't fit for the job. He is even less fit today.

I oppose his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my energy policy fellow, Shuchi Talati, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize and celebrate the career of Minnesota Adjutant General Richard C. Nash. Major General Nash retired on October 31st, after leading the Minnesota National Guard for the past 7 years. His leadership has ensured the excellence of the Minnesota National Guard.

Major General Nash enlisted in the infantry in 1972 and quickly rose through the ranks, earning a commission as a second lieutenant following completion of officer candidate school. Since then, he has commanded at all levels, starting as a company level commander and rising to lead the U.S. Divisions-South supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2010.

In November of 2010, Major General Nash was appointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty to be the adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard. In this role, he has skillfully commanded Minnesota's Army and Air National Guard units not only in missions in Minnesota, but also as they have served across the globe, in places such as Iraq, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Baltics. Under Major General Nash's stewardship, the Minnesota National Guard has performed every mission reliably and with distinction.

I have had the honor of working closely with Major General Nash during my time in office. He has been a tireless advocate for the Guard on issues ranging from installations, to the Guard's renewable energy use, to the important task of ensuring the Guard's annual priorities are met. One area I worked particularly closely with Major General Nash on has been our efforts to expand medical, education, and retirement benefits that had been previously denied to National Guard soldiers deployed under the 12304b authority. Major General Nash has been a strong voice on this issue, and his work was critical to my efforts to enact bipartisan legislation to ensure Minnesota Guardsmen and Reservists have access to these services. Our veterans have earned these benefits through their service and sacrifice to our country, and they should not be denied those benefits.

In addition to his exemplary leadership of the Minnesota Guard's service in missions foreign and domestic, Major General Nash deserves special recognition for his work preparing the force for future energy and sustainability challenges. In particular, his work developing the Minnesota Guard's sustainable infrastructure has made the Minnesota Guard a pioneer in the use of solar and geothermal energy initiatives. In 2011, Minnesota National Guard facilities set a goal to reduce energy consumption by 3 percent. Forty-one Minnesota National Guard armories participated in this program and energy consumption was reduced by an average of 5.4 percent year over year through the use of geothermal and solar thermal heating, water reuse, solid waste recycling, as well as natural and LED lighting. Furthermore, all new construction projects under Major General Nash's leadership have been designed to LEED standards. These developments are so important because they reduce the Guard's reliance on fossil fuels and foreign oil, support jobs in the local economy, and reduce energy costs for the Guard, allowing them to invest more in our civilian soldier's readiness, training, and education. The work Major General Nash has done to prepare for future energy and sustainability challenges has ensured that the Minnesota National Guard will continue to lead the country on the battlefield and at home.

Finally, I want to note with my gratitude Major General Nash's many years of service as a judge in my annual poetry contest that allows Minnesota students to write about a military veteran who has made a difference in their lives. Each year, he spends hours reading these heartfelt poems and helping me decide which ones will hang in my Senate office.

I would like to extend my best wishes to Major General Nash upon his retirement and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors. Thank you, General Nash. Your service to our Nation and our State has been indispensable and invaluable. Above all, it has made a difference to the men and women who served under you.

Thank you.