Floor Statements

Thank you, Mr. President.

I rise today to talk about the Republican effort happening in total secrecy behind closed doors under the direction of Leader McConnell to repeal the Affordable Care Act and gut Medicaid in order to give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Georgians, the wealthiest Americans.

Just about 5 months ago, I came before this body. I issued a simple request to Republicans. I asked you to show me your plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

I asked you to show me the plan that was going to be ``terrific.''

As to the bill that President Trump promised during his campaign and the one Republicans had 7 years to come up with, I asked you to explain how you would meet the standards set by one of President Trump's top advisers, Kelly Anne Conway, who said: ``We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance.''

I asked you all to show me the plan that retains coverage for the nearly 20 million people who have gained it, continues to contain healthcare costs, and ensures that nobody gets denied or has to pay more because of their gender or because of preexisting conditions.

I never got that plan from you. Instead, what we received was the American Health Care Act, or the AHCA, a heartless, terrible bill that passed the House in early May, a bill that President Trump heralded in the Rose Garden, after its passage, as ``great.''

The AHCA is a far cry from what President Trump and his allies promised. If the AHCA becomes law, 23 million more people would be uninsured. The bill ends protections for people with preexisting conditions and drives up healthcare costs dramatically for older, sicker folks. Worse still, the AHCA would end the Medicaid expansion and slash Medicaid by $834 billion over 10 years. For what? To offer massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, for the wealthiest Georgians in the Presiding Officer's State. The average tax savings for the 400 richest families under this plan is $7 million apiece each year--$7 million each for every year, because they need it.

No wonder people are outraged. Just 8 percent of Americans think the Senate should pass this bill into law unchanged. Well, 8 percent has to be a new low.

Americans do not want TrumpCare. Three in four Americans want President Trump and his administration to do what he can to make the ACA work rather than undermining it.

Even President Trump reportedly now considers the House bill to be ``mean.'' It went from ``great'' to ``mean.'' In the Rose Garden, it was great. Now, a few weeks later, that same great bill is mean.

Instead of listening to the American people, Republicans are pursuing a strategy that former Acting Administrator of CMS Andy Slavitt has described as sabotage, secrecy, and speed.

Up first, sabotage.

In a few years, Republicans have choked off the Risk Corridors Program, which was designed to help stabilize premiums in the first years of the new exchanges. The Trump administration has gone even further. It has stopped enforcing the individual mandate, has undermined outreach efforts to help people sign up for health insurance, and has cut in half the amount of time that people have to sign up for health insurance coverage.

Perhaps the most troubling of all is that Republicans have refused to commit to funding cost-sharing reduction payments. These payments help low-income families cover their out-of-pocket costs. Since insurers are not sure if they can count on the administration to continue to provide these payments, some are pulling out of the individual market or are dramatically increasing their premiums to account for this instability, this uncertainty.

There is much more we can do to shore up the individual market, but my colleague Senator Stabenow had it right when she said to Secretary Price, of the Presiding Officer's State, regarding the administration's sabotage efforts: ``It's like pulling the rug out from under somebody and going, `Oh, my gosh. They fell down.' ''

That was from Debbie Stabenow, of Michigan.

The next tenet of the Republican approach is secrecy.

A group of 13 men has been meeting in secret to draft the Senate version of the AHCA. What little we do know is that Senator Cornyn estimates there will be about an 80-percent overlap between the Senate and House bills. Prior to now, our understanding was that the Senate Republicans would completely rewrite the bill, with Senator Burr even saying the House bill was ``dead on arrival.'' It sounds like that plan has been jettisoned, but we cannot be sure because the Senate has had precisely zero hearings, zero days of public floor debate, and we have yet to see or hear about the revised draft of the AHCA, despite the forthcoming vote.

I urge my Republican colleagues to recall that during the long debate over the Affordable Care Act, the Senate held nearly 100 bipartisan hearings, roundtables, and walkthroughs, and had 25 consecutive days of public floor debate. Let me repeat that--nearly 100

bipartisan hearings, roundtables, and walkthroughs in the Senate alone, with 25 consecutive days of public floor debate on a bill that affects one-sixth of our economy. In the Senate HELP Committee, Senators considered nearly 300 amendments during a 13-day markup--one of the longest in congressional history--and ultimately accepted more than 160 Republican amendments in the process.

In 2009, then-House Budget Committee Ranking Member Paul Ryan argued:

Before Congress changes healthcare as the American people

know it, we must know the likely consequences of the House

Democrat legislation, including the number of people who

would lose access to their current insurance.

The irony is palpable. Feel the palpable irony. Do you feel it? Does everybody feel it?

That brings me to the final component of the Republican approach, and that is speed.

Leader McConnell would prefer to have a vote on the Senate plan before the July 4 recess or shortly thereafter. That timing only leaves us with a few days to go. There will just not be enough time to truly understand how this bill would affect the healthcare system, which, again, is one-sixth of our economy and affects all of the millions of Americans who rely on it.

Republicans plan to schedule the vote in such a way as to keep the American people in the dark about this bill for as long as possible. The American people deserve a chance to weigh in on a bill that would affect their lives and those of their friends and families in my State of Minnesota and the Presiding Officer's State of Georgia.

My office has received over 15,000 letters from very worried Minnesotans these past few months, and I have gone to visit rural healthcare facilities that would be among the hardest hit by the AHCA. My constituents--the people of Minnesota--are frankly scared about what will happen to them or their families if they lose their health insurance, and I am too.

As I did in January, I would like to encourage my Republican colleagues to join me on a trip to Minnesota to meet Leanna. Leanna's 3-year-old son Henry has been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. His treatment will last until at least April of 2018. He needs around-the-clock care to manage his nausea, vomiting, pain, and sleepless nights. Henry's immune system is so compromised that he is not supposed to go to daycare so Leanna left her job to care for him. Henry and Leanna are supported by Leanna's spouse, but they cannot pay for his treatment on one salary.

Leanna says:

It is because of the ACA that Henry gets proper healthcare.

Henry can get therapy and the things he needs to maintain his

health and work towards beating cancer. Henry is still with

us because of the ACA.

He is 3.

Let me say that again: ``Henry is still with us because of the ACA.''

I will do everything I can to fight the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, strip away consumer protections, and gut Medicaid.

To all of my constituents who care about this, I need you to keep fighting. Now is the time to make your voices heard.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his attention.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to commend my colleague from Alaska. Closer to the Poles, you see the effect of climate change more starkly. I am glad that she spoke on this issue. She is a real champion for her State, which means recognizing that climate change is having an effect on the Arctic and on those villages up there. It will have a lot of consequences going forward.

I say thank you to Senator Murkowski.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the House Republican healthcare bill and the devastating effect that it would have on people with mental illness and those affected by the Nation's opioid epidemic.

Nationwide, more than 52,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, with 63 percent of those deaths involving an opioid. This means that drug overdose deaths now surpass the number of people who die each year from automobile accidents or from firearms.

That same year in Minnesota, we lost more than 570 people to drug overdoses. About half of those deaths were tied to prescription medication--particularly, opiate pain relievers--and another 20 percent of those deaths were associated with heroin. We saw drug overdose deaths jump 11 percentage points in Minnesota from 2014 to 2015.

The opioid epidemic knows no boundaries. It has touched people and families of all incomes, of all races, and of all ages. Some communities in Minnesota have been hit particularly hard by this crisis, including our Native American population. Not long ago, I visited the Bois Forte Indian Reservation. Bois Forte is a small, beautiful reservation up in northern Minnesota, a community where people know each other and trust each other. In fact, historically, the trust has run so deep that folks in Bois Forte didn't even lock their doors at night. But the opioid epidemic--I was told this by the Tribe chairman--and the impact it has had on the people in the reservation has changed that. Opioids are changing and destroying families and communities, and one clear sign of this is that people now are locking their doors, the chairman told me.

Right now, we need to be doing all we can to help people, families, and communities that have been devastated by opioid addiction. We must provide support for treatments and other necessary interventions, and we need to be focusing on prevention. That is why we passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act just last year, and why we followed it up with the behavioral health provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act--again, just at the end of last Congress.

Now these important advances are under threat. The so-called healthcare bill that Republicans pushed out of the House of Representatives would undermine the very programs that help people with opioid addiction. For instance, as the CBO confirmed yesterday, the bill guts Medicaid, cutting the program's budget by more than $830 billion over 10 years. These losses are compounded by the additional $610 billion in cuts to Medicaid proposed in President Trump's budget yesterday. In total, these cuts would amount to close to a 50-percent reduction in the funding for the Medicaid Program, causing at least 14 million people to lose Medicaid coverage over the next decade. Medicaid is the No. 1 payer for behavioral health services in the Nation. It covers both prevention and treatment for people at risk for or actively battling opioid addiction.

For example, Medicaid pays for about one-quarter of medication- assisted treatment for opioid and heroin addictions. Because of the Medicaid expansion, 1.3 million additional people gained access to behavioral health services, which reduced the number of low-income adults needing substance use treatment but not receiving it by 18 percent.

To further undermine coverage, the House bill would also allow States to eliminate essential health benefits. The essential health benefits are 10 key benefits that plans exchanges must offer, including maternity care, prescription drugs, and mental health and substance use disorder services. What we know is that before the ACA was passed, many people with private insurance did not have coverage for the mental health services they needed. One in three did not have coverage for substance use disorder treatment, and close to one in five did not have coverage for mental healthcare.

Now is not the time to be cutting back on those benefits. In fact, last year, the Surgeon General issued a report on addiction, which found that there are more people with substance use disorders than people with cancer. What the CBO score confirmed yesterday was that people who live in States that rollback essential health benefits, who still need the services that are no longer included in the essential health benefits would ``experience substantial increases in out-of- pocket spending on health care or would choose to forgo the services.''

The report goes on to call out the fact that out-of-pocket costs for these patients could increase by thousands of dollars a year, and the benefits would again be subject to annual and lifetime limits. Substance use disorder services are highlighted as specific benefits that CBO anticipates States will exclude first.

I want to make this clear to my colleagues and to the American people: You cannot say that you want to address our country's opioid epidemic and at the same time support this bill. Those things are in direct opposition to one another. So, to all of my colleagues who supported CARA and supported the 21st Century Cures Act, I urge you to work with us to build on the ACA so that we can effectively address the opioid epidemic ravaging our country.

My colleague on the other side of the aisle, Senator Corker from Tennessee,

had it right when he remarked on the secret partisan process currently underway in the Senate. Earlier this week he said:

It's a very awkward process, at best. There are no experts.

There's no actuaries. . . . Typically, in a hearing, you'd

have people coming in and you'd also have the media opining

about if a hearing took place, and X came in and made

comments.

Senator Corker is spot-on. The American people deserve an open and transparent discussion on how we can best improve healthcare in our Nation. Many Americans are struggling just to keep their heads above water, paying their bills, raising their kids, caring for their parents, and coping with health problems.

Families in Minnesota and in all of our States have been or are currently being ripped apart by opioid addiction. They need our help. They don't need a bill or a budget, for that matter, that is hastily put together for ideological reasons. They don't need policies that undercut their care and their livelihood.

Ninety-one people die every day in the United States from an opioid overdose. Only one in five people who currently need treatment for opioid use disorders is actually getting it.

American lives hang in the balance. People are counting on us to do the right thing. So let's do it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Katie Wright, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the year.

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

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the healthcare bill the House of Representatives passed and is currently being considered behind closed doors by my Republican colleagues.

I travel around greater Minnesota all the time, and when the Republicans' healthcare plan first came out, I traveled to rural Minnesota to meet with rural hospitals, nursing home providers, and constituents to hear how this bill would impact their lives and communities. They are upset and they are frankly scared.

In Perham, MN, I heard from a woman who was in tears, not knowing where her mother would go if the Republican plan passed and she lost her nursing home coverage. This woman and her husband work full time, but together they cannot afford the around-the-clock care her mother needs.

Later, at a nursing home in Moorhead--that is in Minnesota across the river from Fargo--I also heard from a resident, Chrysann, who said this new plan wasn't about taking care of people but about ``survival of the fittest.'' The hospitals and nursing home administrators I met with said the financial blow they would receive would cause them to cut services and in some cases even close their doors.

What I heard, and the real panic that I saw, is a far cry from what President Trump promised this past January when he said: ``We're going to have insurance for everybody.'' He went on to say it would be ``much less expensive and much better.''

Versions of these promises keep coming from President Trump, his Cabinet, and from his allies in Congress--coverage for more people, at lower costs, with better quality. Those things all sound great, things that might help people like Chrysann, but the fact is, the Republican bill does the exact opposite. It takes coverage away from people, it drives up costs, and it makes coverage worse. In other words, the GOP is selling this healthcare bill on false pretenses.

Today I would like to explain how the Republican bill betrays each one of these three fundamental promises, and let's take them one by one. We can start by the number of people who will be covered. President Trump promised that everyone would have insurance, but an analysis of an earlier version of the healthcare bill--the first iteration of this, which is actually not as bad as this one--an earlier version analysis conducted by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that under current law the House Republican plan would leave 24 million fewer people with health insurance by 2026. That means by 2026, nearly 1 in 5 Americans under the age of 65 would be uninsured, compared to just over 1 in 10 today.

One particular way the Republican bill cuts coverage is by gutting Medicaid, a program that covers more than 60 percent of all nursing home residents nationwide, covers kids with disabilities, and benefits nearly 70 million Americans. The Republican plan ends Medicaid expansion. It fundamentally undermines the structure of the Medicaid Program and cuts the program's budget by as much as one-quarter over 10 years, a more than $800 billion cut.

On May 7, journalist Jake Tapper of CNN asked Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price whether the hundreds of billions of proposed cuts would result in millions of Americans not getting Medicaid. Secretary Price responded: ``Absolutely not.'' Well, that is absolutely false. When I say ``absolutely,'' I mean that literally.

It doesn't take an expert to know that if you take funding away from this program, which provides health coverage for millions of Americans, the program will suffer, and the human beings who rely on Medicaid will suffer as well. Specifically, according to the

Congressional Budget Office, 14 million of those 24 million people who will lose coverage under the Republican bill would lose their health insurance because of cuts to Medicaid. ``Absolutely not,'' says the Secretary of HHS.

It is bad enough to push a bill that will take away care from millions who need it; it is extra galling to be so fundamentally dishonest about it in the process. Look, the Affordable Care Act is far from perfect and we have problems that need to be fixed, but let's step back and review how far we have come because of the ACA. Since it came into effect, about 20 million Americans have gained health insurance coverage, producing the lowest uninsured rate in the history of this country.

In Minnesota, the number of uninsured dropped by nearly half, with people in rural areas seeing the largest gain in coverage. As a result, we have eliminated the gap in coverage between rural and urban Minnesotans. These coverage gains have increased access to vital health services, including access to treatment for mental illness and substance use disorders, but the Republican healthcare plan throws all of these gains into jeopardy, which is particularly troubling given that the country is still in the midst of battling a devastating opioid and heroin epidemic. Researchers estimate that 2.8 million Americans with substance use disorders will lose some or all of their insurance coverage under the ACA repeal.

Let's be clear. People will lose coverage as a result of the proposed Medicaid cuts; people will lose coverage because of the proposed insurance reforms; and tens of millions of more people will be uninsured and without care in the Republican plan than under current law.

Let's move on to the second point; the assertion that is repeated constantly by President Trump and by others that their bill brings down costs. In his Rose Garden celebration after the Republican health care bill passed the House--not after signing it into law but sort of an unprecedented Rose Garden celebration after merely the House passed the bill--President Trump said: ``As far as I am concerned your premiums they are going to start to come down.''

When Secretary Price was asked, again by Jake Tapper, if he stands by the President's statement, he responded: ``Absolutely.''

On an earlier date, Secretary Price actually said: ``Nobody will be worse off financially'' under the Republican plan.

This is just blatantly wrong. Republicans are actively sabotaging the individual market, needlessly driving up premiums in the short term, and in the long term what they are doing will result in exorbitant premium hikes for older, sicker people--so much so that CBO estimates some will eventually drop out of the market altogether.

Let me explain. For years, Republicans have taken deliberate steps to sabotage the individual market. First, Senator Rubio ran through a last-minute change to the 2015 spending bill that undercut the Risk Corridor Program. The Risk Corridor Program, which was modeled after a similar program in the Medicare Part D Program, was included as part of the ACA to offset high costs incurred by insurers as they took on new enrollees in the early years of the ACA.

Here is how it worked. The Federal Government would make payments to health plans that enrolled a group of people who were sicker than expected and had higher healthcare costs than the insurer predicted when it set its premiums. On the flip side, the Federal Government would receive payments from health plans that enrolled a group of people who were healthier than expected and needed less care. By limiting losses incurred by insurers, the Risk Corridor Program was designed to help make premiums more affordable for individuals and families who bought coverage on the exchange. Senator Rubio's provision undercut all of this. It severely curtailed the payments that could be made under the Risk Corridor Program, which meant that premiums soared and health insurers left the market.

For example, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota lost about $220 million between 2014 and 2016 under the weakened Risk Corridor Program, which the CEO told me in a meeting late last spring was a huge setback for the company. I was dismayed but not surprised when I heard, shortly after our meeting, that the company was leaving the individual market, which affected coverage for more than 100,000 Minnesotans and contributed to average premium increases of 36 to 67 percent in Minnesota's individual market in 2017.

Insurers across the country faced similar destabilizing losses, but that is not all. On top of that, for months, President Trump has been doing his part to sow uncertainty by repeatedly arguing that the individual market is in a death spiral. For example, on May 4, in response to Aetna's exit from the individual market in Virginia in 2018, President Trump shouted on Twitter: ``Death spiral!'' This is similar to his post on March 13 in which he said: ``ObamaCare is imploding. It's a disaster and 2017 will be the worst year yet, by far!'' But he is wrong.

Even the CBO noted in one of its scores that barring any significant changes, the individual market would probably be stable in most areas. This confirms what other research has found, which is that this year markets were starting to stabilize, which led Standard & Poor's to issue a report last December predicting that 2017 could see ``continued improvement, with more insurers getting close to breakeven or better.''

But this didn't faze President Trump or any of the Republicans. Instead, they seem to have used these reports as a guidebook on what changes are necessary to actually cause the individual market to collapse. For example, President Trump has been playing games with payments that are due to insurance companies that reduce out-of-pocket costs for working families. On numerous occasions, he has threatened to stop these payments altogether, but in practice, he has been holding these payments hostage on a month-to-month basis to push forward other insidious reforms. Just yesterday, his administration announced that it would seek another short-term delay in the House's lawsuit, which aims to stop these payments permanently. These games are driving up the premiums for families and rattling health insurance markets.

Lastly, the administration has stopped enforcing the individual mandate. As a result, we are seeing enrollment in the individual markets stall for the first time since 2010, and if this results in younger, healthier people dropping their coverage, we could see prices rise dramatically for those left behind.

That is right. President Trump and the Republicans are actively attacking the insurance markets, causing premiums to go up. So if these markets falter and consumers suffer, it is because of what Republicans are doing right now and have been doing for years to undermine the individual market.

Still, you will often hear Republicans talk about the need to reduce costs. They even claim that their proposed healthcare plan would lower premiums in the long run. For millions of Americans, that is not true, but the reasons why it is untrue are slightly complicated. It goes to the CBO report for the Republican healthcare plan.

The March 13 CBO score says that average premiums for single people in the individual market would be 15 to 20 percent higher than under current law--than under the current ACA--in the first 2 years of its implementation. But it does say that they would be roughly 10 percent lower in 2026 under the House bill than they would be under current law.

At first blush, this sounds like prices would be coming down for people, right? That is certainly what the Republican leadership wants you to think. That day, House Speaker Ryan stated: ``This report confirms that the American Health Care Act will lower premiums and improve access to quality, affordable care.'' House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy got more specific. He said: ``After 10 years, premiums will be 10 percent lower than under ObamaCare.'' But Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McCarthy are being deliberately misleading. One of the reasons that average costs go down is that the price for some people would go up so much that they couldn't afford any insurance at all. If the people facing the most expensive insurance

simply dropped out of the market, sure, average costs go down.

Here is how this works: Under the Republican plan, insurers would be able to charge older enrollees five times more than younger ones, which would dramatically increase premiums for people aged 50 to 64 years old while decreasing premiums for younger people. Meanwhile, the tax credits that help older Americans afford their premiums would be drastically slashed. The result is that, especially for older people of modest means, coverage would become unaffordable, so they disappear from the market. If only younger, healthier people can buy insurance, average premiums go down, but you have actually made the system much worse and much more expensive for the people who really need it.

But that is not all. The Republican plan would also allow States to waive crucial protections for patients with preexisting conditions, which means that in those States, we could go back to something like the old days when insurance companies could charge people with preexisting conditions much more--potentially as much as $25,000 more for their coverage, as estimated by the AARP.

Republicans are quick to point out that their bill maintains a requirement that insurance companies have to offer plans to everyone, but it abandons the principle that the plans must be affordable, and an unaffordable plan does people about as much good as no plan at all.

If you are young, if you have no preexisting condition, it might be true that your premiums will go down under the Republican plan. But for millions of Americans, though, if the Republican bill passes, insurance costs are going to go up. For many people, they will go up so high that they will be out of reach.

That brings me to the third claim the Republicans are peddling--that their plan will result in higher quality coverage. In fact, Republicans want to open the door to junk insurance.

In defending the House Republican plan, Secretary Price recently stated that the plan allows ``for every single person to get the access to the kind of coverage that they want.'' We have heard this before. This is a code for allowing insurers to offer garbage insurance plans that offer skimpy benefit packages and impose much higher deductibles and cost sharing on consumers.

Under the Affordable Care Act, you cannot sell junk plans on the insurance exchanges. Plans have to cover the essential health benefits. This is key. Under the ACA, plans have to cover the essential health benefits--10 key categories of benefits such as prescription drugs, maternity care, and mental health services. On top of that, the law prohibits insurers from imposing annual or lifetime limits on these essential health benefits. The goal is to make sure that when people get sick or if they have a preexisting condition, they don't go broke getting the care they need because of fine print in their health insurance plan.

The Republican bill would allow States to eliminate these essential health benefits. Consumers would be left with plans that leave them up a creek if they actually get sick. And plans for people who are sick-- the price of those plans will go sky high. No one would call that ``better care,'' which is why Republicans aren't really being straight about it. What they call ``flexibility'' is actually just the removal of consumer protections.

To review, the Republican plan covers fewer people, costs too many people more--in many cases, much, much more--and provides worse coverage, and it is being sold by misleading people on each of these points.

It is not as though there aren't ways to cover more people, reduce costs, and provide better coverage. You could do a public option, for example. You could reduce prescription drug costs--an issue on which I recently introduced a comprehensive bill. You could improve coverage by increasing the number of healthcare providers in rural areas, as I proposed last year in my rural health bill. But the Republican plan does none of these things, which raises the question: What does it do? Why would anyone take the time to propose such a terrible bill? The answer is this: It gives a giant tax cut to the wealthy. That is the real point of this bill. It is not a healthcare bill; it is a ``take healthcare away from people who need it and use the money to give a tax break to the rich'' bill.

As Chrysann in Moorhead, MN, said, it is about ``survival of the fittest.''

The average tax savings for the 400 richest Americans under the Republican plan is $7 million each--again, $7 million each. For households earning $1 million or more a year, it is more than $50,000 apiece, each year. But for households earning $50,000 a year, which is about the median income in the United States, the tax cut is next to nothing, or you could even face a tax increase. There are tax cuts specifically for insurance company CEOs. There are tax cuts specifically for drug companies. There is nothing comparable for the middle class. And all of those tax cuts are paid for by cutting healthcare programs that keep people alive, by cutting off funding that lets seniors age with dignity, and by cutting services for kids with disabilities.

This bill would take us back in time and roll back our progress. It is up to us here in the Senate to stop that from happening. This bill is literally sickening. It is vicious, it is cruel, and it should never be passed into law. I urge my Republican colleagues to walk away from this cruel effort and work with us to actually improve healthcare for Americans. And I urge everyone considering this bill to be straight with the American people about exactly what it is that this bill will do to them.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I would.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I rise to discuss the Trump administration's effort to undo the open internet order. Together we must protect net neutrality and ensure that all content on the internet receives equal treatment from broadband providers regardless of who owns the content or how deep their pockets are.

Two years ago, American consumers and businesses celebrated the FCC's landmark vote to preserve the free and open internet by reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers under title II of the Communications Act. The vote came after the SEC received nearly 4 million public comments, the vast majority of which urged the agency to enact strong rules protecting net neutrality.

Consumers urged the Commission to protect their unfettered and affordable access to content. A wide range of advocacy organizations pressed the Commission to ensure that broadband providers couldn't pick and choose which voices and ideas would actually reach consumers. Small and large businesses alike asked that the internet remain an open marketplace where everyone can participate on equal footing, free from discrimination by companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.

The FCC responded by establishing rules that are strong, clear, and enforceable; rules that prevent broadband providers from blocking or throttling lawful online content, and rules that stop providers from charging websites for access to fast lanes.

Perhaps, most importantly, the FCC implemented these rules within the time-tested legal framework that allows the agency to respond to challenges to net neutrality that arise in the future. Following the commonsense path I have long urged, the FCC recognized that broadband access is a title II service--a classification that the DC Circuit has upheld and had previously signaled was necessary in order to establish strong rules.

The FCC's vote to implement strong net neutrality rules was an important victory for American consumers and for American business, and that victory demonstrated the overwhelming power of grassroots activism and civic participation. In 2014, millions of Americans from across the political spectrum organized to ensure that their voices were heard, and in the process, they redefined civic engagement in our country, but in the 21st century, that kind of participation requires an open internet, a place where people can freely share information and engage in meaningful public discourse.

Because of net neutrality, a handful of multibillion-dollar companies cannot bury sites offering alternative viewpoints or attempt to control how users get their information. Because of net neutrality, people from across the Nation can connect with each other, share their ideas on the internet, and organize a community effort.

I have always called net neutrality 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. That is why I am so concerned about Chairman Pai's proposal to gut the strong net neutrality rules we fought so hard for.

Tomorrow, the FCC will vote officially to initiate a proceeding to undo the open internet order, but, importantly, American consumers and businesses will once again have an opportunity to make their voices heard. I hope the American people will contact the FCC, that they will remain engaged and willing to speak up, and that they will continue to use the internet to spread ideas, organize support, and ultimately counter the deep-pocketed ISPs and the politicians who seek to undermine net neutrality.

Two years ago, the best principles of our democracy won out. I do believe that with the same energy and determination that has gotten us this far, net neutrality supporters can garner another win for the American people.

I thank the Presiding Officer for this opportunity to speak.

I yield to my good friend from the State of Hawaii.

Mr. President, I rise to address President Trump's stunning dismissal of FBI Director Comey yesterday evening. We know the Russians interfered in the 2016 election. We know the Russians did so in order to undermine confidence in our democracy. We know the Russians carried out this attack with the goal of benefiting the campaign of Donald Trump, whom the Kremlin preferred to see win the election. These facts have been confirmed by our intelligence agencies.

What we don't fully yet understand is all of the reasons why, all the reasons why the Russians favored Donald Trump and whether associates of the President or members of his campaign assisted in the Russian operations to sway the election in his favor.

These questions are the subject of an ongoing counterintelligence investigation, an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, until last night, an investigation led by James Comey.

As former Director Comey recently testified to the House Intelligence Committee, ``[T]he FBI, as part of [its] counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election--and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia.''

The timing of Director Comey's dismissal raises serious questions, and President Trump's decision to abruptly fire the man leading an investigation that could implicate the Trump administration should shock the conscience of every American who believes that no man or woman is above the law and who has faith in the fair and impartial pursuit of justice.

The White House attempted to preemptively dispel any suspicion by announcing that President Trump fired the Director ``based on the clear recommendations'' of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The White House released several documents to back up that claim: a letter from President Trump to Director Comey, firing him; a letter from Attorney General Sessions to President Trump, recommending that Comey be fired; and a memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, which cited the Director's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as damaging the FBI's reputation and credibility. These documents create more questions than they answer.

First, the letter from President Trump to Director Comey firing him. President Trump, ever eager to put distance between the Russian inquiry and himself, wrote: ``While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.''

Again, we know the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians in their efforts to influence the election. Director Comey confirmed that before he was fired. Whether President Trump is personally under investigation by the Bureau or whether investigators are merely scrutinizing his advisers and associates, the President's clumsy attempt at misdirection does little more than remind us of the many unanswered questions about his and his people's connections to Russia.

Second, Attorney General Sessions' letter to President Trump. The Attorney General writes that based on his review of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein's memo, which cites the Director's handling of the Clinton email investigation, that Attorney General Sessions has concluded that the FBI requires new leadership and a fresh start. Attorney General Sessions recommended that Director Comey be fired.

Attorney General Sessions should not have had any involvement in this decision at all. On March 2, the Attorney General called a press conference to announce: ``I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.''

The reason Attorney General Sessions made that announcement was because news reports revealed he had provided misleading testimony in response to a question that I asked during his confirmation hearing; that Attorney General Sessions had falsely stated: ``I did not have communications with the Russians.'' In fact, he did meet with the Russian Ambassador during the campaign twice.

Having provided misleading testimony under oath about a matter that could potentially be the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI, Attorney General Sessions was forced to recuse himself.

I find it deeply troubling that Attorney General Jeff Sessions--who misled the Judiciary Committee about his own communications with the Russian Ambassador and who pledged to recuse himself from this investigation as a result--betrayed that pledge by involving

himself in the decision to fire the Director of the FBI, who was leading the investigation into Russia's interference in our elections, including whether members of President Trump's campaign were involved in that interference. Attorney General Sessions was a member of that campaign, and he misled the committee on whether he had met with the Russians, and he did that under oath. That is why he recused himself, and yet he inserted himself in this firing.

Finally, there is Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein's memo, which asserts that Director Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation caused the public to lose confidence in the Bureau. Director Comey spoke publicly about the Clinton email investigation twice, in July and October of last year.

Setting aside whether Director Comey's decision to discuss the investigation was unorthodox or broke with Justice Department and FBI protocols, his actions were well known to both President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, and both of them celebrated his actions at the time. After Director Comey wrote to Congress on October 28, informing us that the FBI had discovered additional emails and would therefore reopen its investigation into Secretary Clinton, then- Candidate Trump praised his decision. He said: ``What [Comey] did was the right thing,'' and ``It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had.''

Appearing on FOX Business Network, then-Senator Sessions said that Director Comey ``had an absolute duty, in my opinion, 11 days [before an election] or not, to come forward with the new information that he has and let the American people know that, too.''

If President Trump or Attorney General Sessions truly objected to the way that Director Comey conducted the investigation into Secretary Clinton's emails, I suspect they would have said so at the time rather than heap praise upon him. But their previous statements lauding Director Comey's handling of the Clinton email probe cast suspicion on the extent to which they relied on the Deputy Attorney General's purported rationale.

Further, and this is important, if Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein were truly concerned that Director Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation had damaged the reputation of the Bureau, then why not wait for the conclusion of an investigation by the very respected DOJ inspector general into Comey's decision during the election--his decisions--an investigation that had been underway since January?

The shifting positions of President Trump and Attorney General Sessions lead me to believe something else is going on here, that this is not about Hillary Clinton's emails but about turning the page on Russia. In fact, last night, a White House spokesman said so. Appearing on FOX News, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked how Director Comey's firing would affect the Russia investigation. She replied:

When are they going to let that go? It's been going on for

nearly a year. Frankly, it's getting kind of absurd. There's

nothing there. It's time to move on. Frankly, it's time to

focus on the things the American people care about.

The American people care about whether a hostile foreign government influenced our election. They care about whether advisers and associates of the President helped that foreign government do that.

The events that have occurred over the past 24 hours are deeply, deeply unsettling. As my Republican colleague Senator Flake said last night:

I've spent the last several hours trying to find an

acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey's firing. I just

can't do it.

And I can't either. In my view, the timing and the circumstances surrounding Director Comey's dismissal are very suspicious. For example, just this morning, it was reported that Director Comey recently asked the Justice Department to provide additional resources for the Russian investigation--a request that purportedly he made personally to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. This raises grave concerns about the Trump Justice Department's ability to conduct a full, fair, and impartial investigation. In order to address these concerns, Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein should come to the Senate and explain their involvement to all of the Senators in this body.

In the wake of what I believe was a politically motivated decision to remove Director Comey, I no longer have confidence that the Department of Justice can fulfill its obligation to resolve this matter impartially. The situation now calls very clearly for the appointment of a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation into whether associates of the Trump organization or former members of the Trump campaign had knowledge of or participated in the Russian attack on our democracy.

I join my colleagues' calls for an independent inquiry so the American people can have confidence that the individuals who conduct this investigation will follow the facts no matter where they lead.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. President, before I begin my remarks on Judge Gorsuch, I just want to take a minute to talk about the chemical attack in Syria.

Words cannot describe these vicious attacks against civilians. We have all seen the horrific footage of the victims, many of whom were children. These are innocent men, women, and children who, through no fault of their own, are caught in the middle of a bloody civil war, stuck between a brutal regime, armed groups, and foreign powers. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

The world has come together and unequivocally condemned these acts and their perpetrators. We must work together to find a path toward peace and stability in Syria, and the United States must take a leadership role in that effort.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. After meeting with the nominee, carefully reviewing his record, and questioning him during his confirmation hearing, I have come to the conclusion that elevating Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court's bench would merely guarantee more of the same from the Roberts Court--a sharply divided, already activist Court that routinely sides with powerful corporate interests over the rights of average Americans.

I think it is important to start by acknowledging just exactly how it is that Judge Gorsuch came to be before the Senate; namely, this body's failure to fulfill one of its core functions. Immediately following the death of Justice Scalia, in a move as cynical as it was irresponsible, Senate Republicans announced that they would not move forward with filling the vacancy until after the Presidential election. Before President Obama had even named a nominee, the majority leader said: ``The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.'' The only problem with the majority leader's reasoning was the American people did have a voice in the decision; they had voted to make President Obama the President of the United States. Nonetheless, Republican members of the Judiciary Committee gathered behind closed doors and vowed to defy the eventual nominee a hearing. Many Republicans refused to even meet with the nominee. They said it didn't matter who the President nominated; they said this was about principle.

But Senate Republicans had a difficult time justifying their obstruction--that is, until they decided to mischaracterize a speech delivered by former Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden in June of 1992. In that June of 1992 speech, then-Senator Biden discussed the possibility of a Supreme Court Justice resigning in an election year in order to ensure that a President of the same party could name a replacement. Under those circumstances, he said, the President should refrain from nominating a replacement and the Senate should not hold confirmation hearings until after the election.

My Republican colleagues seized upon this small portion of Senator Biden's speech and dubbed it the ``Biden rule.'' Chairman Grassley said the Senate ought to abide by the Biden rule, which he said holds that there are ``no presidential Supreme Court nominations in an election year.''

The majority leader said: ``As Chairman Grassley and I declared . . . the Senate will continue to observe the Biden Rule so that the American people have a voice in this momentous position.'' So in order to justify a truly unprecedented act of obstruction, my Republican colleagues pointed to the so-called Biden rule and said they were standing on principle. That was the principle. But my Republican colleagues chose to overlook a few important details.

First of all, the scenario Senator Biden described in his 90-minute speech was not the situation our country faced last year. No one strategically resigned last year. A Justice died. No one dies to game the system.

Second and most importantly, my Republican colleagues ignored the actual point that Senator Biden made in that speech. If they had bothered to read the entire speech--and I suspect they actually had-- they would have found that further down, Senator Biden said--and this is important. This is what Senator Biden said in the speech used as the justification not to take up Merrick Garland. Senator Biden said in that speech, ``If the president [then George H. W. Bush] consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections absent consultation, then his nominee may enjoy my support, as did Justices Kennedy and Souter.''

Allow me to dwell on that for a moment. Senator Biden said that if a Supreme Court vacancy arose during an election year and the President consulted with the Senate or, absent consultation, put forward a moderate, consensus candidate, that candidate

should enjoy the support of the Judiciary Committee's chairman. That is the Biden rule. That is the Biden rule.

If Senate Republicans had actually followed the Biden rule, we wouldn't be here today. Merrick Garland would be sitting on the Supreme Court bench.

Over the past few days, I have heard my Republican colleagues denounce Democratic opposition to Judge Gorsuch by claiming that there never has been a partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. But if the shameful and unprecedented obstruction that Republicans used to effectively block President Obama from appointing a Supreme Court Justice wasn't a partisan filibuster, then I don't know what is.

Perhaps my Republican colleagues were concerned that President Obama would seek to replace Justice Scalia--a reliably conservative member of the Court--with a jurist whose view would place him or her on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. That seems to be the concern that my good friend Senator Hatch expressed when he said:

[T]he President told me several times he's going to name a

moderate, but I don't believe him. [President Obama] could

easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably

won't do that because this appointment is about the election.

So I'm pretty sure he'll name someone the [Democratic base]

wants.

But as it turns out, in recognition of the forthcoming election and the Republican-controlled Senate, President Obama did exactly what then-Senator Biden said a President should do: He named a moderate, consensus candidate. He named Merrick Garland.

Judge Garland was supremely well qualified for the job. Here is a guy who was his high school's valedictorian, who attended Harvard on a scholarship, won clerkships with legal legends like Second Circuit Judge Henry Friendly and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, and left a partnership at a prestigious law firm to become a Federal prosecutor during the George H.W. Bush administration. He later joined the Justice Department, where he prosecuted the men responsible for bombing the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, and Merrick Garland kept in touch with the survivors' and the victims' families. That is the reason why one of the very first of three Republicans agreed to meet with Judge Garland--Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a staunch conservative--because people of Oklahoma had such regard for Merrick Garland.

After Judge Garland was confirmed to the DC Circuit in 1997, he earned a reputation for working with his colleagues from across the ideological spectrum to identify areas of agreement and to craft strong consensus opinions, often by deciding a case on the narrowest grounds possible.

Judge Garland was the right choice at the right time. He wasn't a partisan warrior or a partisan political animal; he was a judge's judge, and everyone knew it. That is why my Republican colleagues had to hide behind new and misleading so-called rules in order to deny him a hearing and a vote.

Judge Gorsuch is no Merrick Garland. Judge Gorsuch is a creature of politics. That is not what Judge Gorsuch told me when I met him earlier this year. I asked Judge Gorsuch if he was bothered by the way the Senate treated Merrick Garland. He responded by telling me that he tries to stay away from politics. But documents that the Judiciary Committee received from the Department of Justice, including emails between Judge Gorsuch and Bush administration officials, show that Judge Gorsuch was very heavily involved in politics. A resume he sent to President Bush's political director in November 2004--back when Judge Gorsuch was looking for a job--detailed his work on Republican political campaigns dating back to 1976 and highlighted an award he received from Senate Republicans for his work to advance President Bush's judicial nominees. Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, later recommended Judge Gorsuch for a post at the Justice Department and described him as a ``true loyalist.''

Understand, being politically active or being a Republican is not a disqualifying characteristic in a Supreme Court nominee, at least not in my book, but Judge Gorsuch's resume is relevant here because, contrary to what he told me, his resume establishes that he is not just intimately familiar with politics; he knows the politics of the judicial nominations process and he knows it well. Let me explain why I think that is important.

During the campaign, then-Candidate Trump spoke openly about his litmus test and what kind of a judge he would appoint to fill Justice Scalia's seat on the Court. He said that he would ``appoint judges very much in the mold of Justice Scalia.'' During the final debate, he said, ``The justices that I'm going to appoint will be pro-life. They will have a conservative bent.''

Part of the reason that then-Candidate Trump could say that with such conviction is because he had already outsourced the job of coming up with a list of potential nominees to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, both rightwing organizations. The groups produced a list of 21 conservative judges for then-Candidate Trump, a list that included Judge Gorsuch. Presumably, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation knew something about the judicial philosophy of the men and women who it had decided to include on that list, given Judge Gorsuch's previous work to push judicial nominees through the Senate. I am sure he knew a thing or two about the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, as well.

In fact, Judge Gorsuch first learned that he was under consideration for the vacancy from the Federalist Society's vice president, who was working with the transition team. Judge Gorsuch went on to interview with a host of other members of the transition team, including now- White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon. Weeks later, President Trump had officially nominated Judge Gorsuch. Both Mr. Reince Priebus and Mr. Bannon appeared before rightwing activists at CPAC and talked about his nomination. Mr. Priebus told the crowd that Justice Gorsuch would bring about ``a change of potentially 40 years of law.'' He said: ``Neil Gorsuch represents . . . the type of judge that has the vision of Donald Trump, and [his nomination] fulfills the promise that he made to all of you,'' gesturing to a crowd of conservative activists.

So whether Mr. Priebus was suggesting that, if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would unsettle 40 years of precedent--like Roe v. Wade or Chevron--or whether he was suggesting that Judge Gorsuch would be a reliably conservative vote for the next 40 years, it seems clear to me that confirming Judge Gorsuch is central to President Trump's political agenda.

Now, my Republican colleagues would have you believe that nothing could be further from the truth. In their view, they say that judges call balls and strikes--nothing more, nothing less. Earlier this week, for example, Senator Cruz said: ``Conservatives understand that it is the role of a judge, and especially the role of a Supreme Court Justice, simply to follow the law.'' He said that Senate Republicans ``are not confirming someone who will simply vote with our team on a given issue.'' It is Democratic judges, according to Senator Cruz who, ``by and large view the process as achieving the result they want and view the process of adjudicating a case as a political process.''

Let me explain why I take issue with that. If my Republican colleagues truly believe that a judge's proper role is to call balls and strikes and to decide cases narrowly, they would have confirmed Merrick Garland, a judge with a proven track record of crafting consensus opinions built on narrow holdings. But a judge who calls balls and strikes isn't really what my colleagues want. Contrary to what Senator Cruz said, what my Republican colleagues want is a results-oriented judge. Why else would they hold open a seat on the Supreme Court bench? Why else would they turn to the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society for candidates? Why else would they trample on the traditions of the Senate? What my Republican colleagues really want is a judge who will vote with their team, and that is the judge they will get by confirming Neil Gorsuch. That is what this is all about. That is what this is about.

Unlike Merrick Garland, Judge Gorsuch has little interest in reaching consensus or in citing cases narrowly.

Now, Judge Gorsuch took great pains to paint himself as a mainstream nominee. He pointed out that the Tenth Circuit ruled unanimously 97 percent of the time, and that he was in the majority 99 percent of the time, but that is not unusual, and it doesn't provide any insight into his approach to being a judge. After all, the Courts of Appeals are required to follow Supreme Court precedent in all circuits around the country, and the vast majority of their cases are decided unanimously.

So in order to really understand Judge Gorsuch's approach to deciding cases--in order to really understand how he views the law--it is critically important to look at the cases where he chose to write separate concurrences or dissents. These concurring and dissenting opinions offer the clearest window into how he really thinks. Judge Gorsuch tends to write a lot of concurring and dissenting opinions. Even when Judge Gorsuch agrees with the majority and joins their decision, he frequently writes his own concurrence, setting out his own views. Judge Gorsuch has done this 31 times, including writing two concurrences to majority decisions that he, himself, had written. That is not seeking out consensus. That is holding his nose to join a consensus opinion, and then writing separately in order to point the way to broader, more sweeping rulings that other courts might issue in future cases--other courts like the Supreme Court, which doesn't have to follow precedent, which he is now poised to join and where he will not be restrained by precedent.

Judge Gorsuch is a results-oriented judge, and his record demonstrates that he approaches cases with a very specific outcome in mind. Contrary to what my Republican colleagues would have you believe, he doesn't hide that judicial philosophy. Whether it is his concurrence in Hobby Lobby or his dissent in TransAm Trucking, Judge Gorsuch wears that philosophy on his sleeve. It only underscores a disturbing pattern: siding with corporate interests over average Americans.

That philosophy was on full display in the dissent that Judge Gorsuch wrote in TransAm Trucking. It seems clear to me that Judge Gorsuch approached this case with a specific outcome in mind, which was siding with a company over a worker. And in order to just justify that outcome in his dissent, Judge Gorsuch twisted himself into a pretzel.

You may have heard this story, but I want to lay it out as efficiently as possible because I think it reveals a great deal about Judge Gorsuch's philosophy, and it helps to explain exactly why I am voting against him. In this case, trucker Alphonse Maddin is driving a rig on the interstate through Illinois. He is pulling a long trailer that is fully loaded. He makes a stop. He takes a break. Then, at 11 p.m., he is about to pull back onto the interstate, but discovers that the brakes on his trailer are locked. It is 14 below zero out. These brakes are literally frozen. So he calls his dispatcher to ask for repairs. And he waits.

While he is waiting, the heater in his cab stops working, and he falls asleep and is awakened by a call from his cousin. When Maddin sits up to answer the phone, he realizes that his torso is numb, and that he can't feel his feet. He is having trouble breathing. His cousin later says that Maddin's voice is slurred, and he wasn't tracking. According to the Mayo Clinic, these are all symptoms of hyperthermia. Maddin calls into the dispatcher again. He is told to hang on. He says: I can't. His boss tells him he has two choices, wait there until the repair truck comes, or he can take the whole rig on the road, including the trailer with frozen brakes. Those are the two options he is given by his boss. Maddin knows that if he waits, he may very well freeze to death. That is his first option, or he can go out on the interstate at 2 o'clock in the morning, dragging a fully-loaded trailer with frozen brakes at 10, maybe 15 miles per hour max, posing a safety hazard to other drivers at the interstate. Remember, it is 2 o'clock in the morning. It is dark. It is probably icy. Imagine a car going 80, 85 miles per hour--as people do at 2 o'clock in the morning on an interstate--coming up over a hill behind that rig, and then coming down and seeing this rig going 10 or 15 miles per hour, where you are going 80, 85. That would be like suddenly coming down on a stopped tractor trailer while you are going 70 miles per hour. That is his second option.

Instead, Maddin does what any of us would do. He unhitches the trailer and drives down the interstate to find someplace warm, and he does get warm. Then he returns to the trailer when the repair truck finally shows up, and he is fired. He is fired for abandoning his cargo. Now, there is a law to protect people in Maddin's situation. So he files a case. When it gets to the Tenth Circuit, a three-judge panel agrees with him, with Maddin. They find that the trucking company shouldn't have fired Mr. Maddin, but one judge dissented--Judge Neil Gorsuch.

So during my question, I asked Judge Gorsuch a very simple question: What he would have done if he had been the truck driver; if he had been driving that truck. I asked: Which would you have chosen? What would you have done? And here is Judge Gorsuch's response: ``Oh, Senator, I don't know what I would have done if I were in his shoes.''

Now, is there anyone here who would not have done what that driver did? I don't think so. Of course, you would unhitch the trailer and find someplace warm as quickly as possible--of course. But Judge Gorsuch said he didn't know what he would have done? Is that possible?

I asked him if he had even thought about what he would have done if he were Maddin. You know, he had heard the case. He did not answer. So I asked him again. I asked him, given the choices of sitting there and possibly freezing to death or going on the road with an unsafe vehicle, or doing what Mr. Maddin did, and Judge Gorsuch responded: Senator, I don't know. I was not in the man's shoes.

Judge Gorsuch said he decides cases based on the facts and the law alone. ``I go to the law,'' he said. But so, in fact, did the majority. Here is the operable law. Here is the law: ``A person may not discharge an employee who refuses to operate a vehicle because the employee has reasonable apprehension of serious injury to the employee or the public because of the vehicle's hazardous safety or security condition.''

The majority ruled that the company could not fire the truckdriver because he had refused to operate the rig, the entire rig, because it was unsafe. But Judge Gorsuch said no. While operating the cab, he was operating the vehicle. Therefore, he did not refuse to operate a vehicle.

Judge Gorsuch said he made that decision by applying the plain meaning rule. I pointed out that the plain meaning rule has an exception: ``When using the plain meaning rule would create an absurd result, courts should depart from the plain meaning.'' It is absurd to say that this company was within its rights to fire him because he refused to choose between possibly dying by freezing to death or possibly killing other people by driving a semi on an interstate at 10 miles an hour at 2 in the morning. Frankly, the company is fortunate that Mr. Maddin made the choice he made because otherwise they may very well have faced a wrongful death claim.

Everyone who was in the hearing knows what Judge Gorsuch would have done in Alphonse Maddin's situation. If Judge Gorsuch had answered honestly, he would have said that he would have done exactly, exactly what the driver did. Everyone would. Judge Gorsuch just did not want to admit it. That is because there is no good answer.

If Judge Gorsuch said that he would do the very same thing that Mr. Maddin did, that would make his dissent look pretty bad. But if he had said ``I would have done what the company told me to do,'' that would be an absurd answer. That would make you question the man's judgment. No one would believe it. So, instead, Judge Gorsuch said: I don't know what I would have done. But of course he did. He just was not being honest. Judge Gorsuch approached Mr. Maddin's case with an outcome in mind, siding with the corporation, and the dissent that he wrote makes that perfectly clear.

When I joined the Senate back in 2009, I arrived here in June, a little later than the rest of my class. Just a few days later, my fifth day in office, Judge Sonia Sotomayor appeared before the Judiciary Committee for her

first day of her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. I have been thinking a lot about Justice Sotomayor's hearings because the concern I expressed about the direction of the Court back then is just as relevant as today. Back then, almost 8 years ago, I voiced concern about it becoming more difficult for Americans seeking a level playing field to defend their rights and get their day in court, from bringing a discrimination claim to protecting their right to vote.

Back then, I said: ``I am wary of judicial activism and I believe in judicial restraint. Yet looking at recent decisions on voting rights, campaign finance reform, and . . . other topics, . . . there are ominous signs that judicial activism is on the rise.''

That was my first opening statement, the first opening statement that I ever delivered at the first confirmation hearing that I ever attended. But in the years that followed, my concerns have proved to be justified in one 5-to-4 decision after another. We have seen the Roberts Court go out of the way to answer questions not before it, to overturn precedents, to strike down laws enacted by Congress, and to do all of this at great cost to consumers and to workers and to small businesses and to middle-class Americans.

In decisions such as Shelby County, the Court gutted one of our landmark civil rights laws, 5 to 4. During the oral argument, Justice Scalia suggested that when the Voting Rights Act had last been passed 97 to 0 in the Senate, the Senate had done it because of the name of the Voting Rights Act. How could you vote against the Voting Rights Act? What a great name. He was showing contempt for this body. What is more judicially active than overturning a law voted on unanimously in the Senate because the Senate just liked the name?

Of course what that did was get rid of preclearance. What is preclearance? Preclearance said that those States that had a history of suppressing the votes of minorities had to preclear any new voting law with the Justice Department.

These were States that had a history of suppressing the votes of racial minorities. Well, that gets overturned. Boom. States like North Carolina, Texas, start passing new laws--voter ID laws. The second section of the Voting Rights Act still stayed, so you could appeal to a Federal court. But it takes a while to work its way through.

So finally, in early 2016, a circuit court, the Fourth Circuit I believe, ruled that North Carolina had targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision to suppress their votes. That is why you have preclearance. That is why you want preclearance. But in a 5-to-4 vote, preclearance was struck down. That is one 5-to-4 case. Concepcion, a 5- to-4 decision, allows corporations to force consumers into mandatory arbitration. There are a whole host of 5-to-4 decisions that make it impossible for people to get into the courts.

But the most egregious of all 5-to-4 decisions was Citizens United-- another 5-to-4 decision that paved the way for individuals and outside groups to spend unlimited sums of money in our elections.

In each one of those 5-to-4 decisions Justice Scalia sided with the majority. So now this body considers replacing him with Judge Gorsuch. I think it is important to understand the extent to which he shares Justice Scalia's views. Judge Gorsuch's record demonstrates that he is, in President Trump's words, a judge very much in the mold of Justice Scalia.

During his time on the Tenth Circuit, Judge Gorsuch has consistently ruled in favor of powerful interests. He has sided with corporations over workers, corporations over consumers, and corporations over women's health.

A study published in the Minnesota Law Review found that the Roberts Court is the most pro-corporate Supreme Court since World War II. If the Senate confirms him, Judge Gorsuch guarantees more of the same from the Roberts Court, and I do not believe that is a Court that our country can continue to afford.

So I oppose Judge Gorsuch's nomination. I urge my colleagues to take a close look at his record of siding with powerful corporate interests over average Americans, to consider carefully how he stands to impact the Court, and to reject his nomination.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about a path forward on healthcare.

Last week, Republicans in the House failed to pass the American Health Care Act--a deeply flawed policy that amounted to little more than a massive tax break for the wealthy at the expense of working people. The failure of that bill means that, as Speaker Ryan put it, the ACA is the law of the land for the foreseeable future. So today I would like to invite my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to leave repeal efforts behind and instead roll up their sleeves and work with me and other Democrats to improve the system we already have, which is the law of the land for the foreseeable future. It is time to pass commonsense reforms that build on the successes of the ACA and lower healthcare costs.

In a recent HELP Committee hearing, Chairman Alexander said that he wanted to work on a bipartisan basis to stabilize the individual market. Great. Let's do that. We should reinstate and strengthen programs that help insurance companies stay in the marketplace and continue to serve even the sickest patients. We should pass a public option to make sure there is competition in every market. We should provide more tax credits to more people.

While we work on those things, there is something else we should do, something that, together with a group of my colleagues, I introduced a bill about yesterday. It is time to bring down healthcare costs for everyone by reducing the price of prescription drugs. It is time to pass the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act.

I think all of us would agree that no one should have to choose between affording a lifesaving drug and putting food on the table for one's family, but right now that is happening. Companies are setting prices that are beyond the reach of consumers and that are driving up costs for insurers and taxpayers.

One in five Americans says he has not filled a prescription simply because he could not afford it. Others are rationing care due to high prices. A study published just last month found that about 10 percent of cancer patients skipped their medication and about 13 percent delayed filling their prescriptions. We have all been shocked by the stories of EpiPen's prices shooting up nearly 500 percent. The price of insulin has more than doubled in the last 5 years.

Drug companies can essentially set whatever prices they want. As a result, in recent years, drug companies have secured some of the highest profit margins of any industry.

Drug prices are too high. That is why my colleagues and I are introducing comprehensive legislation to tackle prescription drug prices. We want to make sure companies cannot exploit the sick and dying to make a profit. The bill includes 17 policy changes that will improve transparency, promote affordability, spur innovation, and enhance competition. Today, I would like to highlight just three of those provisions.

First, transparency. This legislation requires drug companies to disclose how much they spend on research, manufacturing, and marketing, as well as research grants from the Federal Government, to help all of us understand why prices for lifesaving drugs are so high. It is especially galling that so many drugs that are developed with taxpayer dollars are unaffordable for so many Americans. Getting this information would help all of us hold drug companies accountable, and that can be an important step toward bringing prices down.

Second--something that President Trump called for on the campaign trail--the bill will allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. It is just common sense that the biggest buyer of pharmaceutical products in America should be able to use its negotiating clout to bring prices down.

Third, the bill would end the practice of so-called pay-for-delay. Right now, drug companies that make the expensive brand-name drugs will pay other companies that make generic alternatives to keep their products off the market. This is called pay-for-delay. It is outrageous, and it is increasingly common. This bill will stop these agreements once and for all.

There is a lot more that this bill does. It penalizes companies that price-gouge for lifesaving medicine, and I think we can all agree on that. It puts a cap on out-of-pocket drug costs in insurance plans. It speeds up generic competition. It funds new innovation and includes a number of other provisions.

Tackling the high cost of prescription drugs is an issue many of my colleagues care deeply about. This bill reflects many of their ideas and proposals, and I am grateful for their work with me. Moreover, it is obvious that the public is ready for action on this issue. Overwhelming majorities of Americans in both parties support government action to curb out-of-control drug prices.

I am eager to hear from colleagues on both sides of the aisle and from the administration about how we can work together to pass the reforms into law. This is an area of health policy that Democrats are eager to work on, and we hope the President will stand by his promise to stand up to drug companies and reduce costs for American families. It is morally wrong that some people are denied access to lifesaving drugs because they cannot afford them, and it is something we can fix.

I am in the Senate so that I can fight for policies that improve people's lives. That is why I am here. With this bill, I am trying to do exactly that. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in helping to bring down the cost of prescription drugs.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the effort by my Republican colleagues to gut critical consumer privacy protections. Last week, the Senate voted 50 to 48 to allow internet service providers such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to freely collect, share, and sell its customers' private information. Later today, the House will vote on the same measure.

Let's be clear what we are talking about here. From web browsing histories to app usage information, broadband providers have easy access to a whole lot of Americans' personal information. Comcast knows exactly what ails you when you visit WebMD's Symptom Checker or that you have recently experienced a major life event when you are browsing maternity clothes on target.com. They would like the ability to use or sell this information to target advertising toward you, and they would really like to use or sell this information without first having to ask your permission.

Now, for me, the interests of consumers in Minnesota, Texas, and across our country have always come before those of big corporations. That is why I have long championed an internet that is open, accessible, and protects Americans' fundamental rights to privacy. For most Americans, I don't think those are controversial ideas.

For example, I suggest that most if not all of us in the Senate believe in the importance of ensuring that Americans have access to affordable high-speed internet. It is one of those great issues on which Members on both sides of the aisle can agree. See, we all know that Americans' cable and broadband bills are too high. The Consumer Federation of America recently reported that the average American household spends about $2,700 a year for phone, TV, and Internet services. That is why it is so disappointing that instead of acting to make broadband more affordable and more accessible for Americans, my Republican colleagues have actually paved the way for multibillion- dollar companies to make even more money off of their consumers by monetizing some of the most intimate details of their lives. Make no mistake about it, this is purely and simply a corporate handout at the expense of Americans' privacy.

When the FCC voted to pass the broadband privacy rules, the broadband industry was quick to oppose and oppose loudly. In recent months, internet service providers have used their vast resources to lobby the FCC and my fellow lawmakers. If House Republicans heed their call, as my colleagues in the Senate have done, companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will be free to sell their customers' personal information to the highest bidder, and importantly, they will do so without the oversight or regulation of either the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission.

For my part, I have long held that Americans have a fundamental right to privacy. We deserve both transparency and accountability from companies that have the capacity to trade on their private information. Should some people choose to leave their personal information in the hands of those companies, they certainly deserve to know that their information is being safeguarded to the greatest degree possible. I am going to keep fighting on behalf of consumers in Minnesota and across the country to secure these rights because I work for them and not the broadband industry.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about President Trump's selection of David Friedman to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

Our relationship with Israel is of tremendous importance. We are strong allies, and we have a strong military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural relationship with the State of Israel. As a Jew, the importance of that relationship is something that I feel in my bones, and as a Senator, working to

make our relationship with Israel stronger is a major priority. I strongly believe that part of strengthening that relationship is doing everything we can to help make progress toward a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Helping to resolve that conflict has consistently been one of the top diplomatic priorities of the United States.

There are very important implications in this selection for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, the Middle East region, and even beyond. We need an Ambassador who can rise to the challenge, someone who can bring the parties together for negotiations and be regarded as legitimate in the eyes of all parties. Mr. Friedman is not that man.

Mr. Friedman's past conduct demonstrates that he lacks the tools one needs to be a good diplomat. For starters, diplomacy is about choosing your words carefully. It is about reasoning with those with whom you disagree. Diplomacy means not resorting to insults and to name-calling when you have a disagreement, which is something that Mr. Friedman has done time and time and time again.

In an op-ed he penned for the newspaper Arutz Sheva, Mr. Friedman called supporters of the American Jewish Organization J Street ``far worse than kapos.''

Now, for those who don't share the history, I was born in 1951, and I grew up with the holocaust and the stories of the holocaust pounded into my head, and I know what ``kapos'' are. It is the term that refers to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis--with the Gestapo, the guards at the concentration camps during the holocaust. When asked to repudiate his statement on J Street, Mr. Friedman refused, and in fact doubled down, stating ``They're not Jewish, and they are not pro- Israel.'' For those who don't know, J Street is a pro-Israel organization dedicated to the two-state solution--a goal that is shared by successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican. The two-state solution is the only way to keep Israel a Jewish State and a democracy.

Mr. Friedman's smearing of our fellow Jews--my fellow Jews, many of whom are members of J Street, this is a calumny. This should be a disqualifier for someone seeking to represent the United States in the State of Israel. Mr. Friedman's statement shows that he lacks understanding of history--of our history, the history of the Jewish people--it shows he is intolerant of opposing views, and he is profoundly insensitive. That is probably why so many of my fellow Jews have reached out to me, have urged me to reject his nomination.

Mr. Friedman's offensive remarks don't stop there. He regularly insults those with whom he disagrees. He even called me a clown and a moron after I pointed out the anti-Semitic stereotypes evoked in the Trump campaign's final ad. As I told Mr. Friedman when we met in my office, I have been called a moron before--that kind of thing happens in campaigns all the time--but as I also reminded him, part of being a diplomat is being diplomatic.

Now, while I have serious concerns with Mr. Friedman's temperament, my biggest issue with this nominee is his lack of commitment to the peace process. For example, right after being nominated to serve as Ambassador, Mr. Friedman stated that he ``looked forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem.''

It has been a longstanding policy of the United States to recognize Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel. This policy has been viewed by successive administrations as important for helping maintain regional stability and peace with Israel and its neighbors. An abrupt change in this tradition would make it more difficult for the United States to play the role of arbiter, to achieve peace and security between the Israelis and the Palestinians. At a time when we need to reduce tensions in the region, Mr. Friedman was sending the exact wrong message. What I find even more troubling is Mr. Friedman's support for settlement building. Successive U.S. administrations have recognized that new settlements are barriers to peace. Mr. Friedman has served as president and has been actively fundraising for the American Friends of Beit El, the nonprofit that supports the expansion of that settlement-- expansion which is illegal under international law, an expansion deep inside of Palestinian territory.

How can we possibly help advance peace between the two parties with a man who believes there ought to be more settlements--one of the very things that observers on both sides of this conflict recognize as a significant obstacle to peace. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained intractable for far too long, proving a hardship--a tragedy-- for Israelis and Palestinians both and impacting regional and even global security. I believe--I am convinced that a just and lasting agreement between the two parties on a two-state solution, though very difficult, can and must be achieved. Confirming David Friedman as Ambassador of the United States to Israel will only serve to make that job more difficult, if not impossible, and in my mind would be a tragedy.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Friedman nomination.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to a resolution that will roll back nearly 45 years of OSHA workplace safety enforcement precedents. We would be reversing a precedent that helps ensure every American worker heads homes safely at the end of their shift.

This resolution is an effort by my Republican colleagues to overturn a rule issued by OSHA on December 16, 2016, entitled, ``Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness.'' As the title says, this rule provides employers with clarification on the requirements to timely report and record workplace injury and illnesses. This rule adds no new employer requirements that differ from 45 years of policy. The rule supports a practice that law-abiding businesses comply with and have operated under since passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Passing this resolution and repealing this rule only creates a safe harbor for businesses that have broken the law in the last 5 years or don't intend to follow longstanding rules created to protect the safety and health of workers.

For nearly the last 45 years, OSHA has required employers, with the exception of small employers, to timely report workplace injury and illnesses to the Department of Labor and maintain a record of such incidents going back at least 5 years. If an employer failed to do either, they could be cited and penalized. OSHA's rule issued last December simply maintains this longstanding practice.

This resolution aims to change that record keeping requirement, or lookback period, from 5 years to 6 months. So if an unscrupulous employer fails to report a worker injury or illness and OSHA doesn't discover the underreporting and cite the employer in the first 6 months after the incident occurred, the employer is able to get away with it and the data used to identify dangerous industries or worksites is lost.

Accurate injury and illness records are critical for the protection of workers and for OSHA to direct the most efficient use of their limited resources, and the more data they have, the better. With their current resources, OSHA is only able to inspect a workplace, on average, once every 140 years. That is clearly not sufficient, especially when over 4,800 workers were killed in 2015 and almost 3 million more suffered a serious workplace injury or illnesses. The OSHA reporting rule is critical for OSHA to conduct a thorough investigation, enforce accurate recordkeeping requirements, and focus limited resources on industries and bad actors that pose the greatest risk to worker safety.

Take, for instance, the Exel Corporation, a Pennsylvania warehouse and trucking company, which hired hundreds of foreign students on temporary visas, and was cited for numerous unrecorded injuries after some students were seriously injured on the job. Only after students fought for fair pay and safer working conditions and OSHA was able to conduct an investigation was it revealed that, for years, the company had withheld wages and willfully failed to record about half the serious injuries to student workers as well as other serious health and safety violations.

By the time DOL had completed their lengthy investigation, the Wage and Hour division recovered over $200,000 in wages withheld from 1,028 foreign student workers. OSHA cited the company for dozens of unrecorded injuries, all of which occurred over the 6-month period before OSHA issued the violations, and a penalty of $283,000. About two-thirds of the $283,000 penalty was for unrecorded violations that occurred outside the 6-month statute of limitations window this CRA is proposing to codify.

In response, the Exel Corporation accepted all the penalties, agreed to pay half the total fine, and instituted a new corporate-wide program to fix their recordkeeping practices which added safety protections for roughly 40,000 workers at over 500 facilities nationwide.

None of those violations and the associated fine would have been allowed if a narrower 6-month statute of limitations was in place as this resolution proposes to do. I think it is safe to say that Exel's new corporate-wide program that added protections for 40,000 workers in 500 facilities nationwide would not have been implemented either.

Efforts to repeal the OSHA reporting rule and 45 years of OSHA enforcement precedent, without even a hearing or vigorous debate, is reckless and runs contrary to any proworker vision. The change in longstanding OSHA precedent was prompted by a DC Circuit Court ruling in the 2012 Volks Constructors v. Secretary of Labor case. After that decision, OSHA revised its recordkeeping regulation to conform with guidance provided in a concurring opinion. If there is a legal disagreement regarding the authority of OSHA to cite employers for continuing violations, we should let the legal process conclude before any congressional or legislative action is taken.

The OSHA reporting rule is a fair occupational safety standard, and that is why every administration in the last 45 years, Democratic and Republican, has enforced the requirement this rule clarifies.

Opponents of the OSHA reporting rule and supporters of this CRA resolution claim that the OSHA rule would extend the statute of limitations on recordkeeping paperwork violations and that this CRA resolution is necessary to protect jobs, eliminate burdensome regulations and protect small business. None of that is accurate.

The OSHA reporting rule does not kill jobs; it creates no new employer obligations that are different from what they were required to uphold for nearly 45 years. And the rule does not cover small businesses.

What the rule does do is save employers from killing and maiming workers. It gives OSHA the tools it needs to identify dangerous industries, reckless employers, as well as punish those who break the law at the expense of worker health and safety and businessowners who obey the law.

No law-abiding business, which values the safety of its workers and the information used to make the workplace even safer, should be at a competitive disadvantage facing a competitor that underreports injuries and cuts corners at the expense of workers' safety.

The safety of the American worker and a level playing field for law abiding employers should not be a partisan issue. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me, working Americans, and the millions of law-abiding businesses that strive to create a safe workplace and oppose this resolution. Vote no on H.J. Res. 83.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the effort by my Republican colleagues, including the President, to dismantle the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive order and roll back protections for workers.

For too long, many workers in this country have been subject to dangerous working conditions, wage theft, discrimination, and harassment. While most companies follow the law and play by the rules, a few have cut corners at the expense of workers' rights and safety and have factored in paying penalties as just another cost of doing business. That is not fair for workers, and it is not fair for the businesses that play by the rules. It is time we put a stop to it.

We certainly should not be spending taxpayers' dollars to pay Federal contractors who violate--and sometimes repeatedly violate--Federal labor laws. Repeated violations by Federal contractors is a serious problem.

According to a 2013 HELP Committee staff report, 49 government contractors accounted for 1,776 Federal labor law violations. We are talking about things like an unsafe workplace, discriminating against workers, or failing to pay workers what they earned. Understand when I talk about unsafe workplaces, I am talking about fatalities. But despite these widespread violations, these companies continue to receive taxpayer-funded Federal contracts worth $81 billion a year.

My colleagues may have seen a recent Politico Magazine report on VT Halter. VT Halter is a major Navy shipbuilder, but its safety track record is deeply concerning. In 2009, two workers were killed and five others injured--some severely--when an explosion occurred at a VT Halter shipyard. A month later, they received an $87 million Federal contract. About 6 months after the explosion, VT Halter settled charges relating to the explosion, admitting that they had willfully violated at least 12 Occupational Safety and Health Administration--or OSHA-- workplace safety rules to prevent incidents like this from occurring-- an incident in which two workers died. They willfully violated-- willfully; that is willfully violated.

That explosion wasn't VT Halter's only incident. In 2009, a worker fell to his death at another VT Halter shipyard where there were no handrails or fall protections. In 2012, the company was fined by OSHA after a worker at a VT Halter shipyard was killed when the lid on a pressurized pot exploded. They were fined again in 2014 for violating crane safety rules after two cranes tipped over, injuring five workers, including one 63-year-old worker who now has the mental capacity of a child.

It doesn't make sense to keep rewarding companies like this with lucrative contracts when they repeatedly--and, again, willfully-- disregard basic safety protections.

To address this problem, in 2014 President Obama issued an Executive order that essentially says that if you have repeatedly broken our labor laws, the Federal Government will need to examine a company's compliance record on labor law violations before awarding large taxpayer-funded government contracts. Companies with poor track records will need to prove they are taking action to make sure that these types of egregious labor law violations don't happen again.

In addition to cracking down on repeat violators who bid for Federal contracts, the President's Executive order also includes two other important provisions that I support: a requirement that companies give workers a pay stub each pay period and a provision to make sure workers are able to access justice if they have been wronged.

As the Presiding Officer may know, employers are required, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, to accurately report the number of hours an employee works and their pay. But, surprisingly, employers are not always required to give this information to an employee on a pay stub each pay period. This matters. This matters because when a bad actor cheats its employees by undercounting hours or underpaying wages, it is a lot harder for an employee to recover damages if they don't get a pay stub.

It is often low-income workers who work variable shifts who are most easily exploited in these cases. For example, last year, a group of janitors in the

Twin Cities won hundreds of thousands of dollars of back pay because their employer had miscounted their hours. And because most of them weren't given pay stubs, it took them much longer to discover that they had been underpaid. One of their key demands, in addition to being paid fairly, was that they start getting pay stubs to ensure they don't get cheated again. This seems to me like a sensible thing to ask.

Let's be clear. Most employers already give their employees pay stubs, so this requirement isn't a big change for them, but it makes a big difference for the workers who are most vulnerable to wage theft. And because this provision has already been implemented, repealing it will have real and obvious consequences for working families.

The fair pay and safe workplaces rule also took an important step toward protecting workers' fundamental rights by banning the use of forced arbitration in cases of discrimination or sexual assault and harassment. As we have seen in a multitude of contexts in recent years, corporate America is increasingly preventing its employees or customers from accessing the court, relying instead on forced arbitration to avoid accountability when people seek justice for being cheated or mistreated. And some of the most egregious cases we have heard are from workers whose rights have been viciously violated and whose cases were forced into the dark.

I have made it a priority during my time in the Senate to combat the widespread and harmful use of forced arbitration. In fact, the forced arbitration regulations within the fair pay and safe workplaces rule build on an effort that I successfully championed 8 years ago.

I first became interested in the issue after learning that major Department of Defense contractors charged with performing vital national security functions were using arbitration to sweep cases of sexual assault and harassment under the rug. I heard stories of women who were assaulted or subjected to hostile working conditions while employed by a DOD contractor. And when those women sought justice for the actions--or inactions--of their employers, they were forced into secret arbitration where none of the traditional safeguards of a public court of law apply. As a result, countless other victims were left in the dark about the women's cases, and the contractors were shielded from accountability, both from the courts and from the public eye.

So in 2009, I introduced an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that prevented certain DOD contractors from forcing their employees to arbitrate claims of discrimination or sexual assault and harassment. The amendment passed with bipartisan support. In the years since, it continues to be passed on a bipartisan basis as a part of the Defense appropriations process each year, most recently in December of 2014.

Now, it is unclear to me what has changed in the years since we passed my amendment that would make my Republican colleagues shift course. But what is clear is that now is not the time to roll back these critical protections for our workers.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, at least 25 percent of American women say they have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. And recent high profile revelations about abuse--for example, former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes' abuse of his employees, as well as the allegations of sex bias at Kay and Sterling Jewelers-- demonstrate that we are far from addressing this issue on a broader scale. So I urge my Republican colleagues to reconsider their support for this resolution. I urge them to not force vulnerable women who have been wronged into the dark and into forced arbitration.

Blocking the fair pay and safe workplaces rule is just wrongheaded. A vote to repeal this rule is a vote to support giving taxpayer dollars to companies that break the law, it is a vote to help employers who cheat their employees out of fair pay, and it is a vote to take away workers' fundamental rights to access to the court.

I urge a ``no'' vote, and I thank the Presiding Officer for the generous window of 10 to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Wow, I kind of hit it right on the nail. Am I out of order now saying that? No? Good. That means I have another minute and a half.

I thank the Presiding Officer.