Floor Statements

Mr. President, on another matter, today the Judiciary Committee is holding a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Mr. Michael Park for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers my home State of New York.

I have always assessed judges on three criteria: excellence, moderation, diversity. While Michael Park satisfies the first and third prongs of my test, he fails miserably on the second--modification.

Mr. Park has spent much of his career working in opposition to civil rights and seeking to advance the rightwing agenda that lies at the very core of the Federalist Society's mission. Mr. Park is currently working to defend the Trump administration's effort to insert a citizenship question into the 2020 census--a cynical effort to discourage people from responding to the census.

He has been on the frontlines of the effort to dismantle affirmative action policies in education. In 2012, he submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, writing on behalf of the petitioner who sought to have the university's use of race, as one consideration among many, in the admissions process struck down as unconstitutional.

He is currently representing the plaintiffs in a suit challenging Harvard's affirmative action policy. He has worked to deny women's reproductive freedoms when he represented the State of Kansas against a challenge to its attempt to defund Planned Parenthood and ban it from participating in the State Medicaid Program.

In 2012, he submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in NFIB v. Sebelius urging the Court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. This nominee rather wants to get rid of the whole ACA.

If the American people knew the kind of nominees President Trump is nominating and the kind of nominees the Republican majority is supporting, so against everything they believe in--America believes in Roe v. Wade, America believes in keeping the ACA, America believes in voting rights--if they knew all these details, they would be appalled, and our Republican colleagues rarely bring these things to the floor legislatively. They know they would be roundly defeated, but it is sort of an end run--pick judges who in the courts will uphold these unpopular positions.

Mr. Park has a long and detailed record of support for the most conservative legal causes. A judge is asked to interpret the law rather than make the law, to apply fairly the legal principles set forth by precedent, not reread the Constitution to fit the political cause of the moment.

Mr. Park's career does not give me the confidence that he can be an impartial arbiter on the Second Circuit. I will oppose his nomination, and I will urge my colleagues to do the same.

Now, in the not-so-distant past, my objection to this nomination would mean that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee would not move forward with the nomination out of respect for home State Senators in the blue-slip tradition--but not in this Congress, not with this Republican majority.

Since the election of President Trump, Senate Republicans, led by Leader McConnell, Chairman Grassley, and now Chairman Graham, have unceremoniously discarded the blue-slip tradition. My colleagues on the other side will say it is because we haven't worked with them in a timely manner to fill these vacancies, but let's not kid ourselves. This is about one thing and one thing alone--the desire of the Republican majority to ram through more of the Federalist Society's handpicked, hard-right judges.

Last Congress, the majority confirmed two judges over the blue-slip objections of Democratic Senators Baldwin and Casey. A third, Ryan Bounds, would have been confirmed over the objections of Senators Wyden and Merkley if not for Senator Scott's principled objection to Bounds' past racist writings.

The practice continues, unfortunately, in this Congress. Last week, the Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance an additional four circuit court nominees over the blue-slip objections of five Democratic Senators--Brown, Murray, Cantwell, Booker, Menendez-- and in the coming weeks, the committee will move forward with two additional court nominees over the objections of Ranking Member Feinstein and Senator Hatch.

Last Congress, we worked with the White House to move eight New York judges--one circuit, seven district--through the Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan way. That is how it should work. I would like to cooperate on New York judges this Congress, but the continued consideration of Michael Park, combined with the majority's clear intentions to ignore the blue-slip tradition, makes this very difficult, if not impossible. I know the leader is proud of what he is doing on judges. I don't think history will look very kindly on it; A, putting such hard-right judges, so against what the American people believe, in office. History will not look kindly on that as their decisions come down; but second, eliminating the last

vestiges of bipartisanship as we select judges.

Mr. President, let me thank the chair of the Energy Committee, the senior Senator from Alaska, for the wonderful work she always does around here. She has the respect of Members on both sides of the aisle. She tries to do the right thing and ends up there so often. This lands bill wouldn't have happened without a lot of the people she mentioned, but at the top of the list would certainly, certainly, be the senior Senator from Alaska.

Once again, I tip my hat to the junior Senator from Washington State, who worked so long and hard on this. The two of them were a great team, and Joe Manchin filled in when he became ranking member. We are all very glad that this wonderful lands bill, with so many good things in it, will, barring any unforeseen mishap, become law very soon.

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

Madam President, last night, the country heard some good news. The members of the conference committee announced a tentative agreement to keep the government open past Friday as well as provide additional border security. It was welcome news.

All on the conference committee worked very hard and should be commended for their efforts. I talked to them regularly. Everyone wanted to get something done, and everyone wanted to avoid a government shutdown. While the details are still being hammered out, the tentative agreement represents a path forward for our country--away from another round of fraught negotiations up against a government funding cliff, away from a dreaded government shutdown.

Over the past few months, we have been lurching from one manufactured crisis to another. It would be a wonderful thing for this Congress to pass bills that settle the budget issues for the rest of this year and for the country to finally move past. Hopefully, that is what this agreement will portend. Hopefully, this agreement means that there will not be another government shutdown on Friday--sparing the country of another nightmare of furloughed Federal employees, snarled airports, and economic hardship. Hopefully, it means that we will pass not only the DHS appropriations bill but all six other appropriations bills-- done in a bipartisan way--that have been caught in the tangle of these negotiations since last year.

Each of these bills is a product of bipartisan consensus. Each contains more support for programs to help the American people-- additional funding for infrastructure, housing, money to combat the opioid crisis, and more. We should pass these appropriations bills alongside this agreement on DHS.

These months of shutdown politics must come to an end. We now have a bipartisan proposal to accomplish our goals, better secure the border, and avoid another senseless government shutdown. I don't know the details, but the parameters of this are good. So I thank the members of the conference committee.

I would make one more point. I urge President Trump to sign this agreement. We must not have a rerun of what happened a few months back, whereby legislators--Democratic and Republican, House and Senate-- agreed, and President Trump pulled the rug out from under the agreement and caused the shutdown. If he opposes this agreement, the same thing could happen again. We don't need it. So I strongly urge the President to sign this agreement. No one gets everything one wants in these agreements. The President must sign it and not cause another shutdown.

Madam President, on another matter, late last week, I had the privilege of addressing an audience at the Newseum about the current challenges facing the free press in America.

I ask unanimous consent that my remarks be printed in the Record after my remarks here.

One of the most significant challenges the press faces, of course, is economic. Besieged by a fractured media landscape and rapidly changing technology, newspapers have been forced to adapt or die. Some have adapted, but many have died.

One area in which it is particularly troubling to me is in smaller markets in midsized and smaller cities. In those areas, local newspapers have been the glue that keeps communities informed and stitched together. I have seen it. In cities in Upstate New York-- small- and middle-sized--big companies have left, and some of the community banks have been bought up by major large banks. The things that keep a community together are greatly deteriorating. Newspapers are one of the few glues these communities have. They are vital--way beyond the profit and loss that they might make. The external benefits of these newspapers, as the economists would say, are large, but they are in trouble because of all the economic issues I mentioned.

Now there is a new threat on the horizon. A few weeks ago, a hedge fund, known as the ``destroyer of newspapers,'' announced a bid to take over Gannett, which, in addition to USA Today, publishes a lot of small- and medium-sized newspapers and four important papers in my State, those being the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, the Press & Sun in Binghamton, the Poughkeepsie Journal, the Journal News in Westchester, and newspapers in Elmira and Ithaca.

This morning, on the front page of the Washington Post, there is an article about the business practices of

Alden and its subsidiaries. Essentially, Alden's strategy is to buy up newspapers, cut staff, and then sell the commercial real estate of newsrooms and printing presses for profit. The article quotes several experts who have said of Alden:

They are the ultimate cash flow mercenary. They want to

find cash flow and bleed it to death.

Their principle is ``no new investment and sell off what you can while you can,'' according to analysts who have studied it.

An analysis of the newspapers owned by Alden revealed that it cut newspaper staff at more than twice the rate of its competitors. In all likelihood, when it sells the real estate, the vast majority of the money does not go to revitalizing newspapers, as a newspaper itself would do when it sells real estate; it goes elsewhere. For Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund, the acquisition and streamlining of Gannett papers might increase its profits a couple of percentage points, but the loss of the Press & Sun and the Democrat and Chronicle would be incalculable.

Let me ask the American people and every one of my colleagues here: What is more important--having our newspapers go on, which is so important to local communities, or having a hedge fund raise its market profits by five points, if it is public, or by a certain amount? What is more important? I would argue: the newspapers.

The Gannett consortium was already the result of a consolidated news business, with one reporter working multiple beats and placing stories in multiple newspapers. I have seen that in Upstate New York. What was already an overburdened, undersourced operation now faces potential annihilation by an indifferent media conglomerate that is backed by an even more indifferent hedge fund.

What do we do about this?

I don't know how to solve the broader economic problem for newspapers, big and small. I hope there is a solution. The only antidote to these problems, as I have seen, is the rarer and rarer presence of generous, civic-minded families and individuals who own news outlets for the right reasons, not simply to maximize profits-- although profit is still important--but because they feel an obligation to advance journalism for the greater benefit of us all. Everyone has seen this work at flagship newspapers, but the family model has worked in smaller markets as well, including at several papers in Upstate New York.

So I would propose that charitably inclined institutions and individuals should begin to think of journalism as a philanthropic endeavor. If it becomes a worthy endeavor to buy a local newspaper and preserve its size and independence--just as it is a worthy endeavor to support the local hospital, school, charity--many more might consider doing it.

As Americans, we must continue to support the First Amendment--the freedom and viability of the press. Our democracy depends on it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I don't know if the Judiciary Committee voted yet, but if they haven't, they will vote shortly on the nomination of William Barr.

I knew Mr. Barr when he was Attorney General and when he was general counsel to Verizon--that is a New York company where I dealt with him-- and I have always respected his public service and his intelligence. But when his authorship of an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department criticizing the special counsel's investigation was uncovered, I came to the conclusion that he is the wrong person to serve as Attorney General at this challenging moment for our country. The memo alone, I felt, was disqualifying--maybe not under any President but certainly under this President, who is utterly

contemptuous of the rule of law. But I wanted to give Mr. Barr a chance to change my mind, so I met with him a few weeks ago. Our conversation focused on three issues.

The first was an issue that had been discussed at his Judiciary hearing where I didn't think his answer was very satisfactory, so I asked him again, very directly, whether he would recuse himself if ethics officials at the Justice Department said he should. Regrettably, he would not commit to do this. Instead, he said he would make his own decision.

The second issue I brought up was the need for the special counsel's report on Russian influence in the 2016 election to be made public. Whatever conclusions Mueller comes to, we as a Congress and the American people have an obligation to see what kind of foreign influence there is in our elections. It seems pretty clear to me that in this case, the report should be made public--the full report, except things redacted for security purposes.

I asked Nominee Barr whether he would release the full Mueller report, with redactions only if intelligence agencies said that was necessary to avoid compromising sources. He said he is for transparency. That is not good enough. We are all for transparency in the abstract. The question is, Are you for transparency in probably the most important act you will take as Attorney General when it comes to transparency? To merely say you are for transparency doesn't say much. What was needed was an unequivocal and public commitment to release the full report. Again, he would not give me that assurance.

Finally, I asked Mr. Barr about interference in the special counsel's investigation. He referred to the special counsel regulations and said at the hearing and I think in other places publicly that he wanted to finish the investigation. That is not good enough. Finishing the investigation while interfering and limiting it as it goes forward would be a travesty--certainly with this President, who has treated the Justice Department as if it is his own personal fiefdom. At times, President Trump seems to feel there are two goals to the Justice Department and those alone--to punish his enemies and help him. That is not the rule of law. That is not the greatness of the United States.

With this President, we need an Attorney General who can assure the Senate and the public that he will stand up to a President who believes the Justice Department exists simply to do the President's personal bidding and protect the President's personal interests above those of the country. The President wants a Roy Cohn to be his Attorney General, but this is a moment that calls for an Elliot Richardson.

As Senator Coons said in the Judiciary Committee today, Mr. Barr's case for his own confirmation seems to boil down to one thought: Just trust me. Mr. Barr doesn't seem to recognize that this isn't adequate for an Attorney General in the Trump administration. The moment calls for stronger, more explicit assurances. And that is independent of what each of us thinks of the personal characteristics of Mr. Barr. This President has no regard for personal characteristics. This President never listens to an argument that he thinks is against his self- interest, even if it is in accord with American tradition or American law. So to simply say ``just trust me'' is not close to good enough probably under any President but certainly under this one.

I believe that in the coming months, our next Attorney General will be faced with one or more real constitutional crises. The Attorney General will be tested. If Mr. Barr is confirmed, I hope he will be equal to those challenges, but unfortunately and very regrettably, he was not willing to provide the Senate with sufficient assurances to give us confidence that he is prepared to meet the challenge. And the idea that he shouldn't say it now because it would jeopardize his nomination? Well, if Trump would withdraw the nomination when he says it now, Trump will certainly fire him if he tries to do it later, so that argument doesn't hold any water.

For all those reasons--the fact that he won't recuse himself even if the ethics officials at the Department of Justice say he should; the fact that he won't give an unequivocal commitment to make the full report available to the Congress and the public, with the appropriate redactions for intelligence only; and the fact that he won't commit to not interfere in the investigation, not to limit the investigation or not approve subpoenas--all three of those make it crystal clear that Mr. Barr should not be approved for Attorney General.

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

Mr. President, last night President Trump had the opportunity to bring our parties together and offer the Congress and the country a new vision for the next 2 years of divided government. President Trump squandered the opportunity with a forgettable and, oftentimes, incoherent speech. At times, he called for unity without specifics, and at other times he served up divisive campaign rhetoric that he has used so frequently in the past.

The President's speech was like a 90-minute performance of ``Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'' calling for comity but lacing it throughout with invectives. Unfortunately, President Trump seemed more excited and placed more emphasis on the Mr. Hyde parts of the speech than on the Dr. Jekyll parts.

Listen to a few of the contradictions in the speech. There were so many that I can't mention all of them.

President Trump says he believes in legal immigration but not illegal immigration, but every bill he has pushed on immigration has cut legal immigration as well as illegal immigration, including the proposal he has now sent over, in the debates, where he changes the asylum process dramatically.

President Trump said he would only work with us in Congress if we abandoned our oversight duties. He is back to his old tricks--hostage- taking. He said: I am not going to advance the causes of the American people if Congress investigates me.

Congress is supposed to do oversight of the executive branch. It is one of the things the Founding Fathers put in the Constitution. They were weary of overweening Executive power. They wanted Congress to be a check.

What is President Trump afraid of? If he weren't afraid of these investigations and if he weren't afraid of something that might be there that he did that was wrong, he would shrug his shoulders and say: Let them go forward.

But, instead, he threatens. He threatens the American people by saying: Unless these investigations stop, I am not going to move forward on anything.

How about this one? This one made everybody's eyes roll, even on the Republican side. He said if he weren't elected President, we would be in a war with North Korea--what hyperbole. It is not just hyperbole-- what untruth, what selective memory. President Trump began his time in office by precipitously ramping up tensions with North Korea. They were much lower under President Obama than they were with President Trump.

Maybe the most blatant contradiction of all, which makes you just lose respect for the integrity and honesty of the President, was when President Trump spoke about the need to defend protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, while at the very same time his administration is waging a lawsuit that would eviscerate protections for preexisting conditions. How can the President have the nerve to get up on the podium last night and say he wants to preserve preexisting conditions and wage a lawsuit, support a lawsuit that tries to undo them? It is shocking hypocrisy--that one maybe most of all for a speech that had many.

Of course, there were a whole lot of omissions in the speech that many Americans felt should have been placed in. Let me give an example. The President did talk about a few potentials for bipartisan compromise. We Democrats would love to compromise with the President and come up with some things that would advance the causes of working families in America.

He mentioned infrastructure and prescription drugs, but instead of offering substantive ideas and spending some time on these issues, he delivered a couple of lines about each and then moved on. It seemed obligatory and perfunctory. There was no new sinew, no real way to figure out if there is a way we can come together and get something done, because he really didn't seem interested.

He talked about the future of America and didn't even mention climate change. How could you do that? Every scientist who has studied it knows that in the next 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, climate change is going to evoke huge changes in our country and in our world. If you believe in the future and you want to have a good future for our children and grandchildren, which we all do, you can't ignore climate change. You may have different views on it, but you can't ignore it.

He also talked a great deal about the safety of the American people, but there was not one mention about gun safety--not one. Again, maybe not to President Trump, maybe not to his hard-core supporters, but to the rest of America, to talk about the need for security and the safety of Americans and not to talk about gun safety misses the mark badly.

Then he rattled off economic statistics--how great everything is--but completely ignored the difficult economic realities of working Americans. Why do so many Americans not have faith in the future? Why do so many Americans worry that their children

will not have as good a life economically as they do? It is because so much of what the President has done economically has benefited the top 10 percent. Those improve the overall statistics, but they don't improve the lives of the average middle-class person.

Let's take the tax cut, a huge tax cut geared to the wealthy and the powerful corporations. The President said each worker will get about a $4,000 increase. It didn't happen. Wages are going up by a small amount. They are still way behind where they were in the past. What did these companies do with all of this huge tax break? They got $1 trillion in buybacks--buybacks, which benefit the corporate CEOs, which benefit the shareholders but do nothing for the workers, since so many of them don't own stock.

In fact, the stock market has become more skewed. About 85 percent of the value of the shares is held by the top 10 percent of Americans.

Then, of course, on the wall, he demanded that Congress fund his wall but showed no signs of remorse over the pointless Trump government shutdown that he precipitated. He didn't mention the pain he caused to 800,000 Federal workers, even though many of them were in the Galleries listening.

I brought as a guest a man named Ronan Byrne. He works in the TRACON, our control tower in New York. He just had two twins. He has two other kids. I saw the nice pictures. He came with his wife. She quit her job when the twins came along.

He lost his salary at an intense job like that, where you have to be on all the time. I have been up there in the TRACON. It is dark. You see little dots, and you can't have them get too near each other because that is a safety issue for the people on the planes, and here he was worried about paying the bills and providing for his children.

Well, there was no mention of people like that. No, it was just about his wall.

It didn't work for the President. We know that. Our Republican colleagues and Leader McConnell know that. I think even in his situation, where he is often in a bubble that is often only aimed at the narrow band of his supporters, he touched a hot stove, and I don't think he wants to do it again.

But there was no mention of it. He should have used his speech to say: We are not going to have another government shutdown. There was no word.

There was no plan to tackle our opioid problem. There was no plan to increase wages for the middle class. There was no plan to increase manufacturing jobs.

So anyone who hoped that the President would change course and offer some new bipartisan ideas with some meat on the bone where we could discuss it and begin to move forward to help the American people was sorely disappointed. As I said, his real excitement came in the most divisive parts of the speech on immigration and abortion.

So let's contrast his speech with Stacey Abrams'. The contrast between the President's speech and Stacey Abrams' speech was stunning. The President was political, divisive, calculating, and, at times, even nasty. Ms. Abrams was compelling, warm, and uplifting, showing real compassion for the plight of our average families but also filled with hope and inspired by the promise of the American dream. It was an uplifting speech. Ms. Abrams' speech represented the kind of unifying vision--understanding our challenges but also having some confidence in our ability to solve them--that the President failed to deliver. In short, last night, Stacey Abrams gave President Trump a lesson in how to lead.

Xavier Becerra, speaking from the high school he graduated from in Sacramento, McClatchy High School, gave a wonderful response in Spanish.

We all knew the President would say that the state of our Union was strong, but the American people know the unfortunate truth. On the economy, on healthcare, on governance, and on foreign policy, it is abundantly clear that the Trump administration has been getting failing grades from the American people.

The state of the Trump economy? Failing the middle class. Wealthy shareholders and corporate executives cashed in from the Trump tax bill, while American workers have been left behind.

The state of the Trump healthcare system? Failing American families. Coverage is getting more expensive, and the amount of coverage is declining. Due to the sabotage this administration has done to our healthcare system, this is the first year that fewer Americans have healthcare than they did the year before--the first time in a while.

The state of the Trump administration? Chaos. President Trump has had the most Cabinet turnover in more than a century. He has failed to nominate anyone to one-fifth of our government's top positions. This has nothing to do with the Senate; for one-fifth of the positions, there are no nominations. This is 2 years into this Presidency. The Senate had nothing to do with all the Cabinet members who quit or resigned under a cloud--nothing to do with that either. President Trump likes to blame somebody else for the problems he creates; that is one of his MOs.

The state of President Trump's foreign policy? Inside out. Inside out. Our longstanding allies--countries of NATO--have been alienated. Our adversaries--Russia, China, North Korea--have been emboldened because President Trump doesn't stand up to them. During the national security section of the President's speech last night, the first item he mentioned wasn't Russia's malign activities, North Korea's nuclear program, or even the crisis in Venezuela; it was criticism for our NATO allies. That says it all.

The President's State of the Union last night did something rare for a State of the Union Address: It revealed just how much repair the state of our Union requires; just how much work we still have to do to aid working Americans left behind by an economy that only seems to work for the wealthy and well-connected; to provide American families everywhere with affordable healthcare; to bring stability and accountability to a government too short on both--a government that seems to have made the swamp deeper and more odorous and to further isolate our enemies and give comfort to our allies abroad.

Let us hope and pray that the country can heal. President Trump did nothing to move that forward last night.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, later this evening, in front of a joint session of Congress, President Trump will report on the state of our Union. As is tradition, the President will that say the state of our Union is strong, but the American people know the truth. Unfortunately, it is not.

The American people know that the Trump economy is failing the middle class and those struggling to get there. In Trump's economy, multinational corporations and the already-wealthy were given a tax cut, while American workers were left behind. The Federal Reserve reports that over 40 percent of Americans would have trouble covering an emergency of just $400. Forty percent of working Americans, middle- class Americans, are just one medical bill, one unexpected car accident, one missed paycheck away from financial uncertainty. The state of the Trump economy--failing the middle class.

The President will say that the state of our Union is strong, but the American people know that the state of the Trump healthcare system is failing American families. After 2 years of relentless sabotage by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, premiums are higher than they should be, copays are higher than they should be, and for the first time in 8 years, fewer Americans have health insurance than the year before. The state of the Trump healthcare system--failing the middle class.

The President will say that the state of our Union is strong, but the American people know that the state of the Trump administration is in chaos. No administration has had as much Cabinet turnover as the Trump administration in over a century. Key positions are unfilled or uncovered or covered by individuals in an acting capacity--the Chief of Staff, the Attorney General, the Defense Secretary, the Interior Secretary, the OMB Director, and the EPA Director. Of the 705 top positions in the government, in close to one-fifth, the President hasn't even nominated somebody. The state of the Trump administration-- chaos.

The President will say that the state of our Union is strong, but the state of the Trump foreign policy is woefully backward. It is inside out. Our allies are alienated and criticized. Our adversaries are emboldened and praised. Dictators and strongmen are given license by this administration, while our NATO allies receive harsh words. American values--free speech, free elections, freedom of the press, humanitarian rights, civil rights--go undefended in the dark corners of the world. The state of the Trump foreign policy--woefully backward.

The state of the Union is not strong. The state of the Trump economy--failing America's middle class. The state of the Trump healthcare--failing American families. The state of the Trump administration--chaos. The state of the Trump foreign policy--woefully backward, inside out.

These are not the total extent of our Nation's challenges, but even on these four metrics--the economy, healthcare, governance, and foreign policy--the state of our Union is in need of drastic repair. Still, knowing this President and his penchant for hyperbole, he will probably say that the state of our Union is stronger than it has ever been before in our Nation's long history, thanks to him. Knowing this President, he will rely on distortions and made-up facts to mislead the American people. The only question about the President's State of the Union is, How often will he distort? How often will he make up facts? How often will he resort to fear and divisiveness? And if past States of the Union are prologue, he will do that far too many times.

Knowing this President, he will then make some bold new promises and not even make an attempt to fulfill them. The man has so little integrity that a promise he makes at the State of the Union means nothing the next morning. Allow me to mention just a few of the things the President said in previous State of the Union Addresses.

Do you remember this one? In his first address to a joint session, President Trump said: ``Education is the

civil rights issue of our time.'' It has been 2 years, and we have heard almost nothing from the President about an education bill.

In the last State of the Union, just 1 year ago, the President said: ``One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs. . . . Prices will come down.'' But over the course of the last month, nearly 30 drugmakers have taken steps to raise the prices of their medicines.

In the last State of the Union, the President promised that ``[manufacturing] plants will be opening up all over the country.'' I don't know about you, Mr. President, but I haven't seen a remanufacturing policy from the White House. Meanwhile, Nissan has announced hundreds of layoffs in Mississippi, and GM has announced the closure of 5 factories and the loss of 15,000 jobs.

In the last State of the Union, the President said: ``We will protect American workers and American intellectual property through strong enforcement of our trade rules.'' That is something I strongly agree with. Six months after the President said that, he decided to let a Chinese telecom giant, ZTE--a company that violated multiple trade sanctions and put our Nation's security at risk--off the hook and begin operating in the United States. Now, while some in the administration are pushing him to be tough on China, there are some who just want to sell out for a decrease in the trade deficit. That will not do the job the President always promised he would.

In the last State of the Union, the President said: ``No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea. . . . We are waging a campaign of maximum pressure to prevent that from happening.'' After that, what happened? The President hosted a largely symbolic summit with Kim Jong Un and is already planning a second summit. North Korea has failed to dismantle its nuclear program--some reports say it is growing--and the United States is not engaging in a pressure campaign, maximum or otherwise.

President Trump called for a compromise immigration bill that dealt with Dreamers and border security. Congress produced one along the lines he proposed, and then he threatened to veto it.

In the last State of the Union, the President said ``It is time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure'' and called for new legislation to spur investment. He said: ``Let's support working families by supporting paid family leave.'' He said: ``We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.'' What are the facts? There has been no infrastructure bill, although he promised one in the previous State of the Union; no paid family leave proposal, although he promised one in the previous State of the Union; and he is withdrawing from Syria even though he promised we would continue the fight until ISIS is defeated. And by all reports, including our own intelligence, it is not.

I could go on. The list of broken or empty promises is long. The gap between the President's rhetoric and reality is cavernous. Every President uses the State of the Union to set goals, but few have done it so cheaply and indifferently. Many of those promises were discarded mere weeks after they were uttered.

Forgive me, but if we Democrats and the American people have real doubt about any promise the President makes, real doubt about his following through or really meaning it, how can we not? In previous State of the Union Addresses, he has thrown around promises and not fulfilled them more than any other President I know.

Perhaps even emptier than his policy promises are President Trump's calls for unity each year. It seems that every year the President wakes up and discovers the desire for unity on the morning of the State of the Union. Then the President spends the other 364 days of the year dividing us and sowing a state of disunion, whether that is using public servants as political pawns, the President's false equivalence after Charlottesville, his attacks on the Federal judiciary, the free press, and the rule of law, or his near-daily twitter provocations. The blatant hypocrisy of this President calling for unity is that he is one of the chief reasons Americans feel so divided now.

So it is logical to believe, based on his past speeches, that the President's speech tonight will ignore the reality of his administration, the reality of our economy, the reality of our world, and instead weave a web of fiction. If past speeches are an indication, the President will be in his own bubble.

Democrats are not focused on the President's rhetoric; we are focused on fighting for workers in this unequal economy, fighting for American families struggling to afford healthcare, fighting to bring a measure of accountability to this government, and fighting for a foreign policy that reflects both our interests and our values.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, tomorrow, President Trump will belatedly report on the state of the Union before a joint session of Congress. The reason for the delay, of course, is the 35-day government shutdown that President Trump precipitated as an attempt to extract taxpayer money for a wall he promised Mexico would pay for, a pointless exercise, if there ever were one--a pointless exercise that punished hundreds of thousands of innocent public servants and took billions of dollars out of our economy.

We are all glad that the government is back open and Federal workers are back on the job and getting paid, but the recent government shutdown speaks to the fundamental uncertainty about the state of our Union.

Tomorrow, the President will say, predictably, that the state of our Union is strong, but the truth is that the state of the Trump economy is failing America's middle class, that the state of the Trump healthcare system is failing American families, that the state of the Trump administration is embroiled in chaos and incompetence, and that the state of the President's foreign policy is incoherent, inconsistent, and cynical in the extreme and has undermined American power and our national interests. In sum, the state of our Union is in need of drastic repair.

Let's begin with the state of the Trump economy. Corporate America has cashed in on the Trump tax bill, but working America has been left behind. Since the tax bill passed over a year ago, corporations have announced plans to repurchase more than $1 trillion of their own stock--a practice that benefits corporate executives and wealthy shareholders but not many average workers. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the tax bill had no major impact on whether businesses made capital investments or hired more workers. The very wealthy--the big, powerful corporations--fed this line: Help them, and everyone will be helped. Our Republican friends swallowed that--hook, line, and sinker.

The only good news about this tax bill that passed last year is that it showed what a false promise it was--$1 trillion for the wealthy through stock buybacks and other things and virtually nothing for American workers. The President promised--remember this?--that his tax bill would deliver a $4,000 raise to the average household. The reality is that wages for average workers have remained quite stagnant. Workers are still making less today than they did in 1973 after adjusting for inflation. The effect of the Trump economy has been a deepening of the inequalities and wealth disparities that threaten the future of the middle class and the future of the American dream. The rich are getting richer. The middle class is being hollowed out. That is the state of the Trump economy.

How about healthcare? The state of our healthcare system is dire. Premiums are higher than they should be. Out-of-pocket costs are higher than they should be. The uninsured rate is, once again, rising. This is the result of a relentless sabotage by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. The Trump administration expanded junk insurance plans. It supports a lawsuit that would end protections for Americans with preexisting conditions. It all but eliminated programs that help people find the right coverage for themselves and their families, and it continues to routinely propose and approve policies that cause people to lose coverage and cause health insurance markets to spiral into chaos.

When any one of us goes home, one just has to be home for a short time before hearing of people with horror stories of how they had normal procedures and were told that this doctor was not covered, that this procedure was not covered, and that it would be several thousand dollars out of their pockets, which they can't afford. We are told of one horror story or another--of the cost of something like insulin, which is way through the roof, when it should be available because it does so much for those who have diabetes. We hear story after story, and those aren't isolated. That is the state of the Trump healthcare system.

The past 2 years have been a wholesale assault by the Trump administration on Americans' healthcare. I doubt President Trump will mention that tomorrow, but if you ask American families of the No. 1 problem they face, it will be the cost of good healthcare, which seems more and more out of reach. So the state of the Trump healthcare system is dire.

What is the state of the Trump administration? The state of the Trump administration is chaos. Underqualified staffers cycle in and out of our

government's most powerful positions. Cabinet Secretaries are fired over Twitter. Hundreds of important positions are unfilled or are covered by someone in an acting capacity, including for the Chief of Staff, the Attorney General, the Defense Secretary, the Interior Secretary, the OMB Director, and the EPA Director.

Hardly a week goes by without news of a high-profile firing or resignation from the White House. President Trump publicly belittles the people who are working for him. That is no way to incent people to work hard. An NPR study found that the Trump administration has had the most Cabinet turnovers of any administration in more than a century. Three Cabinet Secretaries have been fired or have resigned in scandal-- Price, Zinke, and Pruitt. One has resigned in protest--probably the best Cabinet member we had--General Mattis, who couldn't take Trump's zigzags on policy and his lack of sharing information. Another had his nomination pulled before it could be considered--Puzder--which is not altogether rare for this President.

Since the start of the administration, more than 40 of President Trump's nominees have been withdrawn. They don't know how to vet. The President makes these off-the-cuff decisions based on how someone looks, and we all pay the price. Oh, yes, the state of the Trump administration and how he runs the government--chaos. The continuity and effectiveness of American Government has been deeply compromised by the turmoil and turnover at the White House.

Finally, the state of the Trump foreign policy is woefully backward. From Brussels to Beijing, President Trump has alienated our allies and emboldened our adversaries. Russia, China, North Korea--three of the worst and least democratic countries on Earth, the countries that pose the greatest threats to America--are treated with kid gloves, while our allies, like those in NATO, get harsh words from this President. It is inside out. It is topsy-turvy. It is what his instincts and gut show, and they are totally wrong--without fact, without knowledge, and without understanding history. Too often, the President has, regrettably, failed to champion free speech, freedom of the press, humanitarian rights, and democratic values. Dictators and strongmen are ascendant in the President's circle while allies are pushed to the fringe. Yes, the state of the Trump foreign policy is woefully backward.

Concerning the speech tomorrow night, the President will not talk like this, of course. What I expect the President to do is to ignore reality and spin his own fiction. A looming question is just how many falsehoods, distortions, and made-up facts will appear in the President's speech. How many times will he say something is fake news because it is true, and he doesn't like to hear the truth?

Yet the Democrats are not focused on the President's rhetoric--his usual boasts or bluster or blame--that is so characteristic of this administration. We are going to continue fighting for American workers in this unequal economy, fighting for American families who are struggling to afford quality healthcare, fighting to bring accountability and stability to this government so in chaos, and fighting for rational foreign policy that promotes both our interests and our values.

The state of the Union is sad. Let me just say that the No. 1 reason the state of the Union has such woes is the President. I hope he changes in the next 2 years.

Mr. President, one other issue--I mentioned earlier that one of the major consequences of the Trump tax bill was the explosion of stock buybacks. In 2018 alone--just 2018--U.S. companies announced plans to repurchase more than $1 trillion of their own stock. It is a staggering figure and the highest amount ever recorded in a single year.

When companies buy back their own stock, it boosts the earnings of wealthy shareholders and executives but does little for average workers. The vast majority of Americans don't own stocks. In fact, the top 10 percent of Americans own 85 percent of stocks, total.

When corporations direct so much of their resources to buy back shares, they restrain their capacity to reinvest profits in R&D, equipment, higher wages, medical leave, pensions, worker retraining, and more.

I would like to see a study of how many companies bought back their stocks while leaving pensions underfunded. What is happening is that corporations are promising their workers that they will have a good life in retirement, and, instead, the corporate executives and their top shareholders are enriching themselves.

Think about this. Between 2008 and 2017--the last 10 years--466 of the S&P 500 companies did stock buybacks. Do you know how much? It was $4 trillion. That is equal to 53 percent of their profits. More than $1 out of every $2 in profit just went to stock buybacks--not improving our economy, not helping workers, and not helping communities. Then another 30 percent went to dividends. It is the same thing. When more than 80 percent of corporate profits are going to stock buybacks and dividends, something is really wrong in the state of corporate America and the state of our economy.

It wasn't always this way. From the mid-20th century up until the seventies and even into the eighties, American corporations shared a belief that they had a duty not just to their shareholders but to their workers, to their communities, and to their country, which helped them grow and prosper, along with our schools, our roads, and everything else. That created an extremely prosperous America for corporate America but also for American workers in the broad middle of this country.

But over the past several decades, workers' rights have been diminished, and corporate boardrooms have been obsessed, slavishly, to shareholder earnings. The only people they seem to want to help are their shareholders.

I hear it. I talk to CEOs, and they say: Well, maybe it is the wrong thing to do this or that, but I just have to go for the shareholder. And the shareholder often has only short-term interest. The explosion of stock buybacks is, perhaps, the most pernicious way that this new corporate ethos manifests itself.

My friend and colleague Senator Sanders and I have written a joint op-ed in today's New York Times, outlining how we propose to curb the overreliance on stock buybacks and, instead, encourage corporate America to make more productive investments that help workers and communities therein.

We are planning to introduce legislation that will prohibit a corporation from buying back its own stock unless it invests in workers and communities first, including doing things--there will be a list-- like paying people $15 an hour, providing 7 days of sick leave, offering decent pensions, more reliable healthcare, putting money into training workers, and providing equipment. These are the kinds of things we always thought American corporations would do and now they do scantily when compared to how much they do in terms of buybacks.

I know many of my Democratic colleagues have focused on these issues, including Senators Baldwin, Booker, Casey, Warren, Schatz, and Gillibrand. We all believe that this Congress, this Senate, should vote on legislation that demands that corporations commit to addressing the needs of their workers and communities before the interests of wealthy shareholders.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) are necessarily absent.

Madam President, hundreds of thousands of Federal workers are, thank God, returning to work this week to tackle a backlog that has been building for over a month. Over that time, the U.S. economy suffered a loss of $11 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--$11 billion for the President's temper tantrum, including $3 billion that can never be recovered. That is an expensive temper tantrum. The individual costs are even harder than the big numbers.

Who knows how many Federal workers missed a doctor's appointment or fell behind on their payments because they weren't getting their paychecks. Federal contractors will not get backpay and may have lost health insurance entirely during the shutdown. Senator Smith is working on legislation to fix that problem.

While even Federal employees and contractors are returning to work, they still might be digging out of the hole that the Trump shutdown put them in. I hope this serves as a lesson to President Trump and all of my Republican colleagues--no more shutdown. We cannot repeat this same nightmare scenario in 3 weeks when the CR expires. We Democrats will not shut down the government. We hope President Trump has learned his lesson. He touched a very hot stove. We hope our Republican colleagues will join us, as they did last Thursday, to make sure there is no shutdown. Thankfully, I have heard several of my colleagues say that. A number of them, including some of the most senior Republicans, have said we shouldn't have another shutdown. So we look forward to working with you to avoid that in every possible way.

The House and Senate conferees should strive, instead, to find common ground where it already exists and build from there. The good news is they begin with plenty to work with. Democrats and Republicans agree on the need for stronger border security measures at our ports of entry as well as the need for more humanitarian assistance. That is a good place to start.

Plenty of column inches have been dedicated to the discussion of areas where Republicans and Democrats have friction, but several times over the past 2 years, Congress has come together to reach big compromises, including two budget agreements and a landmark Russia sanctions bill. The common theme of those agreements is that the President stayed out of the

negotiations. Because President Trump gave Congress space to find a deal on our own, we were able to strike an accord. That is what we will need again if the conference committee is to succeed, because the President has no understanding of what the realities are in this Senate and in the House and no consistency in what he says one day and what he says the next. As I said, negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O.

So let Democrats and Republicans, the House and Senate, come to an agreement, and my guess is we can avoid a shutdown.

Huawei

Madam President, on another matter, yesterday afternoon, the Department of Justice unveiled nearly two dozen charges against the Chinese telecom Huawei in two indictments--one for the evasion of sanctions on Iran and another for its attempts to steal sensitive intellectual property from T-Mobile in the United States.

I am so glad the Justice Department announced these indictments yesterday. China has been flouting international sanction laws and, even worse, stealing IP and know-how for the last decade. State- connected telecom giants like Huawei are an example of how China operates. They are not the exception. They are the rule in China.

When China wants to supplant U.S. dominance in an emerging industry, it acts rapaciously. It steals. Our law enforcement needs to be especially vigilant with Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei and CTE, which intend to displace U.S. communications networks with their own 5G networks because those could give China access to all kinds of sensitive information. U.S. authorities should be prosecuting Huawei's criminal violations to the fullest extent of the law. I give the administration credit for having this suit go forward, but my message to President Trump now is this: Don't back down. While the Trump administration has shown signs of being tougher on China than either the Bush or Obama administration--which I commend them--President Trump has also tried the conciliatory approach, particularly at the moment when the administration is engaged in negotiations with the Chinese.

Just last year, President Trump let ZTE, another state-backed Chinese telecom that violated trade sanctions, off the hook in the hopes of achieving concessions from China on North Korea that never materialized. In December, the President said he would ``certainly intervene'' in the Huawei case if he thought it were necessary to achieve a trade deal with China.

President Trump, do not make the same mistake you made with ZTE by interfering with the Justice Department's prosecution of Huawei. The United States should not make any concessions unless and until China makes credible and enforceable commitments to end all forms of theft and extortion of American intellectual property, which is exactly what Huawei is accused of.

Koch Brothers

Madam President, finally, a comment on the Koch brothers. I read a column with interest today in the Washington Post. The Koch network has been trying to rebrand itself as less partisan. They are saying: Let's bring us together. Let's work with both sides.

That is a good instinct, but color me skeptical. The Koch brothers may sit out the Presidential contest, as they did in 2016, but their political arm, Americans for Prosperity, continues to support candidates who are divisive, who do not bring us together. Some of the ads you see, the very candidates they support, are dividing us. You can't, on the one hand, say you want to bring us together and use your political arm to tear us apart. Yet that is what the Koch brothers are doing.

They support the kind of judges who agree with them on all the corporate stuff. They don't want regulation, but they are against voting rights. How does that bring us together? They are against immigrants. How does that bring us together? At the State level, the Koch brothers' network of affiliates continues to support so many different initiatives that divide us. Through support for shadowy think tanks and pseudoacademic institutions, the Koch brothers continue to fund studies that sow doubt about climate change and evangelize deregulation.

It seems their highest priority is still to help the rich and powerful, no matter how divisive it is, as long as we can get our corporate taxes cut even further, cut the taxes for the wealthy, and stop the protections by preventing government regulations for average folks. As long as they do that, all this talk about coming together and supporting an occasional bill here and there doesn't mean much.

I hope that this beginning of what the Koch brothers say spreads. I hope it is not just sort of a figleaf because they are getting such bad publicity, and America is moving so far away from what they believe.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, as the dust settles from the longest shutdown in American history, we have work to do to get our country back on track. Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers who endured a month without compensation need to get their paychecks and backpay as soon as possible. So I have written a letter to President Trump urging him to expedite the delivery of those paychecks.

At the same time, we must be mindful of the hardships that persist for Federal contractors, who may not receive the backpay they have missed and who may have lost health insurance during the shutdown. We need to find a solution as well for those contractors. Senator Smith of Minnesota is working on that, and I hope we can do something to help them. It is of no fault of their own that they lost pay.

But there are some costs from the Trump shutdown that cannot be recouped. The CBO today released a report about the lasting damage that the Trump shutdown has done to the American economy. According to the CBO, the 5-week shutdown cost the U.S. economy $11 billion overall, including $3 billion in economic activity that can never be recovered.

Let me repeat that. The Trump shutdown has cost the U.S. economy $11 billion. What a devastating and pointless exercise this has been. If President Trump didn't appreciate the error of his ways already, his CBO ought to set him straight--no more shutdowns. They accomplish nothing. They only inflict pain and suffering on the country, our citizens, our economy, and our national security. That is a lesson we all must keep in mind.

The continuing resolution we passed on Friday only runs until February 15. In 3 weeks, we must pass additional appropriations to avoid another shutdown. Let the CBO report be a dire warning to President Trump and my Republican colleagues in the Senate against shutting down the government again.

Now, in these next 3 weeks, House and Senate appropriators named to the conference committee on Department of Homeland Security will endeavor to strike a bipartisan deal on border security. The good news is that we begin this process with plenty of common ground. Democrats and Republicans alike agree on the need for stronger border security. Though Democrats sharply disagree with the President on the need for an expensive and ineffective border wall, we agree on the need to strengthen our ports of entry, as well as the need to provide more drug inspection technology and humanitarian assistance. Since so many of the drugs come through the portals, a border wall will do no good at all, but strengthening those portals is vital.

Because we have set this up as a conference, Democratic and Republican leadership--House and Senate--will be involved, as well as the appropriators from those committees. Everyone has skin in the game. So in the next 3 weeks, the goal of the committee should be to find areas where we agree and work on them together.

In the past, when the President has stayed out of it, when the President has given Congress room, we have been repeatedly able to forge bipartisan agreements, including two budget agreements and the Russia sanctions. When the President injects maximalist partisan demands into the process, negotiations tend to fall apart. The President should allow the conference committee to proceed with good faith negotiations. I genuinely hope it will produce something that is good for the country and acceptable to both sides.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.