Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as we continue the review of the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, let's recap what we already know about the judge.

Judge Kavanaugh's judicial opinions reveal a man skeptical about our healthcare laws, reproductive rights, contraceptive coverage, and the basic powers and independence of Federal agencies. His public speeches and writings reveal a man with a nearly unbounded, almost monarchical view of Executive power, and yet an incredibly limited interpretation of Executive accountability. Those beliefs are profoundly troubling at any moment in time, but they are particularly troubling at this moment in time as the President of the United States routinely belittles the rule of law and as his lawyers pronounce that they will fight a duly authorized subpoena--a subpoena that has been obeyed in the past by previous Presidents.

There is still much about Judge Kavanaugh we don't know because Senate Republicans have engaged in a blatant, historic obstruction of a large portion of his record.

First, Chairman Grassley broke with tradition and fired off a one- sided, partisan request for documents. Senator Feinstein is known as the most reasonable of Members, and if she couldn't join with Senator Grassley in a request for documents, clearly, it indicates how biased that request was.

Chairman Grassley unilaterally declared papers from Judge Kavanaugh's time as Staff Secretary irrelevant, even though those documents constitute the bulk of Judge Kavanaugh's record, and Judge Kavanaugh himself has said those years were among the most instructive as to his work as a judge.

They keep chipping away at what we are allowed to see, what the American public is allowed to see about Judge Kavanaugh. Then it was revealed that a small percentage of the documents we will receive are being prescreened by a political operative named Bill Burck, a longtime Republican lawyer and former deputy to Brett Kavanaugh--a man who has counted among his clients Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Don McGahn. This man is hardly a fount of impartiality. He is a partisan. Mr. Burck also refuses to provide us with a log of the documents he has withheld.

Why are you withholding this one but not this one? No one is going to know.

Could it be that some of the information being withheld would be embarrassing to Judge Kavanaugh or, at the very least, harmful to his quest to become a Supreme Court Justice? Possibly. The American people have a right to know.

We have been denied the opportunity to evaluate whether the documents are being withheld for legitimate or self-interested purposes by a lawyer who is clearly a partisan.

That is two layers of obfuscation already. First, we are not allowed to see the most important documents of Judge Kavanaugh's time as Secretary. Second, of the counsel documents, which are a small percentage of his total documents, those are being prescreened by a Republican lawyer, not an impartial observer, who tells us which ones we can have and which ones we can't, without giving us any reason as to why one is OK and one isn't.

To make matters worse, Chairman Grassley has added a third level of withholding documents. He has declared that one-third of the small prescreened universe of documents only from the counsel's office, only prescreened by Burck--that wasn't good enough for people who want to avoid Judge Kavanaugh's record coming out in full. So those are now deemed ``committee confidential,'' meaning no one outside of the Judiciary Committee, not even other Senators, can see those documents, at least by Chairman Grassley's determination. It is outrageous.

Chairman Grassley is usually a fair-minded man. I have enjoyed working with him on many issues. We are the two Charles E's of the Senate. We carry, for instance, rural hospital legislation all the time and help our rural hospitals. When it comes to this area, Chairman Grassley's actions are manifestly unfair, not typical of his character. I understand the pressures he is under, but that doesn't forgive the result.

Withholding documents from the Senate and the American people under

the bogus label of ``committee confidential'' is a dark development for the Senate. ``Committee confidential,'' by the way, means that Senators on the Judiciary Committee can see the documents, but they can't tell anyone about it--not their fellow Senators, not the American people. Why shouldn't the American people see them? There are key issues here that we need to understand better.

On Friday, three of my colleagues raised questions about Judge Kavanaugh's truthfulness regarding testimony he gave about the Bush administration's post 9/11 terrorism policies in 2006. We need to understand the issue better, and we also need to know what he thought about the Bush administration's efforts on warrantless wiretapping, efforts to curtail reproductive rights, and more. He testified in 2006, when he was nominated to join the DC Circuit, and we have to see if he was being truthful. This is such an important position, the Supreme Court. We should see those. The American people should.

Locking up documents in committee, even on those important issues, is an affront to transparency, openness, and to the basic integrity of the confirmation process. We have been given no reason--no legitimate reason--why the committee confidential documents are acceptable for some Senators but not others to see.

My understanding of the Senate rules is that every Senator has the right to access documents in the possession of a Senate committee, any Senate committee. I am now going to ask the Chair to confirm that understanding.

Mr. President, am I correct that under Rule 26.10(a) of the Standing Rules of the Senate, all committee records are the property of the Senate as a whole and that all Senators ``shall have access to such records''?

Thank you. The words say ``shall have access to those records.''

Is there anything that undoes those words in the rules?

Yes. I asked if, under the rules, all committee Senate records are the property of the Senate as a whole and that all Senators shall have access to those records--shall have access.

The Presiding Officer said: Yes, those are, in part, the rules. Of course, those are not all of the rules.

Is there anything the Presiding Officer knows in the rules that would undercut that ruling in the Senate rules?

Fine. Then it is clear there is nothing that undercuts-- I appreciate the Chair's reading of the entire rule. Nothing in the rest of the rule undercuts what I have said, obviously.

Based on your ruling--the ruling of the Chair--I will therefore be submitting a request to the chairman and the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee for access by all Senators to all of the Kavanaugh documents in the possession of the committee. This request will include approximately 81,000 pages of documents that have been deemed ``committee confidential'' by the private lawyer, Mr. Burck, and by the chairman of the committee, Senator Grassley. My colleagues should do the same.

Again, the purpose here isn't dilatory. We will work hard, day and night, to go through these documents to see if anything worth questioning Judge Kavanaugh arises in them. We certainly have that right, by the rules of the Senate, and I am glad the Chair so interpreted it.

This is not just about rules or about having more reading material. This is about the Senate, and by extension the American people, understanding the stakes and consequences of elevating Judge Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on our Nation's highest Court. This is about our constitutional duty to advise and consent on a Supreme Court nominee. Senators cannot do that in an informed manner without fair and full access to a nominee's record. And, of course, the Constitution assigns this duty to Senators on behalf of the American people. Without access to the nominee's record, the American people will be in the dark. That is unacceptable.

Finally, on another matter--I see that my colleague from Vermont, who, incidentally, is doing an excellent job on the appropriations bills, which I believe he will want to discuss--is waiting. One more matter: Last week, the Trump administration announced it was revoking the security clearance of a former Director of the CIA. The action was taken not after a thorough review of the security clearance process. It did not affect a new policy. The revocation of the former CIA Director's security clearance was a gratuitous act of political retribution taken out of spite and malice--sometimes, unfortunately, attributes the President shows. It was an attempt to silence critics of the President--something the President regularly tries to do, usually unsuccessfully.

My Republican colleague, Senator Corker, said this in July about the possibility of President Trump's revoking security clearances. This is Republican Senator Bob Corker, a well-respected man in America. He said:

When you're going to start taking retribution against

people who are your political enemies . . . that's the kind

of thing that happens in Venezuela. . . . it's a banana

republic kind of thing.

Senator Corker is right. The abuse of the powers of public office to silence critics and punish political enemies is exactly what goes on in dictatorships, in banana republics. We are not one of those, thank God.

Then we found out on Saturday that the President is openly considering reaching into the Justice Department to revoke security clearances of a current career professional--this professional that the President mentioned works drug cases, anti-gang cases--based solely on rumors and innuendo spread by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee--hardly a credible source--and spurious other sources. Revoking the clearance of current Justice Department officials without cause is so far out of bounds for what can be considered the proper use of Presidential power that it is appalling. The words of Senator Corker are even more strongly felt.

What is next? Will President Trump decide to revoke the security clearance of everyone working for Special Counsel Mueller because he thinks it is in his craven political interest? There is enormous potential for gross abuse of Presidential power.

Congress, on a bipartisan basis, ought to make sure the President does not politicize the security clearance policy. Revoking a security clearance is a decision that should be done for national security reasons and national security reasons alone.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, as the Senate continues to work on appropriations, I want to thank the chairman, Senator Shelby, and the ranking member, Senator Leahy, for their work. The process has so far been productive and bipartisan in the Senate. Both sides have worked to avoid poison pill riders. That has meant steady progress. Next up are the annual appropriations bills for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Defense, which I hope will follow the same bipartisan course of the previous few bills.

We have already achieved substantial increases in funding for important priorities through the appropriations process, including significant new resources for the NIH, significant new resources to combat the opioid epidemic, and significant new investments in infrastructure, childcare, college affordability, Social Security, and the VA. That is a big victory for the American people, who have waited too long for our country to invest in them.

Middle-class people are worried about staying in the middle class. People trying to get to the middle class are worried--the ladder is steeper and longer. These kinds of things help them: college affordability, help with childcare, building infrastructure, making sure Social Security is around. All of that helps the middle class. For years, a hard-right group on the Republican side cut the smithereens out of these things, but this year, we managed to restore them. The American people will do a lot better because of it.

Madam President, I am happy to report that the annual authorization of the national defense was signed into law. I want to take a moment to thank a colleague who is not here today to celebrate that fact--Senator John S. McCain, for whom the bill has been named. Our dear friend Senator McCain has been such a stalwart champion for the men and women in uniform. He would be proud that once again Congress has met its obligation to give the military the support and certainty it needs to conduct missions around the globe.

Even from afar, Senator McCain's influence on this Chamber is considerable and strong. His presence hovered over us as we all made sure--knowing he would importune us, if he were here, to make sure the Defense bill was strong and voted on quickly. So many of the bases in my State--including our Niagara Air Force base, including our Fort Drum--are so much the better because of John McCain's great work. I wish him all the best and commend his staff and Senator Inhofe's and Senator Reed's staff for their work on the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act.

Madam President, on the Supreme Court, as we return from the State work period, the Republican majority continues to steam forward on President Trump's nomination to the Supreme Court, announcing that hearings will begin on September 4. That is just 12 business days from today. Yet the Senate remains unable to do its due diligence on the nominee because we have access to only a tiny percentage of his record.

Why is this? Senate Republicans are in the midst of a blatant and historic obstruction of a Supreme Court nominee's record, denying the Senate and the American people critical information about this potential Supreme Court Justice.

The entire record of Judge Kavanaugh's 3 years as Staff Secretary in the White House--the most senior position he held before joining the bench--is being deliberately withheld from the Senate and from the public. The Republican majority has unilaterally declared those papers irrelevant even though Judge Kavanaugh himself has testified to the importance of the position and the work he did there.

Meanwhile, the small percentage of documents the Judiciary Committee will get to see are being prescreened by a political operative named Bill Burck--a longtime Republican lawyer and former deputy to Brett Kavanaugh when he worked in the White House. A deputy to Brett Kavanaugh is now determining what Brett Kavanaugh's record should be there--somebody who was a lawyer for Steve Bannon--notorious Steve Bannon--a lawyer for Reince Priebus, a lawyer for McGahn, White House Counsel.

Mr. Burck and his team have already started delivering documents to the Judiciary Committee, but they are refusing to provide a privilege log. Why are they giving us this document and not that one? Aren't we entitled to know what their reasoning, at least, is? So the Judiciary Committee cannot understand how many documents are being held back and on what basis. A privilege log has always been provided in previous Supreme Court vetting processes, and without it, we have no idea whether the basis for Mr. Burck's withholding all of these documents is legitimate.

Where is our chairman of the Judiciary Committee? He says: Oh, this is the best ever. Then why aren't we getting such a log? What is his answer to that? I know he will come to the floor and rail and rail, but the process--the actual facts--is much worse than we have seen.

Here is something new--also being done by the chairman of the Judiciary

Committee. One-third of the documents we are getting, which is a small percentage of the total documents, are being deemed as ``committee confidential'' by the majority and have not been released, stacking an additional layer of secrecy on top of multiple layers of existing secrecy.

Why are I and my staff and the other 79 Senators not on the Judiciary Committee being denied the ability to review so many of these documents that have been given to the Judiciary Committee? What are the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee hiding? The moniker ``committee confidential'' sounds like another way to shield Judge Kavanaugh's record from the eyes of the American people and the Senate, and we have no knowledge of why these documents are being withheld.

Even the National Archives--nonpartisan and neutral--felt compelled to release a statement about this process. They are usually very quiet. They are archivists. They go ahead and do their job. They felt that what was going on was wrong. You can tell by the statement they released. The Archives clarified that Burck's review of Kavanaugh's records is ``a separate review--completely apart from the National Archives and the George W. Bush Presidential Library's efforts. This effort by former President Bush does not represent the National Archives or the George W. Bush Presidential Library.'' That is what the archivists said. They are separating themselves from such a secretive, nondemocratic process. For a down-the-middle organization like the National Archives--very reluctant to comment on political matters--to put out a statement like this goes to show how far the Republicans and Chairman Grassley have departed from precedent.

The obstruction here is shocking. Everywhere you look, Republicans are deciding what constitutes the proper review of a nominee chosen by a Republican President. Republicans have unilaterally decided what documents are relevant to the Senate. Republican lawyers are the ones combing through those documents and deciding unilaterally which can be released to the Senate. The Republican majority and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee are then deciding unilaterally which of those documents remain under the committee's lock and key. It is like letting only the defendant in a lawsuit decide what evidence is admissible. Let me say that again. This is exactly like letting only the defendant in a lawsuit decide what evidence to admit. It would be a rigged trial. That is what is happening here.

It seems as though the Republicans are trying to rush Judge Kavanaugh through with as little scrutiny as possible because they know there are some troubling beliefs in his history. Think about what we already know. Judge Kavanaugh has written opinions skeptical of our healthcare, reproductive rights, and even the contraceptive coverage requirement. On this issue, he is far to the right of the American people. That is maybe why our Republican friends don't want people to know his views. He has argued that Presidents should effectively be above the law; that they should be immune from civil and criminal investigations while in office; that Presidents can decline to enforce a law they deem unconstitutional, even if a court has held it constitutional; that Presidents should be able to reach into independent Federal agencies to hire and fire the heads of those agencies at will. He rules almost reflexively against actions by Federal agencies, whether it is net neutrality, environmental protections, or dark money.

That is another one. He seems to agree with the Citizens United decision and would seem to allow dark money--poisoning our politics, leaving American people with little faith in government, that they will have an influence--to have greater influence than ever.

This isn't just about allowing the Senate to review documents for the sake of it; we need to scrutinize Judge Kavanaugh's record because his beliefs will matter a great deal in the decades ahead, if he gets approved, on issues ranging from healthcare, to women's reproductive rights, to Executive power and accountability.

Rudy Giuliani, the President's lawyer, just declared that the President may not decide to comply with a subpoena issued by the special counsel or whomever. A court case on this matter could reach the Supreme Court. So this isn't a hypothetical case; it is well within the realm of possibility that the Supreme Court will have to decide whether President Trump, who has shown so little respect for rule of law, will have to comply with a duly issued subpoena. So it really matters what Brett Kavanaugh thinks about this.

Before we elevate someone to the Supreme Court who may have to rule on the issue of Presidential subpoenas, don't the Senate and American people deserve to know what the nominee thinks? This is just one of many reasons the Senate and the public must be able to review the nominee's full record.

There must be a reason Republicans are so intent on hiding this nominee's record and rushing through his confirmation. What are they hiding? What are they hiding? What are they afraid of? I think they realize that if the American people knew exactly how Judge Kavanaugh felt before he became a judge, they might not want him to be there.

Republicans demanded all of Elena Kagan's documents, and Democrats agreed to request them. Again, we have this hairsplitting argument by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He says: We are giving more documents before--it is the percentage of documents that matter. Are you seeing the whole record or only part of the record? Some people have bigger records than others. Kagan--we Democrats in the majority, when our Republican friends, including the Senator from Iowa, asked, gave them the whole record. That is what we should be getting as well.

In fact, Republicans, including the distinguished majority leader, demanded all of Judge Sotomayor's records, including documents from her time as district attorney and even her records as a board member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. We agreed. But now they have totally changed the rules. And I understand. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee is a decent man, and when he has to do things like this, he doesn't like it. But he ought to rise to the occasion.

What they are doing is flat-out wrong. The American people deserve a methodical and thorough examination of a nominee who will yield immense influence over their lives for generations. The Republican majority seems intent on denying the American people that basic right.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize city court Judge Michael F. McKeon of Auburn, NY, on his retirement from the New York bench after 20 years of dedicated and faithful service to his community and to his State.

Judge McKeon was born and raised in Auburn and, save for a few years during college and law school, has lived his entire life in this vibrant community in the heart of New York State's Finger Lakes region.

Judge McKeon has dedicated much of his professional life to public service. After law school, he clerked for New York State Supreme Court Justice Robert White for 7 years, and while in private practice, he also served as corporation counsel for the city of Auburn. For 27 years, McKeon also taught criminal justice courses at Cayuga County Community College in Auburn.

First elected as Auburn's city court judge in November 1998, Judge McKeon quickly got to work implementing new and innovative ways of administering justice and ensuring that those with behavioral and addiction illnesses got access to critical treatment and support to help turn their lives around. Under his leadership, Auburn introduced one of the first drug treatment courts in New York State. Soon thereafter, he founded a behavioral health court for misdemeanor and felony offenders.

McKeon was a very active member of the Nation's drug court community and became a sought-after resource for other judges in New York and throughout the country looking to introduce drug courts into their communities. With evangelists like Judge McKeon demonstrating great successes in helping end addiction through diversion and treatment programs, Federal funding for drug court programs reached its highest levels in fiscal year 2017.

Judge McKeon was chosen by his peers as president of the New York State City Court Judges Association from 2006 to 2008 and vice president from 2002 to 2006. He continued his drug court advocacy in these leadership roles, helping New York State become one of the Nation's leaders in drug court adoption. In 2015, he worked with the State legislature to pass the first cost-of-living-adjustment for State judges in 13 years. McKeon also served as chair of the Local Codes Advisory Committee to the chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals.

I congratulate Judge McKeon and his family on his well-earned retirement, and I thank him for his outstanding service to his beloved Auburn.

(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given the floor and that my time be allocated to leader time.

Mr. President, for several weeks, our Republican colleagues have been stonewalling our efforts to gain access to Judge Kavanaugh's full record on behalf of the Senate and, more importantly, on behalf of the American people. In doing so, they have discarded a tradition of bipartisan cooperation when it comes to requesting a nominee's record.

Whether or not you have been for a nominee, we used to all agree that the Senate should be able to review their

full record for the sake of transparency and openness, for a vote, to advise and consent on one of the most important jobs in the country and in the world, a lifetime job of tremendous power, not abstract power. The decisions the Supreme Court makes affect the daily lives of Americans. So this is just incredible.

For Justice Kagan, Democrats joined with the Republican minority to request all of her records. For Justice Sotomayor, Democrats did the same. We could have come up with some fake reasons why you couldn't get the records. We didn't. We believe in transparency and openness. But Republicans are doing a 180-degree reverse now that they are in charge, which leaves a very bad taste in our mouths and in the mouths of the American people. They are saying that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander; that transparency is fine when Democrats are in charge and nominating nominees but no transparency when Republicans are in charge.

Republicans are breaking from the bipartisan precedent, and they are requesting only a subset of Judge Kavanaugh's records from his time in the White House. Chairman Grassley has asked for documents pertaining to Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office but none from his 3 years as Staff Secretary--arguably a more important and more revealing job.

Now, adding insult to injury--and this is utterly amazing--we have just learned that even when it comes to the documents concerning Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office, the Senate is not likely to get the full picture even on that limited group of documents.

Chairman Grassley has written to the National Archives and the Bush Library to request documents from when Kavanaugh was White House Counsel, and both are working to produce them. But, unlike at the National Archives, the Bush Library--and we know President Bush. I have a great deal of respect for him. I think he is a good man even though I disagreed with him on a whole lot. But he is a close friend of Kavanaugh's, who worked for him, and he is a loyal guy.

So what have they done? The Bush Library has hired a legal team--led by a Republican lawyer with close ties to President Bush and President Trump--to prescreen the documents from Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office. They are doing the screening--this lawyer who worked for Bannon and who worked for Priebus and so many other Republicans. Pejoratively, you might say he is sort of a hack lawyer. He may be a fine lawyer. But he always works for Republicans. He is a very partisan man, and he is screening the documents that the public can see.

The legal team can cite Executive privilege--that is President Bush's prerogative--to deny the Senate some or all of the documents, and we believe they may be claiming the discretion to determine whether a document is properly considered a Presidential record at all. That is something only the National Archives can do. They are nonpartisan. They don't have any political pull.

The bottom line is this: The Republican lawyers overseeing the production of documents from the Bush Library may seek to deny the Senate access to documents the National Archives would otherwise bring. Is that incredible? So there is another layer. It is not even all the counsel's documents, because there is a lawyer--a tried-and-true doctrinaire Republican lawyer, tight with so many of the people in this administration--who is determining which documents we get to see and which documents we don't.

Knowing that, I recently wrote a letter to President Bush asking him a simple question: Will he, President Bush, make public Judge Kavanaugh's full record or not? I wanted to be sure there would be little or no daylight between what the Senate received from the Bush Library and what we received from the National Archives. Unfortunately, I did not get a simple answer; I got a reply from the lawyer hired by the Bush Library, draped in legalese and obfuscations, confirming that a team of private-sector lawyers are screening the documents--the limited number of documents--from when Kavanaugh was White House Counsel. He also made clear that ``copies of records that the team of lawyers has reviewed and . . . approved for disclosure'' would be made ``available directly to the Committee.'' That is in this letter right here sent by the lawyers.

Ironically, this offer was presented as a courtesy. Of course, it is plain as day--it means that Chairman Grassley could access the prescreened documents from the Bush legal team and decline to wait for documents being processed by the National Archives, meaning the Senate and the public will only see what the partisan lawyers want us to see. Some courtesy.

This is not a fishing expedition. This is not an attempt to run out the clock. We are talking about a lifetime appointment to the highest Court in the land. The person who fills this vacancy on the Court will have the power to affect the lives of every single American, now and for decades. Democrats simply want his records to be made available to the Senate and to the public to judge for themselves whether President Trump's nominee is the right choice for our country. The American people deserve that right. But not only are Republicans blocking access to Kavanaugh's record when he was a senior member of the Bush administration, the documents they are requesting are being prescreened by lawyers on their side. It leads you to wonder over and over again, what are the Republicans trying to hide in Kavanaugh's record? To go to such lengths to tie themselves in knots and pretzels to deny simple documents that people can read makes people ask: What are they hiding? What are they afraid of? Why can't we have open documents, as we had for Kagan and Sotomayor, President Obama's nominees? To go to such lengths to deny the Senate impartial access to this material is telling.

Healthcare

Mr. President, on healthcare, today the Trump administration has finalized a plan for a type of health insurance that will essentially repeal protections on preexisting conditions and allow insurance companies to cover fewer benefits, not more. These so-called short-term plans are the very definition of a bait-and-switch. Under the guise of lower premiums, these plans lure Americans in, but they hardly cover anything.

The insurance company will tell you that this plan will cover you for this and that, and then when you read the fine print, it doesn't, even though you are paying a nice-size premium. So there will be no protections in these plans if you develop a preexisting condition. God forbid you find out your son or daughter has cancer. You need help. You are desperate for help. You want a healthy child above anything else. The insurance company can just kick you off. That is not what America should be.

These plans the administration is supporting--allowing, pushing-- don't have any protections for preexisting conditions. Many don't cover basic services like maternity care and prescription drugs. How do you like that? You sign up for a plan--no prescription drugs. When you get sick, you discover you are on the hook for much more than you expected, maybe much more than you can afford.

There are stories of people having medical bills close to $1 million after an insurer used a loophole in their junk plan to deny them coverage. We already know that many of the leading issuers of these junk plans spend less than half of the premiums they receive on healthcare. They pocket the money for profit and for salary, and the poor person who is covered hardly gets anything. There ought to be protections for that.

We don't live in the 1890s; we live in a modern-day America where we believe in the private capitalist system. But we have protections. We have learned through the centuries that people need them. But this administration, aided by some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--not all--just wants to roll back that clock for the benefit of the big, powerful industries, hurting average, middle-class Americans.

The Trump administration plans to increase premiums for middle-class families and for older Americans. So many who have preexisting conditions will have no choice but to remain in

comprehensive insurance, and their premiums will go way up. If you are over 50 before you get Medicare, you had better be wary of these too. Even if you don't want to buy the plan, it is going to cost you a lot more--your existing one. Insurers across the country have already cited the prospect of this rule as a major reason for the premium increases that are coming up in 2019, and who knows how much higher the premiums will go now that the rule is final.

Let me be clear. These new short-term plans are nothing short of junk insurance. They are junk insurance, and the President is pushing them, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--many of them, not all--are giving these junk plans a Good Housekeeping seal of approval at the obeisance of big, powerful industry interests. These plans will cost Americans more, both those who sign up for these plans and the many who do not. We Democrats will do everything in our power to stop these junk plans.

Instead of pushing new rules that weaken vital protections for people with preexisting conditions and raising the cost of healthcare for families, President Trump and Republicans in Congress should work together in a bipartisan fashion--as some have tried to do, including the Senator from Maine, who is standing behind me--to lower costs and help the most vulnerable Americans.

I yield the floor and relinquish my leader time.

Madam President, I would like to join my friend the majority leader in congratulating Dick Shelby on his 10,000th vote. I knew him before he cast his first vote in the

Senate, when we were fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives. That was a long time ago.

But one thing has been consonant throughout his career: his decency, his honor, and, most of all, his desire to get things done for his home State of Alabama and for our country. That has led him to be an outstanding leader of the Appropriations Committee.

As the majority leader mentioned, we are working in a remarkably smooth, bipartisan way. We hope that is a precedent of things to come. We hope we will continue to work together and not let any outside forces mess that up--not to mention any names.

He is just a wonderful guy. He really is. We see each other in the gym in the morning. Let me tell you, Shelby is as fit as ever, huffing and puffing away on the bike. That gives all of us solace because it means he has even more strength to guide us through the appropriations process for many years to come.

I wish to acknowledge his partner in this--they couldn't have done it without working together--Senator Leahy. It is a great team, and we look forward to continued bipartisanship, compromise, and success.

The Senator from Vermont.

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

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

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