Floor Statements

Mr. President, a note on healthcare.

As the House Republican caucus continues their effort to revive TrumpCare, I just want to remind my friends in the House of a few things.

First, for all the significant changes House Republicans are proposing to the bill, it would still cause premiums and deductibles to rise, it will still jack up the costs on low-income and older Americans, and, most importantly, it doesn't change a thing about the 24 million fewer Americans who would get healthcare. It may actually increase that number, but it certainly will not decrease it.

Second, it is unwise and irresponsible to rush through a brandnew bill without a new CBO score, without committee hearings, and without any debate on the floor of the House. If this thing were so good, why wouldn't there be open debate? Why wouldn't there be discussion? I hope, if the bill gets to the Senate--I don't know if it will. I hope it doesn't, but if it does, I hope we will not mimic the House, have no committees, no hearings, no CBO score, not much debate. That would be very wrong.

Third, even if the new version of TrumpCare passes the House--we hope it doesn't--its chances for survival in the Senate are small. We don't even know if the new version would survive under the rules of reconciliation.

The amendment to allow States to drop preexisting condition requirements, for instance, very possibly violates the Byrd rule. If the moderate group in the House gets an additional amendment to deal with the very same issue, that may violate the Byrd rule as well because if Republicans try to throw money at their problem, as it has been reported, they may end up violating the budget instructions to reduce the deficit, and they will not even know if it does violate the Byrd rule because, again, they will not have a CBO score.

As my friend, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Mr. Graham, said, talking about the TrumpCare bill, ``I just don't see how you square the circle here. Some of the things the Freedom Caucus wants probably won't make it through the Senate.''

The same is true for the group of moderates who are angling for more changes to the bill right now.

The reality is, TrumpCare cannot pass the Senate. So to my moderate Republican colleagues in the House, I ask: Why would you risk a ``yes'' vote for a bill that is devastating to your constituents and has virtually a minuscule chance--probably no chance--of becoming law?

Now, we Democrats--as we have said time and time again to both the President and to our Republican colleagues--are willing to work with you on ways to improve the Affordable Care Act and our healthcare system in general. Drop repeal, and then come talk to us about finding a bipartisan way forward. We are always willing to work in a bipartisan way, but, again, to repeat, ``bipartisan'' means talking to both sides and taking things from both sides, not just throwing a bill down and saying you have to support it. That is what bipartisanship is.

Mr. President, let me talk about the retirement CRA, the vote that is coming before us quite soon.

So far this Congress, the Republican majority has passed 13 CRAs-- Congressional Review Act resolutions--all on party-line votes. Far from being a major accomplishment, these CRAs just overturn rules passed at the very end of the Obama administration. To make them a major accomplishment of the first 100 days misreads what they are and history, when compared to many other Presidents. Most of them, to boot, even worse, rather than benefiting the American people, just benefit large, wealthy, special interests--not just this one but just about all of them. They are not for working people. They are not for middle-class Americans. If there is some narrow special interest that doesn't like it, then this Republican-led Congress goes along. It is not right. Let me give a few examples.

The Republicans passed a CRA that removed protections for our waters and streams from the harmful pollution that comes from the runoff of mining sites. Why? Large mining companies wanted it. The American people weren't crying out for it.

This Republican Congress passed a CRA that would make it easier for the adjudicated mentally ill to purchase firearms--a priority of the gun lobby, certainly not of the American people. They even passed a CRA that allowed large oil, mining, and gas companies to make payments to foreign governments--essentially bribes--without even having to disclose them.

That is not the America we know. That is not the Shining City on the Hill. That is not the lady in the harbor with a torch.

Today, the Republican majority is going to have a vote on another CRA. This one may be the worst of all because it would block initiatives by States to provide alternative retirement savings options for millions of Americans. Is that because Americans are clamoring: Take away my ability for retirement if my company doesn't give me one. No, we haven't heard a peep about that. It is because the private financial institutions--Wall Street--that manage retirement plans don't want to see any competition from city or State retirement plans. This is just another giveaway to the wealthy special interests that will hurt working Americans who should have more low-cost choices when it comes to their retirement.

We all know our Nation faces a serious retirement security problem. Pensions, often a guarantee for large numbers of Americans, are vanishing. New employers often don't provide pensions. Older employers' pension plans are running low. People who used to feel, when they retired, there would at least be something there so they could live their final years in dignity, are worried, as they should be. Fifty- five million working Americans do not have a way for retirement to save through their employer. That is nearly half--half--of all private sector workers aged 18 to 64. It is a huge concern.

So what did the Obama administration do in its last few months? Wisely, they said States could set up initiatives for employees to save through their employers' payroll systems. The Obama administration acted to allow States to pursue these initiatives by exempting them from overreaching

Federal regulations and then provided necessary consumer protections. That is what people want. Now, maybe some of these big financial interests don't want it because the plans the States head up will be a lot cheaper than the private sector plan, but we have to adapt to the 21st century. Any way we can help people with security in their golden years with retirement savings, we should.

Here is another issue. We hear a lot from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about States' rights. This regulation doesn't force the States to do it. It allows the States to do it. It gives them a choice. This CRA vote would re-regulate the States.

My Republican friends--who spare no opportunity to decry regulation and exhort States' rights--will impose a new regulation on States from Washington. My Republican friends talk about increasing Americans' freedom of choice in all sorts of matters. What about their choice in terms of retirement, one of the most important things to the American people. Middle-class incomes are squeezed in so many different directions. It is harder to scrape and save for retirement when the cost of college, medicine, and other essentials go up while take-home pay is stagnant. It makes sense to give Americans a choice to start saving earlier, at a lower cost, for retirement. That is why 23 State Treasurers from States across the political spectrum--across Utah and Kentucky, our two speakers before me--have written to their Senators opposing this CRA. Red States and blue States alike want to pursue this option. Polling shows that across party lines, 77 percent of voters support State-facilitated retirement savings, but Republicans want to block it. We haven't heard one good reason--one good reason. We know the real reason. Financial institutions don't want competition, particularly if it is a little cheaper for the worker.

Another example of special interests taking hold of the Republican agenda: Almost every one of these CRAs has been at the behest of a narrow special interest over the interests of working Americans. Unfortunately, it is a metaphor for both the new Trump administration and how our Republican colleagues are marching in lockstep to support the wealthy--people doing great--over the middle class and working people who need help.

President Trump promised over and over again in his campaign to stick up for working Americans. He said he would be their voice and their champion. Since he has taken office, President Trump sure hasn't governed that way. He is pursuing policy after policy that would help the wealthy and hurt the middle class, breaking promise after promise after promise to working Americans. I ask him to veto this legislation.

Leader Pelosi and I are putting out a statement that asks just that. Stand up for working people. There is no good argument against what the Obama administration did. There is no good argument against letting workers decide on their own volition that they want a retirement plan and are willing to put some money into it.

This CRA is another test. If our President and our Republican colleagues were truly a champion of working men and women, they wouldn't support this resolution. If President Trump were truly a champion of working men and women, he would veto this resolution. We call on him to do so.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) is necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, first, I wish to respond to the President's latest tweets about the bipartisan, bicameral deal we just reached to fund the government through September.

Members of both parties worked very hard to come to this agreement. There was a real spirit of cooperation. I thank Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi, as well as Senators Cochran and Leahy and Congress Members Frelinghuysen and Lowey, all who worked together often until the wee hours of the morning to make this happen. We all spent a lot of time working on it, and I think we got a very good outcome. So when the President threw cold water on this deal and actually recommended a government shutdown, I was deeply disappointed. Here we saw Democrats and Republicans working together in the best traditions of the Senate, and the President disparages it in a way that is destructive, essentially saying: Let's have a shutdown.

The President has been complaining about the lack of bipartisanship in Washington. Well, this deal is exactly how Washington should work when it is bipartisan. Both parties negotiated and came to an agreement on a piece of legislation we each can support. It is truly a shame that the President is degrading it because he didn't get 100 percent of what he wanted. Bipartisanship is best summed up by the Rolling Stones: You can't always get what you want--or at least everything you want.

On taxes, Mr. President, yesterday, Secretary Mnuchin, in an appearance at the Milken Institute Conference, admitted that the administration plans to go it alone on taxes. He said they are trying to design their proposal to fit into the rules of reconciliation so they need only Republican votes to pass their tax cut.

The message was clear as day. The President is not interested in working with Democrats to craft a proposal that both parties can support. He is just going to pass his plan with Republican votes or not pass it at all. What that means is that the Trump tax plan likely will not have to change much from the 200-word outline that they put out last week, and that means the Trump tax plan will benefit the incredibly wealthy and the special interests while leaving the middle- class, working Americans with crumbs, at best.

We Democrats support tax relief, so long as it is aimed at the middle class and those struggling to get there. Those are the folks who really need the help. College is getting ever more expensive. Take-home pay is being squeezed in so many different directions. The middle class and those working to get there should be able to keep more of what they make, but the Trump tax plan seems designed to benefit his Cabinet and the incredibly wealthy on Wall Street, not Main Street and the middle class.

There are many wealthy people doing very well in America. God bless them. Their lifestyles are getting better every year. Their incomes are getting better every day. They don't need the help, but the middle class does. But in the Trump plan, taxes on the very wealthy and big corporations would go down, while tax deductions that benefit the middle class would go away. For example, President Trump campaigned on getting rid of the carried interest loophole. Instead, his plan keeps the carried interest loophole and creates an even bigger loophole for the wealthiest by allowing the so-called passthrough entities, which include wealthy businessmen like President Trump, to pay just 15 percent. So with this 15-percent passthrough, hedge fund managers, corporate lawyers, and big business CEOs who make millions of dollars every year would pay 15 percent, while their workers will pay 20, 25, 30 percent.

To add insult to injury, the Trump tax plan would repeal the estate tax, a tax on estates only of over $10 million--very wealthy people. How many of us have a $10 million estate? And it would result in the 5,200 wealthiest families in America each year--or estates in America-- receiving an average $3 million windfall. While the Trump plan eliminates taxes for the very wealthy, it also eliminates tax breaks that are most beneficial to the middle class, like the State and local deduction. The loss of this deduction for those who use it would cost New Yorkers an average of $4,500 a year.

The middle class has seen rising expenses and virtually stagnant incomes. They need tax relief, not the loss of key tax deductions that helped put a few more dollars in their pockets. And the biggest danger for the middle class might be what happens after the Trump tax plan gets passed, if that happens.

A tax cut for the wealthy of the size President Trump is proposing would explode the deficit, costing between $5.5 trillion and $7 trillion over 10 years, by some estimates. The Republicans might be willing to ignore the debt and deficit now in order to get their tax cut. But make no mistake about it, a few years down the line, they will start howling about the deficit again and say: Oh, we have no choice but to cut Social Security and Medicare to make up for the massive debt they created with their tax cut. This has been the nefarious goal of the hard right for decades.

In fact, the same story played out during the Bush years. President Bush passed a big tax break, primarily for the wealthy. It racked up debt, and then he pursued deep cuts to the social safety net to try to balance the ledger. He might have gotten it, but Democrats stood in his way. This could be deja vu all over again.

In sum, the very wealthy get a huge tax break while the middle class gets very little. And down the road, programs like Social Security and Medicare--so crucial to the middle class--would be endangered.

If this administration wants to pursue such a plan all on their own, that is their choice, but as we saw with healthcare, the go-it-alone approach doesn't guarantee success. What it does guarantee is a very partisan bill that will benefit the very wealthy and the special interests--a bill that I predict will be very, very unpopular with the American people.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) is necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, late last night, due to the hard work and diligence of the staffs of the Appropriations Committees on both sides of the aisle in both Houses, the staff of the leadership, and so many others, we were able to come to a bipartisan agreement on a bill to fund the government through September. Most importantly, this agreement takes the threat of a government shutdown off the table. It is also a good agreement for the American people.

The bill ensures taxpayer dollars are not used to fund an ineffective border wall; it excludes over 160 poison pill riders; and it increases investments in programs that the middle class relies on, like education, infrastructure, and medical research.

It includes a permanent extension for health benefits for miners. Here, I want to praise--and I can't give enough praise--to the Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, who was relentless even after disappointment after disappointment, at holding the Senate's feet to the fire and making sure this was done. Many miners can rest easy tonight--people who have worked so hard all their lives and had so much disappointment--because of Joe Manchin's work and what we put into the bill.

There is also funding to shore up Puerto Rico's Medicaid Program, and $2 billion to help States like California, West Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina recover from recent natural disasters.

The bill also includes a significant increase in NIH funding, which deals with cancer research and the Cancer Moonshot that both President Obama and Vice President Biden pushed for and continues onward, and a restoration of year-round Pell grants that will benefit about 1 million students. College is often the ladder up for a lot of students, and this will help them stay on that ladder.

And the bill includes significantly increased funding for infrastructure, as well as funding to combat the scourge of opioid abuse which affects all parts

of the country--urban areas, suburban areas, rural areas. It affects the poor, the middle class, and the rich.

Good news: It protects 99 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency's budget so their quest to keep our water and air clean will be able to continue. It increases funding for clean energy research as well. That is one of the great hopes for jobs in this country, as our Senator from Washington, Maria Cantwell, constantly reminds us.

For my home State of New York, I was particularly pleased the agreement supports critical programs that are greatly needed and very popular in my State, like the Community Development Block Grant Program, which so many smaller cities depend on; the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to get pollution out of all the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie being on the shores of New York; and the vital TIGER Grant Program, which has done so much to support infrastructure, road building, and highways throughout my State and throughout America.

As I said, the bill explicitly precludes the use of any of this funding for a border wall. This is an idea that both parties rejected. A load of Congressmen and Senators on the Republican side have said that the wall doesn't make sense. In fact, you couldn't find one Republican on the border in the States of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas who supported that wall. Why? Unlike the President's promise, Mexico is not paying for it. There is no plan for the wall. We don't even know where we would build it. The Secretary of the Interior, President Trump's appointee, said: We can't build it from the U.S. side because it cuts us off from the river. Mexico will not build on their side. Where are we going to build it? In the middle of the river? And, mainly, because it is not very effective--you can tunnel under a wall.

We all want to prevent the scourge of drugs from coming across our border; so many of them come in little planes and boats. When they come by land, they are often hidden in parts of cars, in the carburetor or the exhaust tank--hidden. They will be able to come through because the wall obviously is going to have portals in it where trucks and cars can go through. So there is no money for the border wall, not one plug nickel.

We do have money, of course, for border protection, which both parties have always supported, and comprehensive immigration reform. Senator McCain and I, in a bipartisan bill supported by 68 Members of this body, made sure we had very strong border protection. But it has to be smart, it has to be cost effective, and it has to work.

Early on in this debate, Democrats clearly laid out our principles and insisted there would be no poison pill riders in this bill. We were able to knock out more than 160 poison pill riders from the final agreement, including the border wall, anti-labor measures that hurt the working people of America, and efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. So many women depend on these clinics for their health. And we were able to achieve significant investments in domestic programs that help the middle class and those struggling to get to the middle class.

Of course, this bill doesn't include all the things we wanted, but that is the nature of compromise. At the end of the day, this is an agreement that reflects our basic principles--something that both Democrats and Republicans can support. It took a few extra days, but we got a very good agreement.

I want to thank my friend, the majority leader, Senator McConnell. He worked very hard to get a good bill. I thank the chairmen and ranking members of the House-Senate Appropriations Committees, particularly Senator Leahy from Vermont in our Chamber. I thank Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi and all of their staff for working so hard last week and over the weekend to forge an agreement.

I must tell you, and I must tell my colleagues, the negotiations between our two sides were consistently productive and always respectful. Throughout the process, both Republican and Democratic Members and staff negotiated in good faith because we all wanted to get something done. I believe this experience bodes well for the 2018 budget and future negotiations between our two parties on appropriations. If we can show the same desire to get things done--the same mutual respect, the same ability to compromise--we can get a darn good budget for the year 2018 without the specter of a government shutdown hanging over the country's head.

I wish to say one final thing. It shows that when our Republican colleagues are willing to work with us, we can get things done. All too often--particularly from the White House--this attitude is just do it our way, my way or the highway. That is what happened on the healthcare bill--no consultation with Democrats. That is what happened on this little tax plan.

When you don't do things in a bipartisan way, it is much harder to pass things. It is much harder to get a product that is at the consensus of where America is. I hope that not only will this successful negotiation on the 2017 appropriations bill be a model for the 2018 bill but a broader model that we can all work together to get things done for the country we love.

I expect we will vote on this bill later this week, and I believe it will receive overwhelming support in this Chamber.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin) is necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, first, I wish to speak on the appropriations bill. We still have several issues to address. Our Republican friends, mostly in the House--I want to say that my friend the Republican leader is working hard to get a good bill done, and I appreciate that, but Republicans are holding us up on some critical poison pill riders.

We have made good enough progress. The four corners of the negotiations--the Appropriations chairmen and the ranking members in both Chambers and the House and Senate leadership were negotiating until 1:30 a.m. last night. I want to thank all of the staff who worked so hard and stayed up so late to bring us closer to an agreement. They have done heroic work, and I am happy to report that, if we get an agreement, we will see increases in NIH funding, year-round Pell grants, and housing assistance in the underlying omnibus bill.

We are willing to have a voice vote on a short-term extension of the government funding in the hopes that we can wrap this up early next week. As I said last night, there is still a handful of unresolved poison pill riders, fewer than there were yesterday at 6 o'clock because of the work they did overnight, but there are still some out there.

I want to reiterate the Democratic position. We don't want them-- zero. We are happy to pass a clean, bipartisan appropriations bill, which is the way this process is supposed to work. On the more controversial issues, we can have a debate in regular order. They shouldn't be stuck in these bills with no debate and no discussion and no votes--no regular order voting.

I am confident that we can get there if both sides realize that these important debates on policy should be left with the regular order process and in full view of the public.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, tomorrow will be President Trump's 100th day in office. This week, we Democrats have spent each day highlighting how this President has broken or failed to fulfill promise after promise to the working men and women of America on issue after issue-- on jobs and the economy, on healthcare, and on draining the swamp.

Earlier today, my colleagues talked about how the President's budget is another example of his tendency to promise one thing and then do another. Despite promising to address the issues of education, infrastructure, and scientific research, the President's budget takes a meat ax to the funding for NIH and NSF, vital school programs, and transportation grants.

This morning, I want to touch on a few examples of the broken promises that characterize the President's first 100 days, broken promises to the working men and women of America.

In the campaign, he ran as a populist against both the Democratic and Republican establishments. He is governing from the special interest- laden hard right--far, far away from where the American people want him to go.

In the President's scramble to show some progress before his 100th day, he has rushed to make progress on the wall, healthcare, and taxes. This desperate sprint has only left these three efforts more damaged than before.

First, on the wall, we were progressing nicely on a bipartisan agreement to keep our government open and running until the President stepped in to muck up the process by insisting on funding for his wall on the Mexican border. This is a huge broken promise. Every time he mentioned this wall on the campaign trail, he insisted that Mexico would pay for it. This week he demanded that the American taxpayers pay for it and threatened to shut down the government over it. The Americans know that $50 billion--if that is what the wall will cost--is far better spent laying broadband throughout America, rebuilding our roads and bridges--doing things that help Americans, not some ideological issue. Thankfully for the American people, the President failed.

Second, on healthcare, breaking his promise of insurance for everybody and lowering costs yet again, the President's healthcare bill rose from the dead and moved further to the right. It is hard to think of a bill worse than the first, but TrumpCare 2.0 has all the terrible aspects of round one, with even more cruelty placed on the American people. TrumpCare 2.0 would still leave millions without coverage, raise rates dramatically on 50- to 64-year-olds, and also take us back to the day when insurance companies could deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions. Once again, the President failed.

Finally, the President's tax plan was another huge broken promise. As a candidate, Trump promised to lower taxes for middle-class Americans, but his Secretary of Treasury can't even guarantee the plan will do so. The President could have worked with Democrats on taxes, but he chose to focus on the wealthy instead of the middle class.

To be clear, the President's tax plan is a wish list for billionaires, not a serious proposal. The Trump tax plan is designed to cut Trump's taxes, those of his Cabinet, and those people of his wealth, not the taxes of the middle class.

Thankfully, this plan is yet another dead-on-arrival Trump proposal that has been panned by both Democrats and Republicans. The Trump tax plan pretty much sums up the dynamic of the first 100 days--promise for the working class; deliver for the wealthy. Frankly, it is why he has made such little progress.

These three actions this week, in the President's rush to try to prove that the 100 days isn't as bad as everybody is saying--the wall, TrumpCare, and the Trump tax plan--have made our point that his 100 days have been a failure better than we ever could.

President Trump could have chosen to spend his first 100 days working with Democrats to find consensus on issues like jobs, trade, outsourcing, and infrastructure--issues on which we have some common ground. I told him many times that if he governed from the middle, his Presidency would have some success. Instead, he abandoned his campaign populism in favor of a hard-right, special interest-driven agenda and chose to go at it alone without consulting or so much as considering the minority party. That is why he has been unable to make any progress on healthcare. That is why he has been unable to make any progress on his wall. That is why he has been unable to achieve any significant piece of legislation. In fact, of the 10 pieces of legislation the President promised in his first 100 days, he has achieved none of them. These are the bills the President promised to get done in his first 100 days--not a one.

The President's achievements to date consist of Executive orders-- something he repeatedly derided during the Obama administration as an ineffective way to govern--and several bills passed under the Congressional Review Act. Keep in mind that many of these Executive orders simply direct Federal agencies to study issues. They are messaging tools that don't achieve anything. And many of the CRAs only benefit powerful special interests.

Compared to Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days in which FDR passed 76 pieces of legislation, this can hardly be considered a record of effectiveness. And the contrast between the President's boasts and his actual record through the first 100 days is even starker when you consider just how much this President promised to deliver all these things. There is an air of unreality when he says it is the best 100 days ever--compared to Franklin Roosevelt? Come on, give me a break.

In fairness, candidates make a lot of promises. That is the nature of campaigning. We know that. But this President has made particularly outlandish promises to working Americans, summed up by a line he said in his campaign. He said to his supporters: ``I will give you everything.''

President Trump promised working Americans a cherry pie, but after 100 days, he has delivered only crumbs. If the President wants his next 100 days to be better than his first, he needs to abandon the ``my way or the highway'' approach, abandon his special interest-driven, pro- wealthy agenda, and start pursuing policies that actually help the middle class and those struggling to get there. We are willing to work with him if he does. But if he stays on his current path, abandoning the working people of America for the very wealthy, the next 100 days will be just like the first: a series of broken and unfulfilled promises and very few results for America's working families.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.