Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am on the floor to join my colleagues Senator Blumenthal and those who will speak afterward.

It has been 113 days since the House of Representatives passed H.R. 8, the bipartisan background checks bill. We have a proposal before the Senate as well, and we are here to make a simple request: Bring this bill up for a debate. Let us do our work as the U.S. Senate on an issue that dominates headlines, dominates kitchen table conversation, and steals from this country 36,000 lives a year, 3,000 a month, and 100 a day. Those are the number of people who are killed by gunshot wounds.

Each one of their stories is different. These are mostly suicides; many of them are homicides; accidental shootings; some are mass shootings that make the headlines, but no one can escape this horror today.

In my son's school, he has to go through an active-shooter drill every year. Think about the trauma we put kids through preparing for a stranger to walk into their classroom with a weapon.

Just this past weekend, 32 people were shot and 6 were killed in 1 city alone, the city of Philadelphia, including 24-year-old Isiaka Meite, who died this weekend. He was at a cookout to celebrate a graduation and to also celebrate Father's Day, and he along with four teenagers were shot while out celebrating. That is the reality of what happened in just one single city.

So I get it that the bill that passed the House of Representatives may not be the bill that could get 60 votes in the Senate, but what is so offensive to many of us who have lived with this epidemic--it is personal to everyone here--because I don't think there is an individual in the Senate who hasn't had a one-on-one experience with a victim of gun violence or the mother or father of someone who was killed. What is so offensive is that we are not even trying. We are not even attempting to find common ground.

The Senate used to do this. The Senate used to take big important issues, put them on the floor, and spend at least a week's time trying to figure out whether you could get 50 or 60 votes. We are not doing that on anything in the U.S. Senate today. This place has become a complete, total legislative graveyard. There is really nothing more important to families out there than their ability to protect their loved ones from harm. The fact that we are not trying to find consensus on the issue of gun violence, that there is no interest to put H.R. 8 before this body so we can attempt to debate it, amend it, and come to some consensus in the Senate is unconscionable to many of us.

I want to narrow my remarks on how exceptional this issue is from a public opinion standpoint. I have been on the floor so many times before talking about the evidence that points us to why background checks are the most impactful intervention we can make.

In Missouri, where they got rid of their universal background checks requirement, and guns started to flow into the community through gun shows and internet sales without a background check, homicide rates went up by 40 percent and reports of Missouri-bought illegal guns found in other neighboring States skyrocketed.

It is the exact opposite effect in Connecticut. Years ago, Connecticut put in place a universal background check requirement tied to a local permit. Research showed that reduced our gun homicide rate by around 40 percent. So the evidence is there.

Let's just talk about public opinion on this matter because there is really nothing like background checks today in the public consciousness. Today polls will show that 97 percent of Americans believe that everybody should go through a background check before they purchase a weapon. There is nothing else in America today that gets 97 percent support. I mean, there is nothing else that gets 97 percent support. These are actual numbers. Apple pie is supported by 81 percent of Americans. Kittens only get 76 percent support from the American public today, and baseball, the American pastime, has the support of only two-thirds of Americans. Yet 97 percent of Americans believe someone should fill out a form proving they are not a criminal or seriously mentally ill before buying a gun. Universal background checks, while here in Congress seemingly a very controversial, politically charged issue, is more popular than apple pie, kittens, or baseball. These are actual numbers.

I don't mean to make light of this. I just need to drive home the point that no matter if you represent a Republican-leaning State or a Democratic-leaning State, a State that voted for Donald Trump or a State that voted for Hillary Clinton, your constituents want you to vote for universal background checks.

Let me just give the full panoply of public opinion on this. The number of people who support background checks is 97 percent today. That includes 90 percent of gun owners. I can back that up with plenty of anecdotal experience from my State. When I talk to gun owners, many who assume I have a hidden agenda and who believe I want to confiscate their guns--when I sit and talk to them about background checks, they say: Of course. It took me 5 minutes. I don't want people who are criminals to get their hands on guns. Everybody should go through a background check. Ninety percent of gun owners think this is a good idea.

This is not new data. Back in 2012, prior to the shooting in Sandy Hook, 74 percent of NRA members who were polled said they supported requiring criminal background checks. A year later, in April 2013, a Washington Post poll showed that 91 percent of Americans supported background checks.

In July of 2014, a Quinnipiac poll found that 92 percent of Americans supported background checks, including, in that poll, 86 percent of Republicans and 92 percent of Independents, 90 percent of men and 94 percent of women and 92 percent of gun-owning households. You don't get below 90 in any constituency.

In September 2015, another poll showed 93 percent of Americans support it and 90 percent of Republicans.

A CBS poll from 2016 shows that 89 percent of Americans supported it, including 92 percent of Republicans.

In March of 2017, a Pew Research Center poll found that 77 percent of gun owners and 87 percent of non-gun owners supported background checks.

Then the February Quinnipiac 2018 poll found 97 percent of Americans support background checks.

These are stunning numbers. They are stunning numbers. Again, they don't require everybody in this Chamber to support the bill that passed the House of Representatives, but it has been 113 days since H.R. 8 passed, which is broadly supported by 90 percent of Americans, and we still have not had that bill or any version of this measure brought up before this body for debate or an attempt to find consensus.

This is the running theme. We are talking a lot about the Senate becoming a graveyard for legislation because, in my lifetime, I have read stories about the Senate working through big issues, having serious debates--sometimes not coming to a completed product, sometimes ending up stymied but more than not figuring out a way where 50 or 60 votes could be achieved.

The House is passing legislation--healthcare legislation, anti- violence legislation, clean elections legislation--and all of it is coming here to die, not because we can't find consensus but because we don't even try to find consensus. In those 113 days, approximately, 11,000 people have been killed by guns. That is a number that finds no equal in any other high-income nation. I can talk to you about the variety of reasons for it. Some of them can be solved by us; some of them can't.

America is a unique nation with a unique history. We are, indeed, a melting pot of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. By virtue of that, we were likely going to be a more violent nation from the start. I admit that, but we have poured kerosene on this fire by having the loosest gun laws, a set of laws that are not supported by 90 percent of Americans who are asking us to do something different.

So we are on the floor today asking, begging, pleading with Senator McConnell and Republican leadership to at least bring H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, or some version of it before the Senate so we can have a debate on the most important, most vital issue to Americans today--their physical safety.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is a reason Article I of the Constitution is about the structures around the legislative branch and Article II of the Constitution imagines structures around the executive branch. It was the legislative branch that was most important to the Founders. It was rooted in the desires and dreams and priorities of the people. The way in which we structure ourselves and how we have become chosen to these bodies has changed over the years, but we are Article I for a reason.

The division of labor between the Article I branch and the Article II branch was not limited only to domestic policy. The Founding Fathers spent a lot of time talking about making sure that the Article I branch had a significant say, a dispositive say over foreign matters as well. That is why we have the power to declare war, not the executive. That is why we have the power of the purse when it comes to funding overseas activities, and it is the reason Congress gave itself the power to have oversight over the arms that we sell to the rest of the world. It is because these arms and the relationships that surround the sale of these arms are amongst the most important foreign policy decisions that we make.

We don't have to look far to understand how arms sales can go wrong very quickly. It was the arms that we sold either overtly or covertly to the rebel forces in Afghanistan that ended up becoming the arms used by some of the most vicious terrorist groups that eventually attacked the United States. It was arms that we sold to Syrian rebels that ended up in the hands of the extremist Sunni Muslim groups there that we were, in fact, fighting. So we have good reason for historically coming together, Republicans and Democrats, to ask these questions about arms sales.

I agree with Senator Cardin in that, if we let this emergency declaration go without protest, without a vote, I don't know whether we are ever going to get the power to oversee arms sales back as body, and it will be just another mechanism by which we fritter away our coequal responsibility to determine the course of America's role in the world to a growing imperial Presidency, especially when it comes to matters of foreign affairs.

I want to be clear with my colleagues and the Presiding Officer that I didn't just adopt this view when I became a member of the minority party. I didn't just decide that this was important when Donald Trump became President.

In fact, I brought a resolution of disapproval of this very similar arms sale under President Obama.

I note there were 24 Members of this body--20 or so of them Democrats--who voted to maintain our prerogative to vote against that arms sale. There were 20 members of the Democratic Party who were willing to vote, in a sense, to cancel out a sale that had been proposed by a Democratic President. So, on this side of the aisle, we have been willing to hold to this principle whether the President is of our party or is of a different party. It is because we think this is a nonpartisan principle.

I agree with Senator Menendez and Senator Cardin in that, if we don't take a positive vote here, we are potentially giving away this priority forever. This emergency that exists in the Middle East is not a new emergency. You could argue that if the emergency is related to Iranian behavior, it is one that has been created, in part, by this President's policies. It, frankly, invites any President, Democrat or Republican, to be able to just point to one of the various crises in the Middle East, of which there is always one, as the reason by which Congress just can't be bothered to weigh in on this particular arms sale.

Second and lastly, I want to quickly go over a case that I have made several times on the floor of the Senate. That is the case that, I think, is shared by most smart watchers of the Middle East, which is that there really is not a national security disaster for the United States that equals that of Yemen today.

First of all, it is a humanitarian nightmare, and it is not one of these humanitarian nightmares that was caused by a drought or a famine and over which the United States is just looking and watching. It is a humanitarian disaster that we are, in part, causing. We are selling the bombs that are being dropped in a country where 100,000 children under the age of 5 have died of starvation and disease, where tens of thousands have been killed by conflict and the bombs that are dropping. They are dropping on school buses, on Doctors Without Borders' facilities, on churches, and weddings. These are not all by mistake. Many of them are purposeful.

We have never seen a cholera outbreak like the one that we have today--never in our lifetimes. Just this week, the head of the U.N. relief mission there rushed here to Congress to give us devastating news. I don't know whether all of my colleagues were able to meet with her or get a briefing from her, but the head of the relief work in Yemen told us that there are a quarter million Yemenis who are so sick and so malnourished that they are beyond saving. A quarter million Yemenis are going to die this summer and this fall.

The Saudis and the Emiratis have stopped funding the relief work, and they have stopped funding the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme. They are all closing up shop. The conflict is bigger and in more places than ever before. The bombing has not stopped, and the money from the contestants is no longer flowing. This fall, we will see a catastrophic loss of life in Yemen that the world has not seen in a very, very long time.

Second, this is all coming back to haunt the United States, these bombs that are being dropped. This famine that exists is not seen as a Saudi-caused famine; it is seen as a U.S.-Saudi-caused famine. So these young Yemenis--and they are mostly young--are being radicalized against the United States, and there are willing places and willing contestants for their allegiance who are gobbling them up. Al-Qaida and ISIS have never been stronger in Yemen.

I will admit we have made some military progress against them in the last couple of years, but from the beginning of the conflict to today, they are much stronger than ever before, and they have more potential recruits than ever before because of our actions there.

Third, there is no change in battle lines. Sit down with the maps of what the Houthis control and what the coalition controls. They are, essentially, the same today as they were a year ago or 2 years ago. Senator Cardin is right in that there is no military solution here. The more bombs the coalition drops, the more mercenary armies they bring in from Sudan and other places, and the more the battle lines just harden.

Fourth, Iran gets stronger and stronger by the day. When this all started, the Houthis were not a proxy force of the Iranians. They relied on them. Yet, as the war goes on and our country stands unwilling to negotiate a peace and we remain only willing to fund the war, Iran gets deeper and deeper into the Houthis. When the political settlement is finally achieved, Iran will have much more of a footprint in Yemen than had we ended the war last year or the year before.

Lastly, just to underscore this point that others have made in the context of these gross, grave Saudi human rights abuses, whether it be the Americans who are there whom they are locking up today and torturing or whether it be the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi as reported on most recently by the United Nations, America just looks so fundamentally weak in the world. It looks so fundamentally weak in the world when the Saudis stick a finger in our eye by grabbing a U.S. resident and dismembering him in their consulate and then lie to us about it until the evidence is so incontrovertible that they have to tell the truth.

The result of that is we draw them closer in. Our Secretary of State goes to Saudi Arabia; it is not the Saudis who are coming to us. We offer them more nuclear secrets, and we give them more weapons. Then, inside this deal, not only do we give them weapons, but we actually grant them coproduction of some of the most sensitive technology that we own, which is of our smart bombs. That is the kind of deal that you do if the other party has leverage on you. We give coproduction to countries when we feel like we are the weaker party. We are giving the coproduction of smart bombs--we are going to vote on this tomorrow. We are giving the coproduction of smart bombs to a country that just chopped up an American resident into little pieces and lied to us about it. What a world we are living in.

It is important for this body to stand up for itself sometimes. It is not to stand up for your party, not to stand up for your particular principles or to stand up for yourself. I think I can make the case to vote for these resolutions based just on our institutional prerogative. The war itself is a national security nightmare for us.

I said this when President Obama was perpetuating it, and I say it here today. So, for me, this has nothing to do with who is in the White House. I believed this from the start, and many of us have believed it from the beginning. Even if you don't believe in standing up for our prerogative as an institution, standing up for American national security compels you to vote against these sales tomorrow.

I thank Senator Menendez for being such a strong, resolute voice not just for the principle of standing up for human rights but for the principle of standing up for this body. I am glad to stand by his side and by so many others who are sponsors of this, and I am glad that he has brought us to the floor this evening.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, last week, a man submitted his 2-weeks' notice to his place of employment in Virginia Beach before going there and shooting 12 people and injuring 4 others. He unloaded dozens of rounds indiscriminately. In addition to having two handguns, he had extended ammunition magazines and a suppressor to muffle the sound of gunfire.

This was the 100th mass shooting in America, coming on the 100th day of the year. This has become a regular part of life in the United States of America--individuals walking into churches and shopping malls and schools and places of employment and shooting indiscriminately such that dozens of innocent lives are lost. In most cases, the same kinds of weapons are used--semiautomatic rifles, extended magazines--weapons or components of weapons that are banned in other countries and that were banned in this country for a period of time because they were believed to have been so dangerous such that they should have been in the exclusive province of the military and law enforcement.

Mr. President, Ryan Keith Cox was 50 years old when he was shot and killed on May 31. He was known for his soft-spoken nature and his powerful singing voice in his church choir, and he was constantly affecting those around him with small but meaningful gestures of kindness.

The day that he was killed in Virginia Beach, a close coworker of Ryan's, Christi Dewar, was with him when the shooting started. Ryan told Christi and other colleagues to barricade themselves in the break room. Christi implored Keith to join them in the break room, but he said to her ``I have to go check on the other ones.'' Keith left and was soon shot by the gunman as he was assisting other coworkers in reaching safety.

Christi said:

Every time I was upset, [Ryan] would give me a [big] hug.

When I was upset about something, he knew exactly what to say

to make you smile. He's the type of person who you know would

lay down his life for someone, just like he did.

Bishop Williams of Faith World Ministries in Norfolk said that he had known Keith and his family for years. They were close, a very loving family, and had just been ``leaders in the church world,'' Bishop Williams said.

Ryan Keith Cox was 50 years old when he was shot in Virginia Beach.

Mr. President, Joshua Hardy was 2 years older. He was 52 years old. He had been working for 4\1/2\ years as an engineer and technician for the city of Virginia Beach. He was raised in Hampton Roads. He came from a really big family, and he was described by his friends and his family as being incredibly caring, especially about kids. He didn't have any children of his own, but he often watched over his nieces and nephews.

One of his nieces, Tasha, remembered that he was around a lot. ``He cared about me and all of my cousins,'' she said. ``He was like a father figure to me because my dad wasn't around.''

In 2011, Joshua actually published a book, called the ``ABC Book on Protecting Yourself from Strangers.''

The people he worked with remember being so impressed that Joshua had gone above and beyond the call. One of his colleagues in the engineering department, Larry Knight, gave a copy of the book to his daughter and his grandson. He remembers Joshua as just always having a smile on the job:

Joshua was one of the nicest men you would ever care to

meet. He was funny and kindhearted. [He] would do anything

for you.

Mr. President, LaQuita Brown was 39 years old. She was a public servant from Chesapeake, VA. She had worked in the public works department for more than 4 years. She was a right-of-way agent. Her friends called her ``Ms. Worldwide'' because she loved to travel. She had

been all around the world, and her social media was plastered with pictures of her travels.

Her father, as any father would be, is absolutely heartbroken by her death.

He said:

She was just everything. She was everything to me. I know

nobody's perfect--but from the time she was born, she had no

faults.

For the Brown family, the grief surrounding LaQuita's death comes on the heels of LaQuita's brother dying from a hit-and-run driver 3 years ago. Her father said that LaQuita helped him through the grief. ``She saved me,'' he said. ``I wouldn't have made it through that [without her].''

In 100 days into the year, we have had 100 mass shootings. It doesn't happen anywhere else in the world except in the United States of America. We can't claim to be helpless, and we can't claim to have no solutions because, if it only happens here and nowhere else, then there must be something different happening here. We can learn. We can adapt.

It has now been 100 days since the House of Representatives passed a universal background checks bill, a universal background checks bill that is supported by 90 percent of Americans and would have a significant downward effect on the number of people who are shot in this country.

We tend to pay attention as a nation and as a body only when something like Virginia Beach happens, when there is a mass shooting of an epic scale--when 5 or 10 or 20 people lose their lives at one time. Yet, since the House passed the universal background checks bill, 10,000 people have been shot and killed in America. That is a stunning number.

There have been 10,000 people shot and killed in America in just the 100 days since the House passed the universal background checks bill, but the vast majority of these individuals were not killed in mass shootings. Most of these were suicides. Most of these were individuals who had taken their own lives with weapons. Others were accidental shootings. Many of them were homicides.

The grief and the pain that comes with all of those is no different than the grief that LaQuita Brown's family is feeling right now. We should care about every single one of these deaths.

The reason I pegged this to the passage of the background checks bill is that we know that background checks save lives in States that have universal background checks, meaning, if you are getting a gun in a commercial sale, you need to prove that you are not a criminal or that you are not seriously mentally ill. In the States that have universal background checks, you have fewer suicides, and you have fewer homicides.

Connecticut is a perfect example. The research shows that once we passed our universal background checks requirement--and we did it quite a number of years ago--we saw a 40-percent reduction in gun homicides in our State. Similarly, when Missouri went from having a universal background checks requirement to its not having one, the State saw a 40-percent increase in gun homicides.

Not every single one of these 10,000 deaths was preventable, but many of them could have been. It is not that we don't know what to do, and it is not that we don't know what makes this country different; it is just that we are unwilling to take those steps.

Just this past weekend, 52 people were shot in communities across this country. There were 10 deaths from gunshot wounds in Chicago alone. These victims are just as worthy of remembering as the victims in Virginia Beach or in Sandy Hook or in Parkland.

Mr. President, Gwain Brown was 16 years old. He was a sophomore in high school in Chicago, IL, and he was all hyped up to throw himself the biggest 16th birthday party that his friends had ever seen. At the end of April, he was going to throw down. Yet, on April 1, he was standing in front of a gas station when a gunman opened fire and hit Gwain in the leg and the chest.

One of his basketball teammates thought the initial news of Gwain's death was an April Fools' joke as it happened on April 1. So, when he heard about it, he just went back to sleep.

His friends said Gwain was the life of the party and was so energetic. ``I was . . . with him . . . a week ago, and for that to happen in this time period, I'm just in shock.''

At a vigil, his elementary school principal read an excerpt of something he had written well in school.

Gwain wrote: ``I want to be a good son, always be there for my mom and always be there to take care of her.''

Mr. President, a couple weeks ago, Jaylin Ellzey was a freshman at Fenger Academy High School in Chicago. According to his uncle, Jacob, he was an outgoing, kindhearted kid. He lived with his mother. He had two sisters and three brothers.

Jaylin is not around anymore because he was one of those victims of gun violence in the city of Chicago.

His uncle said:

Summer in the city, it's just something different. Other

kids look forward to going to summer camp. He was just trying

to make sure he lived another day.

His uncle, Jacob, began tearing up as he recalled his favorite memory of Jaylin as a small child. Whenever Jaylin and his brother would come stay with their uncle, they would take a bath, and then they would nestle amongst the pillows and the blankets, waiting for their uncle to blast them with hot air from a blow dryer.

``He was just a lovable kid surviving his environment,'' said his uncle. ``And he knew about family. Family was always instilled in him.''

Since my life was changed in December of 2012, when 20 first graders were killed in Sandy Hook, I have tried to come down to the floor every couple weeks and tell the stories of victims of gun violence in this country to try to put some personality behind the 10,000 lives that have been lost in the last 100 days, and I told you about 5 of the victims this morning.

Our inaction is complicity. There are tough things, and then there are easy things. I get it that there are some anti-gun violence measures that I would support that are just too hot for some Republican Members, but I don't care what State you are from, 97 percent of your constituents, 80 percent of your constituents--the vast majority of your constituents--support expanding background checks to make sure that if you buy a gun online or you buy a gun at a gun show, you have to go through a 5-minute background check.

All of our constituents, no matter whether we represent a blue State or a red State, support extreme risk protection orders--the idea that you should be able to go to court when somebody is on the verge of lashing out against someone else or going to hurt themselves and take away their guns, at least temporarily. These are things that are not controversial anywhere, except for here, that we could pass.

Since the House passed the background check bill--by the way, with bipartisan support--10,000 people have died, but there have been 109 mass shootings. Thirty-one States have had a mass shooting; 166 kids have been killed or injured; 175 teenagers have been killed or injured.

I am on the floor today to send my heartfelt condolences to the families in Virginia Beach who continue to mourn yet another mass shooting. I express, as I always do, my condolences to the families of gun violence throughout this country. Eighty to ninety people lose their life every day from a gunshot wound.

I am also here today to ask my colleagues to think about why we continue to refuse to have a debate on a piece of legislation that the House passed 100 days ago in a bipartisan fashion.

Even if you don't love the version of the background checks bill that the House passed, bring your own version to the floor--bring a different bill that will address the epidemic of gun violence in this country. All I ask is that you don't do nothing; that you stop your absolute silence in the face of this epidemic of slaughter.

Let the Senate be the Senate. I heard there was a time some years ago when the U.S. Senate actually debated legislation. I have read in the history books that this is supposedly the greatest deliberative body in the world. We are doing no deliberation here. Bill after

bill passes the House of Representatives. None of them come before the Senate for a vote--no healthcare bills, no immigration bills, no anti- gun violence bills.

I get it that the bills that pass the House probably can't pass a Republican-led Senate, but why are we not even trying? Who is in charge here? The special interests who want nothing to happen, the gun lobby, the health insurance companies or are we in charge? We are the ones who were elected. We are the Members of the U.S. Senate. We could choose to have these debates, hash out our differences, and see if there is a proposal that 60 of us could agree on that would do something about this unacceptable level of gun violence that plagues this Nation on a daily basis.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted for the remainder of the day to my fellow, Dr. Kali Cyrus, and that they be granted for the rest of the year to the interns in my office, named Jyot Singh, Darcy Farwell, Alexandra Hartman, Jordan Sicklick, Holly McGrath, Jordan Adjepong, and Cady Stanton.

Mr. President, the House recently passed a piece of legislation called the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act. The substance of this legislation would prevent a Trump administration rule from going into effect that would allow for States to license the kind of insurance plans that Senator Baldwin was referring to. These are plans that do not cover preexisting conditions or the essential healthcare benefits.

I am going to offer right now a unanimous consent request to proceed to immediate consideration of this bill. I suspect it will be objected to. After an opportunity for Republicans to object, I will speak to the merits of this legislation. So let me start with a request to bring this legislation that will protect people with preexisting conditions and the essential healthcare benefits to the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. Again, I share in Senator Baldwin's disappointment that we can't move immediately to this legislation. This isn't a political game. These are individuals all across the country who are relying on us to make sure that they are not subject to the abuses of the market. They are relying on us to make sure we don't return to the days in which insurance companies could prevent you from getting healthcare simply because you were sick or return to the days when you bought an insurance product and then it didn't turn out to ultimately be insurance.

Let's be clear. The waiver that the President has allowed States to take advantage of would absolutely--it would by definition of the rule--allow for States to waive the preexisting condition requirement. The rule itself says that the innovation that happens at the State level does not have to comply with the essential healthcare benefits requirement. It says in the rule that you do not have to comply with preexisting conditions requirements. That is the reason that they are so cheap. So I am at a loss as to why we have Republicans on the floor saying that preexisting conditions will be protected under this rule. That is not true. The rule says that States do not have to comply with the preexisting requirement. It says that States do not have to cover essential healthcare benefits. That is why these junk plans are attractive, because they aren't actually insurance, and they are only insurance for people who are at the time very healthy.

We have to get on the same page here. We have to be reading from the same script. The fact of the matter is, the definition of the rule allows for protections for people with preexisting conditions to be discriminated against.

I am sorry that we weren't able to bring up this piece of legislation because healthcare insurance should be healthcare insurance. And what we worry about are two things. First is that by allowing for the marketing of these junk plans, you are going to have all sorts of people who today aren't sick jumping into those plans, coming off of the plans that protect people with preexisting conditions. The people who are going to be left behind on those regulated plans are people who are sick, people who have preexisting conditions. So you are, all of a sudden, bifurcating the insurance market. You are going to have a market for people who are currently healthy, and then you are going to have a market for people who are sick or have ever had a preexisting condition.

You do not have to be an actuary and you don't have to have taken classes in healthcare insurance economics to know that when that happens, rates skyrocket for people who have a preexisting condition-- for the millions of people around this country who have had a serious diagnosis at some point during their life.

So as you sell these junk plans, there is no way but for costs to go up. That is on top of the increases we saw last year. Last year, insurance companies priced in the costs of Trump administration sabotage. They priced into their premiums the attacks on our healthcare system from the Republican Congress.

In many States, we saw insurance plans pushing 60 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, 80 percent increases in premiums. Now on top of that, for sick people, for people with preexisting conditions, the rates are going to be even bigger because of the flight of those without preexisting conditions into marketplaces set up specifically for them.

The second thing we worry about is that these junk plans market themselves as insurance, but they aren't. Here is a list of things that I would generally consider to be covered under my insurance plan.

If I bought an insurance plan, if I handed over a check to the insurance company, I kind of think that if I go to the emergency room, I am not going to have to pay for it out of my pocket. I am thinking to myself: Well, you know what, if I need prescription drugs, they are going to cover some of that. Well, if I have a mental health diagnosis, doesn't insurance cover my head as well as the rest of my body?

These are the things that I would assume that insurance covers, but these junk plans don't cover these things.

Junk plans do not cover trips to the emergency room. Junk plans often don't cover hospitalizations. They don't cover prescription drugs. Almost none of them cover maternity care. Your checkups might not be covered

under a junk plan. Preexisting conditions will cost you more. Contraception isn't going to be in lots of these plans. They are not required to cover lab services or pediatrics. Mental health isn't going to be in many of these junk plans. As for rehab services, if you get injured, you are not going to find those in some of these plans. And if you have a chronic disease, there is nothing in the law that requires treatment for those to be covered.

So all of a sudden, as for the things you thought insurance covered, they don't cover it, and you have been paying a premium for years. Then, when you finally need access to the system, it is not there. That is what these plans can do. That is what the law and the Trump administration rule allows States to license as insurance. And that is why we are on the floor today, to ask--to plead--to our colleagues to bring legislation before this body, either Senator Baldwin's legislation or Representative Kuster's legislation that has already passed the House, that would stop these junk insurance plans from being sold all around this country, which will trick many Americans into believing they have insurance when they don't and will dramatically raise the cost of care potentially in many States for people who have serious preexisting conditions.

I am not surprised at the objection to both of our unanimous consent requests. Nevertheless, I am disappointed in it. We will continue to be down here on the floor for as much time as it takes to try to rally the whole of this body to protect people with preexisting conditions, to fight back against the sabotage of the Affordable Care Act and the healthcare system by this President. Hopefully, one day we will be successful.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, across America, there are 130 million individuals who have a preexisting condition. This means individuals have a diagnosis, an illness, a medical condition that without the Affordable Care Act would likely mean they were priced out of insurance because the costs associated with their illness are so high that no insurer would provide them coverage or the cost of insurance is much higher than those who don't have that illness or that condition.

These preexisting conditions don't discriminate. They affect Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, people who watch FOX News, people who watch MSNBC. This isn't a partisan issue; preexisting conditions affect everybody.

In my State, give or take, 522,000 people have preexisting conditions, and I talk to them every time I go back to Connecticut. I remember 2 years ago when I was walking across the State--something I do every year. I take about a week in the summer, and I walk from one end of the State to the other end--there were families who would find out on social media where I was going to be walking that day and pre- position

themselves hours ahead of time by the side of the road so they could tell me about their diagnosis. One young woman was sobbing on the side of the road in Meriden, CT, as she explained to me her lupus diagnosis and how, without the Affordable Care Act and the protections it provides her, she would not have insurance; she would not be able to afford the medications that keep her well and alive; and her life would be ruined. Those individuals are freaking out today because they have watched this President--and frankly this Republican Congress--use every power at their disposal, every tool in their toolkit to try to take away these protections for people who are sick, for people who, through no fault of their own, just have higher medical bills than the rest of us. They don't feel like they should be discriminated against or forsaken by the health insurance marketplace because of their unfortunate diagnosis.

The latest assault on people with preexisting conditions comes through an effort by the administration to allow States to sell insurance plans that don't cover basic medical needs, plans that would allow for a skimpy set of benefits to be sold out on the insurance marketplaces. Now, admittedly, that might be good news for pretty healthy people who don't want to pay for a full insurance product because they think they don't need it.

The first problem with that is you are only healthy until you are not healthy. The second bigger problem is, when all the healthy people go to these skimpy plans--sometimes called junk plans--and all the people with preexisting conditions get left behind on the regulated plans, where insurance is real, where it covers everything you need, costs go down for the healthy people, and they go through the roof for the sick people, which is the entire problem we were trying to solve in 2009 and 2010. It is, in fact, the problem the Republicans say repeatedly out on the campaign trail and back in their districts and States that they want to solve too. I don't know that I have met a Republican Senator who doesn't say that they don't think people with preexisting conditions should be discriminated against. Yet this rule the administration is proposing is going to allow States to do just that. It will allow for a ``have and have not'' insurance system, in which people with preexisting conditions are charged more and people without preexisting conditions are charged less.

My intention was to come down to the floor today and offer a unanimous consent request to get us on the road to solving this latest assault on people with preexisting conditions. Let me explain to you what my request was going to be. I understand there are Republican objections, and there is not the ability to object today when I make this request, so I will reserve the right to make that request until early next week.

Here is the substance of the request I was planning to make today. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a piece of legislation called the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act, and what this legislation would have done--and will do, if passed and signed by the President--is prevent HHS from taking any action to implement the administration's waivers for States to set up these junk plans, these skimpy plans.

It is in keeping with the intent of the Affordable Care Act, which is to allow flexibility for States--there is an ability under the Affordable Care Act for States to innovate and to be flexible, but the Affordable Care Act says you can't do that in a way that hurts consumers. You can't do that in a way that provides less coverage to consumers.

The rule the Trump administration is proposing, in many of our minds, is a violation of the Affordable Care Act in and of itself, which is still the law of the land, but this piece of legislation would clarify that you cannot allow for the development and widespread sale of these junk insurance plans without dramatically harming the healthcare of the 130 million Americans who have preexisting conditions.

So my intent was to ask for a unanimous consent request to bring this bill for a vote in the Senate. I will do that next week.

At some point, we have to act like we actually are the U.S. Senate. It is not enough to just say over and over again that you support people with preexisting conditions and then do nothing as the administration launches a daily, nonstop, unending, unceasing, relentless effort to destroy healthcare for people with preexisting conditions.

This is the latest assault on people with preexisting conditions, but it stands in a very long, ongoing line of actions by this administration, backed up by Republicans in the Congress, to try to reduce coverage and increase costs for people with preexisting conditions.

It started, of course, with the whole repeal effort, which would not have replaced the Affordable Care Act with anything meaningful. The bill that passed the House of Representatives would have stripped healthcare away from 30 million Americans. The tax bill that included a portion of healthcare repeal that was passed and signed by the President eliminates healthcare for 13 million Americans, and many of those have preexisting conditions.

As we speak today, the administration is readying to go to court with a whole bunch of Republican attorneys general to ask the Federal judicial system to overturn protections for people with preexisting conditions. So having failed to get the entirety of the bill repealed through the Congress, the administration now is going to court to try to get the protections for people with preexisting conditions repealed.

Once again, this Congress, this Senate is silent on that case. We have offered another piece of legislation to stop that lawsuit from going forward. We don't have any takers on the Republican side. This assault is real. I didn't make it up. It is not imagined. If this court case that the Trump administration is pushing succeeds, overnight the entirety of the Affordable Care Act will be invalidated, and there is no plan to replace it.

If these junk plans go into effect--listen, maybe I will be wrong. I hope I am wrong. Maybe there will not be a flight of people to these skimpy plans, but much of the analyses I have seen suggests that will happen. If it does, there is just no way, other than for the cost to go up for everybody who is left behind on the regulated plans. I don't know about you, but when I talk to my folks living paycheck to paycheck in Connecticut, they don't have a lot of room in their budget for increased premiums for healthcare. They are maxed out as it is.

So I will stand down for now, but I will be back early next week to offer this unanimous consent request. I hope, if my colleagues turn it down, if they don't want to bring up a piece of legislation that would stop this latest regulatory assault on the Affordable Care Act, that they will come to the table with other ideas as to how to protect people with preexisting conditions from this campaign of sabotage by the administration; that they will finally recognize that this assault on the Affordable Care Act in the court system is a really awful precedent to set.

It is going to come back and bite all of us as legislators if it is successful. Without any real hope of a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, it leads to a humanitarian disaster in which 20 million to 30 million people lose insurance because of it.

This is as important as it gets. There is very little that matters to people more than their health and their healthcare, and I hope that possibly next week we can come together as a body and finally do something about the administration's attempt to take away these protections for sick people and people with complicated diagnoses all across the country.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to celebrate the 54th anniversary of Head Start and the 25th birthday of Early Head Start.

Head Start and Early Head Start provide essential early childhood education services to almost 6,000 low-income children and families in Connecticut. In addition, across the 38 Connecticut centers, over 7,000 children have been able to access healthcare services, 2,000 families have gotten help through crisis intervention programs, and over 800 parents advanced their own education. For these families and

thousands of others across the country, Head Start is a lifeline for struggling families and a stepping stone out of poverty.

Fifty-four years since its founding, the work of Head Start and Early Head Start remains paramount. Children in poverty are more than twice as likely to suffer traumatic childhood experiences such as abuse, neglect, homelessness, and parental substance abuse. Exposure to these kinds of trauma results in greater likelihood of chronic disease, mental illness, and substance use disorders, as well as decreased likelihood of high school graduation and increased likelihood of involvement with the juvenile justice system. We know that children having access to safe and stable environments mitigates these effects and that Head Start is on the frontline of providing children with nurturing relationships.

This Saturday, not only do we celebrate the Head Start program reaching another milestone, but we celebrate the hundreds of thousands of dedicated Head Start staff and educators who work hard every day to support and teach the next generation.