Floor Statements

Mr. President, keeping quantity and quality of healthcare in rural America is a constant responsibility of most Senators, because every Senator, even if you come from a high population State, you still have a lot of rural areas.

So one of the things that I have been interested in is keeping hospital services available in rural areas, even if they have a hard time keeping their beds as part of their hospital.

So, in December 2020, I was proud to sponsor and to pass into law the voluntary rural emergency hospital program under Medicare. CMS implemented this program 3 years later, in 2023.

The rural emergency hospital program allows rural hospitals to voluntarily right-size their healthcare infrastructure, while maintaining essential medical services for their rural communities. It gives these hospitals the flexibility to operate without hospital inpatient services, while still retaining a 24/7 emergency department, ambulance services, outpatient services, and more.

Today, 42 rural hospitals in 17 States have transitioned to a rural emergency hospital model and, hence, are still operating. Some States are still working to establish the necessary hospital licensing flexibility so that they can participate in this program.

Rural emergency hospitals have been beneficial for many rural communities, and I want to give you three examples.

In Friend, NE, going to the rural emergency hospital model has ``meant a lifeline'' for that community.

In Union Springs, AL, the rural emergency hospital model has allowed their hospital ``to remain open instead of leaving a void in the community.''

In Scotland, SD, their rural emergency hospital will ``enhance local health services.''

I will submit a longer list of examples of how rural emergency hospitals have benefited rural communities to date.

I look forward to more rural hospitals converting in the near future.

Given it has been 5 years since the program became law, I would like to better understand the challenges rural hospitals and communities face when considering rural emergency hospital programs. So I am pursuing getting that information because I am committed to ensuring the rural emergency hospital remains a viable tool for rural hospitals and their communities.

I recently sent letters to existing rural emergency hospital CEOs and other rural healthcare leaders to get this information. I look forward to their feedback and continuing to strengthen rural healthcare, and I will keep my constituents in Iowa and my Senate colleagues so informed.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we Senators disagree on a lot of issues in this body. However, there is one topic that we should all agree on, and that is the effectiveness of the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that they have awarded the contract to run the hotline to a new contractor-- very good news. The Trump administration moved on from the current contractor, Polaris.

On March 5 this year, I sent a letter to HHS. The letter makes public alarming whistleblower disclosures. These disclosures allege that Polaris failed to report tips of human trafficking, including child sex trafficking, to law enforcement.

On July 29 of this year, HHS sent me a letter confirming that Polaris had failed to report some tips to law enforcement.

For example, an audit of 294 cases was carried out. According to HHS, of the 294 cases, 4 trafficking cases weren't correctly reported because of clerical error, and in 24 trafficking cases, staff managing the hotline didn't follow reporting protocol.

That is nearly a 10-percent failure rate in a sample of 294 cases. Now, project that failure rate to the hotline receiving nearly 1.5 million tips.

So, as you can see, the Trump administration has thus far shown an aggressive commitment to fighting human trafficking.

This Senator will continue his oversight of the hotline and its new contractor to ensure that women and children who fall victim to these horrific acts have a way out.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about the Pentagon's unending audit failures and to once again call for corrective action.

People who have been in the Senate a while know that I have been continually talking about this issue, many times--so many; I don't know how many--but I think it is something I need to keep beating the drum about.

The fact is that the Pentagon is the only Government Agency that can't get what is called a certified audit or sometimes referred to as a clean audit--the only Agency of the Federal Government.

I have been conducting oversight on this issue since the audit began in 1993 and have spoken about it many times. Today, I provide my colleagues with a new update.

Recent Government Accountability Office testimony may have pinpointed the root cause audit problem. It is called the universe of transactions. It is a special bucket of transactions manually transferred from several hundred systems. It should play a pivotal role in the audit process.

In theory, the universe of transactions is an accurate record of every transaction in financial statement balances. Auditors should be able to follow audit trails to verify samples taken from those balances.

In practice, it doesn't work. The data is inaccurate and incomplete. Transactions can't be matched. Audit trails don't exist, so audits fail.

I found essentially the same disconnect in the inspector general's first audits 30 years ago. Those audits contain these telling words: ``No audit trail found.'' It is the same old problem--no controls over transactions then; none today.

The Marine Corps recently developed a workaround for the no-audit- trail. It is a predicament that needed attention, and they gave it some attention. As a result of giving it some attention, the Marine Corps earned two clean opinions, but they did it the hard way.

The marines had to create missing audit trails with labor-intensive, pick-and-shovel work. They dug up, ran down, matched, and verified each transaction. Obviously, the marines deserve credit for a job done well.

But manual audit trail reconstruction is not a very cost-efficient alternative to modern accounting systems. Fully integrated systems are the solution. They are called for in the Chief Financial Officers Act that mandated the audits that I am talking about.

Instead of investing in modern systems, Pentagon bureaucrats keep pouring millions year after year into ancient systems that belong in the junk heap.

Thirty-five years and billions of dollars down the rat hole, and the DOD is still scratching their heads, wondering how to control transactions. Surely, they know traders solved that problem thousands of years ago when records were first kept on clay tablets.

So why is the Pentagon still in the stone age? It is due to incompetence or deliberate bureaucratic foot-dragging or whatever.

Getting a handle on every transaction is the key to success, and therein lies the rub. Integrated systems are needed, but there is relentless resistance to acquiring them.

I call on Secretary of War Hegseth to create a team of independent system experts to examine and resolve this problem. Controlling transactions is the heart and soul of every accounting system--except, as you see, at the Pentagon. Until that truth is accepted, clean opinions will remain nothing but a pipe dream.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as we all know, the last of the living hostages taken into Gaza by terrorists on October 7, 2 years ago, have now been returned to their families. We can all say: Praise the Lord.

I think we all know that this would not have happened without the persistent and skilled leadership of President Trump. The deal that President Trump was able to strike involves a cease-fire and withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, with Hamas not allowed to resume control of Gaza.

Remember, the only reason the Israeli Defense Forces entered Gaza in the first place was because Hamas planned a horrific attack on peaceful Israeli communities, killing over 1,200 people, including 46 Americans.

The Israeli Defense Forces have found written instructions from the leaders of Hamas in Gaza instructing terrorists to broadcast their sadistic torture and killing of Israeli civilians to strike fear in the hearts of Israelis and to destabilize the country. Hamas also thought those images would set off an uprising in the West Bank and with fellow Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the region, with the ultimate goal of destroying Israel.

Once again, Israel destroyed those who sought Israel's destruction.

I have sympathy for everyone who has suffered from Hamas's rule of Gaza, Israelis and Palestinians alike, and other people as well. However, those who called for a unilateral cease-fire without the release of all hostages, while leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza, cannot call themselves anti-war because this would reward Hamas for starting that war.

What made this cease-fire possible was President Trump's diplomatic efforts with others in the Arab world to pressure Hamas into accepting that they must give up power.

It is vital that our partners in the Arab world and throughout the West maintain a consistent message that terrorism will not be rewarded.

Israel is here to stay. Those who dreamed of its destruction need to accept that fact--that Israel is here to stay--and learn to live in peace. This is the only way for real and lasting peace.

And while I am at it, we ought to think of another Trump success in his first term, and that is the Abraham Accords.

If the principle behind the Abraham Accords can be accepted by other Arab nations, besides peace, there will be a great economic benefit to all nations.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, once again, in the Chaplain's prayer, he brought up the issue before the U.S. Senate and presented it to the Lord about the problems created by the shutdown of the government. Not only are the employees of the U.S. Senate not being paid and 750,000 civil servants are furloughed without pay, but we are also beginning to read in business pages of the newspapers about the impact on the economy. For the State of Iowa, the White House Office of Economic Policy said that, weekly, it was doing damage to the economy of my State of Iowa of $137 million.

So we have to get the government back to work because it costs money to shut the government down, and it costs money to open the government up. The government is supposed to be a service to the American people, besides protecting the American people, and quite frankly, none of that can be done when it is shut down.

United States Postal Service

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak about some information that I got from whistleblowers the first time on September 23 of last year. At that time, I spoke to my fellow Senators, making public very concerning whistleblower allegations.

The whistleblower alleged to my office that the Postal Service, which is an independent government Agency, had hired registered sex offenders as

mail carriers. So I investigated to find out how bad this problem was at that Agency.

To date, the Postal Service has refused to provide a list of names of registered sex offenders. The Postal Service has provided some information about the number of sex offenders working at the Postal Service.

On July 7, 2025, the Postal Service confirmed that in 2024, the Agency employed 150 registered sex offenders. The letter said that of the 150, 102 had ``access to the public.'' Of the 102, 77 were mail carriers.

News even more alarming in that letter: The Postal Service doesn't track the routes used by employees who are registered sex offenders. We don't even know the locations where these carriers deliver their mail. The Postal Service also doesn't track the crimes that led to an employee's registration on the sex offender register.

On August 7, 2025, I wrote the Postal Service requesting additional information. So this is what I want to know about how the Postal Service ensures our communities are safe and what the crimes were, and that is just among other questions I have. To date, I have received no response.

When it comes to this matter, our communities deserve much better than what they are getting from the Postal Service, and we have to make sure that the Postal Service is as protective of people's safety as any other Agency of government.

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Majority Leader

Mr. President, Monday of this week, I invited eight of my colleagues to be briefed on an issue that we just found out about from Deputy Director Dan Bongino. What we learned is very disturbing and outrageous political conduct by the Biden FBI.

As most of you know, this year, Senator Johnson and I made records public relating to our investigation of Arctic Frost. Arctic Frost was the FBI investigation that became Jack Smith's elector case against then-citizen Trump. We have shown that partisan FBI agents and the Department of Justice prosecutors created and advanced that matter, and they did so in violation of FBI rules. We have shown that the FBI expanded the investigation to almost 100 Republican groups and individuals, even including Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. And we have learned that Arctic Frost included the targeting of at least eight Republican Senators--the same ones that I invited to that briefing.

In 2023, the Biden FBI sought and obtained cell phone tolling data about my colleagues' personal phones. We have been told the date range for that data was January 4 through January 7, 2021. This is obviously an outrage, obviously an unconstitutional breach. Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel need to hold accountable those that are involved in that serious breach and wrongdoing, and I am confident that those two officials will do just that.

Now, based on the evidence to date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by Federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than the Nixon Watergate scandal.

I have also been informed that Arctic Frost documents, like the one targeting Republicans, have been hidden in prohibited access files.

Now, let me tell you what I think a prohibited access file is. It might be legitimate for national security. It might be legitimate for intellectual property. It may be legitimate for the personal privacy of American citizens. But it should never be used for what it was used for: to hide things from the public that would embarrass bureaucrats and government officials and maybe even political officials.

As I have made public through my oversight, when files are in a prohibited access file, they receive what the FBI calls a false negative search result on their database. So that means that if you ask for emails or some records of the FBI, and they type it in, it doesn't show up, so that it doesn't exist. Clearly, this impedes responses to congressional oversight and court cases. It allows for misconduct.

Because of whistleblowers informing me of this serious problem, the FBI is now reviewing these file types, and only because of that review, the document about targeting eight Republican Senators was located.

Lastly, I started the Arctic Frost investigation in July 2022. Now, it has taken years to get records and to advance the investigation. Sometimes my oversight work is done quietly, outside of the public eye, but what the public is now seeing is the importance of congressional oversight and the importance of whistleblowers exposing government misconduct. My whistleblowers deserve great thanks for what they have helped to expose.

We were all shocked and outraged by the unjustified fishing expedition Deputy Director Bongino informed us about. The FBI told us in our briefing that not a single one of my colleagues on the list was under investigation, so the FBI did its dirty digging without legitimate predication.

We expect Patel and Bongino to shut this abuse down and do it immediately, and I want my colleagues and Iowans to know that I won't give up until I have followed all the facts and accountability is delivered for the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Mascott nomination.

Mr. President, today, we are going to move to our first vote on Professor Jennifer Mascott's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I want to take a few minutes to express my support for her nomination and to urge my colleagues to vote accordingly.

Bipartisanship in this body has become, unfortunately, rare. Our government shut down because of partisan obstruction, and even the few instances of bipartisanship in our committee have been condemned by leftist, dark money groups, such as Demand Justice. The situation is bad for our country and really bad for the American people.

Putting high-quality judicial nominees on the bench to serve the American people should be something that unites this body. In fact, in the Biden administration, that happened. Over 80 percent of the judicial nominees in that administration received bipartisan support on the floor.

By contrast, this Congress, only 20 percent of the Trump nominees have had bipartisan support.

I encourage my colleagues to ignore the pressure from inflammatory progressive groups like Demand Justice and to recognize Professor Mascott's tremendous qualifications.

Professor Mascott is a law professor at Catholic University. She is so beloved by her students. She has had a very distinguished career as a public servant and has impeccable professional qualifications.

Just as an example, as a law student at George Washington University, she earned a recordbreaking 4.22 GPA. Her professors even wrote to the Judiciary Committee prior to her hearing to explain that these professors often thought that her exam answers were better than their own answer keys.

It is no surprise, then, that she went on to clerk for two Supreme Court Justices.

Since her time as a clerk, she has grown into an impressive and nationally influential scholar. Justices of the Supreme Court have cited her scholarship eight times and even mentioned her by name in oral arguments.

She is also well known and well respected by our own Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee has called on Professor Mascott repeatedly to testify about some of the toughest constitutional and statutory questions. She has also filed amicus briefs on behalf of Members of the committee in very important cases. We trusted her judgment then, and we can surely trust that judgment now.

I am confident that Professor Mascott will make an outstanding judge, and I know that she will serve the people of Delaware and the circuit with distinction.

President Trump made an excellent selection in Professor Mascott, and I hope my colleagues will join me in voting to support her nomination so she can serve on the Third Circuit.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is a not-so-perfect storm brewing for farmers in my State of Iowa and in agricultural States generally. Many factors are coming together--and all at once--like low grain prices, high input costs, consolidation in the industry, and uncertainty from trade and tariffs. It is beginning to look more and more like the 1980s to me.

One thing that concerns me is the lowering of land values in Iowa. Land value has gone down 3 percent since last year and down 5.4 percent since the same time in 2023. That is not as bad as it was in the 1980s. There was a very catastrophic drop in prices compared to what I just quoted you for now. And in the 1980s, that didn't happen overnight; it kind of crept up on us very slowly. We don't want to let that happen again, so we need to be vigilant today.

When it comes to land prices, as you know, if farmers lose too much land value, they won't be able to leverage against it for debt to cover their expenses. That happened in the 1980s, and as I said, it kind of crept up on us at that particular time, and Congress didn't see it coming soon enough. Congress waited too long to act. Farmers had been pleading with Congress for 2 or 3 years in the 1980s before Congress was able to pass some help for the farmers. In the meantime, farmers went bankrupt, and a lot of farmers were lost due to suicide.

Now, that may sound like everyday business, but if you have been operating a family farm and you were the fifth or sixth generation doing that and you lost it because of bankruptcy, low prices, land values going down, you become depressed and ashamed, and I am sure that is why a lot of people committed suicide.

Now we have a farm safety net in place. We have tried to be on top of farmers' mental health to a greater extent than in the past. So hopefully all these bad things that happened in the 1980s won't happen again. But I am here saying I don't want to see it happen again. We can't be complacent, knowing the history of Congress being too slow to act. So Congress ought to act now, before it is too late.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, for the third day, we heard an opening prayer of the Chaplain praying that the government will open up and we in Congress would find a solution to keep the government open. That will help the 750,000 executive branch employees who are on furlough without pay; that will help the congressional staff who are working without pay, help the economy--something we should be doing.

You have heard me say several times how ridiculous it is to shut the government down because it costs money to shut the government down. It costs money to open the government up. The government is supposed to be a service to the American people, and you can't serve the American people if the government is not functioning properly.

Mr. President, 2 days ago, I spoke about the potential shutdown of government. I am going to repeat what I said then, but the shutdown of government is now a fact. I said it costs money to shut the government down; it costs money to open the government up.

The government is supposed to be a service to the American people, protect the American people, and you can't do either if the government is not functioning.

You heard the Chaplain speaking about prayer and the government shutdown. Prayer is in order for almost anything, but if common sense would prevail here in the U.S. Senate, 100 Senators would take care of this issue with or without prayer. On the other hand, if people want to pray for the opening of government and the serving of people, that is perfectly appropriate, and, hopefully, it works.

But all 100 of us Senators ought to be ashamed that the government is in shutdown. It affects the United States. Each of our staffs will not be paid during this period of time, and I will bet each Senator will expect their staffs to be on duty since the Senate is going to be in session. We should think about the people we are hurting.

Particularly, Democrats who want to speak, seem to speak more for Federal workers now on furlough, not being paid, ought to think about their support for them that is voiced almost

every day and the harm that will come because this is the Democrat shutting down the government.

Thirteen times during the Biden administration, they voted for a clean continuing resolution, and this is exactly what we are asking they vote for this time.

Agricultural Economy

Mr. President, I come to the floor, once again, to speak about the agricultural economy and trade and tariffs in this particular instance today.

You have heard me talk about the high input costs that farmers are facing. I concluded my remarks 2 days ago by saying farmers need immediate relief. This is especially true if it is the Federal Government's action that has caused the economic hardships. I am going to speak about some of that Federal Government action.

It happens that fertilizer is one of the largest expenses in growing crops. Most fertilizers used in the United States are imported. The tariffs on fertilizers have sent shock waves throughout the supply chains. Most often, those waves come crashing down on the farmers who bear the brunt of the increased cost of fertilizers.

Tariffs not only cause farmers to pay more for their inputs, but they also have seen tariffs reduce markets for U.S. farm products.

Last week, when the Argentinians reduced export tariffs, they sold $7 billion worth of soybeans in just a few days to China. It happens that China has not bought a single one of American soybeans this year, and that is why farmers are losing $2 a bushel on soybeans.

Taking away tariffs on ag inputs and striking meaningful deals to open markets would send immediate signals to the ag economy, helping farmers' bottom lines.

Yesterday, former Senator David Perdue, now Ambassador to China, visited the U.S. Senate, and I had the opportunity to express my views about the situation with China not buying soybeans. He says he hears it; that it is the No. 1 issue when it comes to talking about trade negotiations with China.

He also mentioned something that I think I need to bring to our attention because it is something that China promised to do in 2019. It was something that Trump, in his first term, negotiated with China; that they had to buy a certain amount of agricultural products from the United States. During the period of time that Trump was President, they filled about two-thirds of that agreement. But the Biden administration came into power and didn't follow up on the enforcement of that 2019 Trump agreement with China to buy agricultural products.

So besides hoping that Trump makes a quick deal with China, settles our trade disputes so they will buy soybeans, I hope that maybe President Trump today can follow up on the shortcomings of the Biden administration not enforcing that 2019 agreement with China.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Chaplain, in his opening prayer, mentioned something about the shutting down of the government. It would be a good opportunity for me to follow on that and say that it costs money to shut down the government and costs money to open up the government.

The government is supposed to protect and serve the American people. You can't do that if you are shut down. I hope we can avoid it.

Agricultural Economy

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the agricultural economy.

There are many big issues facing our Nation's farmers this season. There is stress in the grain-producing areas of the United States. That is true of my State of Iowa.

Stress comes from the fact that farmers are losing $1.10 a bushel on corn and soybeans about $2 a bushel. Stress comes not only from low prices for their products but high input costs, uncertainty in the international market, particularly the issue of tariffs. Then, also, we have the issue of high interest rates, market consolidation, and I suppose you can go on.

Today, I would like to focus on high input costs that farmers will be paying this season.

The average production costs for farmers are down only 3 percent since their very high peak in 2022. Meanwhile, corn prices are down 50 percent in the same period. To put it plainly, many farmers will be lucky if they break even this fall. Those words ``break even'' is not possible just because of price. If they break even, it is only because of the expectant bumper crops that we will have at least throughout the Midwest that I know about.

In response to the farmers' concerns about the market concentration and changes in anti-dumping and countervailing duty rates, I introduced the Fertilizer Research Act to shed light on the fertilizer industry.

The issue of ag inputs has become a large enough problem that last week, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice announced a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on agricultural antitrust issues. I am certain many farmers are glad to see these developments, but they need more immediate relief. This will become more of an issue as the harvest progresses.

My message is, as I see it from my State of Iowa, it is beginning to look like the 1980s' agriculture depression all over. Congress was too slow to respond in the 1980s. Thousands of farmers went out of business in the 1980s. That should concern all of us because with only 2 percent of the people producing all the food for the 98 percent, we can't let the destruction of the family farmer happen in 2025 like it did in the 1980s.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, what I am going to say is, remember the history of Putin saying 20 years ago that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster of the 20th century and that Putin's goal was to reestablish the Soviet Empire; and we see that going on every day with how he is destroying Ukraine.

So everyone interested in religious freedom in Russia and Ukraine should read the recent report by the Free Russia Foundation. The Free Russia Foundation is an organization of Russians who wants a ``free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous Russia reintegrated into the international community as a constructive and positive actor.''

This organization's recent report, entitled ``The Russian Orthodox Church and the War,'' demonstrates how this church body supports the ongoing invasion of Ukraine through propaganda, rituals for the invaders, diplomatic manipulation, and espionage. Now, doesn't that seem very odd for a church--any church--to have that as goals?

The Russian Orthodox Church is also actively engaged in suppressing and persecuting other Christian denominations, including Orthodox believers who do not answer to Russia.

It seems shocking to me to see Russians talk about the main Christian denomination in Russia in this way, but remember this: After initially persecuting Orthodox believers, dictator Joseph Stalin co-opted the Russian Orthodox Church to support the Soviet state. At that time, the Russian Orthodox faithful outside of Russia broke all ties with the Soviet-installed patriarch. Today's Russian Orthodox Church is dominated by leaders who came of age under the KGB-controlled church structure. Now understand this: The current patriarch of Moscow was a KGB agent, so it is no wonder that he is close to Putin.

The Free Russia report documents the Moscow patriarch's blessing of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. It quotes the patriarch's September 2022 sermon:

Anyone who dies in the performance of military duty

sacrifices himself for the sake of others. Therefore, we

believe that such a sacrifice washes away all sins previously

committed.

Now, as a Christian--and, I hope, for any Christian--I find that shocking. So does the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, the first among equals in the Orthodox tradition.

He said of the Moscow patriarch's support for Putin and his war:

It is damaging to the prestige of the whole of Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy doesn't support war, violence [or] terrorism.

There has been a lot of propaganda claiming that the Russian Orthodox Church is somehow a victim of religious persecution in this war. In fact, it is a leading perpetrator of the persecution of fellow Orthodox believers, evangelicals, and other churches. I had a chance to meet a year ago with 30 church leaders from Ukraine who told how this persecution was going on.

Don't take my word for it, though. Read this report that I have quoted from by these pro-democracy Russians.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, September 19 is National Stillbirth Prevention and Awareness Day. This day is set aside to recognize the tens of thousands of families in the United States who have endured a stillbirth.

More than 21,000 pregnancies in the United States end in stillbirth each year. Sadly, this exceeds the top five leading causes of death among children under 15 years of age. It is critical that we raise awareness and take action to improve this grave statistic.

I am proud to have been a cosponsor of the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act that was signed into law last year. The law clarifies that resources like Count the Kicks can be deployed for stillbirth prevention. Count the Kicks is a simple and free tool that helps pregnant moms count their babies' movements during the third trimester. The results speak for themselves. In the first 10 years of the Count the Kicks campaign in Iowa, the State's stillbirth rate went down 32 percent while rates in the rest of the country remained static.

My work to improve maternal and child health doesn't stop there. I have introduced the bipartisan Healthy Moms and Babies Act. This bill is a comprehensive approach to addressing our maternal mortality crisis. Through community-based efforts, improved support for rural labor and delivery units, and increasing the use of technology like telehealth, we can prevent maternal and child mortality regardless of the ZIP Code.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

In the United States this year, over 9,000 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed among children from birth to age 14. While cancer rates and their deaths for children have declined by 70 percent from 1970 through 2020, cancer remains the leading cause of death from disease among children.

Access to timely pediatric care is critical to reducing cancer deaths. Children's hospitals specialize in certain types of cancer care. Unfortunately, gaining access to a children's hospital across the country or in the State next-door can be a real challenge.

That is why I am the sponsor of the bipartisan Accelerating Kids' Access to Care Act.

Moms and dads seeking lifesaving cancer care for their kids should be able to access care quickly and wherever it is available. Now, sadly, sometimes it takes months for a child to get access to treatment if it is out of State. There is no excuse for that. In fact, it is pure bureaucratic redtape. Families shouldn't have to navigate redtape to get lifesaving care for their child with complex medical needs.

My bill simplifies this process so parents can ensure kids with cancer diagnoses get timely medical care. Our bill is the most cosponsored, bipartisan bill--I want to emphasize ``bipartisan bill''-- of all the Medicaid bills before the Senate Finance Committee. I look forward to making this bill become law.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this week, we are privileged to welcome Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to Washington, DC.

He is the spiritual leader and the first among equals of Orthodox Christianity worldwide. The patriarch is coming to receive the Templeton Prize, a very prestigious award in religion and science. I know many Orthodox Americans hold him in very high regard and will be very excited to have him visit our country.

Now, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I really appreciate the fact that he has used his spiritual authority to ensure that Orthodox believers in areas of Ukraine, formerly dominated by Russia, have the opportunity to practice their Orthodox faith through institutions that do not answer to the Kremlin as the Russian Orthodox Church has since Stalin's time.

On behalf of Greek Orthodox Iowans, such as those who attend the St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Des Moines, IA, I welcome Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the United States.

May God bless his ministry.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.