Floor Statements

Mr. President, Senate Republicans are about 24 hours away from passing a bill that would make middle-class families in this country pay more taxes so big corporations and millionaires can pay less.

A bill like that would never really make sense, but it really, really doesn't make sense right now. Since 1980, corporate profits have shot through the roof, while wages for working people have remained pretty much the same. With corporate profits up and family incomes flat, who is paying the cost of running the government? Thanks to Congress, over the past 50 years, corporations have gone from picking up about 25 percent of what it costs to run the government to picking up about 9 percent or, to say it another way, hard-working families now pick up a much bigger share of the cost of running our government.

I don't care whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, this just isn't fair. Corporations are wallowing in profits while hard-pressed families are picking up the bill for our military, for our government agencies, for homeland

security, for our infrastructure, and for everything else we have to pitch in to pay for.

Here comes the Republican tax bill, which would make a bad situation worse. The Republican tax bill would slash taxes on corporations even further and raise taxes on millions of working families. It is hard to comprehend how deeply unfair that is. A survey released last May by the Federal Reserve found that 44 percent of American families--just a bit under a half--don't have enough slack in their budget to cover a $400 emergency expense. If the transmission blows up or if a kid gets sick or the fridge stops working, these families are just plain out of luck. These are the same families whom the Republicans have targeted to pay more in taxes under the Republican plan.

In trying to sell a bill that is deeply unfair, Republicans have landed on a tried-and-true strategy--just lie about it.

The first big lie is that the plan will supercharge economic growth. Spoiler alert: It will not. We have seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. There is not one single credible projection that says this plan will have any meaningful impact on the growth of the American economy. One group of economists after another has looked at this bill and said it will not do a darn thing to help the economy grow.

Even Wall Street banks--which stand to pocket billions of dollars in tax giveaways from this bill--have grudgingly had to admit the bill will not lead to any growth. Barclays Bank said: ``A permanent boost to growth remains unlikely.'' Goldman Sachs said: ``We find a boost to GDP growth of 0.1-0.2 [percentage points] in 2018-2019 and smaller amounts in subsequent years.''

The second big lie is that if we just give corporations more money, they will surely do us the favor of raising wages or creating more jobs. We have seen that movie before too. Over the last 30 years, corporate profits have exploded, and companies have not trickled down those profits to workers. They didn't do it before, and they will not do it after the Republicans give away even more money to these giant corporations.

You don't have to take my word for it. The top executives at the companies have already admitted as much. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch surveyed 300 CEOs about what they would do with their tax giveaways. What are they going to do with those tax giveaways? The top three responses: pay down debt, buy back stock, and fund new mergers. In other words, something for the banks, something for wealthy investors, and nothing for workers.

The third big lie is that the plan will not increase the national debt. That is just plain false. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says this bill will tack on $1.4 trillion to the debt in the next 10 years, and we all know what comes next. The same Republican Senators who will vote for this trillion-dollar budget buster tomorrow will turn around next week and say our national debt is just too high, and we need to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, education funding, affordable housing, and you name it. In fact, the Republican budget they passed last month tees up more than $1 trillion in cuts to those very programs.

This bill raises taxes on millions of middle-class families, and it doesn't create any real economic growth. It doesn't create any real job growth, and it explodes the national debt. So this bill clearly is not about helping working families.

You really have to stop and ask the question, What is it about? The answer is simple. This is about Republican Senators paying off the rich corporate donors that helped get them elected. It is about the way that money has corrupted Washington. It is about wealthy donors investing a few million dollars in political contributions to secure billions of dollars in tax giveaways.

Here is what one of my Republican colleagues said recently: If we don't pass a tax bill, ``financial contributions will stop.'' A Republican Member of the House was even more blunt. He said on the record that his donors told him to pass this tax bill or ``don't ever call them again.'' In other words, Republicans have said to each other they need to pass a tax giveaway to give their donors money in order to get reelected. This is a smash-and-grab job.

The Republicans are looting the U.S. Treasury so their donors will keep funding their reelection campaigns. They don't even try to hide the corruption, and they don't worry about how many middle-class families get hurt in the caper. My take on this is pretty simple: I don't think a single middle-class family in this country should pay more in taxes so big corporations and millionaires can pay less. I think big corporations should pay more--not less--so we can cut taxes on working families and small businesses, so we can make investments in fixing our roads and our bridges and our power grid, so we can help young people reduce their student loan debt.

This is about basic fairness. We can build an America where every kid has a shot at success, where every family has some measure of economic security, where every senior has enough savings to retire with dignity. We can do that, and we can start by defeating this Republican tax giveaway.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Ohio for his leadership in impressing on the American people to take a look at Mr. Otting, who has been named to be the head of the OCC. I rise and join my voice with his in saying that this is a bad nomination for America.

Donald Trump promised during his inaugural address to fight for the ``forgotten men and women of our country.'' Yet, even before his bags were unpacked at the White House, he started bringing Wall Street to Washington, importing the worst of the worst bankers who had gambled away the economy, putting them in charge of regulating the same companies they once worked for. It is a long list.

It is the former Goldman Sachs president, Gary Cohn, to lead the National Economic Council and Wall Street fat cat Wilbur Ross to lead the Commerce Department. Randal Quarles went straight from his private equity fund to the Federal Reserve, where he is now responsible for regulating our biggest banks.

Maybe the most important and most ridiculous of all of the Wall Street imports is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs. As the financial crisis was sweeping across the country, Mnuchin organized a team of billionaires to purchase IndyMac Bank out of Federal receivership. He rebranded the bank as OneWest and put himself in charge. Then Mr. Mnuchin and OneWest acted swiftly and decisively to boot more than 36,000 families out of their homes all over the country.

The Senate should never have confirmed that kind of person to run the Treasury Department, but it did. Now, among other things, he leads the Council that is responsible for making sure Wall Street does not blow up our economy again. I know it actually sounds like a joke, but the risks for the rest of us are way too serious.

Republicans don't seem to have any problem with any of this. In fact, they are doubling down. Today, they plan to confirm Mnuchin's former OneWest business partner, Joseph Otting, to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and take another seat on that same Council.

The OCC is one of the most important regulators you have probably never heard of. It is the main bank overseer of the United States. It charters, regulates, and supervises more than 1,400 banks. The OCC writes rules to make the economy more secure, and it puts examiners inside the big banks in order to catch new tricks and scams before they harm consumers or, worse, before they crash the economy, and when banks mess up, it is the OCC's job to enforce the law.

Mr. Otting is buddies with the Treasury Secretary from their days of leading OneWest Bank. I guess that is why he got this nomination, but if you care about making sure regulators watch out for families, businesses, and our economy, it is hard to think of anyone worse for this job other than Steve Mnuchin. We all know a segment of the banking industry specialized in squeezing American families, particularly after the financial meltdown, but OneWest may have been the worst of the worst, especially when Otting was president and CEO from 2010 to 2015.

What happened on Mr. Otting's watch?

OneWest ran a notorious foreclosure mill that threw thousands of families out of their homes and illegally--underline ``illegally''-- foreclosed on dozens of servicemembers. The OneWest crew didn't just hurt families; it destroyed whole communities when it foreclosed on dozens of properties in the same neighborhoods, making it even harder for families to start over and rebuild. OneWest stole homes out from underneath families, lying to homeowners who were legally entitled to modify their mortgages and keep their homes under a government program and telling them the only way forward was through foreclosure.

OneWest treated all of its homeowners like garbage, but its treatment of minority homeowners was particularly disgusting. OneWest was nine times more likely to foreclose on a homeowner who was in a community of color than to offer him a mortgage.

All of this went down while the bank was busy vacuuming up more than $1 billion in taxpayer bailout money during the financial crisis. These scams at OneWest devastated a lot of American homeowners and, at the same time, put Mr. Otting in the same room with a lot of regulators.

After an investigation by the Treasury Department found that OneWest systematically cheated in foreclosure proceedings, including by lying in sworn statements to judges, cutting corners, and failing to check to make sure they had the right documents before foreclosing on families, Mr. Otting signed a consent decree with the government to agree that OneWest would pay more than 10,000 people for improperly throwing them out of their homes, but that is not all. In 2015, OneWest forked over more than $89 million in fines to the Department of Justice for defrauding the government and illegally putting taxpayers on the hook for the loans if they went bad.

So what happened to Mr. Otting after hurting all of those families, after lying to judges, after admitting to defrauding the U.S. Government? He got a nice $12 million severance check and a call from Donald Trump, asking if he wanted a corner office right here in Washington.

It is crazy to expect a banker who has broken the law to turn around and fight to enforce it. It is like putting criminals in charge of the police station and expecting them not to look the other way while their buddies keep stealing. There is nothing in Mr. Otting's record to suggest he would protect consumers from financial fraud or take the steps needed to rein in the banks or avoid future financial meltdowns.

You may not have heard of the OCC, but I promise you that when this agency refuses to stand up to the big banks and enforce the law, American families get hurt. It is as simple as that. Before the financial crisis, the OCC buddied up with the banks they were supposed to regulate, and everybody knew it. The result was the 2008 financial crisis that cost our economy $14 trillion. Millions of families lost their homes. Millions lost their jobs. Millions lost their savings and their retirement money. Nearly a decade later, many American families are still hurting. Now the Trump administration is ready to take us back to the bad old days, in which banks made gobs of money off risky bets while the regulators just looked the other way.

Confirming Mr. Otting is kicking dirt in the faces of every one of OneWest's victims. It is a gut punch to every American who was hurt in the financial crisis. Even if none of that matters to you, it is a terrible idea because leaving Mr. Otting in charge of bank regulation will endanger our economy. American families and businesses need and deserve a cop on the beat who will fight hard to keep them safe. Everything we know about Mr. Otting says he will be out there fighting for the big banks.

I will be voting no on Mr. Otting's nomination, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of William Wehrum to be the next Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency. This job is really pretty straightforward. The person in this job must fight for the right of every American to breathe clean air. But here is the problem: Mr. Wehrum has dedicated his career to the service of corporate polluters. Like President Trump and Administrator Pruitt, in a fight between hard- working families and well-paid corporate polluters, Mr. Wehrum sides with the corporate polluters every single time.

President Trump promised to ``drain the swamp'' in DC. But, seemingly, with every week, this Republican-controlled Senate approves yet another one of the President's corporate insiders to advance Big Oil and Big Coal's dirty wish list. The decision to nominate Mr. Wehrum is no exception. He is another conflict-ridden, climate-dismissing Trump nominee who has made a career of putting corporate profits ahead of hard-working families who depend on the EPA to have their backs.

Some of my Republican colleagues have argued that Mr. Wehrum has extensive experience serving at the EPA under the Bush administration, and that is true. Let's take a look at his experience. Mr. Wehrum fought to keep States from setting their own higher vehicle emissions standards in order to try to keep the air cleaner. He played a key role in the Bush administration's insistence that the EPA has no responsibility to combat climate change--a view that the Supreme Court rejected in 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA. When the Bush EPA was required by law to propose a rule limiting mercury emissions from powerplants, Mr. Wehrum's influence helped tilt the rule to benefit big coal. In fact, several paragraphs of the proposed rule were lifted verbatim from memos provided by the same pro-coal lobbying firm that Mr. Wehrum had worked at before joining the EPA.

The egregious inadequacy of the proposed rule and its blatant disregard for rulemaking processes led to 8 years of unnecessary delay in limiting toxic mercury emissions. There were 8 additional years of an estimated 130,000 asthma attacks, 8 years of 11,000 premature deaths--all potentially avoidable if Mr. Wehrum and his colleagues had just listened to the science and made the protection of human life more important than the protection of corporate interests.

During his tenure at the EPA, looking out for big corporate polluters was standard practice for Mr. Wehrum. In 27 separate cases--27 cases-- Federal courts found that the regulations that Mr. Wehrum helped write contradicted or violated the Clean Air Act and failed to protect public health.

Mr. Wehrum has a lot of experience--the weak-kneed experience of someone kissing up to big corporate interests.

In reflecting on his time at the EPA, Mr. Wehrum said: ``I'm a much better lawyer now than when I first joined the agency. To really get to know how the agency works and how it ticks, I think that is very valuable.''

Yes, valuable, sure, but valuable for whom? Valuable for small towns across America that desperately need more champions fighting in their corner? Valuable for our coastal communities and farmers dealing with the tangible effects of climate change? No. He meant valuable for his own bank account.

Mr. Wehrum describes his time working at the EPA as being ``very valuable'' because it allowed him to ``be effective in generating business and clients.''

I guess he thinks this latest trip through the revolving door will be even better for helping him drum up business from future polluters.

And why wouldn't he? Since leaving the EPA in 2007, Mr. Wehrum has been one of the go-to lawyers for big corporate polluters looking to get off easy or to save a buck at the public's expense. In at least 31 lawsuits against the EPA, Mr. Wehrum has fought to diminish Federal climate policy, to roll back limits on toxic mercury emissions, and to undermine public health protections. From what I can tell, not once has he chosen to use his valuable experience at the EPA to fight for stronger clean air protections that benefit our children and our seniors who suffer the most from toxic emissions.

When deciding whether someone is qualified for public service, sure, experience matters. But it matters who you fight for--whether it is a lawyer before the courts or as a senior appointee in the administration. It matters whether you have a demonstrated commitment to serving the public interest or the narrow corporate interests of rich companies.

Mr. Wehrum is not a person who fights for the moms and dads who know the terror of a child having an asthma attack. He is not a person who fights for the low-income and often minority communities that are literally choking under a cloud of industry toxins. He is not a person who fights for our communities that are suffering from the growing impact of climate change. No, he is a person who does the lucrative bidding of corporate DC insiders, both in government and outside government, and then he leaves American families to just suffer the consequences.

This administration, this Republican Congress, and nominees like Mr. Wehrum are experts at ignoring the facts, but they can't change those facts. Our planet is getting hotter. Our seas are rising at an alarming rate. Our coasts and islands are threatened by devastating storms. Our farms and forests are threatened by droughts and wildfires that are becoming so common across this country that they barely even make the evening news.

The effects of man-made climate change are all around us. Things will only get worse if we don't do something about it. We should never hand our government over to wealthy and powerful companies that put their own profits ahead of people. We certainly shouldn't put someone in charge of our clean air program that will not put the health, the safety, and the future of the American people ahead of short-term corporate profits.

Make no mistake, President Trump wants a fight. Administrator Pruitt wants a fight. William Wehrum wants a fight. And we will give them that fight because the American people will fight to protect the health of our children and our grandchildren, to build a clean energy economy, and to safeguard the future of our planet.

The American people deserve someone who will fight in their corner, and that is not William Wehrum.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last year, powerful corporate interest groups actually stole a Supreme Court seat and handed it over to their handpicked choice, Neil Gorsuch. Now those powerful corporate groups are about to use that seat to deal a devastating blow to hard-working teachers, firefighters, nurses, and police all across this country.

On September 28, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case called Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. AFSCME 31 is a union representing public sector workers in Illinois. This case will determine whether the public sector unions that represent teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers in States and cities across the country can collect fees from all the employees in the workplaces they represent.

Many expect that Justice Gorsuch will deliver the deciding vote in that case, that he will force unions to represent employees who do not pay dues and, in doing so, cut off sustainable funding for public union organizing.

Judges are supposed to be impartial, but there is no reason to expect that Justice Gorsuch will be impartial in this case. On the afternoon of September 28--the very same day that the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the Janus case--Justice Gorsuch attended a luncheon at the

Trump International Hotel. And he didn't just attend an event at a hotel that makes money for the President. Nope. He gave the keynote speech for a rightwing group funded by one of the Koch brothers and by the Bradley Foundation--billionaires and wealthy donors who are pumping money into the people behind the Janus case.

It is no surprise that these rich guys want to break the backs of unions. After all, unions speak up, unions fight back, and unions call out billionaires who rig the system to favor themselves and to leave everyone else in the dirt.

What is at stake in the Janus case is basic freedom--the freedom to build something strong and valuable, the freedom to have a real voice to speak out, the freedom to build a future that doesn't hang by a thread at the whim of a billionaire. And just as the Supreme Court decides to take up a decision that puts the freedom of millions of working people in jeopardy, Justice Gorsuch shows up as the star attraction for a billionaire-sponsored outing to celebrate an organization that is sponsoring an operation to put workers' freedom on the chopping block.

With this kind of brazen disregard for fairness and impartiality, it is no wonder that Gallup Polls have found that fewer than half of all Americans approve of the way the Supreme Court is now handling its job. In a shameless decision to abandon even the appearance of neutrality, Justice Gorsuch makes it clear that he is on the attack against American unions and American workers.

In the Trump administration, workers have been under repeated attack. Since taking office, President Trump has signed several laws sent to him by the Republican Congress, laws that directly undermine the wages, benefits, health and safety of American workers. In just 10 months, they have rolled back rules designed to make sure that Federal contractors don't cheat their workers out of hard-earned wages. They have delayed safety standards that keep workers from being exposed to lethal, carcinogenic materials. They have given shady financial advisers more time to cheat hard-working Americans out of billions of dollars in retirement savings, and the list goes on.

This is a democracy, and in a democracy, the government in Washington is supposed to work for the people who sent us here. So why is it that the Federal Government seems to be working against the interests of 150 million Americans who work for a living? Well, there is one reason-- money.

Money slithers through Washington like a snake. Its influence is everywhere. There are obvious ways that we know about--the campaign contributions from giant corporations and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists--but it is also the think tanks and the bought-and-paid-for experts who are funded by shadowy money, whose point of view seems always to help the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful.

Powerful interests invested vast sums of money in electing President Trump, and with each of his anti-worker actions, their investments are paying off. Powerful interests also spent vast sums of money to push Federal judges who will tilt our courts even further in favor of billionaires and big businesses.

They did it when they spent millions of dollars to hold open a Supreme Court seat for over a year. They did it when they spent millions more to promote Neil Gorsuch to fill that seat. Now that the Court is poised to deliver a massive blow to public sector unions and workers, their investment is paying off big time.

The stakes here couldn't be higher. Millions of teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers are looking to the Court for a fair hearing of the case. They are holding out hope that their freedom to come together and to stand up for themselves in the workplace, their freedom to fight for higher wages, their freedom to fight for more generous benefits, and their freedom to fight for a better future for themselves and their children will be preserved.

Unless we make real change, working people are just going to get kicked again and again, and we can make change. We can make the change right here in Washington. We can stand up and fight for our democracy, and we can start by demanding that everyone in our government is accountable, including the President of the United States and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, just last week, the Republican-controlled Congress rammed through a budget with the sole purpose of allowing Republicans to enact a tax plan that would take money from working Americans and put it into the pockets of giant corporations and wealthy individuals. The following week they killed an important rule that would have made it easier for Americans to hold big banks and corporations accountable when they lie, cheat, and steal from working families.

There have been countless stories of the Trump administration in disarray--juicy rumors of distrust and division between and among congressional Republicans and the White House, reports of Republicans' inability to advance key parts of their agenda, but that is only half the story. The other terrifying half is this. Since day one of this administration, President Trump and congressional Republicans have been working hard to make government work better and better for the rich and the powerful. While they have fumbled on their legislative agenda, they have been quietly working to help powerful interests capture our courts.

That shouldn't come as a surprise. For decades, those powerful interests have poured eye-popping amounts of cash into electing politicians who will promote their interests in Washington. They have hand-picked politicians who will enact laws that will make it easier for corporations to abuse their workers or cheat their customers or make an extra buck and make it harder for agencies to hold them accountable for wrongdoing. They have executed a well-funded campaign to rig the rules of the game so the powerful always come out on top and the people come out on the bottom, and they know the courts are the place where they can shape the law for decades to come.

Most Americans already know that while we have one set of laws on the books, we really have two different judicial systems. One justice system is for the rich and the powerful. In that system, government officials fret about being too tough on white-collar crime so wealthy individuals or giant corporations that break the law walk away with a small fine and a pinkie promise not to do it again, and when those executives break that promise, they get 2nd, 3rd, and 23rd chances. Every time they get caught, the cycle repeats. The corporation pays the fine, says some magic words, and everyone goes right back to breaking the law.

The second justice system is for everyone else. In that system, tough on crime is the name of the game. People are locked up long before they go to trial because they don't have the money for bail. Individuals who commit minor, nonviolent offenses are slapped with long prison sentences, and even after they serve those sentences and are released, they are branded with a scarlet letter that creates barriers to employment, to housing, and to opportunity. That second justice system even traps families, children, and elderly parents whose families are blown apart and whose communities are destroyed.

That second justice system has earned America the dubious title of holding the world's highest incarceration rate. Despite having less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States holds more than 20 percent of the world's incarcerated population. Russia, China, and North Korea don't even come close--not only in raw numbers but in the percentage of their population behind bars. America's legal system is great at locking people up but terrible at doing what it is supposed to do, dispensing equal justice under law.

Those words--``Equal Justice Under Law''--are etched into the front of the Supreme Court. If we truly believe those words, we need to start making some changes, and in recent years, we have seen some progress. Some State and local governments have made real efforts to reduce crime and lower incarceration rates. Massachusetts is one of the States leading the way with elected officials in both parties debating transformative changes to the judicial system aimed at replacing this tough-on-crime policy with smart-on-crime policies. The call for reform also extends to corporate crime. Public outrage at corporate greed has created

pressure to hold the rich and the powerful a little more accountable, but President Trump is committed to reversing that trend. He is working hand in hand with this Republican Congress to ensure that the rich get to play by their own set of rules while everyone else gets crushed under the awesome power of law enforcement.

This week will be a big step forward for the two-part justice system as this Senate prepares to hand lifetime appointments to four judges whose careers make it clear that they have no interest at all in fixing our broken justice system.

Let's take a look at their records.

Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid, who was nominated to serve on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, has used her power as a State Supreme Court Justice to shield corporations from accountability. She has voted to make it harder for individuals to bring class action lawsuits against huge corporations that break the law. Sound familiar? Ms. Eid would fit right in with the Senate Republicans, who just voted to make it easier for big banks and financial institutions to cheat people and walk away scot-free.

Ms. Eid also voted to deny workers' compensation to an employee who was injured at work and knocked unconscious because--get this--he couldn't remember the details of what happened. So Ms. Eid said that meant that there was going to be no liability there.

This kind of blocking and tackling for powerful companies that hurt consumers and workers should be embarrassing. With this President and this White House, though, it buys a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench in order to shield corporations from the law on an even bigger stage.

Ms. Eid is not the only nominee up for consideration who would leave working Americans out in the cold. Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, who has been nominated to serve on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, voted again and again to block injured plaintiffs from having their cases heard. Giant companies and millionaires liked her so much that they spent over half a million dollars to get her elected to the Michigan Supreme Court. And why wouldn't they? Now she is going to be elevated to a lifetime appointment on the Federal bench, and that is a pretty good return on their investment.

Yes, these judicial nominees have bent over backward to help the wealthy and the well-connected escape accountability, but that is only half of the story. Trump nominees have a very different view of what justice means for individuals who lack the money or the resources to pay high-powered legal teams or to pay political campaigns to influence judge decisions and judge selection.

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

Mr. President, on September 30, the Children's Health Insurance Program expired. It has now been 25 days since the Congress has put our children's health and well-being on the back burner. My colleagues and I do not think that children's health belongs on the back burner. So we have come to the floor of the Senate to spend the afternoon speaking up for kids.

Thank you to everyone who joins me today to say that we should not wait any longer to make sure that children, community health centers, and new mothers have access to the healthcare programs that they need.

Republicans control Congress. It is up to them what we vote on and when we do it. So what was more important to the Republican leadership than the health of little kids? Republican leaders blew through the days before the children's healthcare deadline by trying to repeal healthcare for millions of Americans.

Once the Children's Health Insurance Program had already expired, Republican leaders burned through more time by holding a series of votes on a budget with giant tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations that would also gut Medicare, Medicaid, and a bunch of programs that help working families. Republicans jammed through their terrible budget without a single Democratic vote last week, 19 days after blowing past the deadline to fund healthcare for kids.

Last night, 24 days past the deadline to make sure the kids had healthcare coverage, what were Republican leaders doing? Republican leaders stayed up late into the night holding a vote to make it easier for financial institutions to cheat people.

The days continue to tick by--24, 25. Tomorrow Members of Congress will leave for the weekend, 26 days past the deadline, and still there will be no vote to fund this critical program.

Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Democrat and Republican, wrote this legislation together back in the late 1990s. The Children's Health Insurance Program, also called CHIP, provides health insurance to low-income children and to pregnant women. Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch created this program because they knew that providing healthcare coverage for children would make them healthier as children and healthier even after they grew up. They knew that some children were slipping through the cracks, and this was their solution. The children covered by CHIP didn't qualify for Medicaid, they weren't covered by employers, and they couldn't afford to buy private insurance.

In 1997, 15 percent of all the children in this country lacked any form of health insurance coverage. Today, because of the CHIP program and the Affordable Care Act, that number has shrunk to 5 percent of children. CHIP works with Medicaid to provide health insurance for one out of every three kids in this country.

States choose whether or not they want a CHIP program. Here is the deal. Every single State has chosen one because every single State recognizes the value of providing their children with healthcare coverage. In Massachusetts, the percentage of children with healthcare coverage is even higher than the national average. It is at 99 percent. We are doing something right here.

The original program was set for 10 years, and since then, every few years, Congress has had to act to reauthorize the program so that children can continue to get healthcare coverage. The CHIP program has been reauthorized four times since 1997, and not one of those times has Congress missed the deadline--not one--until now. In fact, in past years, Congress has made sure to reauthorize the program many months ahead of its expiration in order to give States the time they need to plan their budget. It sounds like a pretty sensible thing to do--but not this year. We are 25 days past the deadline for reauthorizing CHIP--25 days and counting. This isn't fair to States, to kids, or to their families.

So what actually happens now?

Well, the money runs out. Eleven States are set to run out of their CHIP funding by the end of 2017, and the others, soon after. Our Republican Governor in Massachusetts sent me a letter on day 3 past the CHIP deadline, and he wrote:

Parents are already afraid that their children's insurance

may be lost in the near future. With each passing week, their

fears continue to grow.

My Governor is right. States have to start making tough decisions. They may have to decrease enrollment, turning away sick little kids who qualify for coverage but don't make it through the door on time. They could start kicking kids off of their insurance saying: Sorry, we just can't help anymore. Or they could be forced to make tough calls on benefits: We can't cover the wheelchair you need to get around. There is no physical therapy or no prenatal care until the funding comes through again.

That is just flat out immoral. Tax cuts for billionaires shouldn't come before making sure that a sick kid gets the help he or she needs. Mothers are lying awake at night. Fathers are tossing and turning, worrying about their healthcare coverage. What is the Republican leadership doing? Tomorrow they will be heading home for the weekend without lifting a finger to fund a bipartisan program that has been reauthorized four times over the past 20 years.

If that isn't bad enough, September 30 wasn't just the deadline for Congress to reauthorize CHIP. We also blew past the deadline on several other healthcare programs to help children, to help pregnant women, to help older Americans, and to help the chronically ill. We blew past the deadline to reauthorize the Community Health Center Fund and the National Health Service Corps, which funds health centers and supports healthcare workers that provide children with high-quality primary care. We blew past the deadline to reauthorize the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, which funds home visits to new and expectant parents to give them help keeping a new baby healthy and safe. We blew past the deadline to reauthorize the Special Diabetes Program, which funds diabetes research that could offer hope to many children living with diabetes.

When a kid is sick, moms and dads move Heaven and Earth to get them the care they need. They don't wait 25 days to go to the doctor and check to see if something is wrong. They stay up all night to make sure their little ones are all right. They wait outside the hospital room, pacing until they get an answer, but Republican leaders in Congress just don't seem to care. They don't seem to care if these families have the health insurance coverage they need so they can get an x ray or pay for an antibiotic or run some tests.

Twenty-five days, 26 days, 27 days--it just doesn't seem to matter to Republican leaders, but it sure matters to moms and dads and kids in Massachusetts and all over this country.

Senator Kennedy used to say: ``The test of greatness for a nation is how it cares for its children.'' Right now Republican leaders in Congress are failing that test. My colleagues have come to the floor today to say that time is up. We are here to fight for kids.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Wells Fargo creates 3.5 million fake accounts, charging customers fees and ruining credit scores. Equifax lets hackers steal personal information on 145 million Americans, putting nearly 60 percent of American adults at risk of identity theft. And somehow we are about to vote on a Republican proposal that makes it harder for consumers to hold companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax accountable. I know it sounds nuts, but it is true.

Here is the issue: If you have a checking account, credit card, private student loan, or any number of financial products, there is a good chance you have given up your right to go to court if that financial firm cheats you. That is because tens of millions of consumer financial contracts include a forced arbitration clause that says that if this financial company cheated you, you can't join with other consumers in court; you have to go to arbitration by yourself. Tens of millions of consumers, including around 80 million

credit card customers, can't go to court if their banks cheat them.

Think about what this means in the real world. You wake up in the morning and find a mysterious $30 fee on your account statement. You call the bank and say: I didn't agree to this. The bank tells you to pound sand. So what are your options? Well, if there is no forced arbitration clause in your contract, you have a choice: You can go to court, or, if your bank offers it, you can pursue arbitration.

Here is what you want to think about. Chances are pretty good that if the bank cheated you with a $30 unauthorized fee, there are other customers in the same boat. That means, if you want, you can join a class action lawsuit against the bank for free. A class action gives you a chance to get some money back, and it doesn't cost you anything. A class action also means the bank might have to cough up some real money and think twice before hitting you and their other customers with hidden fees the next time around.

Now think about what happens if there is a forced arbitration clause. You can't join with other customers in court. Your only option is to file a solo arbitration claim, which will cost you $200 or more just to get started. Who is going to pay $200 up front to try to get back a $30 fee? No one. That is exactly what the banks are counting on. They can get away with nickel and diming you forever.

But say the bank steals a bigger amount and you just can't stand it anymore, so you decide to be one of the roughly 400 consumers a year who go before an arbitrator. If you don't like the result, there is no appeal. Even worse, the banks are allowed to swipe your wallet in secret. The records of these proceedings are not public, so the regulators and the American people don't get to know what their banks are up to. Does that sound like justice in America?

Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau put a stop to that. They issued a new rule that prohibits financial companies from forcing you to give up your right to join other customers in court and hold your bank accountable. House Republicans already voted to reverse that rule. The Senate will soon decide whether to follow suit and take away American families' freedom to choose to go to court if they are cheated by their bank.

Make no mistake--anyone who votes to reverse this rule is saying loud and clear that they stand with banks instead of their constituents, because bank lobbyists are the only people asking Congress to reverse this rule. Every other organization--all the ones that represent actual human beings, not banks--every one of them wants this rule to be saved. Let me tell you about some of them.

The Military Coalition, which represents more than 5.5 million veterans and servicemembers, supports the CFPB rule because ``our nation's veterans should not be deprived of the Constitutional rights and freedoms that they put their lives on the line to protect, including the right to have their claims heard in a trial.'' The coalition says that ``[f]orced arbitration is an un-American system wherein servicemembers' claims against a corporation are funneled into a rigged, secretive system in which all the rules, including the choice of arbitrator, are picked by the corporation,'' and they warn that ``the catastrophic consequences these [forced arbitration] clauses pose for our all-voluntary military fighting force's morale and our national security are vital reasons'' to preserve the rule. That is from the Military Coalition.

The AARP, which represents nearly 40 million seniors, says that the CFPB rule should be preserved because it ``is a critical step in restoring consumers' access to legal remedies that have been undermined by the widespread use of forced arbitration for many years.'' Older consumers are often at increased risk of financial scams, so the ``AARP supports the availability of a full range of enforcement tools, including the right to class action litigation to prevent harm to the financial security of older people posed by unfair and illegal practices.'' That is the AARP, which represents seniors across the country.

The Main Street Alliance, which represents thousands of small businesses, says that the CFPB rule will help small businesses fight against big financial firms that try to drive up their fees. Since almost ``20% of [small] business owners rely on credit cards as a source of investment capital--many of which contain arbitration clauses--forced arbitration makes it nearly impossible for small businesses and consumers alike to protest hidden fees, illegal debt collection, and other deceptive practices.'' That is from the Main Street Alliance.

So there it is. Veterans, servicemembers, seniors, small businesses, and consumers are all lining up to support the CFPB rule. But that is not all. Let Freedom Ring, an organization that proudly touts itself as ``supporting the conservative agenda,'' likes the CFPB rule, too, saying it is ``in keeping with our Framers' concerns that without appropriate protections, civil proceedings can be used as a means to oppress the powerless.''

That is the thing you have to understand. The effort to reverse the CFPB rule isn't about promoting a conservative agenda, and it sure as heck is not about promoting a working people's agenda or a small business agenda. It is about advancing the banks' agenda, period.

The banks and their lobbyists actually have the gall to claim that they want to kill the rule because it is bad for their customers. That claim is just plain laughable. According to a rigorous, 3-year-long CFPB study, consumers recovered an average of $540 million annually from class action settlements, while receiving less than $1 million annually in the arbitration cases the agency reviewed. It is not even close. Even if there are instances in which arbitration is a better option for consumers than a class action lawsuit, the CFPB rule doesn't stop consumers from choosing arbitration. The rule simply says that consumers--consumers--should also have the freedom to go to court if that is what they prefer.

I will tell you one thing: When it comes to what is right for consumers, I listen to servicemembers, veterans, seniors, consumers, and small businesses. I don't listen to bank lobbyists. When a bunch of bank lobbyists tell you they know what is best for consumers, hang on to your wallet.

Millions of Americans of all political parties think the game in Washington is rigged against them, and this vote is exhibit A. Companies like Equifax and Wells Fargo have hurt millions of consumers and then turn around and try to escape accountability, using forced arbitration clauses. The Republican Congress hasn't done a thing to help the people hurt by Wells Fargo. The Republican Congress hasn't done a thing to help the people hurt by Equifax. Instead, tonight they are actually taking away one of the few legal tools to hold companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax accountable.

This is shameful, and I mean that. Any Senator who votes against our servicemembers and our veterans in order to shield big banks from accountability should be ashamed. We should vote down this proposal.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. Tonight we are on the verge of passing a Republican resolution to make it easier for financial institutions to cheat people. Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Board issued a rule that prohibits financial companies from forcing you to sign an arbitration clause that makes you forfeit your right to take a bank to court. So if this proposal passes, that rule will just disappear.

Now, there are no real human beings who think it should be easier for financial institutions to steal money from you and get away with it. Bank lobbyists are the only people asking Congress to reverse this rule, but let's face it, the Wall Street Journal is pretty powerful around here. The question the American people should be asking right now is, Are they powerful enough to win tonight?

The reason this vote is happening so late at night is because we were right on the verge of blocking it. The American people have watched as Wells Fargo cheated its customers and then used arbitration clauses to try to escape liability. They watched as Equifax negligently allowed hackers to steal personal financial information of more than half of all American adults and then used arbitration clauses to try to escape accountability. Politicians have been watching it too. While many of their eyes might be blinded by dollar signs, it may not be enough.

There is bipartisan opposition in the Senate to turning financial institutions loose to swindle their own customers. Right now our best guess is that it is 50 to 50. That means that Vice President Mike Pence is on his way to the Senate to cast a tie-breaking vote. If we can't peel off one more Republican, Mike Pence will decide whether consumers can hold banks like Wells Fargo accountable when they cheat their customers.

Now, everyone assumes Mike Pence will side with the big banks, and I have just one simple question: Why?

President Trump, Mike Pence works for you. His job is to cast his vote the way you tell him to cast it. We spent more than a year listening to you, first as a candidate and then as a President, and you have gone on and on and on about how strong you are, how tough you are, and about how you are going to stand up to Wall Street.

Well, this bill is a giant, wet kiss to Wall Street. Bank lobbyists are crawling all over this place begging Congress to vote and make it easier for them to cheat their customers. President Trump, are you really going to let Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote to hand big banks their biggest win in Congress since they crashed the economy 9 years ago?

You know, I followed a news story about how tough you are, Mr. President--standing up to Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the Republican Party. Well, this is a top priority for them, Mr. President. So do you work for Mitch McConnell now? Is that the deal? Are you going to roll over and hurt millions of people in this country because Mitch McConnell tells you to?

I keep hearing that you and Steve Bannon are going to remake the Republican Party into a party that stands up to Wall Street. Steve Bannon works with the White supremacists, but, hey, he says he is going to help you drain the swamp, right?

Well, where is the all-powerful Steve Bannon now? Where is he to tell Mike Pence and Donald Trump that they don't work for Mitch McConnell?

Every organization--all the ones that represent actual human beings, not banks--want this rule to be saved, none more than the organizations that represent our veterans and our servicemembers. Do you know why that is, Mr. President? It is because they are sick and tired of being cheated by banks. They are sick and tired of politicians who say ``thank you for your service'' and then turn around and vote to make it harder for them to build a future for themselves and their families.

The Military Coalition, which represents more than 5.5 million veterans and servicemembers, supports the CFPB rule because ``our Nation's veterans should not be deprived of the constitutional rights and freedoms that they put their lives on the line to protect, including the right to have their claims heard in a trial.'' The Coalition says that ``[f]orced arbitration is an un-American system wherein servicemembers' claims against a corporation are funneled into a rigged, secretive system in which all the rules, including the choice of arbitrator, are picked by the corporation.'' They go on to warn that ``the catastrophic consequences these [forced arbitration] clauses pose for our all-voluntary military fighting force's morale and our national security are vital reasons'' to preserve this rule.

We have seen all the tweets, Mr. President. We have seen you go on and on about how disrespectful it is of our veterans and their families that some football players don't want to stand for the national anthem. Well, all three of my brothers served in the military, Mr. President. Do you know what is disrespectful of our veterans and their families? Passing laws that hurt our veterans and their families. Casting tie- breaking votes for laws that are opposed by the American Legion, by the Military Coalition, by the Vietnam Veterans of America, by AMVETS, by the Association of the United States Navy, by the Military Order of the Purple Heart, by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, by the Military Child Education Coalition, by the Military Veterans Coalition of Indiana, by the National Association of Black Veterans, by the National Guard Association of the United States, by the National Military Family Association, by the Noncommissioned Officers Association, by the Reserve Officers Association, by the Retired Enlisted Association, by the Veterans for Common Sense, by the Veterans Education Success, by Veterans Legal Institute, by VETJOBS and by Vets First.

President Trump, this is up to you. Don't do this. Don't let Mike Pence cast the deciding vote to hand a huge victory to Wall Street. If you do, you should be prepared for the consequences. Veterans know when a politician is all talk. They know the difference between a cheap pat on the back and a real punch to the gut. They will not forget what happens here today.

And for Steve Bannon--if this really happens today and Mike Pence casts the deciding vote to make it easier for financial institutions to cheat people, do you want to remake the Republican Party in your image? Do you want to watch primary challenges against Republicans who roll over to Wall Street? Do you want to go after the weak and spineless, the DC-Wall Street swamp, the politicians who will not stand up to Mitch McConnell, and all the globalists who think cash matters more than people? If Mike Pence votes for this monstrosity, why don't you primary Donald Trump, and when you are finished with him, why don't you go after Mike Pence?

Steve Bannon, put your fat wad of billionaire Mercer money where your mouth is or stop pretending that you are anything other than what you are.

With the remainder of my time, I would like to read letters and op- eds from veterans begging Congress not to repeal this rule.

The first is from Col. Lee F. Lange, U.S. Marine, Retired, with 30 years of service, now serving as Arizona chapter president of the Military Officers Association of America. He titles his letter, ``I Served to Protect Our Rights; Don't Let Equifax Take Them Away.''

As a career Marine, I served to protect the rights of

Americans as guaranteed by the Constitution and its

amendments. Among them is the 7th Amendment right to trial by

jury in civil cases, a right dismissed by companies like

Equifax and now under siege in Congress.

Forced arbitration ``ripoff clauses'' buried in the fine-

print of bank accounts, auto loans and other contracts strip

servicemembers and veterans of their day in court when big

banks and other financial institutions violate the law.

Instead, people must face companies alone and cannot join

together in a rigged, secretive process where the banks and

lenders often choose the arbitrator.

Men and women in uniform are surely among the 145.5 million

people impacted by the massive data breach of sensitive

personal information held by the credit reporting agency

Equifax--and among those whose access to the courts was

stripped in Equifax's fine print until the company had to

relent. Servicemembers from Sergeant Charles Beard to Army

soldier Prentice Martin-Bowen have also had their rights

limited by forced arbitration.

Wells Fargo continues to use forced arbitration to deny

victims of the fake account scandal access to the justice

system. Arizona and Southern California were the epicenter of

the Wells Fargo scandal and Wells Fargo is Arizona's largest

bank. Some of the state's more than 500,000 veterans were

certainly caught up in its effects. Wells Fargo has been

caught but it is likely not the only financial institution

guilty of illegal practices.

The Department of Defense has long pushed for

servicemembers full legal recourse against unscrupulous

lenders, and members now have some protection against forced

arbitration clauses through the Military Lending Act. But the

MLA protections don't apply to auto loans, to rights under

the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, to bank account fraud

like the Wells Fargo scandal, or to veterans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its

Office of Servicemember Affairs have worked to protect those

who serve by issuing a rule restoring our 7th Amendment

rights and limiting the use of forced arbitration. The CFPB

rule enhances military consumer protections in the MLA,

restoring the right of servicemembers and veterans to seek

civil justice, including class action suits, for illegal

acts.

For that reason, The Military Coalition, a national

consortium of uniformed services and veterans organizations

representing 5.5 million current and former servicemembers

and their families and survivors, urged Congress to let the

CFPB rule go into effect. The American Legion has done the

same. The general public--including 64 percent of Republicans

and 74 percent of Democrats--also supports the rule to

restore our day in court.

But, despite this outpouring of support, the U.S. House of

Representatives has voted to block the rule from going into

effect. Wall Street lobbyists are pushing Congress to leave

forced arbitration as the only solution, severely limiting

the recourse of servicemembers and all Americans. For

example, only four arbitrations have been filed against Wells

Fargo in Arizona despite up to 178,972 or more fake accounts

in the state.

That is 4 arbitrations against 178,972 or more fake accounts in the State.

We can't allow forced arbitration to be used as a tool to

block accountability.

The Senate, armed with lessons learned from the Equifax and

Wells Fargo scandals, can still reverse course. Our Senators

must put the interests of active-duty servicemembers,

veterans, and American consumers ahead of Wall Street

lobbyists and reject efforts to take away our day in court.

That was from Col. Lee Lange, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired, chapter president of the Arizona Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America and president of the Southwest Veterans Chamber of Commerce.

There is another one that I would like to read, and this is from the chairman of the Alaska Veterans Foundation. It is titled ``Forced arbitration and a right worth fighting for,'' by Ric Davidge.

As a veteran, I am proud to have helped protect the

freedoms so zealously guarded for us by our Founders. Another

guarantor of those liberties is the right to our day in

court--one especially vital to today's servicemembers who are

so often taken advantage of by financial institutions.

Today, the right to our day in court is endangered because

of actions under consideration by the United States Senate on

the issue of powerful banks and forced arbitration.

James Madison, one of the principal drafters of the Bill of

Rights, wrote that ``trial by jury in civil cases is as

essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of

the pre-existent rights of nature.'' The Founders saw this

right to be heard before a jury of our peers as so vital that

they enshrined it in the Seventh Amendment.

This right is not only, in Winston Churchill's words, ``a

safeguard from arbitrary perversion of the law,'' but also a

means to ensure equal access to justice for the powerful and

the powerless alike, and for citizens to signal and set

acceptable standards of conduct in our society.

Why bring this all up now? Because the U.S. Senate is

considering legislation to roll back a rule recently

finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

to limit forced arbitration clauses buried deep in consumer

financial agreements. These forced arbitration agreements are

found in the fine print of financial agreements signed by

tens of millions of everyday Americans with the Wall Street

banks, covering everything from credit cards and checking

accounts to prepaid cards and payday loans. And they require

consumers to take disputes over bank wrongdoing not to courts

overseen by judges, but to arbitrators chosen by the

financial institutions--under their own rules.

Arbitration hearings are held in private with no public

record, no meaningful rules, not even a requirement that

arbitrators enforce state and federal laws. And of course, no

jury.

Perhaps most significant of all, Big Banks have leveraged

arbitration to block class action suits, where the ability of

consumers to band together helps balance the extraordinary

legal and financial resources at banks' disposal.

The Wells Fargo scandals--yes, there's more than one--offer

a prime example of how financial institutions use forced

arbitration to rip off consumers.

The bank, with 48 branches in Alaska, opened nearly 6,000

of its infamous fake accounts here on the Last Frontier.

A California judge ordered the financial giant to repay

customers more than $200 million for manipulating accounts to

generate overdraft fees--another activity repeated here.

Recently, nearly a quarter million Wells Fargo car loan

customers were dinged for nonpayment of insurance policies

illegally taken out for them--and almost 25,000 had vehicles

repossessed.

Most infuriating, Wells Fargo has been fined millions for

foreclosing on servicemembers or repossessing their cars in

violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

In every case, Wells has used arbitration to shield itself

from accountability. Since 2009, only 215 consumers

nationwide have filed arbitrations against Wells Fargo--but

not one in Alaska. The reason: arbitration is often too

expensive for a single consumer with a small claim.

That's why the CFPB rule is so important--and why the Big

Banks' Washington lobbyists are working overtime to have it

overturned. The regulation will ensure all Alaskans retain

the right to their day in court as part of class actions--and

uphold the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to protect the

legal rights of the men and women fighting for this country.

As Congress considers whether to preserve this critical

protection for everyday consumers, and especially for our

servicemembers, our Alaska Republican Senators, Lisa

Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, need to remember that equal

access to justice is not a Republican or a Democratic idea.

It is an American right, as old as our Republic itself, and

it's worth fighting for.

Ric Davidge serves as chairman of the Alaska Veterans

Foundation.

From Robert Mitchell, a Marine Corps veteran: ``Forced arbitration is un-American.'' This is from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

I am a proud Marine Corps veteran. Abroad, I joined with my

fellow Marines in united pursuit of justice and rights. At

home, I fight for them and other U.S. military members to be

treated fairly and with dignity in their financial affairs.

I'm disappointed by the actions of my U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton,

who is seeking to roll back a recent rule that restores

servicemembers' and other Americans' legal rights in the

financial marketplace.

So often, military members are unfairly targeted by

aggressive lenders, abusive debt collectors, reckless credit-

reporting bureaus, and discriminating employers. So I devote

my time to help them enforce their rights under federal and

state laws that grant them remedies and other ways to hold

bad actors accountable when they flout these laws.

He goes on to talk about what happens in the fine print in these contracts and how it is that veterans and Active-Duty servicemembers are repeatedly cheated.

His closing remarks are as follows:

Unfortunately, although the rule restores the rights of

active-duty servicemembers and American civilians, it has

become controversial in Washington because the financial-

services industry opposes it. For several years now,

financial institutions have been able to use their strict

terms to wipe away individuals' rights and essentially ignore

legal complaints.

But Senator Cotton and our representatives in Congress must

take the opportunity to look beyond the lobbyists and toward

the experiences of our military members and the U.S.

Constitution. They should support, not abandon, a rule that

simply restores our traditions.

I will just reference a letter from The Military Coalition, a consortium of uniform services and veterans organizations representing more than 5\1/2\ million current and former servicemembers and their families and survivors who also wrote in strong support of protecting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arbitration rule. They conclude:

Our nation's veterans should not be deprived of the

Constitutional rights and freedoms that they put their lives

on the line to protect, including the right to have their

claims heard in a trial by a jury when their rights are

violated. The catastrophic consequences these clauses pose

for our all-voluntary military fighting force's morale and

our national security are vital reasons for this rule to take

effect immediately.

We also have a resolution passed by the Ninety-Ninth National Convention of the American Legion asking Congress not to roll back the arbitration rule put forward by the CFPB, and we have a letter from more than 30 veterans associations begging this Congress to please not get rid of the forced arbitration clause that has been put forward by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have these letters and resolution printed in the Record.

It really comes down to this: We have heard from veterans groups, from individual veterans, Active-Duty military, and from banks, and the banks are the ones saying: Roll back this rule, and the veterans and Active-Duty military are asking us not to.

The decision hangs in the balance tonight, and I urge my colleagues: Just once, don't stand up with the big banks; stand up with the veterans.

I urge the President of the United States: Show us what you are made of. Stand up with America's veterans. Stand up to Wall Street; don't just roll over for Wall Street. Be there for the people who count on you. Be there for our veterans and Active-Duty military.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Crapo and I both be allowed to speak for 5 minutes on the nomination of Randal Quarles.

Mr. President, every time President Trump has the choice between standing up for American families or standing up for wealthy banks and giant corporations, he chooses the rich guys.

Time and again, he has promised that he would ``never be beholden to the lobbyists or the special interests,'' but he has appointed dozens of Big Business executives and lobbyists to senior positions in his administration. During his campaign, he promised that he would not let the Wall Street guys get away with murder, but after he was sworn in, he loaded up his economic team with Goldman Sachs executives. Over and over again, he has promised to drain the swamp, but then he appointed an army of lobbyists and industry insiders to positions that oversee the industries that paid them for years.

Randal Quarles is just the latest in this long line of corporate appointments. He is President Trump's nominee to the Federal Reserve's Vice Chair for Supervision. He has gone through the revolving door so many times that it is hard to keep up--from a big Wall Street law firm, to the Treasury Department, back to the Wall Street law firm, back, eventually, to the Treasury Department, then to a private equity fund, followed most recently by a trip to another private equity fund. Now Mr. Quarles is ready for another spin through the revolving door.

The Vice Chair for Supervision of the Fed is one of the most important jobs in the government. After the 2008 crisis, Congress put the Fed in charge of supervising the biggest banks. That included banks and other financial institutions that would bring down the whole financial system with them if they went under--the so-called ``too big to fail'' institutions. The Fed is what stands between millions of American families and another economic catastrophe that could rob them of their jobs, their savings, or their homes. After the 2008 crisis, Congress created the Vice Chair for Supervision position to lead efforts to supervise these giant institutions. There is no other position in government that has a more important role in stopping the next financial crisis.

So what kind of supervision and oversight does Mr. Quarles believe in? His motto seems to be, ``Whatever the big banks want, give it to 'em.''

Mr. Quarles has spent more than a decade in private equity and investment management, where he has argued repeatedly for weaker rules for giant banks, including relaxing the rules for stress tests that evaluate banks' soundness, lowering capital and leverage standards, and repealing the Volcker rule.

At his hearing before the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, I showed Mr. Quarles a 124-page list of financial rule rollbacks from a lobbying group for the biggest banks in the country. I asked him to tell me which of those dozens of changes he disagreed with. He couldn't name one--not one.

The No. 1 thing that we need from a Vice Chair for Supervision is independence from Wall Street--a demonstrated willingness to stand up to the wishes of

the big banks and protect the interests of working families. There is not a speck of independence in Mr. Quarles' track record.

Mr. Quarles' time in government also raises red flags. As Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, he was responsible for overseeing financial institutions, markets, and regulations in the years leading up to the financial crisis. Let me say that again. Mr. Quarles was the Treasury official in charge of helping to oversee Wall Street in the years leading up to the crisis. Does anyone want to point out how that worked out?

If Mr. Quarles had wanted to stand up to the banks, he could have found and fixed systemwide problems in the markets before catastrophe struck. Instead, in 2006, when the banks were making gobs of money off of risky bets that eventually crashed the economy, Quarles gave a speech in front of a roomful of bankers and said: ``Fundamentally, the economy is strong, the financial sector is healthy, and our future''-- the banks'--``looks bright.'' Less than 2 years later, the entire system exploded and cost Americans, collectively, about $14 trillion.

Make no mistake about it, confirming Mr. Quarles endangers the health of the economy. The last time that Mr. Quarles was in charge, he failed to act to protect the American people from the biggest recession since the Great Depression either because he missed the signs or because he deliberately ignored them. Either way, that makes him the wrong person for the job.

American families deserve a strong leader as the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Fed who will fight hard to keep them safe. Everything we know about Mr. Quarles says that he will be fighting hard for the big banks. I will be voting no on Mr. Quarles' nomination, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.

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

Madam President, I wish to begin by offering my condolences to the victims of the massacre in Las Vegas last night and to their loved ones. I am heartsick for the residents of Las Vegas and everyone around the country who woke up to the horrendous news of last night's attack and who is worried sick about whether their family members, friends, and neighbors are OK.

Thoughts and prayers are good, but they are simply not enough. Thoughts and prayers are not enough when more moms and dads will bury their children this week. Thoughts and prayers are not enough when sons and daughters will be forced to grow up without their parents.

Attacks like the one last night have happened all too often in America. Enough is enough. We have to have a conversation about how to stop gun violence in America, and we need to have that conversation right now.

Madam President, I want to take some time to discuss the vote we will be taking shortly on the nomination of Ajit Pai to serve as the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC.

One thing that last night showed us is the importance of connections. Every day, moms and dads pick up their phones to check in on their kids, students go online to do research on homework assignments, and families sit together to watch the newest hit television show or movie. It is just a fact--media and telecommunications services play a vital role in helping American households connect with their loved ones, communities, and the world around them.

The FCC makes sure those services are available and accessible to all Americans, whether they live in a rural community or in a large city-- at least that is what the FCC is supposed to do. There are a lot of powerful companies that want to change that picture, companies that want to change the rules so they can line the pockets of their corporate executives and their wealthy investors. Those powerful companies have launched an all-out assault on every branch of our government with only one goal: to make sure the government works for them and for their buddies. If it leaves everyone else in the dirt, they don't much care.

As powerful companies know, it is good to have friends on the inside, and they have invested a lot of money in making friends. Giant corporations have spent unlimited amounts of money to elect politicians who will promote their views and to flood Congress with lobbyists who will work around the clock to destroy laws and rules that the industry doesn't like and to reshape those laws to suit corporate interests. But electing politicians and inflating Congress with lobbyists isn't enough. Their Republican buddies in Congress can only do so much. Powerful corporations need weak agencies that will not hold them accountable, so they work to fill those agencies with their allies-- friends who can undo the rules that giant corporations don't like, friends who will not go after those companies when they throw the rules out the window to make an extra buck.

The FCC is one of the agencies that have been on their hit list for a long time, and now they see their opportunity to execute a corporate takeover of the FCC. They started at the top with Ajit Pai, President Trump's pick to chair the FCC.

Since his appointment as Chair of the FCC, Chairman Pai has worked at breakneck speed to transform the FCC from an agency that works in the public interest to a big business support group.

Chairman Pai started with net neutrality protections--rules that help keep the internet free and open by preventing giant broadband companies from discriminating against certain internet users and turning the internet into another service that caters to those who can pay top dollar. Like his big broadband buddies, Chairman Pai

opposes net neutrality. Once President Trump was elected, Chairman Pai declared that the days of net neutrality protections were numbered, and now he is working hard to reverse those rules.

Chairman Pai has more items on his agenda. He is working to weaken the FCC's Lifeline Program, which helps low-income households across the country pay for phone and broadband service. Chairman Pai has also halted the FCC's efforts to demand some accountability from private prison phone companies that charge sky-high rates to prisoners and their loved ones. Chairman Pai thinks it is just fine for private companies to make it harder for prisoners to stay connected to their families and their communities by charging exorbitant phone fees.

Chairman Pai defends killing these strong, public-centered rules by repeating a version of the same old, tired refrain that we have heard over and over from industry: Government should stay out of the way and let big corporations do as they please because when big corporations make lots of profits, that benefits everyone. Yeah, right. That worn- out theory has been disproved time and time again. Americans know that when government is asleep at the wheel and big companies get to make the rules, those giant companies make out like bandits, while everyone else gets stuck with the bill.

That is not all. When government doesn't do its job, when it fails to protect the public interest, the big guys can grow even larger and more powerful and can translate greater economic power into greater political power, and that is where it gets very scary. Just look at Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is the largest television station owner in America, and it has made a name for itself by aggressively promoting ultraconservative views. It is infamous for forcing its stations to regularly run rightwing segments, and it melds its radical ideology with a take-no-prisoners profit-making mission, finding more and more creative ways to reduce news coverage and instead promote its sponsors' products.

Being the biggest isn't enough for Sinclair--it wants to become even more powerful, so it has put in a bid to purchase Tribune Broadcasting, another large television station owner. If government regulatories don't stop the merger, Sinclair would have access to over 70 percent of American households. If the alarm bells haven't already gone off, this is where they should start ringing like crazy.

During the Presidential campaign, Sinclair was a huge supporter of then-Candidate Trump. It used its power in local television markets to spread slanted, pro-Trump news stories. Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, even bragged about reaching a deal with Sinclair to get more positive news media coverage of Trump.

The day before Trump's inauguration, Sinclair's chairman met with Pai--who was then an FCC Commissioner but who was expected to be promoted to Chairman--he met with him to urge him to change the rules so Sinclair can grow even more powerful. When President Trump nominated Pai to chair the FCC, Sinclair got exactly what it wanted: Chairman Pai immediately got to work changing the rules so it would be easier for Sinclair to acquire Tribune.

Local media is sacred to many Americans. It is where we catch up on what is happening in our communities from people who know and care about our communities. A merger between Sinclair and Tribune would allow Sinclair to change that dynamic. With more local programming coming from a centralized source, there would be less information and less diversity of ideas in local reporting. That kind of concentrated power is bad for competition, and it is worse for democracy. Whether the Sinclair agenda is on the political right or the political left, no single, centralized corporation should control access to local programming for so many households.

We need a strong Chair at the FCC, a Chair who understands that the government's role is to work for American families and to hold giant corporations accountable. We do not need a Chair at the FCC who is working for the most powerful communications corporations in this country. That is why I will vote no on the nomination of Chairman Pai to be Chairman of the FCC.

Thank you, Madam President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, our economy is in trouble. In markets all across our economy, a few giant corporations hold all the power. It is everywhere. Four airlines control over 80 percent of all domestic airline seats in America. Five health insurance giants own over 80 percent of the health insurance market. Four companies dominate over 80 percent of the beef market. Three drugstore chains control almost all retail pharmacies in the country. Two companies sell more than 70 percent of the beer in America.

As competition has been snuffed out in industry after industry, big corporations have made out like bandits, and everyone else has paid the price. How do we pay? American families shell out more for lower quality goods. Small businesses find it harder and harder to compete against the big guys. Innovators and entrepreneurs struggle to promote new ideas that can change the world. Income inequality has left more American families struggling to make ends meet as the top 1 percent has grown even richer and richer. As fewer companies have seized more economic power, they have translated their economic muscle into political power--power they can use to elect the politicians they like, get the kinds of laws and policies they like, and run up even more economic power.

It is a nasty, self-perpetuating cycle, and it is exactly why Congress created antitrust laws over a century ago. Back then, like today, a few powerful companies were stifling competition in markets all across the economy and gaining extraordinary political power. Congress decided to create laws to break up trusts and protect competition.

Today the Justice Department's Antitrust Division is charged with protecting competition by blocking anti-competitive mergers and going after companies that engage in illegal conduct. For decades, though, antitrust enforcers have put their tools on the shelf instead of aggressively enforcing our antitrust laws, they have given the green light to megamerger after megamerger and allowed big corporations to misuse this power without a peep.

That problem is set to get worse in the Trump administration. Since taking office, President Trump has loaded his administration with a Who's Who of former lobbyists, Wall Street insiders, and corporate executives committed to tilting the scales even further in favor of his powerful friends and against American families.

Now, President Trump has nominated someone to head the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. His nominee, Makan Delrahim, will be in charge of determining whether there is someone to stand up for competition or let the big guys just get bigger and more powerful. Unfortunately, Mr. Delrahim's approach to antitrust enforcement is based on a hands-off economic theory that just leaves big corporations to do pretty much whatever they want to do. Case in point, just last year, when asked what he thought about the proposed merger of AT&T-Time Warner--a merger that would combine two of the most powerful companies in media--Mr. Delrahim said he didn't think it was a ``major antitrust problem.''

Mr. Delrahim spent over a decade working to convince government officials that other megamergers weren't antitrust problems. During the airline merger wave that left us with only four major carriers, Mr. Delrahim was lobbying the government to approve a merger between US Airways and Delta. Despite the fact that there are only a few large retail pharmacies, he lobbied to get government approval for CVS's proposed takeover of Caremark. Even though only five health insurers control the vast majority of the health insurance market, he tried to convince government regulators to approve Anthem's unsuccessful attempt to merge with Cigna.

Now he wants to take a spin through the revolving door and regulate the industries he worked to make even less competitive. For the giant corporations, wealthy individuals who want to amass more power and profits for themselves, Mr. Delrahim is a dream candidate, but he is also a dream candidate for President Trump. President Trump has not been shy about his willingness to use his power against individuals or companies he doesn't like, and he has made it clear that he expects his agency heads to carry out his orders.

Mr. Delrahim has been a loyal supporter of President Trump's since the campaign. He urged fellow Republicans to support President Trump because he correctly believed President Trump would appoint a pro- corporate Justice to the Supreme Court. He also served as legal counsel to President Trump after he was sworn in and as the President reversed rules that made it easier for families to pay their mortgages or reversed rules to prevent people with serious mental illnesses from buying guns or reversed rules to stop companies from dumping toxic waste into water. As head of the Antitrust Division, Mr. Delrahim will be in a position to make even more harmful decisions.

It is no secret that Americans don't trust Washington. They see politicians who care more about catering to corporate donors than fighting for the interests of hard-working people who are trying to figure out how to pay the bills and build a little security in their own lives. It is a real problem, but it is a problem we can solve. We can begin to solve it by fighting the economic concentration that is putting more money and more power into the hands of a few giant corporations. That means choosing enforcers who will hold companies accountable when they break the rules, and that means rejecting nominees like Makan Delrahim.

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

Mr. President, today we are voting on the nomination of William Emanuel to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB may be one of the most important independent Federal agencies that you have never heard of. They are responsible for protecting the lawful rights of workers to come together and bargain with their bosses for higher wages and better working conditions.

Starting a union is not an easy task. Often, it is a large corporation against its own employees. The money and the ability to threaten retaliation are heavily weighted on the corporate side.

For more than a century, many corporations fought unions tooth and nail, hiring strikebreakers and union-busting thugs and, later on, union-busting lawyers. So back in the 1930s, Congress established the NLRB to act as a referee and to keep the playing field level so that workers would have a chance to form a union if they wanted to.

President Trump picked William Emanuel to fill a vacancy on the NLRB. Mr. Emanuel has over 40 years of experience practicing labor and employment law. He has represented manufacturing companies, trade associations, logistics companies, hospitals, and dozens of other giant companies involved in labor disputes. He has represented big companies like Nissan, FedEx, Rite Aid, Safeway and Uber. That is an impressive resume. There is just one problem with it: In his more than four decades of practice, he has never been on the side of the workers--not once.

Every party to a dispute is entitled to legal representation, and Mr. Emanuel has every right to spend his career representing corporations, but a guy who has never even once represented workers should not serve on the NLRB, period.

The NLRB is not the Department of Commerce. It is not the Chamber of Commerce. It is not there to help pump up big corporations. No. When Congress created the NLRB, it gave it a simple mission: encourage collective bargaining. An individual who has spent his career working for some of the country's most ruthless union-busting firms, fighting off union efforts at every turn, has absolutely no business at the helm of an agency whose job is to encourage collective bargaining. The deck is already stacked against hard-working Americans.

For the last few decades, productivity has increased, corporations and shareholders have gotten richer, but workers haven't shared in that growth.

Hourly wages have been virtually flat for almost 35 years, and one reason for this is the decline of unions. The impact is everywhere.

Inequality has risen in America. Why? According to the Economic Policy Institute, the decline in unions accounts for about 20 percent to 30 percent of the growth in income inequality over the past several decades. When unions decline, all workers are hurt. For the more than 40 million non-union men working in the private sector, the loss of unions over the past 30 years has been equivalent to an annual wage loss of about $109 billion. It is no wonder that American families are feeling the squeeze.

The decline of unions isn't an accident. It didn't happen on its own or as the unexpected byproduct of some other event. No. Large corporations have called on their Republican buddies in local, State, and Federal governments, and they have launched a quiet but deadly attack on unions. Twenty-eight States have passed laws banning the collection of union dues from workers that the unions represent. The only purpose of these laws is to starve the unions of resources and make it harder for workers to join together and to stand up for themselves.

The Supreme Court hasn't been kind to unions either, effectively decimating the ability of home healthcare workers to join together in 2014. Now with a Republican-appointed majority on the Court, they are poised to deal the knockout blow to public sector unions later this term. And with the nomination of Mr. Emanuel, workers won't be able to count on the NLRB, either.

As a candidate, President Trump promised American workers that under a Trump Presidency, ``the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.'' He also promised to ``drain the swamp'' in Washington and fill his administration with those who would work for working Americans--not for donors and not for special interests.

When President Trump nominated Mr. Emanuel to serve at the highest labor court in the land, he delivered another gut punch to working people. In fact, Mr. Emanuel is the dream nominee for the donors and special interests. Trade associations for the companies that make their profits on the backs of low-wage workers immediately came out in support of his candidacy. The National Restaurant Association, the International Franchise Association, the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the National Right to Work Committee, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauded President Trump's pick with almost giddy enthusiasm and urged the Republican Senate to quickly confirm him to the Board. Today, unless a few of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decide to stand up for workers, they will get their wish.

We all know that Washington works great for the trade associations and their armies of lobbyists and lawyers, but it delivers one punch after another to the hard-working Americans who sent us to Washington to work for them. If Congress isn't going to stand up for workers, the very least we can do is give these workers a fighting chance to join together and stand up for themselves.

It is the NLRB's job to make sure that employees can join unions if they want to. That is the law. A man who has spent 40 years beating back workers' efforts to form unions has no business on the Board. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing his nomination.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.