Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, Wells Fargo creates 3.5 million fake accounts, charging customers fees and ruining credit scores. Equifax lets hackers steal personal information on 143 million Americans, putting nearly 60 percent of American adults at risk of identity theft. What is the Republican Party's response? To take away your legal rights to hold companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax accountable.

I know that sounds nuts, but it is true. Here is the issue. If you have a checking account, a credit card, a private student loan, or any other number of financial products, there is a good chance that you have given up your right to go to court if this financial firm cheats you. That is because millions of financial contracts include a forced arbitration clause that says that, if you want to legally challenge something your financial company did to you, you can't join with other customers in court. You have to go to arbitration all by yourself.

Think about what that means in the real world. You wake up one morning, and you find a mysterious $30 fee on your account statement. You call the bank and say: Hey, I didn't agree to this. The bank tells you: Go pound sand. So what are your options?

Well, if there is no forced arbitration clause in your contract, you can join a class action lawsuit against the bank for free. Chances are you are not the only customer who got hit with an unauthorized $30 fee. A class action gives you a chance to get some of that money back, and, just as importantly, the bank might actually have to cough up some real money and think twice before hitting you and their other customers with hidden fees again.

Think what happens if there is a forced arbitration clause. You can't join with other customers in court. Your only option is to go out on your own and file an arbitration claim, which will cost you $200 or more just to get started. OK. Who is going to pay $200 to get back a $30 fee? No one. And that is exactly what the banks are counting on. They can get away with nickel-and-diming you forever.

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 in a class action. The rule guarantees your right to join other customers in court and to hold your bank accountable.

But Republicans in Congress are now coming after the rule. House Republicans have already voted to reverse the rule, and now Senate Republicans are gearing up to follow suit.

Make no mistake: Anyone who votes to reverse this rule is saying loud and clear that they side with the banks over their own constituents, because bank lobbyists are the only ones who are asking Congress to reverse this rule. Every other organization--all of those that represent actual human beings--want the rule to be saved.

Let me read from just a few. 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, ``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.

The AARP, which represents nearly 40 million American 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.''

And the Main Street Alliance, which represents thousands of small businesses, says the CFPB rule will help small businesses fight against big financial firms that try to drive up their fees.

There it is: veterans, servicemembers, seniors, small businesses, consumers--all lining up to support the CFPB rule. But that is not all. Let Freedom Ring, which is an organization that proudly touts itself as ``supporting the conservative agenda'' likes the CFPB rule too. They say 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 we 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. It is about advancing the donors' agenda, the big money agenda. That is it, period.

It is amazing. Not even a decade ago, the banks sparked a financial crisis that hurt millions of working families. And while the big banks got a taxpayer bailout and are back to doling out multimillion-dollar bonuses to their executives, a lot of working families are still struggling to recover.

Yet, here in Congress, the Republican Party is still carrying water for the big banks. The big banks say: Jump. The Republican Party asks: How high? The big banks tell Congress to take away their customers' rights to hold them accountable, and the Republican Party says: You bet. The big banks say: Take away those rights right now--right on the heels of Wells Fargo and Equifax sticking it to millions of customers. The Republican Party, without an ounce of shame, says: Yes, sir, just keep those donations coming.

The Republican Party will stop carrying water for the big banks only if you demand it. There are a lot of dollars on the other side, but your votes, your calls, your emails can make a real difference. Tell your Senators to stand up to the big banks and vote no on this resolution.

Healthcare

Mr. President, over the past several weeks, families all over this country have raised their voices yet again. They have not given up, nor have they been shouted down, and they have made it very clear where they stand on the issue of healthcare.

The American people don't want tens of millions of people to lose their healthcare coverage. They don't want to open the door to insurance companies discriminating against people with preexisting conditions or eliminating addiction coverage or denying care for people with mental illness. They don't want to kick our grandmothers out of nursing homes or tell the parents of babies born prematurely that they are on their own to deal with a multimillion-dollar hospital bill. They don't want the Republican healthcare repeal bills--not any of the bills that have come before and not the latest version that was revealed this morning that is still as rotten to the core as every bill that has come before it.

Doctors and nurses don't want the Republican repeal. Neither do hospitals and insurance companies and nursing homes and Governors and State insurance commissioners.

But Senate Republicans plow ahead anyway. They are so desperate to destroy the Affordable Care Act that they keep yelling about how our healthcare system is in crisis, how it is imploding in front of our very eyes, trying to convince everyone that we need to blow the whole thing up in order to save it. But the thing is, while Republicans try to manufacture an imaginary healthcare crisis to justify their cruel repeal bill, there is a real crisis about to unfold--a crisis created by the Republicans.

September 30 is the deadline for several healthcare provisions. If Congress doesn't act this week, Federal programs that help children, pregnant women, people in need of addiction treatment, veterans, Medicare beneficiaries, and other populations will run out of funding or just expire altogether. In many cases, Republicans and Democrats have bills stacked up, just waiting to get a vote, the agreements all hammered out. But instead of bringing those bills to the floor, the Republican leadership is fixated on repealing health insurance coverage. They insist on voting again on something that most of America doesn't want while they ignore the work on healthcare that needs to get done now. This is beyond stupid.

One of the most important programs that will be expiring is the Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage for 9 million low-income children and pregnant women across this country. Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Orrin Hatch wrote this legislation together back in the 1990s. Today, that program works with Medicaid to provide health insurance for one out of every three kids in this country, including foster children and kids with special health needs.

Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden--a Republican and a Democrat--have a bill ready to go to extend this program. Funding expires on September 30, but instead of holding a vote on that bill, Republicans want to spend this week trying to squeeze reluctant Senators to support the Graham-Cassidy bill, which contains permanent cuts to the Medicaid Program.

Then there is the funding for community health centers, which provide high-quality, integrated care. In Massachusetts, our community health centers serve one in every seven residents. Our health centers are on the frontlines of the opioid epidemic. They are working to eradicate tuberculosis. They are improving nutritional health. They are taking the stigma out of mental health treatments. And they save money, promoting prevention and reducing the use of hospital emergency rooms.

Community health centers are a big part of what is working well in healthcare today--more coverage at lower cost. They work, but they are running out of time. Funding for community health centers runs out on September 30. Last week, 70 U.S. Senators--including 24 Republicans-- signed a letter urging Congress to act to extend this funding. But instead of extending these funds, the Senate Republican leaders say: Too bad, we are too busy trying to knock millions of people out of healthcare coverage.

Then there is the funding for medical training at a special type of health center--teaching health centers. This program helps train primary care doctors. Greater Lawrence Family Health Center in Massachusetts was the very first community health center in the country to have a residency program like this. Almost 80 percent of their residents continue to work in underserved communities after they graduate--areas that often have a shortage of primary care physicians.

Funding for this program also runs out on September 30. Senator Collins and Senator Tester--a Republican and a Democrat--have a bill ready to go to extend funding for teaching health centers. But instead of holding a vote on that bill this week, Republicans have said: Sorry, we are too busy trying to take away healthcare coverage from the many people who walk through the doors of community health centers.

What else is at risk if Senate Republicans refuse to act before September 30? A whole package of Medicare Programs, which help seniors and people with disabilities access the care they need. In Massachusetts, this includes the SHINE Program, which helps Medicare beneficiaries pick the right health insurance plans.

Medicaid payments that go to hospitals treating large numbers of low- income patients are also going to run out.

Funds for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, which funds home visits to new and expectant parents to help give them the training they need and the help they need to keep a new baby healthy and safe, will run out. Senators Grassley and Menendez--a Republican and a Democrat--have a bipartisan bill ready to go. But instead of voting to help those new babies and their families, Republicans want us to vote on a bill to take away health insurance.

Let's not forget the bipartisan compromise that Senator Alexander and Senator Murray--a Republican and a Democrat--were working on to lower health insurance premiums. In order to keep insurance premiums down for millions of insurance plans, the bill has to

pass this week. But Republicans walked away from the table because it is more important to them to rip healthcare from millions of Americans than to lower healthcare costs for hard-working families across this country.

There is a whole list of concrete things that Republicans and Democrats could be working on together to improve healthcare in this country--healthcare for babies, for new moms, for seniors on Medicaid, for people with disabilities, and for every American who buys an ACA insurance plan. In fact, behind the scenes, Republicans and Democrats have already been working together on these programs. The bills are ready to go. They are drafted, they are printed up, and they are just waiting for a vote.

We are on the edge of a healthcare crisis. It is a healthcare crisis created by the Senate Republican leadership that insists that we burn time off the clock this week, voting on yet another effort to rip away people's health insurance.

The Senate has real work to do--work that could help millions of American families. It is time to drop this cruel effort to repeal healthcare and instead focus on making sure that important health programs don't run out of funds in the next few days. That is what the American people want to see us do.

Mr. President, I yield.

Mr. President, I ask recognition to speak.

Mr. President, 12 days ago, Equifax, one of the Nation's largest credit reporting agencies, disclosed that hackers had breached its system and stolen highly personal information on nearly half of America. Social Security numbers, birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, even credit card numbers--all in the hands of criminals.

Since then, I have heard from working families in Massachusetts and all across the country. The Equifax hack is a nightmare. At best, it is a giant hassle--time on hold with the credit reporting agencies, fees for this service and that service, confusion about what has been stolen and what to do about it. At worst, it could be ruinous--a lifetime of responsible spending and borrowing wiped out by identity theft and fraud. People are outraged, and rightly so.

Bad enough that Equifax is so sloppy that they let hackers into their system, but the company's response to the hack has been even worse. First, Equifax hid the information about the breach for 40 days--40 days. Equifax gave criminals a 40-day headstart to use the information they had stolen, while the rest of us were left in the dark.

Then, when Equifax finally decided to disclose the breach, they didn't call or send letters to the millions of Americans who were victims of the hack. No, they announced the breach and then made everyone go to an Equifax website and turn over more personal information to see if they were one of the people who had been affected. Once Equifax had the new information, they provided confusing and misleading information about whether the person had actually been a victim of the breach.

Worse still, while Equifax was unclear about whether someone's information had been stolen, they were very clear about one thing: Everyone, whether or not their information was stolen, should sign up for a supposedly free Equifax credit monitoring service called TrustedID Premier. The terms of use for this program initially required anyone who signed up to have a credit card. Why? Because after the first year, Equifax could start automatically charging the credit card for the service if the customer hadn't already canceled. That is right. Equifax was trying to impose secret fees and profit off the hack of their own system.

But wait, it got even worse. To sign up for this credit monitoring service, Equifax at first forced consumers to give up their right to go to court and sue Equifax if they had any disputes about the product. Equifax changed some of the terms after there was a lot of public pressure.

Let me see if I can recap all this. After allowing hackers to steal personal information on as many as 143 million Americans, Equifax hid the breach from consumers for more than a month, failed to clearly inform people whether the information had been stolen, then tried to profit off the breach by tricking people into signing up for a costly credit monitoring product that also required them to give up their legal rights. Wow.

In the last decade, there has been so much corporate misconduct, so much bald-faced contempt for consumers, that at times it seems as though we have all just grown numb to it. But even against that backdrop, Equifax's conduct is just jaw-dropping.

It is time for us to fight back. It is time for all of us to fight back--Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, vegetarians-- it doesn't matter. We have all been victims of the Equifax hack, or we know someone who has, and we all deserve better. That is why I partnered with Senator Schatz and 10 of our colleagues to introduce the Freedom from Equifax Exploitation Act, or FREE Act, last Thursday. Our bill empowers consumers to take back control of their personal credit data.

The Equifax hack has highlighted the strange role of credit reporting agencies like Equifax and how they interface with our financial system. Banks and other big companies feed agencies like Equifax information about every financial transaction you make, from purchasing a car, to taking out a mortgage, to buying a home, to getting a student loan. They get information on every monthly payment you make, and they know where you live and how long you have lived there and what your phone number is. Every day, the credit reporting agencies package up that information about you into files that they then sell to other people. Sometimes it is people you know about, like when you apply for a mortgage or a car loan, but a lot of times, Equifax is selling data to people who want to sell you something--credit cards or student loan refinance or even a cruise.

The bottom line is that companies like Equifax are making billions of dollars a year collecting, sharing, and selling highly personal information about you, all without your explicit permission or without paying you a penny.

The FREE Act tries to level the playing field. First, it allows every consumer to freeze and unfreeze their credit file for free. If you freeze your credit file, no one can access it, and the credit reporting agency can't use it either. A freeze is like a ``do not call'' list for your credit information. It is about security. It means that even after the Equifax hack, thieves can't open credit cards or take out loans in your name even if they have your personal information. But it is also an easy way to give you the power to decide who gets your information for any other reason. The basic idea is simple: Equifax doesn't pay you when they sell your data, and you shouldn't have to pay Equifax to keep them from selling it.

Our bill says that the same rules apply to all three credit reporting companies, and all three companies must refund your money if they charged you for a credit freeze in the aftermath of the Equifax breach. No one in this industry should profit from this hack.

This bill doesn't fix all the problems in the credit reporting industry. It is only a first step.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, has been looking into the credit reporting industry for years, and she has introduced comprehensive legislation to reform the industry and empower consumers. The Senate ought to take a very close look at her bill.

I have also launched an investigation into the Equifax breach and the whole credit reporting industry. In the upcoming weeks, I will be gathering more information from Equifax, other credit reporting agencies, Federal regulators, and legal experts. I want to keep fighting to make sure that credit reporting agencies can't exploit consumers and put their personal information at risk.

This a test for Congress. Will we act quickly to protect American consumers, or are we going to cave in to firms like Equifax that have spent millions of dollars in lobbying Congress for weaker rules? Which is it?

The FREE Act is a simple but important response to the Equifax hack. I hope my colleagues will join me and help pass this bill.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, it has been over 7 weeks since the Senate voted on three different versions of the Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Each of these terrible bills would have stripped healthcare coverage from tens of millions of Americans and raised costs for millions more.

During this 7 weeks that followed the last of those votes, no one has clamored for another try. Phones aren't ringing off the hook with calls for Republicans to go one more round in their effort to rip up the Medicaid Program. Letters and emails aren't pouring in asking for legislation to jack up the costs for people with preexisting conditions. Tweets and Facebook posts don't demand that insurers get the chance to drop coverage for mental health issues and addiction treatment.

Instead, the families I have spoken with have told me, often through tears, that they are so relieved that Republicans stepped back from the brink and came to their senses. They are breathing just a little bit easier knowing that Medicaid will be there for their elderly parent in a nursing home or the neighbor down the street who uses a wheelchair. That tight, anxious, terrifying feeling in their chests has eased up because they don't have to worry about losing the health insurance that helps pay for their asthma medication or their children's heart surgery.

Here we are again, back on the floor of the Senate, engaged in a terrible and familiar ritual: begging the Republicans not to gut our health insurance system for the sake of political games.

If the American people want these cruel repeal bills to be thrown in the garbage, where they belong, then what are we doing here? Well, Senate Republicans are pretty desperate. This month, they learned from the Senate Parliamentarian--the independent umpire here in the Senate who gets the final say on how the procedural rules work--that the legislative instructions they passed back in January to kick off their whole effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act will expire on September 30. Once that happens, Republicans would have to start over with a new set of instructions if they want to be able to use the special Senate rules that allow them to jam this bill through without a single Democratic vote. So the Republicans have dug through the trash and pulled out an old draft of a bill they think could get the job done. It is called the Cassidy-Graham proposal, named after the Republican Senators who put it together.

You might think that after months and months of failed attempts, the Republicans would have something new to offer. You might think that after their last three terrible repeal bills went up in flames, the Republicans would propose something more reasonable this time around. You might think that--but no. This is just the same terrible set of policies with a fresh coat of paint and a new name.

The Cassidy-Graham proposal completely eliminates the parts of the ACA that help families afford health insurance. Do you think insurance is expensive right now? Just wait for Cassidy-Graham. Need help paying for your chemotherapy or your surgery? Good luck. Cassidy-Graham says you are on your own.

What about all the people who count on Medicaid to help out, people who have health insurance but have a baby who was born 8 weeks too early and who now needs breathing equipment and special therapists; people who worked hard all their lives but who couldn't save enough to make it three decades in a nursing home; people who use a wheelchair or need a home health aide to come by so they can live independently? What happens to them? Well, with massive cuts to Medicaid, the latest Republican proposal turns America's back on babies, on seniors, on people with disabilities, on our families and our friends and our neighbors who need our help.

I could go on and on about this, but let's get one thing straight about this latest Republican plan: It is not more reasonable. It is not more moderate. It is not bipartisan. And it is definitely not something that families in this country want. It is just another version of the same old cruel, heartless, shameless plan that Republicans have spent the last 8 months trying to jam down the throats of the American people.

Don't take my word for it. Doctors' groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and a bunch of other medical specialities, pulled the fire alarm last week when Cassidy and Graham released their proposal. They sent Congress a letter saying it could cost millions of Americans their healthcare coverage. They begged Republicans not to start down this road again. Instead, the doctors asked Congress to do something that makes a whole lot more sense: Focus on ways to improve health insurance markets in this country, starting with the discussions that have taken place in the HELP Committee over the last 2 weeks. That is because there is another important end-of-September deadline coming up--the date when insurance companies have to set their prices for next year's insurance premiums.

Over the last couple of weeks, the two Senators who run the HELP Committee--Senator Alexander on the Republican side and Senator Murray on the Democratic side--have held a series of hearings on policies that we could pass before the end of September to help lower premiums and make sure that when you buy health insurance, you get coverage that actually means something.

I sit on that committee, and, like most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I have been to each of the four hearings we held on this issue.

Senators Alexander and Murray have also opened up the discussion to every single Senator so that even those not assigned to the committee can come and meet the witnesses and talk about how to make healthcare better. We have traded ideas. We have talked to Governors. We talked to State insurance commissioners. We talked to doctors and to patients. And not everyone sees things exactly the same way. We have argued back and forth and put a lot of different ideas on the table. We have spent hours talking about how to improve healthcare in this country.

We have 12 days left before the end of September. It is not always this simple, but this time there really is a clear tradeoff. We can either use those 12 days to let Republicans burn down healthcare in this country, or we can use those 12 days to pass a bill that would stabilize healthcare coverage for millions of Americans.

The Republicans are hoping to slip below the radar screen, to sneak the repeal of healthcare coverage across the finish line just when we let down our guard. Well, I have news for the Republicans who want to go down this road: I see you. The American people see you. And we will fight you every step of the way, for as long as it takes and for as many more rounds as you want to go, to stop your ugly bill in its

tracks. We will not give up on the families who are counting on us to defend their healthcare. We will not back down. We will not blink.

Here is the thing Republicans just don't seem to realize: We aren't tired. We don't get tired when we are fighting for kids on ventilators. We don't lose heart when we are lining up on the side of moms with breast cancer or grandparents with Alzheimer's. We never ever run out of steam when we are fighting for people's lives.

We are here today and tomorrow and every day, and we will fight back as hard as we need to for as long as it takes to defeat every single attempt to take away healthcare from millions of families in this country.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support my bipartisan amendment with Senator Lee calling for a ``think first'' assessment of recent Russian violations of the Intermediate- Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the response of the United States.

The INF Treaty has been the bedrock of European security for nearly three decades, and Congress must ask a few reasonable questions before we fund a missile research and development program that our military leaders have not asked for, that our allies do not want, that would undermine the spirit and intent of our longstanding treaty commitment, and that would make the world a more dangerous place.

No one is more concerned about Russia's recent aggression than I am. From their annexation of Crimea to their meddling in our election and the elections of our allies, Russia's behavior must be met with a firm and unequivocal response.

Last month, I traveled to the Baltics to see firsthand the threat Russia poses to NATO allies and to meet with senior U.S. Army officials and local political leaders. On that trip, one thing was abundantly clear: We need to be tough in the face of Russian provocation, but we also need to be smart. That is what our amendment is about today. It isn't about playing politics; it is about smart, strategic, informed toughness that advances the interests of the United States of America.

The INF treaty, negotiated and signed by President Reagan nearly 30 years ago, erased an entire class of nuclear weapons from the European continent. It eliminated ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers--roughly up to twice the distance between Moscow and Paris. This is also the same class of missile that Russia deployed earlier this year, in violation of the treaty.

Russia's treaty violations have been widely reported. There is no question that bringing Russia back into compliance with the treaty must be a top priority. Russian compliance is in the best interest of the United States, it is in the best interest of our European and Asia Pacific allies, and it is ultimately in the best interest of the Russian Federation. But this is a tough job. Our military leaders have told us they see no indication that Russia plans to resume honoring its treaty obligations anytime soon.

In the short term, we must ensure that Russia does not gain a military advantage from its violation and that Russia--Russia--takes the blame on the world stage for breaking this treaty. We cannot accomplish these goals by signaling to the world that we have lost faith in the very treaty we seek to preserve. But that is exactly what section 1635 of the NDAA would do. This section calls for the ``establishment of a research and development program for a dual- capable, road-mobile, ground-launched missile system with a maximum range of 5,500 kilometers''--or, in plain language, the development of a new nuclear missile that we have publicly sworn never to test or deploy.

The proposed R&D program is in itself not a violation of the INF treaty, which only bans testing and deployment, but there is no denying that such a missile program is a violation of the spirit and intent of our treaty commitment, and that is exactly how our allies and adversaries alike will see it.

The reality of this proposal is crystal clear: Either we are authorizing millions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted on research and development of a missile we never intend to build or test, or we are pushing the door wide open to an upcoming violation of the INF Treaty.

In opening that door, we would be signaling not only to the Russians but also to our treaty partners around the world that the United States is preparing to walk away from a nuclear treaty commitment. In sending that signal, we are basically giving Russia the excuse it is looking for to shed remaining international constraints, to justify an acceleration of its intermediate-range nuclear program, and to spark a new contest of nuclear escalation. Such a move can quickly increase the number of nuclear weapons deployed throughout the world and send the globe into a second cold war reality--a reality where we live with the constant threat that one preemptive move, one miscalculation could wipe away everything we hold dear.

Supporters claim that a new missile is needed not only to compete with Russia but also to counter a more assertive China, which is not bound by the agreement. But I have seen no evidence to support these arguments. If anything, a tit-for-tat response is more likely to embolden Putin to up the ante by deploying some more missiles and perhaps withdrawing from the INF Treaty altogether.

The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, has already told us that a new intermediate-range missile is not necessary to hold targets in China at risk.

To ensure that our response to Russian treaty violations is based in international strategy rather than just in knee-jerk responses, Senator Lee and I are offering a commonsense amendment requiring that before we spend a dime of taxpayer money on the proposed missile program, the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State should work together to address a few critical questions.

First, what is the status, capability, and threat posed to our allies by Russia's new ground-launched cruise missile?

Secretary Mattis has stated that Russia's treaty violation would not provide Russia with a ``significant military advantage.'' Is this still the Secretary's assessment? General Selva has said: ``Given the location of the specific missile and the deployment, [the Russians] don't gain any advantage in Europe.'' Is this still the general's assessment? We should not blindly commit taxpayer money and undermine our treaty commitment without understanding the threat.

Second, does our military believe that a new ground-launched, intermediate-range missile that is not compliant with our treaty obligations is our most effective response to Russia?

The Pentagon did not request funding for a new intermediate-range missile. According to a report by the Pentagon just last year, there are multiple options on the table to pressure Russia back into treaty compliance, including enhancements to the European Reassurance Initiative and additional active defenses. That is in addition to the other available tools of national power that could strengthen, rather than weaken, the INF Treaty.

The Pentagon advocated for just such a multipronged approach, writing that ``Russia's return to compliance with its obligations under the INF treaty remains the preferable outcome, which argues against unilateral U.S. withdrawal or abrogation of the INF treaty at this time.''

With the Pentagon reviewing options, Congress's proposed playground approach of ``if you build a ground-based missile, I will build one too'' is not the strategic response of generals and statesmen. In fact, the administration has said that this new program would ``unhelpfully'' tie them ``to a specific type of missile system . . . which would limit potential military response options'' at a time when DOD, State, and Treasury are ``developing an integrated diplomatic, military, and economic response strategy to maximize pressure on Russia.'' We must let our military leaders and our diplomats

do their jobs and inform Congress before we act.

Third question: Will our NATO allies stand with us in this response, and will any of our allies even be willing to host such a missile system if we decide to deploy it?

Given our geographic advantages, a missile of this range does no good on U.S. soil; it only works if it is installed on the ground of our NATO allies.

The last time the United States weighed a land-based escalation in Europe, millions of citizens took to the streets in protest, and in the 21st century, that call for nuclear disarmament of the European continent has only grown. As General Selva recently acknowledged, we don't even know whether any of our European allies would permit the deployment of a nuclear-capable ground-launched missile on their territory.

During the Cold War, Russian deployments of land-based cruise missiles targeting Europe were, in part, a ploy to cause division among the NATO countries, and the same could be said today. It is critical that we respond as one indivisible NATO coalition, unshaken by Russia's provocations.

So that is it--three must-ask questions deserving of must-have answers: What is the nature of the threat? What is the Pentagon's recommended military response? What action unites us with our NATO allies? Until we have those answers, heading down the path of destroying the INF Treaty is grossly irresponsible.

Support to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and prevent their spread to more nations has always been a nonpartisan issue.

When President Reagan signed this treaty into law, he said that ``patience, determination, and commitment made this impossible vision [of the INF Treaty] a reality.'' Ever since then, the treaty has served as the bedrock of our efforts to build a safe and peaceful world in a nuclear age; to build a world where schoolchildren spend their days learning to read and write, not practicing duck-and-cover drills; to build a world where families live in hope for what tomorrow may bring, not in fear that a flash of light may sweep away everything they love; to build a world that looks to the United States to steadily lead toward sustained peace and security. This amendment continues in that spirit.

I thank Senator Lee for his leadership on this bipartisan effort. When we announced this amendment, he said that the amendment ``would set the precedent that the [United States] should not immediately react to an adversary's treaty violation by violating the same treaty ourselves. That's not how working in good faith in the international community is done.'' He is right.

I want to acknowledge Senator Cardin, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Feinstein, a longtime arms control champion, and thank them for their leadership to prevent nuclear proliferation and ensure that America upholds its international obligations. I thank Senator Reed, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, for his strong support on this issue. We are all grateful for his efforts.

On the 30th anniversary of the treaty, we must give no cause to doubt that the United States stands by its word, that it is committed to this treaty, and that it is committed to working with allies to bring Russia back into compliance.

The INF Treaty removed thousands of nuclear weapons from the face of the globe, and we must be certain that we have exhausted all options before we walk away from it.

Rather than simply dusting off a nuclear escalation play from the early 1980s, I ask my colleagues to join us in allowing the Secretaries of Defense and State to do their jobs, to weigh the options, and to recommend a course of action. I ask them to join us in allowing information and strategy to guide our policy. I ask them to join us in supporting this amendment to the NDAA.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised working families that he would subject every proposal he saw in the White House to a simple test: ``Does it create more jobs and better wages for Americans?'' He claimed he wasn't ``going to let Wall Street get away with murder,'' and he said he was going to ``drain the swamp.''

Such great talk--and then he got to Washington. His first order of business was to put together a team of people who had spent decades as executives at big banks and large corporations--people who are determined to tilt the playing field in favor of Wall Street and against working families. You don't need to look very far to see them. His most senior economic advisers--Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, and the senior counselor for economic initiatives, Dina Powell--together, those three have spent nearly a half a century combined working for Goldman Sachs. When it comes to our economy, this isn't the Trump administration; this is the Goldman Sachs administration.

Now President Trump has lined up another top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, who has been nominated to serve as the Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Hassett hasn't worked at Goldman Sachs. No, his ``fresh perspective'' is that he has spent his career advocating for policies that favor the wealthiest Americans.

The Council of Economic Advisers plays a critical role in developing this country's economic policies. It was created by Congress to, as Dr. Hassett has put it himself, give the President ``unbiased, scientific, and objective advice'' about the economic impact of the President's policies on the American economy. They have their fingers in all sorts of policies from trade to healthcare, to taxes, to financial regulation.

So what kind of an economy does Dr. Hassett want? He hasn't been shy in telling us. Dr. Hassett wants an economy that keeps working great for those on top, and if it leaves working families further behind, that is just too bad.

Start with taxes: Dr. Hassett gets really excited about cutting taxes on giant corporations. In fact, when he was working for Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign, he wrote that the new President's top priority-- the No. 1 act, the first thing he should do when he stepped into the Oval Office--was cut the corporate tax rate. His argument was that if we cut taxes for big businesses, they will give those savings to their workers and be more productive, improving the economy for everyone. That is just plain old trickle-down economics: Give more money to corporations and the wealthy, and they will surely pass it along to everyone else. It hasn't worked so far, and it isn't going to work in the future. Well, it isn't going to work for anyone who isn't already wealthy. For them, that works great.

On trade, Dr. Hassett also sings the corporate tune. Dr. Hassett wants to double down on the same kind of trade agreements that enrich giant corporations and leave the workers eating dirt. Dr. Hassett embraces trade deals that make it harder for small businesses to compete, trade deals that weaken public safety, and trade deals that undercut environmental rules. Dr. Hassett's approach really makes one wonder: Does Donald Trump not know who this guy is, or does he just not care? Either way, it is American workers who will take another punch to the gut delivered by Team Trump.

And how about on financial regulation? Nine years ago, Wall Street brought the economy to its knees and had to be bailed out to the tune of $700 billion. The crash cost millions of Americans their jobs and their homes. Congress then passed bipartisan financial reforms to stop another crisis. Dr. Hassett was not enthusiastic. In public, he called those new rules ``lamebrained'' and described the legislation as ``horrifying'' and ``the worst piece of legislation that I've seen in my entire life.'' He sounded the alarm that the financial reform ``needs to be repealed as soon as possible.''

He has since said that he regrets his tone. Tone isn't the problem here. The problem is what he said, not how he said it.

If Dr. Hassett has his way and Wall Street reform gets repealed, the same behavior that caused the 2008 financial crisis would be unleashed again. I cannot understand how, just 9 years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Dr. Hassett would want to turn the banks loose so they have a clear shot at cheating consumers and building up risks that could blow up the financial system again.

There is no end to Dr. Hassett's bad judgment. He is wrong on the minimum wage, calling the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour ``wrongheaded'' and saying that raising the minimum wage was a ``dishonest approach'' to alleviating poverty.

He is wrong on the environment. In a column, he advised President Obama to ``frack away.''

And, most of all, he is wrong about the fundamental problems in our economy, calling income inequality a myth and saying it was ``ludicrous'' to believe that our society is ``rigged or fundamentally unjust.'' He sounds as if he thinks that it is just great that this economy works for those at the top and pretty much for no one else.

Dr. Hassett has consistently advocated for the interests of corporations over working people. If he is confirmed, I am confident that he will be one more voice in the White House speaking up for the rich and the powerful. No doubt he will fit right into the Goldman Sachs administration.

But Congress has a say in this. The last thing we need is another economic adviser who wants to tilt the playing field even further in favor of corporate America.

I oppose this nomination, and I hope other Senators will too.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Defense bill has a long tradition of bipartisan cooperation, and I was glad to join in that tradition as part of the Armed Services Committee. As with any far-reaching legislation, there are a number of provisions in this I support and some I do not, but, on the whole, this bill is a win for national security and a win for Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has a lot to offer our national security. Each of our military bases is unique in making vital contributions to our defense. The Massachusetts National Guard has a proud history, dating back to 1636, and it contains the oldest units of the U.S. Army.

Today we are proud of our military tradition, and we have a unique ecosystem of universities, industries, startups, and military labs, all focused on the next-generation needs for our warfighters. Research and development is critically important to this effort. It will literally save lives. I have made research funding a major priority, and I am very pleased we have secured an additional $45 million in funding for the Army's Basic and Applied Research accounts, for places like Natick, where researchers are doing cutting-edge work to better protect our soldiers. Overall, the bill increases funding for science and technology $250 million above the President's budget.

The bill also recognizes the critical role that MIT Lincoln Lab plays in national security research, and supports the construction of a new advanced microelectronics integration facility that will begin in 2019. It also fully funds the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, which is doing

great work connecting DOD with innovative startups in Cambridge and around the country.

Our military bases, which are the lifeblood of their communities in Massachusetts, are also receiving much needed facility upgrades. Hanscom Air Force Base will receive $11 million to build a new gate complex that will dramatically improve its security. Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee will receive more than $60 million to construct a new maintenance facility and build a new indoor small arms range to improve readiness. Natick Soldier Systems Center will receive $21 million to improve family housing facilities, bringing our families working at Natick closer to the base.

All three of my brothers served in the military, and I know the demands of the military can be hard on families and on servicemembers. I have spent a lot of time over the last 9 months working hard with both Republican and Democratic Senators to do everything I can to help improve the lives of our military personnel and their families. I partnered with Senator Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, to introduce the Leadership Recognition Act, which has been incorporated into this larger Defense bill. Our proposal ensures that our servicemembers get the pay raises they deserve.

Over the last 15 years, Congress directed the Pentagon to raise military pay so it was more comparable to civilian wages, but it also gave the President the authority to waive the requirement to raise military pay. Unfortunately, that keeps happening, and military families who are already sacrificing so much don't get the pay raises they are entitled to.

Our new provision restricts the use of this waiver. We promised our military their regular pay raises in line with inflation, and they ought to get those raises, period. This one is a no-brainer. I am sorry it is taking Congress so long to get it done, but we are there now.

The Defense bill also includes my Service Member Debt Collection Reform Act. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has identified how unscrupulous debt collectors often take advantage of military personnel, for example, by alleging that servicemembers owe disputed or imaginary debts and sometimes even by contacting a servicemember's commanding officer to intimidate a servicemember into paying a debt they don't owe. This is outrageous. My provision requires DOD to review and update its policies regarding harassment of servicemembers by debt collectors.

Our military personnel are also entitled to educational benefits that can help them earn a degree or transition to civilian life. However, too often military members don't actually use these benefits because they can't navigate a frustratingly complicated and bureaucratic application process. That is why I offered an amendment to the NDAA to make sure DOD works with the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs to automate the application of student loan benefits available to military borrowers. These Departments can use this information that already exists in Federal databases to expedite student borrower benefits for servicemembers, and there is no reason we shouldn't just do that right away. This will make life a little easier for our vets, and it will help put many of them on the road to a better education and higher earnings for the rest of their lives.

There is another problem in our military that we need to address. I was appalled earlier this year at reports that some male servicemembers shared nude photos of their fellow female servicemembers without consent, and harassed them on a website called Marines United. The military is not immune to the rise of so-called revenge porn online. Make no mistake, revenge porn is sexual harassment. DOD concluded in a May 2017 report that such harassment can lead to sexual assault.

Just last week, I sat with women in Massachusetts who had been sexually harassed and sexually assaulted during their time in the military. They volunteered for the military out of a deep sense of patriotism, and now they are struggling hard to come to terms with what happened to them. Their sense of betrayal--betrayal by their fellow servicemembers--ran deep.

Acts like these are deeply wrong, and they undermine unit cohesion and readiness. The Marine Corps and other services have taken some positive steps in response to the website scandal, but military prosecutors need the tools to combat this specific behavior.

Commanders have always had the ability to prosecute disorderly conduct, but the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not explicitly prohibit nonconsensual photo-sharing in all cases. To solve this problem, I teamed up with Senator Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, to introduce the Protecting Servicemembers Online Act. Our proposal closes the revenge porn loophole, making it unlawful under the UCMJ for military personnel to share private, intimate images without the consent of the individual depicted. It does this by balancing privacy protections and survivors' rights, and I am grateful this year's Defense bill takes similar steps to address this revenge porn problem. There is more to do to make sure each person who signs up to serve our country is treated with dignity and respect, but this is a positive step.

This year's Defense bill also addresses an issue which is very personal to me--how we care for victims of terrorist attacks. I had been a Senator for only 3 months when the twin explosions went off at the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three people and wounding hundreds more. I was on a flight from Boston to DC when the bombs went off. I didn't even leave the DC airport. I just caught the next flight back to Boston.

The next day, I met with Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes. They had been recently married. When the bombs went off, they were both seriously injured. Each had a leg amputated at the scene. They were rushed to separate hospitals, where they underwent more lifesaving treatments and where Jessica lost her other leg.

When I first saw Jessica, she still had gravel and glass embedded in her skin--injuries the doctors hadn't yet cleaned up. She was grateful to be alive, but worried about Patrick. When I first met Patrick, he had the same question: How is Jessica?

The Boston hospitals at which they received emergency care are among the world's best, and they saved many lives on that day, but those hospitals don't specialize in the long-term recovery from such complex and serious injuries like limb amputation. For that, you need military hospitals, like Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, but right now, access to Walter Reed requires a special exemption from the Secretary of Defense. Jess and Patrick say they owe their recoveries to the doctors, physical therapists, and prosthetic lab technicians who treated them at Walter Reed and who have treated thousands of troops since 2001.

Earlier this year, Senator Collins, a Republican from Maine, joined me in introducing the Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes Act, which would allow all victims of terror attacks to receive treatment at military medical facilities if there is space available. I hope we will never see another attack like the Boston Marathon bombing, but this bill will help us be ready if it happens.

I am glad the Defense bill includes language to implement the policy in our bipartisan bill, and I am particularly thankful to Senator Collins for working with me so other victims of terrorist attacks will be able to access our world-class military medical facilities if they need them the way Jessica and Patrick did.

The work on servicemember pay, GI student loan benefits, and help for civilian victims of terror made me proud to be in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, I worked hard this year to ensure the Defense bill contains a number of provisions that will strengthen our national security.

Like my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, I am concerned about Russian aggression. Too often this year, this issue has been obscured by partisan sniping, and it shouldn't be that way. Russia's attempts to sow global instability are a major national security threat, and on the Armed Services Committee we have treated it that way.

Earlier this year, I introduced the Countering Foreign Interference with Our Armed Forces Act. This bill contains two provisions--one requiring annual reports on the new and disturbing trend of Russian efforts to target our military personnel with disinformation

campaigns and a second bill in response to the Michael Flynn scandal so DOD will be required to report to Congress when a retired general officer requests permission to accept payments from a foreign government. We need to protect our military and our country from outside influence, and these are two steps we can take right now.

Another area which concerns me is the money we spend to outfit our military. The DOD buys a lot of goods and equipment, which means it pays an extraordinary amount of money to government contractors. It shouldn't be too much to ask those contractors to provide high-quality products at a reasonable price, to treat their workers decently, and to knock off any efforts to extort extra profits out of the government. I am pleased the Defense bill also includes a number of my priorities to promote these kinds of reforms.

Step one in this process needs to be a full audit of the Department of Defense. DOD spending makes up half of the discretionary budget, and yet the DOD--unlike other government agencies--has never been audited. That makes no sense at all. Senator Ernst and I teamed up to fight for a provision to incentivize the Department to achieve audit readiness by mandating a pay reduction for the Secretary of each military service unit that does not achieve audit after 2020, and we got it passed.

Senator Perdue, a Republican from Georgia, and I joined together to press the Defense Innovation Board to study how we can improve the way the Department acquires software.

Senator Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, and I successfully fought for a provision requiring DOD to open source software methods and open source licenses whenever possible for unclassified, nondefense software, in accordance with best practices from the private sector. This one is particularly important so contractors can't shake down the Pentagon for new piles of cash every time DOD needs to upgrade and improve its software systems.

Finally, after stories about contractors with terrible safety records continuing to get DOD contracts, one after another, I successfully secured a provision that will require DOD contracting officers to consider workplace safety and health violations when they evaluate a potential DOD contractor. I introduced the Contractor Accountability and Workplace Safety Act to address this issue, and I am very glad it has been included in the NDAA.

This Defense bill isn't perfect. I don't agree with all of it. In a Republican-controlled Congress, I wouldn't expect to agree with all of it. For one thing, I vehemently disagree with the decision to authorize funding for research and development for a new generation of intermediate-range missiles. Everyone knows the Russians have violated the INF treaty already, but that is not a reason for the United States to violate this core anti-nuclear proliferation treaty as well. Our military doesn't want it. Our European allies don't want it. Even the White House doesn't want it. We obviously don't need it. In a world of limited resources, spending tons of taxpayer money to build an unnecessary weapon that will make all of us less safe is a terrible idea.

I also disagree with the committee's recommendation to zero out the funding for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, otherwise known as WIN-T. I have listened to the critiques of this system, but WIN-T Increment 2 is the only tactical communications system the Army currently has that permits communications on the move. GEN Mark Milley, the Army Chief of Staff, has noted the importance of remaining mobile on the battlefield. ``If you stay in one place longer than 2 or 3 hours, you will be dead,'' he said. We should improve WIN-T, not junk it, and we definitely shouldn't abruptly cancel this program without having any earthly idea of what will replace it. Fortunately, this program is not zeroed out in the House version so I will continue to fight for this during the House-Senate conference.

Finally, I am concerned about the overall increase in defense spending contemplated by this bill, particularly when there is no real plan in place to pay for it. The Defense Department is not the only agency that is critical to our national security, and most of those other agencies are under attack in this Congress. Moreover, it is important for us to make the investments we need here at home, to do things like address climate change and promote resilience after natural disasters, to invest in scientific research and discovery, to improve access to healthcare and education, to build new schools, and to repair aging roads and bridges. We cannot support a buildup in military spending that leaves our country weakened and unable to build a strong economy going forward.

Fortunately, the bill we are putting forward today merely authorizes new defense funding. Actual dollar amounts for Federal spending will be determined later this year for all of our agencies as part of the appropriations process. At that point, all spending--defense and nondefense--will be on the table at the same time. If that process is going to serve the American people well, it must provide for significant increases in spending on education, infrastructure, basic research, and the other building blocks of a strong country with a vibrant future.

I commend the leadership of Senators John McCain and Jack Reed throughout this process. Our committee has a long history of bipartisanship, and Senators McCain and Reed have continued that proud tradition. This legislation supports our servicemembers and their families, promotes commonsense Pentagon spending reforms, advances cutting-edge defense research, and bolsters the Commonwealth's innovation economy. Most importantly, this NDAA will make a real, positive impact on the lives of Americans. For those reasons, I intend to support it, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, our country is in trouble. America--and this government right here in Washington--works great for people at the top, works great for corporations that can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers, but for everyone else, America isn't working so well. For decades, expenses have gone up while wages have been flat. Economic opportunity is slipping away from too many Americans.

We know how to fix what is happening--by kicking the lobbyists and the lawyers and the rich donors and the giant companies out of the room and putting working families first. The President of the United States isn't interested in doing that. His first major legislative initiative was to try to boot tens of millions of people off their health insurance. His second major legislative initiative is to try to give giant tax breaks to rich folks and enormous corporations while working people pay for them.

I suppose it is not surprising that the President has no intention of helping working families. After all, he is a rich donor, and he personally profits every single day from a giant company he named after himself.

Here is Donald Trump, a man who promised over and over during the Presidential campaign that he would be on the side of working people. Here is Donald Trump doing the exact opposite of what he told the American people he would do. It is the exact opposite of what the American people need him to do. Sooner or later, it is going to catch up with him. President Trump wants to delay that reckoning for as long as possible. From the day he first announced his Presidential campaign, it has been obvious how he plans to do it--by turning us against each other, by telling everyone that the real problem in America is the neighbor who doesn't look like you, the coworker who doesn't worship like you, the guy in the grocery store who doesn't sound like you.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than on the politics of race. In November, President Trump named Jeff Sessions--a man considered too racist to

be a Federal judge--as our Nation's Attorney General. In January, President Trump rolled out an unconstitutional Muslim ban. In August, after White supremacists marched in the streets, President Trump defended hate. Also in August, he used his first Presidential pardon to shield a racist former sheriff who broke the law.

Yesterday morning, the President continued his campaign to turn us against each other when he decided to end the DACA Program. DACA gives 800,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children the chance to live, work, get an education, and become valuable members of our society. The President said he would end the program. That means over 800,000 young people who have been here their entire lives, who came out of the shadows to contribute to our economy, could be deported to countries they barely know.

Divide and conquer is an old story in America. It is a cold, political calculation. Those with money and power have used it time and time again to keep us fighting with each other--fighting over religion, fighting over race, fighting over anything that keeps us from coming together to fight back against a rigged system.

President Trump wants us to turn our backs on 800,000 Dreamers, including nearly 8,000 Dreamers in Massachusetts. He doesn't want us to look at these young people and see them for who they are; he just wants us to see them as threats. After all, he launched his campaign by calling immigrants rapists and criminals, and that is exactly what he wants everyone else to see. I would like to introduce three Dreamers from Massachusetts and let the American people decide if that is true.

Reina Guevara fled from El Salvador when she was only 11 years old. She is a model student. She won a scholarship, and right now she is working on her bachelor's degree at UMass Boston.

Before the DACA Program allowed her to come out of the shadows, Reina worked up to 70 hours a week in a restaurant for a boss who sexually harassed her. On multiple occasions, he propositioned her to have a sexual relationship with him, threatening to call immigration on her if she refused his advances. The harassment became so frequent and so bad that Reina decided to quit her job, forgoing critical income. Knowing there was no one for her to tell, her boss refused to pay her for her last 2 weeks of work.

Reina was an easy target. A woman without official immigration status was a woman who couldn't complain to HR when she was assaulted, underpaid, or made to work in dangerous conditions. A woman without immigration status was a woman who knew that speaking up could mean immediate deportation.

When Reina entered the DACA Program, her life changed. It meant she could stand up for herself without being afraid that she would be kicked out of America.

I asked Reina what DACA means to her. This is what she told me: ``DACA to me means the opportunity to be the first one in my family to graduate with a Bachelor's Degree, to work without the fear of being humiliated and exploited due to my status.'' Donald Trump wants Reina banished from our country.

Bruno Villegas McCubbin was 6 years old when he left his home. Like most parents, Bruno's mother and father wanted to keep their children safe. That wasn't easy when Peru's economy collapsed. Bruno's father, who was a traveling salesman, was forced to travel to more remote and more dangerous places. It got so dangerous that on one trip, Bruno said he was attacked by armed robbers and injured by flying glass from gunshots.

After that, Bruno's parents decided they should escape to America. Bruno's family settled in Garden Grove, CA, where Bruno and his sister and his parents shared one room in his uncle's two-bedroom apartment. Bruno's parents, who had white-collar jobs in Peru, worked 12-hour days in low-wage jobs just to keep food on the table. While his parents were hard at work, Bruno was building dreams. He threw himself into his studies. When he graduated from high school, he was second in his class. Bruno did a lot more than just study; he founded an organization to help struggling students. He served as a tutor. He played the saxophone.

Bruno was in high school when the DACA Program began. Today, he is a junior at Harvard, where he serves as a student coordinator for the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, which provides financial aid information to promising high school students from low-income families.

I asked Bruno what DACA means to him. He said: ``It means the opportunity for many of us to work here legally and achieve the American Dream that this country still boasts, so we can then give back to our families that have sacrificed so much for us, and to the country that helped form us into what we are today.'' Donald Trump wants Bruno banished from our country.

I could do this all night, but others want a chance to tell their stories as well. So I am just going to do one more: Elias Rosenfeld. Like Bruno, Elias was 6 years old when his parents brought him and his sister to the United States. He remembers hearing stories every day of violence in Venezuela. A gun was pulled on his mother while her car was at a stoplight, and his grandfather was robbed after making a bank withdrawal. To keep her kids safe, Elias' mother transferred to a company in Miami on a visa that allows executives and managers from other countries to work in the United States and then to apply for permanent resident status. But she never got the chance to apply for permanent resident status because when Elias was 11, his mother died of cancer. When he lost his mother, Elias lost his protected status without even knowing it.

In high school, Elias took tough classes, including 13 advanced placement courses. He worked hard, and he earned nearly straight A's. He served in student government and on the speech and debate teams. He volunteered with the Children's Trust and also with the Homeless Trust. The activities director at Elias' high school called Elias his hero. He said: ``I've been teaching here for 20 years and I've never seen a student like this young man.''

Elias' commitment to academic excellence earned him a Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program scholarship to attend Brandeis University. Earlier this year, Elias worked as an intern in my office. I asked Elias what DACA meant to him. He said it has been a ``source of optimism and a light of protection.'' He wrote:

For years, before DACA arrived I would sleep in bed at

night with a constant fear of deportation, imagining in my

head the visual of ICE breaking through my door to deport

myself or my sister. When DACA came, this fear stopped. . . .

But Donald Trump wants Elias banished from our country.

America asked people like Elias, Bruno, Reina, and nearly a million young people all across this country to come out of the shadows. We made them a promise: Work hard, play by the rules, contribute to America, get an education, defend our country, help us build an economy that works, and in exchange we won't knock on your door in the middle of the night and rip you from your home and ship you off to a foreign country you barely remember.

President Trump decided to break that promise. He is hiding behind Jeff Sessions and some flimsy lawyer nonsense, but he is breaking that promise, pure and simple. That means he is failing in his basic, moral duty to protect these people, these children of America.

That is not who America is. America is not a place that punishes children for the sins of their fathers. America is not a place that boots out smart, hard-working, decent young people who have spent nearly all their lives here and who are a core part of our Nation's future.

Donald Trump wants to turn us against each other. He wants to banish Reina, Bruno, Elias, and hundreds of thousands of other young people from our country. He says that is how we will build a better America.

Well, Donald Trump is wrong. He wants to build a hateful and frightened America. But we have the chance to turn away from the hate and fear. We have the chance right here in Congress to take an important step toward building a stronger, more vibrant America. We have the chance to make DACA the law so that Donald Trump cannot take away the dreams of 800,000

young people like Reina, Bruno, and Elias. We can and we must pass the Dream Act now.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, for months the American people have been gripped by the sideshow surrounding President Trump. It seems like every day another shoe drops on the Russia investigation, another White House staffer is fired, and President Trump tweets something that upends the government and causes our allies to move even further away from us.

Despite all of this commotion, all of the drama, and all of the disorganization, there is one thing that Trump and the Republicans in Congress have carried out since day one with complete precision. They have carried out a comprehensive all-out assault on American workers. Day by day, week by week, month by month, President Trump and congressional Republicans have acted to undermine the safety and economic security of hardworking Americans.

Just observe what they have done. On December 8, President Trump nominated Andrew Puzder, who was then CEO of fast food giants Hardee's and Carl's Jr., to lead the Department of Labor. That is right. His first major announcement affecting workers was to nominate a man who made his fortune on the backs of hard-working Americans to the top position in government charged with protecting American workers.

On February 1, just days after he was inaugurated, President Trump delayed a rule protecting workers from workplace exposure to a lethal cancer-causing substance called beryllium. On February 3, President Trump stood with big bank CEOs to announce an Executive order to make it easier for investment advisers to cheat hard-working Americans out of $17 billion a year in retirement savings. On March 1, the Trump administration delayed the rule protecting workers from lethal cancer- causing beryllium a second time. On March 6, congressional Republicans followed the directive of big business lobbyists and voted to make it easier for government contractors to steal wages from their employees. On March 16, President Trump released his budget blueprint, proposing to slash funding for the Labor Department, whose job is to stand for American workers, by 21 percent. On March 22, congressional Republicans voted to make it easier for employers to hide injuries and deaths that their workers suffer on the job. On March 24, the Trump administration delayed a rule that required mine operators to conduct safety inspections and tell miners about any hazardous conditions they discovered before the workers go into the mines. On March 30, congressional Republicans voted to block cities from offering retirement accounts to more than 2 million employees who don't have access to a retirement account at work. On April 4, President Trump delayed the rule preventing investment advisers from cheating hard- working Americans out of their retirement savings. This 60-day delay alone cost Americans an estimated $3.7 billion. On April 6, the Trump administration delayed a rule protecting construction workers from deadly silica poisonings. On May 3, Republicans in Congress voted to keep State governments from offering retirement accounts to employees who don't have access to accounts at work, yanking access away from 15 million Americans. On May 23, President Trump called for massive budget cuts to the Department of Labor, including the complete elimination of workers' safety training programs, programs for older workers, and funding for workers with disabilities. And on June 23, President Trump proposed exempting the construction and shipbuilding industries from the rule to protect workers from lethal cancer-causing beryllium, a move that could prove fatal to workers in these industries.

That is a pretty despicable record--despicable but consistent. Workers get slammed over and over. Today, Senator McConnell has brought us down to the floor to sock it to American workers one more time before he sends us home for summer recess. Today, we are voting on the nomination of Marvin Kaplan to serve on the National Labor Relations Board.

Pause here for just a second. The NLRB is probably the most important independent Federal agency that you have never heard of. They are responsible for protecting the legal rights of workers to come together and bargain with their bosses for higher wages and better working conditions.

Starting a union is not easy. Large employers fight union organizing campaigns tooth and nail. They hire armies of union-busting lawyers to run smear campaigns against the unions or to delay or kill organizing efforts.

That is why the NLRB is so very important--to serve as a referee that ensures employers play by the rules and workers get a chance to exercise their legal rights. It is the NLRB's job to stand up for workers--workers like the nearly 4,000 workers at the Nissan plant in Canton, MS, who, beginning tomorrow, will vote on whether to elect a union to represent them. That is what the NLRB has traditionally done-- stood up for workers. Just last week, they filed a complaint against Nissan, alleging that the corporation has violated the law by running a union-busting drive, warning workers that they would lose wages and benefits if they took the step of joining a union.

It is also the NLRB's job to do the routine but important work of overseeing the elections. Just last month, the NLRB conducted a secret ballot election at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, MA, where nearly 300 service workers elected to be represented by SEIU 1199.

With a Republican Congress and President determined to deliver the knockout blow to the middle class, hard-working Americans need an NLRB that is on their side. President Trump's nominee to the NLRB, Marvin Kaplan, has no experience practicing labor law, but we actually know where he stands on protecting workers.

As a Republican House staffer, here is what he has done. He spent years actively working to strip workers of their right to organize under the law. He spent years working to overturn rulings by the NLRB that would protect workers' rights. He worked on the legislation to delay union elections by at least 35 days, giving employers and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists more time to fight off organizing efforts. He worked on legislation to make some workers ineligible to join unions at their workplaces. He even fought efforts to ensure that Americans get paid the overtime they deserve.

So after 8 months, the Republicans are about to go on vacation, but not before they jam the NLRB with a new anti-worker nominee. The biggest problem in Washington is that this place works great for giant employers and for giant corporations with armies of lawyers and lobbyists. But workers and their families just get ignored. President Trump doesn't seem to have any problem turning his back on millions of hard-working people, but that is not what we are here for.

I will be voting against Marvin Kaplan, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Will the Senator from Wyoming yield for a question about the new study on the impact of ObamaCare on jobs?

Will he yield?

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, since the Republicans have announced that their top legislative priority in this Congress would be to rip away healthcare from millions of Americans, I have come down to the floor many times to beg them to reconsider. I shared stories about families in Massachusetts who gained quality healthcare coverage for the first time after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. I shared statements and letters from hospitals and doctors in Massachusetts talking about the incredible difference healthcare coverage makes for the patients who walk through their doors. I have also shared many, many stories from parents with children who have complex medical needs--all of those children depending on Medicaid.

I know that families, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and patients lying in their hospital beds haven't just been sharing their stories with me; they have been begging every Republican in the Senate to listen to them as well. People share their stories because they want to make a difference. These are the stories of families we represent. They are the reason we are here in the Senate. They are supposed to be our guiding light for the choices we make and the way we vote.

Senate Republicans who voted yesterday to move forward with their effort to rip away Americans' healthcare are not listening to the people they represent. Their vote was irresponsible. It was reckless. It was cruel. It was immoral. But more than that, this was a vote that is not who we are as a country.

Let's be very clear about what is happening on the floor of the Senate right now. Fifty Republicans have voted to open debate on a series of bills, each of which would have devastating effects for healthcare in this country. Now the Republicans don't know which of these bills will actually be the ones they will be asked to vote on. Only some of the bills have been analyzed by the number crunchers over at the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, to estimate exactly how many people would be kicked off insurance and how high premiums would go, but every version that the CBO did examine over the last few weeks was very ugly, with tens of millions of people losing their coverage and costs skyrocketing for millions more.

The latest plan Senator McConnell has been floating behind the scenes would have Republicans ultimately vote on what is called a skinny repeal bill. This bill would make a limited set of changes to the Affordable Care Act--just the important stuff. What is important to Senator McConnell? It seems to be the part of the Affordable Care Act that makes the health insurance system actually work, because the skinny bill would repeal the parts of the ACA that say everyone needs health insurance coverage. This is the individual mandate.

Republican leadership is telling their Members that if they vote for this skinny bill, they can hammer out the rest of the details in conference with the House of Representatives. But make no mistake--this isn't a more moderate version of the Republicans' ugly plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This isn't compromise. In fact, this may be the worst idea they have had yet because if Senate Republicans vote to repeal the individual mandate, they are getting rid of the linchpin of the insurance markets in this country. That is because this provision-- the one the Republicans want to junk--is what keeps the price of insurance affordable for people with preexisting conditions.

Don't just take my word for it. Independent experts have looked at what would happen if the Republicans repeal the individual mandate. Boy, it is not pretty. Just yesterday, the American Academy of Actuaries--these are the experts who study how insurance works. They do that for a living. These are their numbers. They wrote to Senate leadership begging them not to go forward with this reckless plan. They wrote that eliminating this part of the health law ``would likely have significant implications for health care coverage and costs both to consumers and the federal government.'' They said that it would ``lead to premium increases.'' It would ``weaken insurer solvency.''

Let me do the translation on this. The actuaries--those who study insurance for a living--are saying that what the Republicans are thinking of voting on is a provision to jack up insurance costs through the roof and rip away coverage from those who can't afford to pay those higher costs.

We should be very clear about the consequences. If the Republicans go through with that vote, they will be responsible for every dollar of premium increases that occur over the weeks and months that follow as this bill sits in a conference with the House and insurance companies jack up prices because they don't know what they might be required to cover. Senate Republicans will be responsible for every single person who has to drop coverage because they can't afford those price increases. The Senate Republicans will be responsible for every single person who didn't go to the doctor when they needed to or didn't schedule surgery when they needed to because they no longer have health insurance. Senate Republicans will be responsible for every family in this country who misses a mortgage payment or can't pay their electricity bill or is forced into bankruptcy because their medical debts have become too big to ever pay off.

Every time I have come to the floor to talk about this terrible Republican bill, I have said that I am ready to work on bipartisan proposals that will actually improve healthcare in this country, and I say it again. I am still ready to do that, but we cannot move forward while Senate Republicans are still trying to take healthcare coverage away from millions of Americans and drive up costs for millions more.

Republicans seem to think they can wear us down, that they can keep us here until we get too tired or we give up or we just give in, but, boy, that is where they are wrong. They do not have a clue what they are up against because we are fighting for families. We are fighting for little kids. We are fighting for our neighbors. We are fighting for parents and brothers and sisters and loved ones. We are fighting for the American people. When you fight for the American people, the wind is always at your back, and your heart is always strong.

So Democrats will be here, fighting for as long as it takes to beat back these shameful healthcare bills. We hear the American people. We hear you. We are on your side, and we will never give up.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I intend to offer the following motion to H.R. 1628, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record. The motion is supported by Senators Markey, Carper, Durbin, Stabenow, Hirano, Van Hollen, and Brown.

Madam President, I intend to offer the following motions to H.R. 1628, and I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, a few weeks ago the Senate Republicans had to cancel a vote on the healthcare bill because the number crunchers over at the Congressional Budget Office, or the CBO, pointed out that the Republican bill was going to take away health insurance from 22 million people and drive up the costs for millions more. So Senate Republicans started throwing new plans together, one after another, rolling the dice and hoping the CBO would come back with a better number.

Here is a quick guide to what the Republicans have tried since the last time they canceled their vote on this bill. First, there was a bill that was, basically, the same as the first version but that included a little bit more money. CBO said it still knocked 22 million people off their healthcare coverage.

Second, there was a bill to simply repeal the Affordable Care Act, with no replacement whatsoever. CBO said that one would knock 32 million people off their healthcare.

Third, there was a proposal by Senator Cruz that would let insurance companies offer insurance at one price to people with no preexisting conditions and another price for anybody who had anything wrong. We don't

even have a CBO score for that one because CBO had trouble figuring out how many people with preexisting conditions who really needed insurance would never be able to pay for it under that bill.

Why is it that the Republicans have so much trouble coming up with something--with anything--that would improve healthcare in America? The problem is that the Republicans' real motivation behind all these healthcare bills is not to improve healthcare. It is to give giant tax cuts to the richest families and corporations in this country. When the goal is a big tax cut, it is hard to come up with something that actually also improves people's healthcare.

The Republican healthcare bills have gone from bad to worse to embarrassing. What makes this so painful, however, is that the health-- even the survival--of real people hangs in the balance.

A couple of weeks ago, I met with families who said they hoped--they said they prayed--the Senate would not pass this terrible health bill. Each of these families had a small child who had been born with complex medical needs.

I met Baxter, who is only 3 years old and has cerebral palsy. I met Tom, who was born 4 months prematurely and needed multiple surgeries to help correct his medical conditions. I met Brody, who was born with his organs growing outside his body in a protective sac. He spent more than 7 months at Boston Children's Hospital, undergoing complicated surgeries to fit his organs back inside his body.

I met these children, and I have to state that all of these kids are fighters. Every one of them has endured great pain and shown courage and determination. Every one of them has needed help from Medicaid for hospital bills, breathing equipment, special feeding tubes, physical therapists, speech therapists, and nurses to help train the family on how to clean a blocked IV line or how to deal with seizures. Medicaid means these children get the medical care they need, and it means they can live at home instead of in an institution. It means their families don't have to go bankrupt. It is that simple.

Without this help, these families would be destroyed. These children and their families are the face of Medicaid, and we fight every day to protect them.

Just to be clear, Baxter's mother said to me that, without the help that Medicaid provided, Baxter would have died. They are good, hardworking parents with jobs and insurance, but they didn't have the millions of dollars it took to keep Baxter alive or the money to buy the equipment and support they needed to keep Baxter at home. Yes, this is about life and death, and if anyone doubts it, call Baxter's mom and ask her to explain it to you.

The Republican plan isn't just cruel. It is immoral, and it is not who we are as a people. We are better than that.

We shouldn't even be holding this vote tomorrow. The American people have begged Republicans to stop. Governors from red States and blue States alike have told them that this bill will be deeply harmful. Patient groups, the American Medical Association, pediatricians, nurses, hospital groups, nursing homes, and the AARP have all sounded the alarm, saying these bills would do irreparable damage to our health system and to families that are trying to take care of their loved ones.

I urge Republicans to stop the politics. People across this country-- Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--don't want you to repeal healthcare for millions of people. Listen to those people. Listen to Baxter and Tom and Brody. Listen to all the people who love them.

I know there is a lot we could do to make healthcare more affordable in this country. I know there is a lot we could do to make our delivery system work better. We could work together and build something better for all of America. But we can't even start down that path if we rip away healthcare from millions of Americans. We just cannot do this. It is wrong.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of David Bernhardt as the next Deputy Secretary of the Interior.

Mr. Bernhardt has shown that he is unwilling to fight for the long- term conservation of our public lands and the responsible use of our public resources. By his own admission, he intends to be a big business yes-man for the Trump administration's extreme disregard for our environment and the human lives that are affected.

President Trump promised to drain the swamp of DC, but with each day of this administration, this Republican-controlled Senate approves yet another corporate insider to help out big business. The decision to nominate Mr. Bernhardt is no exception. He is another conflict-ridden, climate-dismissing Trump appointee who favors profits over people.

Let's look at his record. Mr. Bernhardt has extensive political experience in the Department of the Interior under the Bush administration, but in his tenure at the Department, including the 2 years he oversaw the ethics division, the Department was awash in ethical scandals and scientific misconduct.

And what did he do after he left government service? He scooted off to a lucrative lobbying firm to help Big Oil and other extraction companies maximize their profits by expanding offshore drilling and delaying air pollution limits on coal plants, regardless of the impact that would have on our children's future.

Even Mr. Bernhardt isn't proud of his own record. Prior to his nomination, his lobbying firm bio bragged about recently helping corporations fight against the Endangered Species Act, supporting corporate interests in offshore drilling and exploration for fossil fuels, and helping mining companies pursue public lands for development. He openly bragged about recently representing ``an entity under investigation by a Federal Agency'' and ``entities accused of violating the Department of the Interior's regulations.'' He swaggered through Washington. That is, he swaggered right up until he was under consideration for the No. 2 spot at Interior. Now that he is in the public spotlight, he has scrubbed all those pro-industry, pro-pollution references from his bio. Now that the public is paying attention, he is putting out a clean image of a public servant who just happens to advise big corporations from time to time.

Beyond the ties Mr. Bernhardt still has to industry, I am alarmed by his willingness to serve as the corporate rubberstamp that President Trump wants. Mr. Bernhardt is a walking conflict of interest who has taken one spin through the revolving door, and now he is coming back around again for a second pass.

The Deputy Secretary serves at the pleasure of the President. But a Deputy Secretary--the No. 2 at the Department--is, first and foremost, bound to serve the American people and the mission of the Department. No President is properly served by a corporate yes-man, and Mr. Bernhardt's yes-man mentality was on full display during his confirmation hearing.

When my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Al Franken, questioned Mr. Bernhardt about climate change at his nomination hearing, he was all too willing to dismiss the urgency of climate change, and he pushed aside the responsibility of the Department of the Interior to act. In defiance of accepted climate science, he stated:

This President ran, he won on a particular policy

perspective. That perspective's not going to change to the

extent we have the discretion under the law to follow it.

In other words, don't bother me with the facts; we will just stick to whatever President Trump tells us to do.

But the rest of us can't ignore the facts. Our planet is getting hotter. The last 16 years were all among the hottest 17 years on record, and our seas are rising at an alarming rate. Our coasts are threatened by furious storm surges that can sweep away homes and devastate even our largest cities. Our economically disadvantaged communities, too often situated in low-lying floodplains, are one bad storm away from destruction. Our naval bases are under attack--not by enemy ships but by rising seas. Our food supplies and forests are threatened by droughts and wildfires that are becoming so common across the country that they barely even make the evening news.

The effects of manmade climate change are all around us, and things will only continue to get worse at an accelerating pace if we don't do something about it. We can act, and one important step is saying no to corporate raiders who are seeking to exploit public lands and gamble with our children's future.

President Trump thinks leadership is handing over management of our public lands to Big Oil and Big Coal executives who are looking to stuff their pockets while the getting is good. Mr. Bernhardt, a seasoned advocate for corporate interests, seems all too eager to please this President and corporate interests, no matter the cost to the American people. If President Trump's highest ranking agency officials are not brave enough to speak even a little truth to power about this President's climate delusions, then, who will?

The American people deserve leadership at the Department of the Interior--leadership that is committed to ensuring that our public resources and

our public lands are preserved for future generations of Americans. The American people deserve leadership that fights back when the President seeks to cut thousands of jobs at the Department of the Interior or offers a budget that critically undermines the Department's mission and threatens our public lands.

The American people deserve leadership at the Department of the Interior--leadership that works for the people--and that is not David Bernhardt.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, so far this year President Trump and Senate Republicans have selected a long list of Wall Street insiders, corporate CEOs, lobbyists, and radical rightwing ideologues to run the Federal Government, but the Republicans haven't stopped there. They are also working to fill vacancies on the courts with the same kind of people--nominees who reflect pro-corporate, radically conservative views that will threaten the principle of equal justice under law.

That is not coincidence. Powerful rightwing groups have had their sights set on the courts for decades, and over the past 8 years they have launched a relentless campaign to capture our courts. During the Obama administration, a key part of their strategy was stopping fair, mainstream nominees with diverse, professional backgrounds from becoming judges. Our Federal courts suffered the consequences. Vacancies sat open for months. They sat open for years, and cases piled up on the desks of overworked judges.

Now, with President Trump in the White House and Senate Republicans are in control of the Senate, those powerful interests see an unprecedented opportunity to reshape our courts in ways that will benefit billionaires and giant corporations for decades to come. Now they see their chance to stack the courts with radical, rightwing, pro- Big Business conservatives.

John Bush, President Trump's nominee to sit on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, is one of those radical, rightwing, pro-business conservatives. Mr. Bush is not just a member of the ultraconservative Federalist Society. He is the cofounder and 20-year president of the Louisville chapter. During his career, he has earned a reputation for fighting for the big guys. For example, Mr. Bush supports weakening our campaign finance laws so giant corporations and wealthy individuals can flood our elections with unlimited contributions and buy the officials they want. I believe Mr. Bush's pro-corporate views call his qualifications to the Federal bench into question. I do not understand how he can be fair and impartial when his billionaire buddies show up in court.

My concern about Mr. Bush runs much deeper. He has demonstrated a level of disrespect for other people that flatly disqualifies him for a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench. Here is just a glimpse of what the man nominated to be a Federal judge has written and said in public:

In a blog post, he called for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be gagged.

In another blog post, Mr. Bush mocked policies that recognize same- sex parents saying that ``[i]t's just like the government to decide it needs to decide something like which parent is number one and which parent is number two.''

In a speech in Louisville, he repeated a quote from a late journalist saying: ``I come here every year, let me tell you one thing I've learned--this is no town to be giving people the impression you're some kind of. . . .'' He finished the quote with an anti-gay slur that begins with an ``f.''

There it is: dismissive, demeaning, and downright ugly. If that word makes you furious, or if you believe that term is hurtful, then think about what it means that this is the man President Trump has put forward to be a Federal judge to sit in judgment on others. Whatever his other qualifications, Mr. Bush has aggressively and conclusively disqualified himself to be a judge. I think Mr. Bush knows that.

In his hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Bush was not keen to defend what he said. When asked about those hateful statements, he ducked and dodged like a prize fighter. He played that old game we have seen before--the ``I promise to be a fair and impartial judge if I am confirmed'' game. He is selling, and I am not buying. Mr. Bush should be embarrassed to defend those statements. They are shameful.

Senator McConnell might defend this man, calling those statements, as he did, ``personal views about politics,'' but I call them hateful views that disqualify him for a lifetime appointment as a Federal judge. Yes, decent, reasonable people can disagree on policy, and decent, reasonable people can disagree on legal interpretation, but decent, reasonable people should not disagree on basic norms that all judges in our Federal court should abide by. Anyone who thinks it is OK to use anti-gay slurs and to tell anti-LGBTQ jokes is disqualified to be a Federal judge, period.

No Senator--Republican or Democratic--should be willing to confirm such a man. Our courts have one duty: to dispense equal justice under the law. No one can have confidence that Mr. Bush could fulfill such a task, and no Senator should be willing to give Mr. Bush a seat on the court of appeals of the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, from day one, this administration, President Trump, and congressional Republicans have attacked rules that protect working families.

Just 1 hour after taking the oath of office, President Trump indefinitely suspended a plan that made it easier for working families to be able to afford a mortgage. Ten days later, he issued an Executive order that requires agencies to identify and eliminate two rules for every one new rule they issue, and that was just the beginning. Congressional Republicans spent the first few months of the year eliminating rules that protected workers, students, and families. They killed a rule that required companies in dangerous industries to track when their employees were injured. They even killed a rule that helped keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

These rules all had one thing in common--they all made sure the public health, safety, and security of Americans came ahead of industry's bottom line.

Oh, and there was a second thing in common for these rules: Industry hated them. With President Trump in office and Republicans in the majority in Congress, those industries were ready to cash in, and they had their wish list ready.

Although the attack on public-centered rules has increased in intensity during this administration, I just want to say it is not new. Powerful companies have long understood that the fight in Congress is just the first of many battles. If Big Business can't weaken or kill bills they don't like in Congress, they turn their attention to the agencies tasked with implementing those laws, working to tilt the rulemaking process in their favor, and they don't waste any time getting started.

Long before rules are even announced, giant corporations intensely lobby agencies--setting up meeting after meeting--to make sure the agencies will prioritize corporate interests. As rules wind their way through the rulemaking process, the lobbying intensifies. Companies bury agencies in mountains of expensive, industry-funded comments. They cite sham research and bought-and-paid-for experts. If, at the end of that long, arduous process, a strong, public-centered rule is published anyway, those companies sue, looking to busy judges who are unfamiliar with the issues to overturn the decision of expert agencies.

There are no two ways about it. The rulemaking process is broken. There are far too many opportunities for giant corporations to influence the

rulemaking process, and there are far too few opportunities for meaningful public participation, but Republicans don't want to fix this problem--no way. They want to make the rulemaking process work even better for their corporate buddies and work even harder against American families.

And, boy, did they pick the right person to lead the charge. President Trump nominated Neomi Rao--a law school professor who advocates for weakening and handcuffing agencies--to run the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs known as OIRA.

OIRA is a small, little-known but intensely powerful office that renews economically significant Federal rules. Before the Department of Labor can issue a rule on workplace safety, for example, or the Environmental Protection Agency can issue a rule restricting water pollution or the Department of Education can issue a rule protecting students from shady, for-profit colleges, that rule must be submitted to OIRA to sign off. If OIRA doesn't like the rule, it can change the rule or hold it up for months at a time. When a rule finally makes it out of the OIRA ringer, chances are that any changes will be slanted in favor of corporate interests.

Professor Rao's view of agencies makes her the wrong person to lead this powerful agency. She believes judges should pay less attention to the conclusions of experts at Federal agencies, and Professor Rao is especially critical of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--the CFPB. This is the agency that has forced the biggest corporations and banks in this country to return more than $12 billion directly to Americans they have cheated and held big banks like Wells Fargo accountable when they have ripped off customers.

Professor Rao says the CFPB's problem is its independence--seriously. Maybe Professor Rao thinks that little agency just doesn't kowtow enough to the big banks. If Professor Rao had her way, independent agencies like the CFPB would be handcuffed by OIRA, the agency she wants to run. It is no surprise that the Wall Street giants that have been trying to take down the CFPB for years love Professor Rao's views.

If confirmed, Professor Rao will be perfectly positioned to put her theories into practice. She will head the Trump administration's efforts to toss out the rules big businesses don't like. She will determine whether rules go through the slanted OIRA process. She will have a chance to gut strong rules that help working families.

The rulemaking process is broken, and there is a lot Congress should be doing to fix it, to try to make it work better for people all across this country--for workers and for families and for people who get cheated, but the Trump administration wants to go in the opposite direction.

Any Senator who believes corporations need more say in the rulemaking process should vote for Neomi Rao, but anyone who thinks we are supposed to be here to work for the American people will vote to reject her nomination.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.