Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I understand that there are two bills at the desk due for a second reading en bloc.

In order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to further proceedings en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the upcoming adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President pro tempore, and the majority and minority leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences, or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent action of the two Houses, or by order of the Senate, and that they be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn to then convene for pro forma sessions only, with no business being conducted, on the following dates and times, and that following each pro forma session, the Senate adjourn until the next pro forma session: Monday, April 10, at 1:30 p.m.; Thursday, April 13, at 8:30 a.m.; Monday, April 17, at 4:30 p.m.; and Thursday, April 20, at 7:20 p.m. I further ask that when the

Senate adjourns on Thursday, April 20, it next convene at 3 p.m., Monday, April 24; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; finally, that following leader remarks, the Senate resume executive session as under the previous order.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about bipartisan legislation that I have introduced to promote innovative solutions to better manage invasive species, conserve wildlife, and eliminate poaching. I have introduced this in a bipartisan way as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, along with Senator Tom Carper, who is the ranking member of that committee, and along with Senator Jim Inhofe, who is a former chairman of that committee.

This legislation is called the Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver Act, WILD for short. I am a supporter of both conserving wildlife and technological innovation that we have before us.

My home State of Wyoming is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world. The people of Wyoming have an incredible appreciation for our wildlife. We applaud the efforts of innovators to help us conserve and manage species much more effectively and at a lower cost. Our State wildlife managers grapple with many challenges that innovators can help us solve.

For example, poaching has been a major issue in Wyoming. Hundreds of animals are taken illegally in the State. That is what I hear from the Wyoming Game & Fish Department. Poaching is a problem across the country. It is not just the case in Wyoming; it has become pandemic overseas. International poachers seeking to cash in on the ivory trade have reduced the population of African elephants by 75 percent over the last 10 years. It is tragic.

Invasive species also present a threat to native wildlife, to water resources, and to our landscape. Invasive species clog pipes and fuel catastrophic fires. In fact, invasive species have a role in 42 percent of the listings under the Endangered Species Act. It is invasive species that are causing other species to become endangered.

We need creative solutions to these threats to our wildlife. Our Nation's innovators are developing cutting-edge technologies to help us more effectively fight poaching, manage wildlife, and control invasive species.

A 2015 National Geographic article outlined a number of innovative technologies that are being used today to promote conservation of many of the world's most endangered species. That includes DNA analysis to identify the origin of illicit ivory supplies, using thermal imaging around protected areas to notify authorities of poachers, and using apps to assist wildlife enforcement in carrying out their duties.

In December, the National Invasive Species Council cohosted a summit, which highlighted innovations that combat invasive species. A few examples are a fish passage that automatically extracts invasive fish from streams, DNA technologies to provide early detection of invasive species, and the use of drones to gain spatially accurate, high resolution images that could be used to detect and monitor specific invasive species. Innovations like these are why we have introduced in a bipartisan way the WILD Act.

This act provides technological and financial assistance to private landowners to improve fish and wildlife habitats. The legislation does this by reauthorizing the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. The WILD Act requires Federal agencies to implement strategic programs to control invasive species. It also reauthorizes important laws to protect endangered and valuable species around the world, such as the African elephant, the Asian elephant, the rhinoceros, the great ape, and the marine turtle.

Finally, this act creates incentives for new conservation innovation. The legislation establishes four separate cash prizes for technological innovation in the prevention of wildlife poaching and trafficking, in the promotion of wildlife conservation, in the management of invasive species, and in the protection of endangered species. The Department of the Interior will administer the prizes, and a panel of relevant experts will award each prize.

Innovation is one of the best tools in conserving endangered species and keeping invasive species under control. The WILD Act will help stimulate that innovation.

I thank Senator Carper and Senator Inhofe for cosponsoring this important piece of legislation.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about bipartisan legislation that I have introduced to promote innovative solutions to better manage invasive species, conserve wildlife, and eliminate poaching. I have introduced this in a bipartisan way as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, along with Senator Tom Carper, who is the ranking member of that committee, and along with Senator Jim Inhofe, who is a former chairman of that committee.

This legislation is called the Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver Act, WILD for short. I am a supporter of both conserving wildlife and technological innovation that we have before us.

My home State of Wyoming is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world. The people of Wyoming have an incredible appreciation for our wildlife. We applaud the efforts of innovators to help us conserve and manage species much more effectively and at a lower cost. Our State wildlife managers grapple with many challenges that innovators can help us solve.

For example, poaching has been a major issue in Wyoming. Hundreds of animals are taken illegally in the State. That is what I hear from the Wyoming Game & Fish Department. Poaching is a problem across the country. It is not just the case in Wyoming; it has become pandemic overseas. International poachers seeking to cash in on the ivory trade have reduced the population of African elephants by 75 percent over the last 10 years. It is tragic.

Invasive species also present a threat to native wildlife, to water resources, and to our landscape. Invasive species clog pipes and fuel catastrophic fires. In fact, invasive species have a role in 42 percent of the listings under the Endangered Species Act. It is invasive species that are causing other species to become endangered.

We need creative solutions to these threats to our wildlife. Our Nation's innovators are developing cutting-edge technologies to help us more effectively fight poaching, manage wildlife, and control invasive species.

A 2015 National Geographic article outlined a number of innovative technologies that are being used today to promote conservation of many of the world's most endangered species. That includes DNA analysis to identify the origin of illicit ivory supplies, using thermal imaging around protected areas to notify authorities of poachers, and using apps to assist wildlife enforcement in carrying out their duties.

In December, the National Invasive Species Council cohosted a summit, which highlighted innovations that combat invasive species. A few examples are a fish passage that automatically extracts invasive fish from streams, DNA technologies to provide early detection of invasive species, and the use of drones to gain spatially accurate, high resolution images that could be used to detect and monitor specific invasive species. Innovations like these are why we have introduced in a bipartisan way the WILD Act.

This act provides technological and financial assistance to private landowners to improve fish and wildlife habitats. The legislation does this by reauthorizing the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. The WILD Act requires Federal agencies to implement strategic programs to control invasive species. It also reauthorizes important laws to protect endangered and valuable species around the world, such as the African elephant, the Asian elephant, the rhinoceros, the great ape, and the marine turtle.

Finally, this act creates incentives for new conservation innovation. The legislation establishes four separate cash prizes for technological innovation in the prevention of wildlife poaching and trafficking, in the promotion of wildlife conservation, in the management of invasive species, and in the protection of endangered species. The Department of the Interior will administer the prizes, and a panel of relevant experts will award each prize.

Innovation is one of the best tools in conserving endangered species and keeping invasive species under control. The WILD Act will help stimulate that innovation.

I thank Senator Carper and Senator Inhofe for cosponsoring this important piece of legislation.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today because we are at a decisive and consequential moment in the Senate. We are here to consider the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to be a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Will Democrat Senators vote to have a well-qualified, mainstream Justice who stands for the rule of law, or will the extreme leftwing of that party continue to try to call the shots? That is a decision Members are going to have to make.

America needs judges who can follow the law, apply the law, have the highest ethical standards, and value the independence of our courts. To me, that is a description of Judge Gorsuch. That is him in a nutshell. We saw it throughout his career, and we saw it again at his confirmation hearings in the Judiciary Committee.

Democrats on the committee asked him to answer hypothetical questions. They asked about issues that are probably going to be coming before the Supreme Court of the land. There are ethics rules that say that judges and nominees cannot answer those kinds of questions and, of course, Judge Gorsuch followed the rules. That is exactly what other nominees have done in the past who were nominated by Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did so in her confirmation hearing in 1993. She said: ``A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints.'' She said this would display disdain for the entire judicial process. Of course, she was confirmed and sits on the Court today. It has been known as the Ginsburg standard, and every nominee since her nomination hearing has followed that same standard. That is what Justice Gorsuch did.

The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried to criticize Judge Gorsuch for some of his opinions that they didn't like. They talked about a couple of cases where the person who was on the losing side in the case was sympathetic. They suggested that the Court should have ignored the law and sided with ``the little guy'' in the involved cases. Judge Gorsuch pointed out that judges are absolutely not supposed to consider what they think is sympathetic. They are supposed to rule on the law. Federal judges actually swear an oath ``to administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.''

Most Senators recognize that judges should be impartial. The minority leader, Senator Schumer, has actually spoken about how important this is. At the confirmation hearing for Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, nominated by President Obama, Senator Schumer praised the way she put the ``rule of law above everything else.'' He said that she followed the texts of statutes, ``even when doing so results in rulings that go against so-called sympathetic litigants.'' That was in 2009. Now it is 2017, and that is the identical standard Judge Gorsuch has continued to follow.

Judge Gorsuch pointed out that it is his job to apply the law, not to write the law. Writing laws is the job of Congress. We are not here to select the 101st Senator; we are here to select a Justice for the Supreme Court. We are selecting a Justice for the most important Court in the land, and it is important and imperative that we take this decision seriously and that we set aside any partisan grudges.

Democrats who want to filibuster this judge are not arguing any principle here. Reasonable individuals know this nominee deserves to be confirmed.

One lawyer wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on March 8, a board member of the very liberal American Constitution Society. He wrote that ``there is no principled reason'' to vote against Judge Gorsuch. Well, he is exactly right.

I listened to the arguments Democrats made in the confirmation hearing. I was not convinced. If any of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle are undecided about how to vote, I suggest they go back and look and listen to the hearings as well and look at what other people have said about this nominee.

A Chicago Tribune editorial said that confirmation hearing revealed ``unassailable assurances by Gorsuch that he would decide each case on the merits, based on the law as written, applied to the world as it is today.''

The Detroit news agreed. It said that Judge Gorsuch showed that he is a ``deeply knowledgeable nominee who should be confirmed by the Senate.''

On Monday, USA TODAY had their own headline. It said, ``On the Merits, Gorsuch Merits Confirmation.''

The American Bar Association surveyed 5,000 people who have worked with Judge Gorsuch over the years. These people described him using words like ``brilliant,'' ``thoughtful,'' and ``really, really, really smart.''

The Bar Association also found that ``Judge Gorsuch believes strongly in the independence'' of the judiciary. This is the Bar Association. The American Bar Association predicted that ``he will be a strong but respectful voice in protecting it.'' The group ended up giving him its highest possible rating. Interestingly, Senator Schumer once called this group ``the gold standard'' for evaluating judges--``the gold standard,'' he called it--and they have given him their highest possible rating. So why does the minority

leader think the gold standard is not good enough anymore?

Judge Gorsuch was even introduced at his confirmation hearing by a former top lawyer for the Obama administration. Neal Katyal is a Democrat. He served as Solicitor General of the United States under President Obama. He called Gorsuch ``one of the most thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our nation over the last century.'' Let me repeat. This is someone who served as Solicitor General of the United States under President Obama calling Judge Gorsuch ``one of the most thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our nation over the last century.'' He even wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that predicted that Judge Gorsuch would ``help to restore confidence in the rule of law.'' Help to restore confidence. Isn't that what we want as a nation--confidence in the rule of law?

I think that any Democrat who has looked at this nominee's record will find it is an easy decision to confirm him. If there is a Democrat who reaches the opposite conclusion, I say come to the floor of the Senate and explain why you think our judges should go into a case favoring one side over another because one side is more sympathetic than the other. If there is a Member who thinks that a judge should make promises about how they will rule just to win a confirmation vote of a given Senator, I say come to the floor and make your case. If there is a Member who thinks a Justice on the Supreme Court should rule based on that Justice's own preferences and not based on the law, I would say please come to the floor of the Senate and say so.

I don't think that is what the American people want. The American people do want Justices who are smart. They want Justices who are principled, who are fair, and who know that their job is to follow the law, not to write the law and not to legislate from the bench. The American people know that Neil Gorsuch is exactly that kind of judge. He is the kind of judge we should have on the Supreme Court, we need on the Supreme Court, and we need on every court in the land. That is why I am committed to vote to confirm Neil Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to add my voice to that of the Senator from Missouri. I thank him for his leadership and for his excellent work on the matters that he has been addressing.

Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

Mr. President, I am here to address the issue, as I have done before and will again, of the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to be a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. America needs judges who can follow the law, who have the highest ethical standards, and who value the independence of our courts. That is the description of Neil Gorsuch. That is him in a nutshell. We saw it throughout his career, and we saw it again in his confirmation hearing last week.

Democrats on the committee asked him to talk about issues that are going to be coming up before the Supreme Court. Well, Judge Gorsuch--we know what he did. He followed the rules, the ethics rules. These are the rules that say that judges and nominees should not answer those kinds of questions.

Following the rules is exactly what he should have done, and it is exactly what other nominees that both Republican and Democratic Presidents have placed on the Court have done in the past.

It is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg did at her confirmation hearing in 1993. She said that a ``judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints.'' She said that this would ``display disdain for the entire judicial process.'' She was confirmed.

That is exactly what Judge Gorsuch said. That is the Ginsburg standard, and every nominee since then has followed that standard.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee also tried last week to criticize Judge Gorsuch for some of his opinions that they didn't like. They suggested that the Court should have ignored the law--ignored the law and sided with ``the little guy'' in these cases.

Judge Gorsuch was quick to point out that all judges are absolutely not supposed to consider who they think is sympathetic. They are to rule based on the law.

Federal judges actually swear an oath to ``administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.''

It is interesting because the minority leader, Senator Schumer, himself has spoken about how important it is for a judge to be impartial. In 2009, at the confirmation hearing for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, he praised the way that she put the ``rule of law above everything else.'' He said that she did this even when it led to rulings that ``go against so-called sympathetic litigants.'' That was 2009.

Fast forward to 2017. It is the identical standard that Judge Gorsuch has followed. He pointed out that it is his job to apply the law, and writing the laws is the job of the legislative branch of government.

We are not here selecting the 101st Senator. This is not about who ought to be another Senator. This is about who should be on the Supreme Court. We are selecting a Justice for the most important Court of the land.

Nearly everyone who has looked at this nominee's record, who has watched his confirmation hearing agrees that he would be an excellent Justice. There was one lawyer who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post on March 8. He is a board member of the liberal American Constitution Society. He wrote that ``there is no principled reason'' to vote against Judge Gorsuch. A Denver Post editorial last week said Judge Gorsuch would make ``a marvelous addition to the Supreme Court.'' The American Bar Association has given him its highest possible rating. He was even introduced at his confirmation hearing last week by a former top lawyer for the Obama administration. Neal Katyal is a Democrat. He was the Acting Solicitor General of the United States for President Obama. He has called Judge Gorsuch ``one of the most thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our nation over the last century.''

I think any Democrat who watched the confirmation hearings and looked at the nominee's record will decide it is an easy decision to confirm him.

If there is a Democrat who reaches the opposite conclusion, I say: Come to this floor. Come to the floor of the U.S. Senate. Explain why you think our judges should go into a case favoring one side or another. If you think a judge should make promises about how he will rule just to win the vote of a Senator, go ahead. Come to the floor. Make your case. If you think that a Justice of the Supreme Court should ignore the law and rule not based on the law but by that judge's own preferences, please come to the floor and say so. I don't think that is what the American people want.

The American people want judges who are smart, who are principled, who are fair, and who know that their job is to follow the law, not write the law. The American people know that Neil Gorsuch is exactly that kind of judge, and that is the kind of judge who we should have on the Supreme Court and on every court of the land.

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, it was 7 years ago that Democrats in Congress passed ObamaCare. They promised lower healthcare costs. What they delivered was a Washington mandate

for expensive insurance that many people found actually wasn't insurance they could use, even though they were forced to buy it. For 7 years, Americans have suffered under the consequences of that decision by this body and by the former President.

Less than 7 weeks into the Trump administration, Republicans introduced a plan to give Americans real healthcare reform. The American people know that ObamaCare has been a disaster, one broken promise after another. I hear about this every weekend when I am home in Wyoming. I heard about it this past weekend. There is now only one insurance company that is willing to offer ObamaCare coverage in my entire State. There are 1,000 counties all across the country in the same situation--only one option. This is not a marketplace; it is a monopoly.

As a doctor who has practiced medicine for 25 years, I can tell you that when it comes to healthcare, the last thing patients want to hear is that they don't have a choice: It is this or nothing. That is why Republicans promised we were going to repeal the restrictions in ObamaCare that limit people's choices. We promised to give people options, not mandates. The healthcare bill we are debating now is the first step to keeping that promise.

The bill starts to give people more choices so they can pick what is right for them and for their families. I want to talk about three ways that it does this.

First, the bill removes the mandates. It ends both the individual and the employer mandates. It eliminates the penalties that hard-working families have to pay if they decide that overpriced ObamaCare insurance isn't right for them. This was one of the most outrageous and unfair parts of the healthcare law. These mandates will be gone.

Second, the bill that the House is considering cuts taxes. It gets rid of the ObamaCare tax on prescription drugs. It gets rid of the ObamaCare tax on health insurance. It gets rid of the taxes on artificial appliances, such as pacemakers and artificial joints. Overall, the bill eliminates 15 different taxes. These taxes are obviously passed on to consumers; repealing them helps to bring down the cost of care.

Third, the repeal bill creates options for people and for States. It encourages people to find creative ways to help make healthcare costs more affordable for them. It expands how people can use health savings accounts, which is a great option for many people. It helps States do innovative things, such as create high risk pools to bring down costs for everybody. It gives States more flexibility when it comes to Medicaid Programs.

Let's face it: Medicaid is broken, and ObamaCare just threw more people onto this second-class health insurance. Just last week, we got evidence of how badly Medicaid is harming patients. The chief executive at the Mayo Clinic said in his speech that his hospital is going to give precedence to people with private insurance over people on Medicaid. The supporters of ObamaCare said that their biggest success is the number of people who got coverage by being put into Medicaid. Well, it is clear that many of these people are being harmed by being in Medicaid, a system that has been broken for decades. It is alarming and it is also appalling.

We have to fundamentally reform the Medicaid Program. To do that, we have to give States more options for coming up with the reforms that work for them and for the people who live in those States. Every State is different, and a one-size-fits-all mandate from Washington will never work for all of the States all across the country. Democrats tried it, and it failed dramatically.

ObamaCare is collapsing all around us. We have to do something, and we have to start now. In the next couple of months, insurance companies are going to start making decisions about what they are going to do for next year, 2018. They will be figuring out how much they want to charge and whether they want to be involved in the ObamaCare exchanges at all. People have been losing their coverage and losing choices ever since the Democrats wrote the healthcare law and the President signed it 7 years ago. I believe it is going to get worse every day that we delay.

There are Democrats who don't really seem to care much about any of that. They would rather set the whole healthcare system on a path to fall apart completely before they will ever admit that they were wrong. Hard-working Americans and families across the country don't have that luxury. There are still 25 million Americans without insurance even 7 years after ObamaCare has been in place. Every year, people have gotten letters in the mail telling them that their plans have been canceled. That is the reality of ObamaCare. Democrats want to pretend that everything is fine, but that is absolutely not true.

That is why it is so important that President Trump jumped in right away to take important steps to help stabilize the marketplace. He recognized what Democrats won't admit--that these ObamaCare markets are falling apart. So the President has already started doing what he can to stabilize the markets, to make sure people keep their options for health coverage. The Department of Health and Human Services has taken steps to preserve programs that ObamaCare tried to eliminate. These are plans that people already had and they liked and the law tried to say they could no longer exist. The Trump administration has said people can continue on those plans. The administration also tightened up some of the rules to make sure people actually pay the premiums for this year's insurance before they are allowed to sign up for next year. The administration is taking commonsense steps that will make it harder for people to game the system and that will lower the cost for everyone else. These are important steps. The administration is going to be doing a lot more to protect families and to create more options.

This repeal bill isn't perfect; nobody says it is. Still, it is a monumental shift away from ObamaCare. The American people will be better off with this repeal plan. They will be better off with the additional reforms that we will continue to push after this bill.

I hope that Democrats will join us and offer their own ideas about what these additional reforms will look like. I hope they realize that families are better off when they have more choices, not fewer. We are better off when people can decide what is better for them and their families, not when government tells them what to do. We are better off when healthcare decisions are left to patients and doctors, not to Washington bureaucrats and insurance companies. We are better off when people have freedom and options, not mandates and penalties.

America needs healthcare reform. What we had before ObamaCare wasn't working; I saw that as a doctor. What we have now isn't working, either. It is time for everyone to admit that and to take this opportunity to start repairing the damage, start creating real reform. As Ronald Reagan said: It is better to get 80 percent of what you want rather than go over the cliff with a flag flying. The American people are asking for our help, and we cannot turn our backs on them now.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, joining my colleague here on the floor, I agree with all of the comments the Senator from Arizona has made. They are interesting because as to the history of the State of the Senator from Arizona and his family history, Judge Gorsuch has a similar history, to the point that his great-grandfather built a hotel in Wyoming called the Wolf Hotel, in Saratoga, WY. I found a picture of that hotel from 1878, which was 12 years before Wyoming became a State. I got that picture from the American history museum at the University of Wyoming and got a copy of the picture and gave it to Judge Gorsuch.

In front of the hotel in 1878, there was a stagecoach with six horses lined up ahead of it. The Wolf Hotel was a halfway stop on the stagecoach line between a couple of communities in Wyoming. They were about 40 miles apart. So that is the heritage from which Judge Gorsuch comes.

I think that western heritage is important. But I think that additionally important is what the Senator referred to--his judicial temperament, being such a mainstream member of the judiciary, and this general belief inherent within him that the role of a judge is to apply the law, not to legislate from the bench.

We have seen so much legislating from the bench. I think you just don't get that if you take somebody from the Rocky Mountain West who has this view of the Nation and an understanding of the rule of law and the Constitution.

So I think we are going to see that when the Senate Judiciary Committee begins its hearings next week on Judge Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court. I visited with him, reviewed his writings, and then compared it to what I saw when I visited with Justice Scalia when he came to Wyoming. The Senator from Arizona mentioned the picture of the two working together, fishing together.

I just think he is the right person to continue that incredible legacy of Justice Scalia.

Yes.

Well, it is about 50-50. But when you talk about the heavy hand of a bureaucratic government and the impact on the lives of the people who live there, it is dramatic. It can be very punishing, as we have seen over the last 8 years with regulations that have come out of agencies--sometimes, I believe, in defiance of the law, sometimes reversed by the Supreme Court.

That is why I think it is critical to have Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, because he is someone who realizes that the Constitution is a legal document--not a living document, not built for flexibility, but really a rigid legal document. That is where I believe he stands. That is what his writings indicate. It is the sort of thing we have seen from him. I visited with him, and other Members have. These are the things we read about.

With regard to his writings over the years, this is a judge who has faithfully applied the law--applied the law, focusing on the Constitution. He has not been afraid to rule against the government or for unpopular parties when the law demands it because he is going to go right back to the law. I believe his opinions show great reverence for all of the Constitution--a key respect for the importance of the separation of powers.

I support his nomination completely. It is interesting, because when he was nominated for the position he currently holds, the Democratic Senator from Colorado--and I am expecting Senator Cory Gardner to be here in a little bit to talk about the quote from Ken Salazar, the former Senator from Colorado, who talked about what a wonderful man Judge Gorsuch was and how he should be put onto that bench. He was unanimously confirmed here in the Senate.

I have full confidence in Judge Gorsuch as a son of the West, as the only Justice from the Rocky Mountain West who would be on the Court. Specifically, though, I would support him no matter where he was from because of his belief that it is the role of a judge and a justice to apply the law, not to legislate from the bench, which I think goes above and beyond where someone is from, what their background may be. But I will just tell you that his background, combined with his philosophy and mainstream approach to the law, is exactly what we need now in 2017 on the U.S. Supreme Court. I believe he deserves an up-or- down vote. I believe he will be confirmed as people get a chance to see him, get to know him better.

I see I am joined on the floor by another colleague, also from the Rocky Mountain West, the Senator from Montana. You have heard from Arizona, Wyoming, and now Montana. I would ask him about his thoughts about this nomination by President Trump of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

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

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, thank you for allowing me to engage in this colloquy with my friend and colleague, Senator Blunt from Missouri, who has been a real leader not just in the Senate but when he was in the House, traveling to all of the hospitals in Missouri and talking about the issues that concern the people there, as I do in Wyoming every weekend, going home and talking to people at home.

You may not know this, but I was the president of the Wyoming Medical Society and worked with something as the medical director called the Wyoming Health Fairs, where we brought low-cost health screening to people all around the Cowboy State. I had been going to these health fairs for years--when I was a doctor practicing medicine, when I was an orthopedic surgeon, and then when I was in the State senate and now as a U.S. Senator, to the point that I was at a health fair last Saturday in Buffalo, WY.

People come to the fairs. They get their blood tested ahead of time so they can come and pick up the results and find out about their cholesterol and thyroid conditions and other issues. There are booths from the Heart Association and the Diabetes Society, depression screenings, all sorts of things. People there are very interested in their health.

When they see me as a doctor and knowing I am also a Senator, they want to talk about how the healthcare laws affected their lives. What I hear, story after story, is, you have to repeal this ObamaCare. Many of them are people who had insurance that worked for them before the healthcare law was passed. When the healthcare law was passed, they were basically told that what they had, which worked for them and which they could afford, wasn't good enough for the government. The government said: No, you have to buy something else, something more expensive and not what you really need or want--which is getting into the fundamental problem here.

ObamaCare is collapsing all around the country. In Wyoming, as in many places--and I know Senator Blunt is in a situation where he has people whom he works with--there is not really a marketplace out there. It is a monopoly. There is only one choice.

We see our colleagues--Senator Alexander in his home State and Senator Corker--in some counties, there are no choices. Nobody is going to sell on the exchange. Even with the ObamaCare government subsidies, there is nothing to be bought.

We have to act now. The House is in the process of doing that. I think they have made an incredible effort, a fundamental change, a big step away from ObamaCare. It is a monumental shift. What it does is it eliminates the things I hear about every weekend in Wyoming that people don't like about the healthcare law. It is the mandates. It is the taxes. It is the penalties they have to pay. People don't like that. They don't like the government saying: You have to buy a government- approved product, pay for it, whether or not you want it, whether or not it works for you.

We eliminate all of those things in what the House is debating now. What do we preserve? We preserve things that people know are important for them. People with preexisting conditions will still be protected. My wife Bobbi is a breast cancer survivor. She has been through operations. She has been through chemotherapy, radiation. As a doctor and as a husband, I know how important it is to protect people with preexisting conditions. There is also a limit on lifetime payments for people who get sick. Finally, we do want to keep and we do preserve for families--they can keep younger members of their family on their insurance, to the age of 26.

We eliminate the things people don't like. We preserve the things that are still so important for families all around the country. We work to get to the point where people can afford health insurance again.

It is interesting listening to the Democrats talking about how many people have been covered under ObamaCare. What you find out is that coverage is empty. They may have an insurance card, but if the copays are so high and the deductibles are so high--$5,000, $6,000, $7,000--it is unusable. They say: I have ObamaCare, but I don't have the ability to get the care.

The issue of Medicaid, which was a failed system for a long time--it has been 50 years since Medicaid came into existence. There is a lot we need to do to modernize, update, streamline, strengthen, improve Medicaid in ways that actually help people.

I was in the State senate. Mr. President, I know you have a long history of involvement in your home State. Senator Blunt does as well with the activities there. What we have seen with Medicaid--and I saw it in the State legislature--if we had the freedom and the flexibility in the State to make the decisions about how that money was spent rather than dealing with all of these rules and regulations and one- size-fits-all that comes out of Washington, we always felt we could do a much better job of providing for the people of our State. Let the State make involved decisions for people on Medicaid, and we could help a lot more people for the same amount of money. It seemed there was so much waste and abuse in the whole Medicaid system.

So much of what the House is doing is to try to get the power out of Washington. The question is, Whom do you want in control? Do you want the government in control or the people, and their care and the decisions being made at home?

I come to the floor today to thank my colleague from Missouri for his leadership on this from the days before he was even in the U.S. Senate, from his days in the House, and for his involvement. He was really one of the leaders in the House before coming to the Senate on this whole topic. He knows it well. He visits with people at home in his home State, as I do at home in mine.

I will be at home in Wyoming again this weekend, traveling around the State with different activities. I think one of the things we all do when we go home is visit with people and find out where they are going to be and what is on their minds, and that is the best way to do it.

I will be at a pancake breakfast. I will be at a Boy Scout event. I will be at a dinner at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. I will visit with a number of high school students. You hear people. You want to be there and listen to what they have to say. So I am looking forward to being there again this weekend, as I was last weekend--in Buffalo last weekend for the health fair in Rawlins--for an event to hear how what Washington does impacts their lives.

What we have seen over the past 6 or 7 years since ObamaCare became law is that decisions being made in Washington hurt a lot of people in Wyoming, hurt people who were patients of mine when I was actively practicing as a surgeon. The regulations, the one-size-fits-all in terms of the impact on the hospitals, the healthcare providers, and the patients--we know these people need relief. They need to be rescued from this collapsing ObamaCare healthcare law. And we want to repair the damage. We can't get it all done overnight. It is not possible. It took us about 6\1/2\, 7 years to get to this point. President Trump has only been in office for about 7 weeks. You can't get it done overnight. We are making definite strides in the direction that is important for the country.

I wish to ask my friend and colleague Senator Blunt if he is seeing the same things in Missouri and hearing the same sorts of stories as we work to repeal and replace this healthcare law.

I am hearing the exact same thing at home. The premiums in our State for people having to buy on the exchange have gone up double digits. I think we had the same thing happen in your State year after year, to the point where if you only have one company selling on the exchange in rural communities--for us, it is our whole State. That is a big problem.

The other thing we certainly are concerned about--and I know this is the case with both Senator Blunt and me--ours is a rural State, and huge areas of your State are rural.

The architect of ObamaCare, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel from the University of Pennsylvania, said that we have too many hospitals in the United States. He said there are 5,000 hospitals, and he said there are about 1,000 too many. He actually wrote a book about this after they wrote the healthcare law, and he said that there are about 1,000 too many and they need to close.

Well, if you are in rural Wyoming or rural Missouri, those hospitals are a long way from other places. The first I think 80 hospitals have closed, and they were rural hospitals. Fortunately not in my State, but in a number of States, you have seen that--numbers of rural hospitals closing. When a rural hospital closes as a result of the Obama healthcare law, the impact on a community is dramatic in terms of it being able to recruit nurses, doctors, and businesses to the community, if there is not a hospital, and to recruit teachers to the schools. I don't know if that is an experience and concern the Senator is seeing around rural Missouri.