Floor Statements

Madam President, U.S. Senators shouldn't get an award for restoring the appropriations process any more than Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should get a merit badge for telling the truth because that is what we are supposed to do, but the fact is, last week and tonight we have taken an appropriations process, which has been incomplete and broken for the last several years, and we have done what we are supposed to do.

Sometimes the U.S. Senate has been like joining the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing.

Senator McConnell said before he became majority leader in 2015 that his goal was to follow the example of the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, who was the leader when Mitch McConnell was a young legislative intern. Mitch McConnell said he wanted to open up the Senate, and for quite a while, that turned out to be the case.

As Senator McConnell has said: In the last year of the Democratic majority in 2014, there were only 15 rollcall votes on amendments the entire year. In the first year of the Republican majority--that is 2015--there were over 200.

One example from the committee of which I chair--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--was the bill fixing No Child Left Behind. Working with Senator Murray, on the floor we considered 81 amendments. We had rollcall votes on 24, and we adopted 11. We had voice votes to accept 28, and we agreed to 27 amendments by unanimous consent. That was the bill to fix No Child Left Behind.

Another example is the Energy and Water appropriations bill we considered 2 years ago. Working with Senator Feinstein of California, the Senate voted on 21 amendments and adopted 14.

This year, we have fallen back into our bad habits with few amendment votes, but over this past week, we took an important step toward restoring the practice of considering appropriations bills under regular order.

Just on the Energy and Water appropriations bill--one of the three we will be voting on tonight--we have worked together in a fair and bipartisan manner to get a result. We held three hearings, a subcommittee markup, a full committee markup. Eighty-three Senators made suggestions during the committee process--almost all of which we tried to accommodate in one way or another. Then, in committee, seven amendments were included in the managers' package, plus we had two rollcall votes and adopted one amendment.

Then, on the floor, the Energy and Water appropriations bill has been considered with Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill and the Legislative Branch appropriations bill. For this package of bills, we adopted 7 amendments by rollcall and another 34 by unanimous consent. That adds up to what one might call restoring the practice of regular order for appropriations from start to finish.

The committee process has almost always been done. The part that has often been missing was the last part, the floor consideration. That is what is different about this year.

I thank Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer--the two leaders-- working with Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy--the chairman and ranking member--for creating an environment in which we can get this done. It wouldn't have happened if they had not done that.

I also thank Senator Boozman, Senator Daines, Senator Feinstein, Senator Murphy, as well as Senator Schatz. We all worked together last week and got a result.

As I said at the beginning, Senators shouldn't get a pat on the back for doing what we are supposed to do any more than Boy Scouts should get a merit badge for telling the truth, but we have done what we are supposed to do. It is an encouraging sign, and I hope it sets a precedent.

For several years now, bipartisan majorities in Congress have appropriated record levels of taxpayer dollars for government-sponsored research, science, and technology. This hasn't always been noticed. President Trump has signed two of these appropriation bills, and I want to suggest that the President include government-sponsored research, science, and technology as part of his ``America First'' agenda.

A principal reason the United States produces 24 percent of all the money in the world for just 5 percent of the people is the extraordinary concentration of brain power in the United States, supported by Federal dollars through our National Institutes of Health, our National Laboratories, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies.

Senator Gardner of Colorado dropped by my office the other day, and he said this: I was flying over the Middle East, and I looked down, and there were cars everywhere. I thought, well, Henry Ford invented the assembly line. Then it got to be dark, and there were lights everywhere, and I thought, well, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. We were flying at 30,000 feet, and I thought, well, the Wright brothers invented the airplane. They are all Americans. I got to thinking, of course, that is not all. We have invented the internet, polio vaccine, the personal computer, nuclear power.

You could make a long list. It is hard to think of any major technological invention since World War II that didn't have some support from government-sponsored research.

So I would like to tell President Trump and the Office of Management and Budget that science, research, innovation, and technology is what helped to make America first and that he include that in his America First agenda.

The funding in this bill is a good first step toward doing that. It prioritizes Federal spending to keep America first in energy research, and it increases funding to build the fastest supercomputers in the world, and develop the next generation of supercomputers.

Two weeks ago, Energy Secretary Rick Perry traveled to Oak Ridge, where he announced that the United States will regain the No. 1 position in supercomputing in the world. We compete for that every year with China and Japan. To stay ahead of China and Japan and other countries--those in

Europe, for example--that are emphasizing science and technology and research costs money, but it is important to note that we have been able to do that with bipartisan majorities over the last several years--not by overspending. We did it by setting priorities.

The record funding that is part of this bipartisan budget agreement is a part of the 30 percent of the spending in the Federal budget that has been going up at about the rate of inflation for the last 10 years, and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will go up a little bit more than the rate of inflation for the next 10 years.

So our record funding is achieved by setting priorities within budget limits. It is not the part of the Federal budget that is breaking the bank. That is the entitlement part, not the National Laboratories, not the national defense, not the National Institutes of Health, and not the national parks. They are within the part of the budget that is under control.

Funding in this bill supports several important agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Corps of Engineers, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Regional Commissions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority.

For the fourth consecutive year, as I was saying, we have included record funding levels in regular appropriations bills for the following activities: The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. This is the outfit that funds our 17 National Laboratories--our secret weapon. No other country in the world has National Laboratories like we do. The Office of Science is the Nation's largest supporter of research in the physical sciences. It is funded at $6.65 billion, a new record level of funding.

The Office of Science provides funding for the laboratories, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Funding for the Office of Science would increase by 6 percent next year if this legislation becomes law.

Or let's take supercomputing. I mentioned that Secretary Perry went to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory last week. This bill provides a total of $1.68 billion for high-performance computing, including $980 million within the Office of Science and $703 million within the National Nuclear Security Administration. This amount includes $677 million to deliver at least one exascale machine in 2021 to reassert U.S. leadership in this critical area.

This funding has been provided, on a bipartisan basis, for 10 years. I remember Senator Bingaman of New Mexico encouraging me to go to Japan to see their supercomputer when Japan was No. 1 in the world. Because of that after 10 years of effort and support from Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, when they signed the bill, America is now No. 1 in supercomputing.

Or take an agency we call ARPA-E. It is funded at $375 million, record funding for a regular appropriations bill. ARPA-E, which is sort of a funny name, has a cousin with a funny name that is a little better known, named DARPA. DARPA is in the Department of Defense. Out of it has come wondrous new technologies from stealth to the internet, for example.

So, 10 years ago, Congress decided to make an energy equivalent of DARPA, and we fund it every year to invest in high-impact energy technologies and quickly get these technologies out into the private sector.

Another important part of this bill is the focus on efforts to clean up hazardous materials on Cold War-era sites. It provides $7.2 billion to support environmental cleanup, which is $581 million above the President's budget request.

Still another important part of this bill is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which touches the lives of almost all Americans. Based upon the number of appropriations requests we get each year, the Corps of Engineers is the Federal Government's most popular agency.

The Corps maintains our inland waterways. It deepens and keeps our ports open. It looks after many of our recreational waters and lands. It manages the river levels to prevent flooding. And its dams provide emission-free, renewable hydroelectric energy.

I can recall when I was a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, after the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers flooded, a whole room full of Senators showed up to ask for more money for their States to deal with what was wrong and to make things right. There is a real interest in what the Corps does.

The bill restores $2.142 billion that was cut by the President's budget request, bringing the Corps' budget up to $6.9 billion--a new record level of funding in a regular appropriations bill.

For the fifth consecutive year, the bill makes full use of the Inland Waterways Trust Fund revenues for water infrastructure projects. What that means is we take the tax money we collect from people who use the locks, and we spend it all on what we are supposed to spend it for, which is making the locks better.

The bill also provides funding that exceeds the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund spending targets established by the Water Resources Development Act in 2014.

This is the fifth consecutive year that the bill has met or exceeded that target, which is necessary to adequately fund our Nation's harbors, including the ones in Mobile, in Savannah, in Long Beach, and many others across the country.

There is $14.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, including $1.9 billion for six life extension programs, which fix or replace components of weapons systems to make sure they are safe and reliable.

We fund the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which oversees our 99 nuclear reactors. Nuclear power provides 20 percent of our electricity and more than half of our carbon-free electricity.

We include funding to ensure that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is prepared to review applications for new reactors, particularly small reactors, advanced reactors, and to extend the licenses of our existing reactors when it is safe to do so.

The bill also provides $47 million for research and development for the Department of Energy to support existing reactors, $30 million for the Center for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, and $30 million for the transformational challenge reactor.

The legislation also includes a pilot program that Senator Feinstein especially has pushed, and I have joined her, to consolidate nuclear waste and move it away from the sites where they now are. Funding is also there to take the first steps toward being able to store nuclear waste in private facilities.

In conclusion, it is important that the American people know that the Republican majority in Congress has worked with Democrats to provide record levels of funding for science, research, and technology. We want to keep America first on both sides of the aisle, and this bipartisan support is not limited to the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee. It is true in our other subcommittees as well.

The National Science Foundation has increased by $200 million this year and another $300 million for next year. It gives 11,000 grants to universities and institutions around the country. And, perhaps most important, in fiscal year 2018, for the third straight year, the subcommittee chaired by Senator Blunt and Senator Murray provided increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and biomedical research--$2 billion additional dollars in the first year, $2 billion the second year, and $2 billion the third year, which is in addition to the money--nearly $5 billion--in the 21st Century Cures Act that focuses on the Precision Medicine Initiative and the Cancer Moonshot, among other things.

Senator Blunt says that over 3 years, that is a 23-percent increase.

So I would say two things to those who haven't noticed this quiet development. No. 1: Congress is doing what it is supposed to do. We are not asking for an award any more than the Boy Scouts get a merit badge for telling the truth, but we are doing what we are supposed to do on appropriations from start to finish on these three bills.

No. 2: We are funding science and research and technology at record levels--record levels. It is important to keep America competitive in the world.

I thank our staffs who have worked together on this bill. On my staff are Tyler Owens, Adam DeMella, Meyer Seligman, Jen Armstrong, Molly Marsh, and Rachel Littleton.

On Senator Feinstein's staff are Doug Clapp, Chris Hanson, and Samantha Nelson.

I look forward to continuing with the regular order and going to conference with the House of Representatives. I urge my colleagues to vote in support of this legislation.

I thank Senator Leahy and Senator Schatz, who are both on the floor, as well as Senator Schumer, Senator McConnell, and the other Senators who have spoken today for creating an environment that allows us to succeed.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senators on both sides of the aisle and staff members for working together to have a good process this week on our first appropriations bills.

We have three of them that we made progress on. We had six recorded votes in the last couple of days. We have about 20 other amendments-- most of them bipartisan--which we believe we could adopt by a voice vote, but we have one or two recorded votes that we are going to need to take this afternoon unless we have agreements otherwise.

Amendment No. 2983 to Amendment No. 2910

Mr. President, based on that, I ask unanimous consent to call up the Bennet-Gardner amendment No. 2983. I further ask consent that at 2 p.m., the Senate vote in relation to the Bennet amendment, and that no second-degree amendments be in order to the amendment prior to the vote.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

What that means in plain English is that we will have a vote at 2 p.m. If we secure agreement, we could quickly wrap up this afternoon. If we don't, we will have further votes this afternoon.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes to inform Senators where we are.

I thank Senators on both sides of the aisle for working well this week on the appropriations process. We are off to a very good start.

We have voted on six amendments in the last couple of days. We have about 20 others that we are close to agreement on and probably can adopt by voice vote.

We have one amendment we are going to have to deal with. If it were not offered, then this would be the last vote for the day. If it needs to be dealt with, then we are going to have to deal with it following this vote. So I wanted Members to know, unless we get agreement, we will be having at least one more vote following this vote.

Vote on Amendment No. 2983

Mr. President, for the information of the Senators, we are about to move to the consideration of the amendment by the Senator from Utah. I want to take about 1 minute to talk about it. The leader will speak, and then I will move to table the amendment. Depending on the outcome of the amendment, there may be other votes this afternoon.

I thank Senators for working well together. We have had six votes. We have had 20 that we think we can work out, more or less, in a managers' package. The Senator from Utah, by the way, has been very helpful in getting us to that point. Yet I am going to move to table his amendment, and I want to explain why.

This is an authorizing amendment. It belongs on the authorizing bill. This is an appropriations bill. We have worked very hard over the last few weeks, under Chairman Shelby's leadership and Senator Leahy's leadership, to try to keep such amendments off of our appropriations bill so that we can get to a result.

It has been a long time since this body has done what it is supposed to do under the appropriations process. This is the first week of that process. If we table the amendment that is about to come up, we will be able to complete our work, I believe, today or Monday and be off to a good start with about two dozen amendments in a process that is of the kind that we have been saying for weeks we want to see.

So, while I totally agree with the Senator's amendment and have voted for it many, many times, this is not the place for it.

Let me finish, if I may, because we are trying to get to the vote. Well, yes, I yields.

I thank the Senator for his support.

Mr. President, in addition to this, for those on this side of the aisle who oppose the waters of the United States, remember that the courts have enjoined it, and President Trump has rescinded it. President Trump's EPA rewrote the rule and sent it to the OMB last week. So there will be a new rule, but it is not now in effect.

Finally, a small part of the bill is dealt with in the Interior appropriations bill.

I thank the Members for being here. I respect the Senator from Utah, but following the leader's remarks, I am going to move to table his amendment. I urge all Senators to do that. We want an appropriations process. We do not want an Omnibus appropriations bill, and that is what we will get if we offer amendments like this during the appropriations process.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I move to table Lee amendment No. 3021, and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to the vote.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Delaware for his customary leadership. He has been wise to come up with this idea.

In some cases, the Corps of Engineers has completed projects under budget. The Corps had excess non-Federal funds paid by the project's sponsor.

His amendment, which I am happy to cosponsor, requires the Corps to provide a list of all the projects that have been completed and have excess non-Federal funds that have not been returned to the project sponsor put on that list. It also requires the Corps to provide a final accounting for each project and the status of the Corps' plan to return the excess non-Federal funds. It does not increase Federal spending. It is intended to ensure that the Corps returns excess non-Federal funds to project sponsors in a timely manner.

Let me thank the Republican and Democratic staffs for working with us through the morning in the customary smooth way to get an appropriations bill on the floor.

This is the first vote on the appropriations bills this week. We will vote on the Coons-Gardner amendment first and then on the Carper- Alexander amendment second. We have several other amendments waiting for consideration. Senators Thune and Durbin

have one that should be filed shortly; Senators Hatch and Udall, the same. We hope to have more votes later this afternoon, hopefully in the area of 5 o'clock. That will be up to the majority leader and the Democratic leader, but we will let Senators know about that.

Senators Boozman, Daines, and I, and our Democratic colleagues hope that Senators and their staff will file today any amendments they wish to have included in these three appropriations bills.

Amendment No. 2914 to Amendment No. 2910

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 2914 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 10 minutes of debate and that following the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote in relation to the Gardner amendment and the Carper amendment and that there be no second-degree amendments in order to the amendments prior to the votes.

Mr. President, Senator Coons has already spoken.

I yield back all time on this side.

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

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

Mr. President, for the information of Senators and staffs, the leadership staffs are talking now about the possibility of a vote at about 4:45 this afternoon on a proposal by Senator Crapo and Senator Whitehouse, which would be a pilot program for advanced reactor fuel. I am saying this just for the information of Senators. The vote is not set yet, but we are hopeful that it will be. As soon as we have final clearance, we will let Senators know.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for the information of colleagues, we are hoping within the next few minutes to have clearance from the leadership to be able to move ahead on a vote this afternoon on an amendment by Senator Crapo and Senator Whitehouse involving a pilot program for advancing reactor fuel.

Senator Crapo would like to be recognized when I sit down in order to briefly comment on that amendment. Following that, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Menendez be recognized.

Hopefully, by the time Senator Menendez is finished, we will have clearance for the vote, and we can proceed to the vote.

Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator would yield for a moment for a scheduling announcement.

For the information of Senators, there will not be a vote tonight on the Crapo-Whitehouse amendment. We have at least one Senator who is still studying the bill, but we believe that will be cleared up shortly. Our goal would be to have votes tomorrow morning at about 10 o'clock on the Crapo-Whitehouse amendment, as well as an amendment by Senator Baldwin. Both of those are subject to being approved by the leadership staff. Only they can announce the scheduling of a vote.

For the information of Senators, there will not be a vote tonight, and there will be a vote on at least one to three amendments tomorrow morning, hopefully, at about 10 o'clock.

Senator Crapo already has spoken about the Crapo-Whitehouse amendment, which is a pilot program for advanced reactor fuel. It is a very good idea. It is not reauthorizing a new program. It is not spending any more money. It is reallocating money for a very creative idea that Senator Whitehouse and Senator Crapo have come up with. I fully support it. I think the Senators on both sides of the aisle will see the wisdom of it once everyone has a chance to consider it. I am glad Senator Whitehouse is here to talk more about it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for his idea. This is a creative idea on his part.

I would like to give credit to Senator Crapo and Senator Risch from the State of Idaho. Idaho has our nuclear laboratory, among our 17 National Laboratories, and the work that we are talking about would be done in Idaho.

The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill, which was approved almost unanimously in the Appropriations Committee a few weeks ago, approved $10 million for the kind of work that Senator Whitehouse just described. It is a pilot program to recycle the Navy's spent nuclear fuel and use the recovered uranium to supply high-assay low- enriched uranium for advanced reactors. That is already in the bill. This amendment by Senators Whitehouse, Crapo, and Risch would add an additional $5 million to the pilot program. The additional $5 million is being reallocated from fuel cycle research and development and does not increase the overall spending in the bill.

In looking ahead to tomorrow, the leaders' offices are still talking, but our expectation is that we will have at least two votes tomorrow at about 10 o'clock. One would be on the Crapo-Whitehouse-Risch amendment, which we have just described. The second would be on the Baldwin- Portman amendment, which has been considered. Hopefully, we will have other appropriations amendments during the day.

I encourage Senators and their staffs to file tonight, if at all possible, the amendments they have to these three appropriations bills, because the majority leader has said that he would like to finish our work this week.

While there is an opportunity for offering amendments, as Senators know, most amendments that Senators can think of have already been dealt with. I speak from experience on our own subcommittee, the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, and then on the full Appropriations Committee, which includes 31 Senators. We have heard, in our case, from 83 different Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. We have heard their suggestions just as in the case of Senator Whitehouse's idea about a pilot program for advanced reactor fuels. We have already heard from him about that and from Senator Crapo and Senator Risch, and we have included it in the base bill. What we will do tomorrow, if we have another vote, is to simply add $5 million to it from another account without increasing the amount of spending.

There are a great many amendments that Senators have offered that are already a part of the Energy and Water Development bill. That is why I think it has such strong support on the subcommittee, the committee, and the floor. Yet, if there are additional amendments that relate to the bill, particularly if they are bipartisan amendments, we would like for them to be filed tonight so they can be considered tomorrow.

It is my hope that before we close tonight, the leaders will authorize the announcements of votes tomorrow morning on two amendments at about 10 o'clock.

I yield the floor.

Seeing no other Senator on the floor, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have 7 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Armed Services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Lieutenant General Austin S. Miller, USA, to be general and Commander, Resolute Support Mission, North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Commander, United States Forces- Afghanistan, Department of Defense.

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Effective Administration of the 340B Drug Pricing Program''.

Committee on the Judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Citizenship for Sale: Oversight of the EB-5 Investor Visa Program.''

Committee on Veterans' Affairs

The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018 during votes to conduct a hearing the nomination of John Lowry III, of Illinois, to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans' Employment and Training.

Select Committee on Intelligence

The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.

Special Committee on Aging

The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer's Reducing Risk, Detecting Early Symptoms, and Improving Data.

Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and

Data Security

The Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and Data Security of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Cambridge Analytica and other Facebook Partners: Examining Data Privacy Risk.''

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2911.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, tomorrow the distinguished Senator from Alabama, Mr. Shelby, and the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy, will lead us in the beginning of the Senate's appropriations process for the year that begins this October 2018. This is also the best opportunity we have had in a long time to do the appropriations process properly.

For the last several years, we have finished and reported our 12 bills out of the Appropriations Committee on which about one-third of the Senate sits. We have reported those bills to the Senate floor. We have usually done that with bipartisan support and often unanimously. This is no small task.

For example, in our Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which I chair and which the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, is the vice chair, this year we have had three hearings. We have received comments from 83 Members of the Senate. We have considered their comments. We considered our bill in a subcommittee markup, and then we approved the bill 30 to 1 in the Appropriations Committee on May 24. We are on pace this year, thanks to the leadership of Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy, to take those same steps with all 12 appropriations bills.

The Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which has not been able to get bipartisan agreement since fiscal year 2010, was able to reach an agreement this year. So I thank Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy, and I thank Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer, the Democratic and Republican leaders, for creating an environment in which all of this is possible.

We are saying to all Members of the Senate, we would like for the appropriations bills to be considered by more than one-third of the Senators. We know we have considered your thoughts in our committee process. We have done that, and we have done that carefully, but to the extent Senators want to, we ought to be able to consider relevant amendments--amendments that have something to do with the bill on the floor of the Senate.

So the key now is whether we know how to consider amendments, whether we can remember how to consider, talk about, agree to time agreements, and then vote on amendments; how we can occasionally show restraint and not offer an amendment that would blow up the whole bill, keeping in mind that our goal is to pass an appropriations bill--literally a series of appropriations bills--that will spend more than $1 trillion of the taxpayers' money in the year that begins October 2018.

Now, too often, once we have gotten on the Senate floor in this shape, we have gotten ourselves into this situation: Senators blocking other Senators' amendments--which Senators can do--but if Senators block other Senators' amendments and the tit for tat gets going back and forth, then no amendments are considered, and we are back in a situation where only the 31 Senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee have a say in the final bill. This is a chance for the other 69 Senators to be more involved by offering their amendments on the floor.

So it is my hope that beginning tomorrow, we will return to the practice of offering amendments that have something to do with the bills at hand, and then we will either accept it, modify it, try to talk a Senator out of offering it, or agree to a short period of time to talk about an amendment and then actually vote on the amendment. If we do that, we can finish our work in a timely way. We can restore to the Senate its most basic process, which is its article I of the Constitution responsibility for appropriating dollars.

Tonight I will make my opening remarks on one of the three bills we will be considering this week, the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill. Tomorrow, Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy will officially kick off our appropriations process. Senator Feinstein, my colleague on the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, with whom I have worked for several years, will make her remarks and so will other Senators from the other two subcommittees. Then we will begin to vote on amendments. Our plan is to begin voting on amendments tomorrow.

We have a number of amendments already proposed that are bipartisan. Of course, it is up to the Republican leader and the Democratic leader how we proceed, but I have talked with them. I have talked with other colleagues. Our hope is to have a couple of amendments to vote on just before lunch, two more amendments to vote on right after lunch, and other amendments to vote on tomorrow afternoon.

I would say to Senators and to staff that all of us--all six of us Senators involved in the three subcommittees, plus Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy--hope Senators will file their amendments tonight and tomorrow. We want to finish the bill this week. That is what Senator McConnell has asked us to do. That means, in order to have timely consideration of amendments--and we could do a number during the week; those that are not accepted, we could vote on--we need to get on with it. We can still consider several amendments tomorrow, other than the ones already planned. This information has been available to Senators and staff for them to consider.

The Energy and Water appropriations bill went through the entire process I just mentioned. That has been public, and it has been available for anybody to read since May 24. It was approved 30 to 1-- one-third of the Senate--and 83 Senators made suggestions that we tried to accommodate in the bill.

The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill has been available to the full Senate since June 7. It was approved unanimously, after going through the full committee process, by a vote of 31 to 0.

The Legislative Branch appropriations bill is the third subcommittee bill that will be considered this week. It has been available since June 14. It went through the entire committee process and was approved 31 to 0.

Last Saturday, all three of these bills were stitched together into one bill. This has been available; we call it in our way of talking a minibus--three subcommittee appropriations bills fully vetted, fully public. It is time to deal with it.

Before I describe the Energy and Water appropriations bill in detail, I wish to tell the Senate a story told to me by the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Gardner, who has taken an active interest in research, technology, and development ever since his arrival in the U.S. Senate 4 years ago.

Senator Gardner came by my office a few weeks ago, and this is what he said to me: You know, I was flying over the Middle East, and I looked down, and there were cars everywhere. I thought, well, Henry Ford invented the assembly line. Then it got to be dark, and there were lights everywhere, and I thought, well, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. We were flying at 30,000 feet, and I thought, the Wright brothers invented the airplane. They are all Americans. I got to thinking that is not all; we have invented the internet, the personal computer, nuclear power, the polio vaccine. It is hard to think of a major technological invention since World War II that didn't have some support from government-sponsored research.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine in Nashville came up to me and lamented the fact--he said: I'm so sorry that Congress hasn't been funding research. He understood that since World War II, it has been so important to our country.

I told my friend: I think you have been missing what has actually been happening, because quietly, with bipartisan support, this Congress--which has a Republican majority and, for the last two appropriations bills, a Republican President--has been approving record funding for science, research, and technology. It is important that the American people know that.

Since January of 2015, it is true we have had a Republican majority in Congress, but there has been a consensus with Democratic Members of Congress. We have worked together to provide those record levels of funding for science, research, and technology.

Let me be specific. In the current year--fiscal year 2018--for the third consecutive year we provided record funding levels in regular appropriations bills for the following activities:

The Office of Science. The Office of Science provides funding for our 17 national laboratories, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which are America's secret weapon. No other country has anything like them. Funding for the Office of Science in this fiscal year's appropriations bill--the one we are voting on this week--would increase funding by 6 percent.

Let's take supercomputing. Last Friday, Secretary of Energy Perry traveled to Oak Ridge, where he announced that the United States will regain the No. 1 position in the world in supercomputers, which we compete for every year with China and Japan. This is the result not of 1 year of funding, but of 10 years of bipartisan effort through three different administrations--Democratic and Republican--to try to make sure that America is first in supercomputing in the world. We continue to do that in the appropriations bill we are considering this week.

Or take an agency we call ARPA-E. ARPA-E is a cousin of DARPA which is an agency that was created in the Department of Defense some time ago, out of which came a variety of wondrous new technologies--from stealth to the internet, for example. So 10 years ago, Congress decided ``Why not try the same thing in energy?'' and created what we call ARPA-E to invest in high-impact energy technologies and then quickly get those technologies added to the private sector.

That is just our subcommittee. In other subcommittees--the Commerce, Justice, Science Committee, chaired by Senator Moran and Senator Shaheen, the fiscal year 2018 bill increased funding for the National Science Foundation by $200 million. The fiscal year 2019 bill, approved by the Senate Appropriation Committee last week, proposes to increase funding another $300 million. The National Science Foundation makes about 11,000 grants to universities and other institutions around the country--$8 billion next year--as a part of our effort to stay first in research, science, and technology.

Then there is one more example. In fiscal year 2018, for the third straight year, the Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee, chaired by Senator Blunt and Senator Murray, has provided increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and biomedical research-- 2 billion additional dollars in the first year, 2 billion the second year, and 2 billion the third year, which is in addition to 21st Century Cures Act funding to focus on the Precision Medicine Initiative, the Cancer Moonshot, among other things. Senator Blunt has said that is a 23-percent increase over three years.

So I would say to my friend in Nashville--and to others who may not have noticed this quiet development--that this Republican Congress and the Democratic Members of Congress, as well, understand that a principal reason why this country produces 24 percent of all the money in the world for just 5 percent of the people--the principal reason for this extraordinary concentration of brain power in the United States has been support by Federal dollars through our National Laboratories, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies.

Let me make one other statement right upfront. That funding is not the cause of the Federal deficit. Funding for the National Laboratories, national defense, national parks, and the National Institutes of Health is all part of the 30 percent of the Federal budget we call discretionary spending. That is what we are talking about this week. That is the money Congress appropriates every year-- more than $1 trillion.

Over the last 10 years, this part of the Federal budget--the 30 percent that is the discretionary funding--has gone up at a little bit less than the rate of inflation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next 10 years, this part of the budget will rise at a little bit more than the rate of inflation.

So record funding for the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation or ARPA-E or to keep our position in supercomputing--or, for that matter, national defense--is not the source of the Federal deficit. What has happened is that the Congress-- Democrats and Republicans alike--have placed a priority on science, technology, and research and, within the budget limits established, we have given that excellent funding--record funding. The source of the Federal budget deficit is mandatory spending, which amounts to more than 63 percent of the budget.

Now to the Energy and Water appropriations bill. This legislation provides a total of $43.8 billion, $566 million above what Congress provided last fiscal year--the year we are in now--and $7.24 billion above the President's budget request. Funding in this bill supports several agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Corps of Engineers, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the regional commissions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority.

I am pleased that the bill provides the fourth year of record funding for our 17 national laboratories and increases funding for supercomputers so that we can stay first in the world. The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, which supports basic science and energy research and is the Nation's largest supporter of research in the physical sciences, is funded at $6.65 billion, a new record funding level.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency--we call it ARPA-E--is funded at $375 million, record funding in a regular appropriations bill. As I said, it was created in 2007 by the America COMPETES Act, a bipartisan effort to invest in high-impact energy technologies.

The bill provides a total of $1.68 billion for high-performance computing, including $980 million within the Office of Science, and $703 million within the National Nuclear Security Administration. This amount includes $677 million to deliver at least one exascale machine in 2021, the supercomputer that will reassert U.S. leadership in this critical area--the one Secretary Perry announced last week.

The bill also advances efforts to clean up hazardous materials at Cold War-era sites. The bill provides $7.2 billion to support cleanup efforts, which is $581 million above the President's budget request.

This bill also includes provisions regarding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps of Engineers touches the lives of almost every American. Based upon the number of appropriations requests we have received from my colleagues in the Senate, the Corps of Engineers is the Federal Government's most popular agency. I can remember a hearing of one of our committees shortly after the Missouri and Mississippi rivers flooded a few years ago, and 18 different Senators showed up to suggest that we needed more money for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps maintains our inland waterways. It deepens and keeps our ports open. It looks after many of our recreational waters and lands. It manages the river levels to prevent flooding and its dams provide emission-free renewable hydroelectric energy.

The bill restores $2.142 billion that was cut from the President's budget request, bringing the Corps budget up to $6.9 billion, a new record funding level under regular appropriations bills. For the fifth consecutive year, the bill makes full use of the Inland Waterway Trust Fund revenues for water infrastructure projects. In other words, when we take tax money from the barges that use the waterways, we spend that tax money to improve the waterways rather than put it in some account somewhere.

The bill also provides funding that exceeds the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund spending target established by the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014. This is the fifth consecutive year the bill has met or exceeded the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund spending target, which is necessary to adequately fund our Nation's

harbors, including Mobile Harbor in Alabama, Savannah Harbor in Georgia, Long Beach Harbor in California, and many others across the country.

We hear a lot of talk about infrastructure and the need to do something about it. Well, this bill does something about it for 5 straight years. We are spending all the money we have collected--and, in fact, we raised the revenues a couple of years ago--for the last few years at record levels to improve our inland waterways and deepen our ports.

A key pillar of our national defense is a strong nuclear deterrent. That has been in the news these last few weeks because of the President's discussions with the leader of North Korea. The bill includes a total of $14 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, including $1.9 billion for six life extension programs, which fix or replace components and weapons systems to make sure they are safe and reliable. Congress must maintain a safe and effective nuclear weapons stockpile and keep big construction projects on time and on budget. This bill achieves those goals. Nuclear power is our best source of inexpensive, carbon-free baseload power. It is important for our national security competitiveness. Nuclear power provides 20 percent of our Nation's electricity, more than half of our carbon-free electricity.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees our 99 nuclear power reactors, is also funded in this bill. We included funding to ensure that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is prepared to review applications for new reactors, particularly small modular reactors and advanced reactors, and to extend the licenses of our existing reactors if it is safe to do so.

The bill also provides $47 million for research and development at the Department of Energy to support existing nuclear reactors, $30 million for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, and $30 million for the transformational challenge reactor.

The legislation again includes a pilot program to allow consolidated nuclear waste storage that I have worked on with Senator Feinstein for the last 6 years. This has been a special priority of the Senator from California, as it is of mine. Funding is also included for the Department of Energy to take the first steps toward being able to store nuclear waste at private facilities.

Tomorrow, Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy will formally begin the process of the appropriations of the Senate for the year that begins October 1. As I said at the beginning, this is our opportunity to do it right--something we haven't done in a long time.

We have done our work in committee. We have gotten our bills through. We had our hearings. We considered everybody's ideas. But that is just 31 of us. What about the other 69 Senators? They might like to have more of a say when the bill reaches the floor.

What we are asking tonight is that Senators and staff read the bills. We don't have 2, 3, 4, or 5 days to sit around and read the bills. Senator McConnell would like for us to be through with this bill this week.

We have 12 appropriations bills to consider. We ought to be able to do that in 2 or 3 days. If we read the bills and decide which amendments haven't already been considered and file the amendments tonight, tomorrow we can ask consent for a time agreement of, say, 20 minutes and give each side 10 minutes to speak, and then we can actually vote on the amendments. That is what we are supposed to do.

Sometimes the U.S. Senate has been like joining the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing. It is rare that we have an amendment. The appropriations process is a chance to do that. I hope we will have a chance to do that.

I wish to make one other plea to my fellow Senators. The Senate has enormous power. Each Senator is equal. As a result, when the majority leader gets up and says we are going to start tomorrow with a prayer and this bill, and then we are going to move to something else, he says, if you listen carefully: I ask unanimous consent that we open tomorrow at 9:30. I ask unanimous consent that we move to this bill.

He gets that. He gets that because Senators recognize that although any one of us could have stopped that by objecting, we demonstrate some restraint. Just because you have the freedom to do something doesn't mean you should always try to do it. We learned that in kindergarten. We are well past that level now; we are in U.S. Senate.

I am hopeful that we can begin tomorrow with our speeches from at least eight of our Senators who have been working on this bill, including our leaders. I am hopeful that we will have a couple of amendments to vote on before lunch--bipartisan amendments--maybe a couple more after lunch, and maybe two or three more in the late afternoon. That is up to the Democratic leader and the Republican leader to finally decide, but I think the chances are good.

I will ask all Senators and staffs who are paying attention tonight, please read these three bills. If you have amendments that need to be considered that are relevant to the bill, please file them tonight or first thing in the morning. Talk with our staff, and let's see if we can accept them, modify them, and, if necessary, vote on them. Let's try to get that done this week and show ourselves and the world that the U.S. Senate is still capable of a complete appropriations process. After all, that is our most basic responsibility.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the purpose of rule XVI in relation to the substitute amendment No. 2910, division A of H.R. 5895 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division A of the amendment, division B of H.R. 5895 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division B of the amendment, and that division C of H.R. 5895 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division C of the amendment.

I see the Senator from Hawaii. I don't know whether he has any remarks to make.

I see the Senator from Oklahoma.

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 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 ask unanimous consent to speak for as long as I may require.

Mr. President, the Senate majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, will become the longest serving Senate Republican leader in history, surpassing former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. This is according to the Senate historical office. Today is Senator McConnell's 4,179th day as Senate Republican leader--a position he assumed on January 3, 2007, after Republicans lost control of both Chambers of Congress.

I would like to take a few minutes to put Senator McConnell's leadership in perspective. That perspective begins in the year 1969. I was 29 years old and working in the Nixon White House. Senator Howard Baker, Jr., of Tennessee, said to me: ``You might want to get to know that smart, young legislative assistant for Marlow Cook.'' Marlow Cook was Kentucky's newly elected Republican Senator. That smart, young legislative assistant was 27-year-old Mitch McConnell.

If one has known him for a long time, the evolution of Mitch McConnell's Senate leadership isn't hard to trace. To begin with, when he was 2 years old, the doctor said: ``Mitch has polio.'' It is hard to imagine today how terrifying those words were for parents then. McConnell remembers:

It was 1944. There was a serious epidemic that year all

over the country. And the disease was very unpredictable.

First, you'd think you had the flu, and a couple of weeks

later, some people would be completely normal and some of

them would be in an iron lung or dead.

He continued:

In my case, it affected my left quadriceps, the muscle

between the knee and your thigh. And in one of the great good

fortunes of my life, my mother was living with her sister in

this little crossroads of Five Points, Alabama, where there

was not even a stoplight--while my dad was overseas fighting

the Germans--and it happened to be 60 miles from Warm

Springs, where President Roosevelt had gone [to treat his own

polio]. My mother took me to Warm Springs. They taught her a

physical therapy regimen, and said to do it four times a day

and to keep me off my feet. She watched me every minute and

prevented me from really walking.

My first memory in life is when they told my mother I was

going to be okay, that I'd be able to walk without a limp,

and we stopped at a shoe store in LaGrange, Georgia, on the

way back to Alabama to get a pair of low top shoes, which

were a kind of symbol I was going to have a normal childhood.

If one knows about the determination of Mitch McConnell's mother, it is not hard to imagine how her son determined as a college student to be a U.S. Senator, and did; determined to be his party's Senate leader, and did; and then determined to hold that leadership position longer than anyone in U.S. history, and has. This was an arduous, two-decade leadership journey: chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, counselor to Majority Leader Trent Lott, majority whip, minority leader, and finally, majority leader.

As for his mother's example, this is what Mitch McConnell said: ``It sure had to have an effect on me, which was that if you stick to something, you keep working at it and giving it your best, the chances are you may actually overcome whatever problem you're currently confronting.''

A second leadership quality that Mitch McConnell learned early--in a fistfight--was to not be pushed around. According to McConnell, ``I was about 7. We lived in Athens, Alabama, and I had a friend across the street named Dicky McGrew who was a year older than I was and considerably bigger. He was also a bully and he kept kind of pushing me around. And my dad called me over and said, `Son, I've been watching the way he's been pushing you around and I want you to go over there and I want you beat him up.' ''

So, McConnell says, ``I went across the street and started swinging and I beat him up and bent his glasses, and it was an incredible lesson in standing up to bullies and I've thought about that throughout my life at critical moments when people are trying to push you around.''

As a junior Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, Mitch McConnell surprised colleagues when he sponsored sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa, and then

in 1986, he voted to override President Reagan's veto of those sanctions, but these colleagues would not have been surprised had they known McConnell 25 years earlier when he was a student at the University of Louisville.

He remembers:

The civil rights movement was the defining issue of our

generation. Working as an intern in Congress during the

summer of 1963, I got to see [Martin Luther King, Jr.'s] ``I

Have a Dream'' speech. Then, in 1964, I was an intern in

[Kentucky Senator] John Sherman Cooper's office. Two

important things happened in 1964. Cooper was in the middle

of breaking the southern Senators' filibuster on civil rights

and we nominated Barry Goldwater, one of the few people who

voted against the Civil Rights bill. Honestly, I was mad as

hell about it. And I was so irritated about Goldwater voting

against the Civil Rights bill and defining the Republican

Party in a way that I thought would be unfortunate that I

voted for Lyndon Johnson, which in retrospect was a huge

mistake. But it was a protest vote.

That willingness as a college student to buck his own political party resurfaced 40 years later in his leadership on First Amendment free speech issues. In 2006, he cast the deciding vote against the adoption of a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning when most of his Republican colleagues and almost all of his constituents had a different point of view. He argued that the First Amendment protects even personally offensive messages, and McConnell became the Senate's leading voice against restrictions on political speech under the guise of ``campaign reform.'' Again, some in his own party disagreed, including President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, but he persisted and on multiple occasions, the Supreme Court has agreed with McConnell's view of protecting political speech under the First Amendment.

Two of the three U.S. Senate office buildings in Washington, DC, are named for Philip A. Hart of Michigan and Richard B. Russell, Jr., of Georgia, two Senators who were never elected to formal leadership positions by their colleagues. In this book, Senator McConnell discusses ``leaders without portfolio'' in some of his writings, describing occasions when a Senator assumes a major policy role outside of the confines of formal party or committee leadership. His favorite was Senator Cooper, whom Mitch has described as ``my role model as a young man, a man of great conviction, very smart.'' In his autobiography ``The Long Game,'' Senator McConnell tells of when Cooper took him to the signing of the Civil Rights Act and, later on, of watching Cooper's principled questioning of the Vietnam war.

Senator Cooper's example must have influenced his young intern's one- man crusade 20 years later against a repressive junta in faraway Burma. According to the New York Times, on September 15, 2016, Senator McConnell ``has been a lead sponsor of every major sanctions measure against the Burmese government over the last 20 years and has worked quietly and tirelessly with several administrations to try to bring democracy to the country.''

``Unlike South African apartheid, it was a totally unknown cause,'' his foreign policy adviser, Robin Cleveland, told the Times. He championed the cause of Burma's pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who for years was under house arrest. In 2012, when San Suu Kyi came to Washington, DC, as the new head of government, she traveled to Kentucky ``to thank [McConnell] for everything he did for us over, well, two decades. That's a long time,'' she said.

Of course, in order to be the Senate leader, one first has to be elected to the Senate. In Mitch McConnell's early career, one can find multiple clues that point to his fascination with political campaigns and the pugnacious style with which he wins them. Of course, an early signal was the fistfight with Dicky McGrew. Another: ``I was the only 14-year-old in America watching political conventions from gavel to gavel [and] I began to practice the craft and see if I could get good at it.'' When he was elected president of his high school student body, he remembers, ``I was hooked.'' At the University of Louisville, he campaigned for president of student council both in college and in law school, participated in civil rights marches on the State capitol, and as president of the College Republicans, persuaded Barry Goldwater to come to campus to speak.

He did learn the craft of the politics, and he did get good at it. He is undefeated in his own political campaigns, winning six Senate races in Kentucky, more than any other Commonwealth Senator. He has been elected Republican leader more than any other U.S. Senator, each time unanimously, and he has been proficient in not just his own races.

In 2010 and 2012, the Senate Conservative Fund helped nominate Republican candidates in five States who lost the general election when more mainstream conservative nominees might have won. So, in 2014 and 2016, McConnell organized an effort to defend incumbent Republican Senators who were challenged in primaries. He was successful in every case, including his own primary. This is what he said:

We were not going to allow [what happened in 2010 and 2012]

to happen anymore. And so we got the most electable people

nominated who basically took them on, because if you're

dealing with a group of people who think compromise is a

dirty word and who always want to make a point but never want

to make a difference, the only thing to do if you want to win

the election is to beat them.

Mostly, Mitch McConnell's political skills were born of necessity. In July 1984, he was 34 points behind in his challenge to incumbent Democrat Senator Dee Huddleston. McConnell discovered that his opponent had been making speeches for money--now, that was legal then--but Dee Huddleston had been missing Senate votes to make those speeches. So McConnell ran an ad featuring a Kentucky hunter with bloodhounds looking for Senator Huddleston to get him back to work. In another ad, the dog treed the Senator right at the end of what became known as ``the bloodhound campaign.'' McConnell defeated Huddleston by fourth- tenths of 1 percent of the vote.

I have searched in vain for early clues to one more aspect of Mitch McConnell's leadership style: his parsimonious use of words. Sometimes he reverts to absolute silence. In his autobiography, he admits he only speaks to the press when it is to his advantage. He also tells of when Microsoft founder Bill Gates visited him and the two of them just sat there waiting for one to speak, making others in the room uncomfortable. At another time, someone once told President George W. Bush that Mitch McConnell was excited over a certain vote, and President Bush replied: ``Really, how can you tell?''

Why so few words? McConnell's answer is, ``I learn a lot more by listening. And so frequently I start out by listening and think about what I want to say before I say it. You don't get in trouble for what you don't say. There's nothing wrong with being cautious about your comments. I certainly don't mind talking but I usually like to know what I'm talking about before I venture down that path.''

He is not the first Senate leader to be frugal with words. According to columnist Bob Novak, former majority leader Mike Mansfield was the most difficult interview on ``Meet the Press'' because ``I would ask Mansfield a question and he says `Yep,' and then I would ask him another one and he'd say, `Nope' and I'd run out of questions.'' Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in his constitutional capacity as President of the Senate, would attend weekly luncheons of Republican Senators, rarely saying a word. This made certain that, when Cheney did rise to speak, Senators listened. And silence, after all, was one of Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues and a tactic Franklin often employed in his leadership style.

In July 2014, when he was minority leader, Senator McConnell spoke on the Senate floor about what kind of majority leader he would be if Republicans won the majority in the November elections. His model, he said, would be Mike Mansfield, the Democrat who was majority leader 45 years earlier when McConnell and I were Senate aides. ``What I meant by that,'' he said, ``was . . . first of all, you have to open the Senate up. The last year of the previous [Democrat] majority (2014) there were only 15 roll call votes on amendments the entire year. In the first year of our majority, in 2015, we had over 200. Open the Senate up, let people vote. Number two, we needed regular order, which means the bill is actually worked on together in committee, comes out to the floor, with bipartisan support, and has a better chance of success. The best example I can think of

was the bill to rewrite `No Child Left Behind.' The law had proved to be unworkable and unpopular. And by the time it came out of committee, you had the Democrats and the Republicans lined up, it went to the floor, it was relatively open for amendments, not that absolutely everybody got everything they wanted, and in the end, it passed with a very large majority. President Obama called it a `Christmas Miracle' and the Wall Street Journal said it was `the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.'''

McConnell is quick to list a series of bipartisan accomplishments during his time as majority leader which he regards as ``concrete legislative results for the American people.'' In addition to the first significant education reform since 2002, these accomplishments include the first significant reforms to Social Security since 1983, the first trade promotion authority bill since 2002, the first long-term highway bill since 2005, and the first major legislation to confront the Nation's opioid crisis. And don't forget, he says, measures to protect victims of human trafficking, to address Puerto Rico's fiscal crisis, to sanction North Korea, to strengthen the Nation's cybersecurity defenses, to reform Medicaid and to provide permanent tax relief for families and small businesses. These are serious accomplishments for a legislative body many had written off as irredeemably broken.

``Now, what do all these things that we have done time after time under our majority have in common?'' he asks. ``In a time of divided government, we're focusing on the things that we can agree on, and do those. Because when people elect divided government, I think what they're saying is, I know you have big differences, but why don't you look for the things you agree on and do those. And that's how this majority is totally different from the previous one.''

To gather other clues for what kind of majority leader McConnell would be, one only had to look to previous Congresses when he was minority leader and was at the center of four major, bipartisan legislative efforts that helped to keep the American economy from being seriously damaged. At the end of 2010, the country was facing a tax ``cliff.'' Republicans controlled neither the White House nor Congress. With an economy still reeling from the Great Recession, the expiration of tax relief threatened to further imperil the economy; yet Senator McConnell led a bipartisan effort to ensure that taxes were not raised on any Americans.

The next year, the United States was on the verge of defaulting on its debt payments for the first time in history. With the clock ticking on the full faith and credit of the United States and calamitous economic consequences staring policymakers in the face, Senator McConnell negotiated an eleventh hour deal with Vice President Joe Biden. This measure avoided the devastating economic consequences of default and resulted in the most significant spending reductions in recent memory.

In late 2012, the United States risked prolonging the Great Recession and increasing unemployment due to a series of expiring tax policies and indiscriminate spending cuts scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2013. Once again, Senator McConnell crafted a bipartisan compromise with Vice President Biden to avert this fiscal crisis by preventing a tax increase on a majority of Americans and making the spending cuts in a more prudent manner.

Finally, in 2013, a standoff involving Federal spending and the debt limit led to the second longest Federal shutdown since 1980, threatening thousands of public and private sector jobs, and putting the economic health of the country in jeopardy. Despite these challenges, Senator McConnell orchestrated an agreement with then- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reopened the government and raised the debt ceiling, allowing the United States to continue making payments on its debt.

The humorist Roy Blount, Jr., who grew up in Georgia has written, ``You start getting in trouble when you stop sounding like where you grew up.'' The political corollary is you start getting in trouble when you stop coming home. This is advice McConnell has not forgotten. He and his wife, Elaine, go home to Kentucky almost every weekend. He has kept his eye on Kentucky matters, both large and small, including disposal of chemical weapons that have long been stored in the middle of Kentucky, enacting a tobacco buyout to help local farmers, support for the State's public universities, and his advocacy for workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Kentucky anglers and tourists appreciate his helping to enact a law to require the Army Corps of Engineers to allow fishing below the dams on the Cumberland River. Twenty years ago, he created the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, attracting a bipartisan parade of national leaders to visit with 10 scholars chosen each year from each undergraduate class.

Each year, Mitch McConnell buys 12 season tickets to the University of Louisville football games. He said:

I have some regulars. We go to every home game and

occasionally an away game. We make a day of it. We go out

early. One of my friends has an RV in the parking lot and we

will talk about what will happen in the game and then go to

the game and then we talk about what did happen after the

game and it's a complete, lengthy exercise. And one of the

great joys of life.

Mitch McConnell's University of Louisville honors thesis on Henry Clay tempted him to pursue a Ph.D. in American history and a career as a professor, but those of us who know him doubt that he would have been satisfied interpreting the action rather than being in the middle of the action, but his devotion to American history and his understanding of the importance of the U.S. Senate as a unique institution in American life have contributed a valuable extra dimension to his Senate leadership.

In a 2016 C-SPAN interview, he was asked: ``What would you like for high school American history teachers to tell their students about the United States Senate?''

He replied:

That the Senate has been the indispensable legislative

body. Because that's the place where things are sorted out,

the place where only rarely does the majority get things

exactly their own way, the place where stability can occur.

And at a time when many Americans are not optimistic about our country's future, he was asked: ``What would you want those teachers to tell students about their future in this country?''

Mitch McConnell replied:

Because of our woeful ignorance of American history we

always think the current period we're in is tougher than

others. We've had nothing like the Civil War period. We

haven't had a single incident where a Congressman from South

Carolina came over and almost beat to death a Senator from

Massachusetts. America's had plenty of tough challenges.

World Wars. Depressions. This is a great country. We're going

to deal with whatever our current problems are, and move on

to another level. And I'm just as optimistic as I ever was

that this generation is going to leave behind a better

America than our parents left behind for us.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, sometimes when I am traveling across Tennessee, someone will come up to me and say: Why don't you guys in the U.S. Senate ever do anything? So I have taken to carrying around a little card that I keep in my pocket. I hand it to them and I say: Well, I can read this to you in about 30 seconds, and this is what has happened in the last 18 months: the best economy in 18 years; lower taxes; biggest reforms in 31 years; biggest increase in financial support for the military in 15 years; biggest pay raise in 8 years for the military; more repeal of regulations than anyone can remember; a Supreme Court Justice; 21 conservative appeals court judges; Alaska energy, which took 38 years, and the Presiding Officer knows all about that; a new National Labor Relations Board, which could be the most important change of all; repealed the ObamaCare individual mandate; the Dodd-Frank mortgage rules are gone; Veterans Choice, which the President signed yesterday; Iran, Russia, and North Korea sanctions.

All of that would not have happened without a Republican President, and it would not have happened without Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress. It took both.

The person who asks me ``When are you guys ever going to do anything?'' will often say ``Well, I didn't know that; I hadn't realized that.''

So I am very proud of that record; that is in 18 months. I think if you like a conservative government, a center-right government, you would have to agree that those are the most accomplishments in at least 30 years in this country. The President should be justly proud of that, and so should the Congress.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today the Senate is finally voting to confirm a well-qualified nominee, BG Mitchell Zais, to serve as Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education. I worked to get a time agreement for this vote because General Zais did not deserve to be subject to the Democrats' unreasonable and unnecessary obstructions and delays. For example, General Zais was nominated on October 5, 2017, 223 days ago, and the HELP Committee approved his nomination for the first time on December 13, 2017, 154 days ago. Because the Democrats forced his nomination to be returned to the President at the end of the session in December, the HELP Committee had to approve his nomination again on January 18, 2018, after he was renominated.

It is time to confirm General Zais and give Secretary DeVos a Deputy Secretary. He has extensive experience working in education and in government. From January 2011 to January 2015, General Zais served as South Carolina's elected State Superintendent of Education. Before that, he was president of Newberry College in South Carolina for 10 years. He also served as a commissioner on South Carolina's Commission on Higher Education for 6 years. Further, after 31 years in the U.S. Army, he retired as a brigadier general. He graduated from West Point, has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, as well as an honorary doctorate of education from the Citadel.

As Deputy Secretary, his job will be to help the Secretary manage the Department of Education, which includes implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. I am glad we are having this vote today. I support his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to support him as well.

Mr. President, I ask that my remarks to the International Franchise Association be printed in the Record.

The material follows:

International Franchise Association

Mr. ALEXANDER. What I have discovered is that those who

like a center-right administration, which I do, have a hard

time accepting success. I could probably do the

accomplishments and achievements over the last 15 or 16

months in a 60 second version, which would be a better

economy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative

judges, repeal of the part of Dodd Frank that hamstrung small

financial institutions in mortgage lending, Alaskan energy, a

new NLRB, the local control of schools--that actually

happened before President Trump came in because of a

Republican majority in the Senate--and the repeal of the

individual mandate. That's a pretty good list. In fact, if

you only did economy, taxes, regulations and judges, at the

end of four years, most administrations would be pretty happy

with the

different direction. So if you cut through all the tweets and

the chaos and confusion and the noise and the cable

television in Washington, D.C. and look at the direction of

the country, I think it's significantly different.

I'll give a couple of examples of that: rolling back

regulations--only once before this administration and this

Republican majority in Congress, we've used a provision in

the law that allows us to overturn a regulation with 51

votes. We've done it 15 times in the last 15 months,

including the blacklisting rule, including the OSHA record

keeping rule. Most of you know about all these things in

detail so I won't go into detail, but those are important.

They're unusual and they're a completely different direction.

We passed the first major tax reform for 31 years. In

Tennessee, I hear a lot about that, not just from individuals

whose taxes are lower but I hear it from corporations who are

now paying 21 percent on their income tax. But I'm hearing

especially about being able to deduct capital investments in

the first year, and I think we can see the results in the

economy.

We have been able to confirm experienced and qualified

nominees in a whole range of areas and I would suggest that

in no area has the shift in policy been more marked than in

the Labor area. For example, there's a new labor secretary,

Acosta. A new deputy labor secretary, Pizzella. There's a new

NLRB chairman Ring, NLRB member Kaplan, NLRB member Emanuel,

NLRB general counsel. Those are big changes in the policy

direction of this country. Then we've been examining, or

these new appointees have been examining policies that are

harmful that you work on a regular basis. Let's start with

joint employer guidance. At least Secretary Acosta was able

to pull back that guidance as it bled over from the NLRB to

the department.

The problem with the joint-employer decision for me is that

we live in a time when it's harder to find a good middle

class job close to home. People are always flying here,

flying there in what I would call the Internet economy. The

hundreds of thousands of franchisees we have in America are

an opportunity for mom or mom and dad or a family to work 12

hours a day, work several days a week, build their own

business in their own home, contribute to their own community

and be a part of the American middle class. And the joint

employer decision during the last administration was a direct

assault on that route for the middle class. And I'm glad to

see this administration heading in a different direction on

that as well as the Micro Union decision, as well as

beginning to review the Ambush Election Rule.

These are all major, major decisions. Where are we likely

to go on joint employer? Well, the House has done its job,

but in the Senate to get legislative results, you need 60

votes, and that's going to be hard to do--impossible to do--

without Democratic support. We don't have any Democratic

support in the Senate right now. Your association has been

working hard to try and develop that. I hear Democrats

privately talking about it, but when it comes to co-sponsor a

bill or vote for a bill, they don't want to do that. So I

think I would suggest to keep pushing, but a more likely

solution is when the NLRB revisits the rule, because that's

after all how it was changed in the first place, and by a new

administration with new appointees from a center-right

administration and a center-right Senate that keeps things

headed in that direction.

Last thing I want to mention to you has to do with what I

believe is a prominent Labor Department proposed rule

involving health insurance called association health plans. I

worked for the last seven months to try to at least

temporarily fix the individual market. President Trump asked

me to do it. He did a very good job of working with us. In

the end, we had a proposal which he called Senator McConnell

and Speaker Ryan and asked him to put it in the omnibus

spending bill a month ago. They agreed to do it but the

Democrats blocked it because Democrats didn't want to vote

for the so called Hyde compromise language that they'd been

voting for on elective abortion since 1976 and that they

voted for in a hundred other provisions in the same bill. The

shame of that is that we have millions of Americans who don't

get any government subsidy. A contractor, for example, may be

earning $60,000 and paying 15 or $20,000 for their insurance.

We had a proposal and Oliver Wyman--the experts in health

consulting--said over these next three years would reduce

those premiums up to 40 percent. If you're paying $20,000 for

your health insurance and you get an $8,000 reduction, those

are real bucks. So we have to turn to the administration to

get changes in the Affordable Care Act. One of the most

promising potential administrative changes is Secretary

Acosta's proposed rule, and I hope you've followed it. It

basically would allow uninsured people who are self-employed

and more small business people to enjoy some of the same

health insurance benefits that people who work for large

companies do. Most Americans get a subsidy of some sort from

the government for their health insurance. More than half of

Americans get their insurance on the job, they get in effect

about a $5,000 subsidy because of the way the tax code

interacts with the employer deductions and the income that

goes to the employee on large group insurance. So, if you're

a small business person, you get the same kind of insurance

that somebody who works for IBM might have.

It would be cheaper. I just mentioned the amount of the

deduction, and it wouldn't have the same protections that the

large group plans have where you couldn't be charged because

of a pre-existing condition, you couldn't be denied insurance

or be denied coverage. You'd have to have coverage offered

for your kids up to the age 26. You couldn't have lifetime

limits and you would have of course, the lower costs. That

could affect 9,000,000 Americans like the contractor I

described who are getting hammered by Obamacare because they

get no subsidies when they buy their insurance, and could

affect the 11,000,000 other people who are self-employed or

work for small businesses that don't provide health

insurance. So that rule is not yet final. It's been published

by the Department of Labor for everybody to consider.

I expect it to soon become final. And I expect that when it

is, it's likely to be the single greatest development in the

near term for individuals who are either uninsured or who

worked for small businesses and who can't afford the

insurance that is offered. So thanks for all that you do.

We'll keep our eye on joint employer. At the very least, our

committee can continue to focus on it. My hope is that the

NLRB revisits the issue soon.

And I hope you remember when you think about this

administration and you look through the chaos and the tweets

and all that goes on here, that if you stripped that all

away, there's a picture of a country heading in a

significantly different direction with a better economy,

lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative judges, a

repeal of a significant part of Dodd Frank, an energy bill in

Alaska that we've been trying for 40 years to do, a different

NLRB, more local control of schools and a repeal the

individual mandate.

In a big democratic, messy government, that's a significant

shift of direction. I hope we can add joint employer to it

before very long.

Mr. President, for the sixth consecutive year, ObamaCare insurance rates are going up, and Democrats are already running around pointing fingers, trying to find someone else to blame.

About 10 days ago, the distinguished Democratic leader came to the floor and warned that, very soon, health insurance companies will be announcing rates for 2019 in each State across the country. He said that many health insurance companies will propose rate increases.

Today, several Democratic Senators held a press conference saying that insurance rates are going to go up in 2019. Well, they are exactly right. Insurance premiums are going to go up in 2019, just as they have for the 5 previous years of ObamaCare. But they are exactly wrong about who to blame.

The Democrats wrote the bill. They wrote ObamaCare, and they voted for ObamaCare--every single one of them. Not a single one of us voted for ObamaCare. They wrote the bill. If they are looking for someone to blame, they should look in the mirror.

Running around, pointing fingers, and trying to find someone else to blame is a little like selling somebody a house with a leaky roof and then blaming the new owner for the leaky roof. Democrats built the house with the leaky roof. They built these insurance markets--the individual markets, where no one can find insurance. They wrote the sloppy law. They failed to make the markets competitive, and they erased the ability of consumers to have choices. They didn't follow the law when they paid out cost-sharing payments that were designed to help low-income Americans pay for their out-of-pocket expenses, and--this is the very worst--when Republicans were prepared 1 month ago to stabilize these markets and, according to the Oliver Wyman healthcare experts, to lower rates by up to 40 percent over 3 years, the Democrats said no.

President Trump asked Speaker Ryan and he asked Senator McConnell to put that bipartisan proposal in the omnibus spending bill that passed. The Republicans said yes, and the Democrats said no. So the rates are going up because Democrats wrote the law, and they said no to lowering the rates.

What Democrats don't say--but every American should know very well-- is that health insurance rates didn't start increasing when President Trump took office 15 or 16 months ago. Insurance rates have been increasing since ObamaCare took effect more than 5 years ago.

In 2010, there was a big discussion at the Blair House. I was invited to make the Republican case for President Obama, who stayed there all day and listened.

I said: Respectfully, Mr. President, the Affordable Care Act will not work. I said directly to him that ObamaCare would send an unfunded Medicaid mandate to States. It did.

I said: It will cut Medicare by one-half trillion dollars. It did.

I said: There will be new taxes in it. There were.

I said: It will mean that for millions of Americans, premiums will go up because when people pay those new taxes, premiums go up, and they will also go up because of the government mandates--and they have, for 5 years. Now the Democrats are pointing out that their law, which they passed, will cause rates to go up for the sixth consecutive year.

Back in 2010, I said: Our country is too big, too complicated, too decentralized for Washington, DC--just a few of us here--to write a few rules about remaking 17 percent of the economy all at once. That is the size of the healthcare economy. That sort of thinking works in the classroom, but it doesn't work very well in the big, complicated country which is the United States of America. Since the

ObamaCare exchanges opened in 2014, history has proved this--what I said--to be right.

The Affordable Care Act has not worked the way Democrats promised. It certainly hasn't worked that way for Marty, a farmer in Tennessee who stopped me at a Chick-fil-A last December. She wanted to tell me that before ObamaCare her rates were $300 a month. She is in the individual market. She doesn't get a subsidy. She pays these rates herself. This year, it is $1,300. Next year, it will be more.

Rates in Tennessee for people like Marty went up 58 percent this past year. That is a lot of money. People can't afford it. She is one of thousands of others in Tennessee who have seen their premiums increase 176 percent since 2013, the year before the ObamaCare marketplaces opened.

The Affordable Care Act hasn't worked for the 9 million Americans, like Marty, who purchased their health insurance in the individual market and received no government subsidy. They have been hammered by skyrocketing insurance premiums, and Democrats come to the floor and say: Well, they are going up for the sixth straight year.

If I were them, I would want to keep it quiet. But, no, they are looking for somebody to blame. They don't want to look in the mirror. They wrote the bill. They are the reason the rates are going up. They have rejected any reasonable attempt to change the law. They will not even support changes that they are for--that they know aren't working.

The Affordable Care Act does not work because it is too Washington, DC, focused. It has made insurance too expensive, and it is hurting the American people. So last year, Republicans tried to repeal the law to help make health insurance work again for people like Marty, the farmer I met at Chick-fil-A. We came up short.

While I hope that Senators Graham and Cassidy can build a coalition to try again, there is still the urgent problem of skyrocketing ObamaCare premiums. It did not have to be this way. The Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray--the lead Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee--and I last year announced that we would hold hearings to see if there were steps Congress could take to stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance markets so that Americans could buy insurance at affordable prices in 2019.

President Trump called me in August of last year, and he asked me to work with Senator Murray to try to come up with a temporary solution so people who were hurt by the skyrocketing ObamaCare prices would not be hurt while Congress concluded what to do in the long term. In September, our committee hosted four bipartisan hearings. We invited all of the Senators to come to meetings before the hearings. We had about half of the Members of the Senate involved in those meetings and hearings. Out of those meetings and hearings, we came up with three proposals that Congress could pass that would temporarily lower rates over the next 3 years, according to Oliver Wyman, one of the most well- respected healthcare experts in the country, by up to 40 percent over those 3 years.

No. 1, our proposal had 3 years of reinsurance grants at $10 billion a year so States could create funds to insure the needs of the very sick. You take the very sick out of the pool, care for them, and then you can lower the rates for everyone in the individual market. That is 3 years and $10 billion a year. That was the first proposal.

No. 2 is 3 years of cost-sharing reduction subsidies to help low- income Americans pay out-of-pocket expenses. It is counterintuitive, but when you pay those expenses, you actually lower the deficit. You lower the cost to taxpayers because it lowers the premiums, and that lowers the subsidies. You actually save taxpayer money when you pay those 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies.

No. 3, we took a provision that is in the Affordable Care Act called the innovation waiver--it was already there, and it wasn't working--and we agreed to streamline it so that it would work and the State might make an application and say we have a better idea.

We said: You can't change the essential health benefits and you can't change the prohibition on lifetime limits. You still have to give people an offer of insurance if they have a preexisting condition. All of those provisions and protections were still in our bill, but that new flexibility would have allowed Iowa and other States to increase their choices and lower premiums. It would have allowed New York, Minnesota, and New Hampshire to do things their Democratic Senators said they badly wanted to do and their Governors said they badly wanted to do.

There was new authority for a catastrophic insurance policy with lower premiums and higher deductibles that people could choose. That was in there too. This is the package that the Oliver Wyman expert said if you are a contractor and you are making $60,000 and your insurance is $20,000, it could reduce your premium from $20,000 to $12,000 over 3 years. That was the package.

Almost all Democrats liked those three ideas. The truth is, a lot of Republicans and conservative groups were skeptical about them because they said it would ``shore up ObamaCare.'' But the Congressional Budget Office said that if the scoring reflects the cost-sharing payments being paid, our proposal would actually save taxpayer dollars by lowering premiums and, therefore, lowering subsidies.

So this would sound like a very good proposal; wouldn't it? It is something that at one point Democratic leaders said every Democrat could vote for, something that more than half of the Senate participated in--reinsurance, cost-sharing subsidies, and more flexibility without changing the basic guarantees of the Affordable Care Act. That sounds very much like a proposal that might come from the other side of the aisle, not the Republican side of the aisle. Yet, on the Saturday before we passed the omnibus spending bill, President Trump called Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell and said: Will you please put that provision in the omnibus spending bill?

They said yes. The Democrats said no.

The Democrats have written this ObamaCare bill, which for 6 years has raised rates. Then, we come up with a proposal that every Democrat should like, and they say no. They will not even support changing one sentence of a law, even if it changes parts that don't work and that they are for.

What was their reason? Here is their reason. They would not apply to our proposal the traditional Hyde compromise language regarding Federal funding for elective abortions. What that basically says is that there may be no Federal funding for elective abortions, but States may do what they want. That has been the compromise since 1976. Since 1976, in every omnibus appropriations bill, Democrats have voted for that. In fact, all those weren't omnibus bills. Some of them were different appropriations bills. Since 1976, in every appropriations bill, Democrats have voted for the Hyde amendment. In the omnibus appropriations bill that we passed a month ago, Democrats voted for the Hyde amendment more than 100 times in other proposals, but they would not vote to lower health insurance rates by 40 percent over 3 years.

I will say that again. Even though they voted for the Hyde language every year since 1976 and voted for it 100 times in the omnibus bill, they would not vote for it. They would not vote for our proposal to lower rates even though it was bipartisan because they didn't want to apply that same compromise Hyde amendment to health insurance.

Howard Baker, the Senate majority leader, once said that the essence of Senate leadership is becoming an eloquent listener. That means hearing and understanding what people have to say because what they are saying is not always what they mean.

My conclusion is that, by their words and by their actions, what Democrats really were saying is this: We will not change one sentence of ObamaCare, even the parts that obviously are not working and even when most of the Democrats would support the policy and the changes.

Given the Democrats' attitude, I know of nothing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on to stabilize the individual health insurance market. I know of nothing.

No one regrets Congress's failure to reach an agreement on this more than

I do. I ran for the U.S. Senate because I wanted to achieve bipartisan results on important issues. I have often been able to do that, but I literally struck out here.

When Democrats blocked these proposals from being included in the omnibus in March, I said: ``Now let's look down the road . . . insurance companies will announce their rates for 2019 . . . and rates will continue going up instead of going down.''

They are right about that. Already in the last few days, it has been announced that rates will go up in 2019. Millions of Americans will be hearing more about that. The Democrats could have worked with us to lower premiums by up to 40 percent. They instead chose to cling to an unworkable law, to skyrocketing rates, and to reject any change that would have temporarily reduced rates, even though the President and the Republican leaders were willing to support ideas that the Democrats, as a matter of policy, almost unanimously support.

For relief, we will have to turn to the Trump administration and to the States. I am encouraged by Labor Secretary Acosta's proposed rule on association health plans. It would help some self-employed Americans, like Marty, the farmer, and employees of small companies to buy the same kind of insurance with the same lower cost and the same protections that roughly 160 million Americans who work for large employers have today. In other words, if you work for IBM, you in effect get about a $5,000 average tax break because of the way the tax law applies to employer insurance. We would like to give the same opportunity to the self-employed and to people in small businesses.

The Trump administration has also proposed a rule that would reaffirm the role of States in regulating short-term health insurance and that could provide a coverage option for Americans who are uninsured because plans in the Affordable Care Act markets are too expensive. Neither of these changes require the approval of Congress.

I am talking with Secretary Azar and Seema Verma, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, about other administrative actions they can take to give States more flexibility within the current law to help lower health insurance premiums, especially for the 9 million working Americans who do not receive a Federal subsidy in the individual market.

Those are the ones who are getting hammered. Those are the one whose rates we could have reduced by up to 40 percent over the next 3 years, but the Democrats said no.

I will be encouraging Governors and State insurance commissioners to do everything they can to repair the damage caused by the Affordable Care Act, but my own efforts as chairman of the HELP Committee will turn to other pressing healthcare issues, including the opioid crisis, overall healthcare costs, electronic healthcare records, prescription drug prices, and the 340B program.

Contrary to the Democratic leader's speech, this is not a crisis of Republicans' making. Democrats should look in the mirror. The last 5 years and the upcoming 6 years of premium increases are the fault of a law designed, drafted, and voted on exclusively by Democrats.

Last year, Republicans freed Americans from the individual mandate requirement, which was a tax on the poor that forced many Americans to buy insurance they couldn't afford or didn't meet their needs. We tried to provide even more freedom from this unworkable law, but, as I have detailed, Democrats said no.

If you have an insurance premium that is going up 40 percent next year, on top of the more than 105 percent increases since 2013, you can thank the Democrats. If you would like greater choice and an opportunity for lower premiums, you should support Republicans.

I yield the floor.