Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the voters told them: The party's over. Go home.

But before going home, they want to go big with another big, irresponsible national debt-busting bill. Republicans are struggling to stuff just a little more silver in their donors' pockets as they get pushed out the Capitol door.

Republicans are ending this session the very same way they began it in January of last year, with arrogance, with duplicity, with total indifference to the needs of working families across our country.

And this bill comes from the ``Great Cover Up Committee,'' the committee that covers up as much of its tax work as possible from the public; the committee that secretly changes the tax law to directly benefit the Trump family; and the committee that refuses to even review, under existing law, the Trump tax returns; the committee that believes in overlook, not oversight of the corruption that pervades this Trump administration.

Since Trump took office, the Republicans have feverishly pursued two goals: Take away healthcare from the many, and award the few with more tax benefits.

Last Friday, a Republican judge in Texas ruled that they can take away the coverage. He declared the entire act of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

And so what is the response today from the actions of our indicted Texas

Attorney General colluding with the Trump administration that refused to defend the act? Are they here to protect Americans on preexisting conditions? No. They are here to reward those in the healthcare industry with more billions of dollars of tax breaks.

Today's Republican parting shot adds almost $100 billion to our national debt, saddling existing and future Americans with that debt.

We need, in a new Congress, genuine tax reform. Today's bill does not provide it.

Mr. Speaker, what cruel irony that this rule, dealing, in part, with too much food in America, will deny food to millions in Yemen.

In that remote corner of the world, of which most Americans know very little, 85,000 children have already died, and another 12 million people are on starvation's brink. This very day, more children will die of starvation and disease.

In an eloquent plea this week, Nick Kristof reports on one of them, an 8-year-old boy who is starving, and his limbs are like sticks. ``He gazes stolidly ahead, tuning out everything,'' as his ``body focuses every calorie simply on keeping [his] organs functioning,'' weighing just over 30 pounds.

United Nations officials have warned that ``this could become the worst famine'' in the world in a generation. Mr. Kristof rightly concludes very succinctly. ``The bottom line: Our tax dollars are going to starve children.''

Suffering is rising; American bombs are still falling. When the Saudi coalition attacked a schoolbus, killing 40 little children, scrawled on the remains of the bomb were words that meant ``made in America.''

With today's rule, Trump's enablers here in this House, they tell him to keep it up, keep supporting the murderous Saudi regime for whom they can see no evil and hear no evil, even if there is a recording of the Saudi murder and dismemberment of an American resident available to listen to.

This rule today prohibits a fair debate and a vote on this floor because the Republican leaders know that so many members of their own party, along with Democrats, can no longer stomach these atrocities.

Mr. Speaker, atrocities that are supported with American tax dollars. They fear that a bipartisan majority of this House would reject what has become a wretched stain on our Nation.

Last month, this same group of Trump enablers buried consideration of our resolution to end this atrocity in a bill about gray wolves, and, today, they bury Yemenis again with a bill about American agricultural abundance.

As Americans celebrate this special, joyous season of Christmas, the Trump administration, if we do not act today, will continue to write the epitaph on the mass graves in Yemen.

Let's reject this rule today and put a stop to this egregious wrongdoing.

Mr. Speaker, as we approve this Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, it is also very important that we provide reassurance to Americans that our values are not being abandoned. With one deranged tweet after another, many people, both here and in Asia, view the United States as having lost its way.

As approved by the Senate, this particular resolution responds very appropriately to the vacillation and confusion of the Trump administration's foreign policy, including its trade agenda.

In today's important House amendment to section 302 of the bill, we commit not only to support continued engagement and friendship in the Asia-Pacific region, but to advance, through our trade negotiations, the values for which America has long been recognized as a beacon of hope to the world. That is a beacon that should leave no corner of this globe, including Asia, in the dark, and it must include human rights as a universal concept for all the people of the world.

Our economic relations must be rooted in our shared values, our respect for human rights, and our adherence to the rule of law. It takes more than simply an opportunity to have more exports to justify a new agreement with a trading partner.

A previous administration looked the other way on Malaysian human trafficking in pursuit of more commerce, and it found itself in this House short of votes. We must not make that mistake again.

With this new, improved section 302, Congress rejects support for just any trade agreement and indicates its support for those agreements with partners that actually respect, promote, and adhere to the rule of law.

By its very terms, when section 302, as amended, is tied with title IV as it came over from the Senate, we would not, for example, be justified in new trade agreements with Myanmar, formerly Burma, after its murderous ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya population. Nor does it offer any support to the Trump administration's July 26 declaration of intent to reward the tyrant of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.

Every Democratic member of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, on which I serve, has advised this administration that ``we strongly oppose President Duterte's Philippines as a trade agreement partner.''

All of us noted that ``Duterte's fiery rhetoric has been linked to a surge of extrajudicial killings of citizens by police and gunmen.''

Duterte's shocking human rights abuses is not all. Child labor is persistent and serious. Safety is not prioritized, as indicated by the 72 workers who were killed in a garment factory fire.

These anti-worker policies mean that the Philippines is a low-wage country

that markets itself to American companies looking to further outsource American jobs. Yet Duterte's rule has been marked by abusive, arbitrary actions against international investors who have turned to the Philippines.

We all said on the Trade Subcommittee that ``we strongly oppose Duterte as a trade partner,'' and I hope the Administration is listening.

Though Trump's hug-a-thug approach around the world has repeatedly preferred foreign tyrants over dependable, long-term American allies, I believe that human rights is not a luxury. It is central to American values. It is central to the security of every American family.

Amending this bill today helps us to achieve that objective and to send a strong message to the administration about the trade policies that we will consider in the coming year.

Mr. Speaker, in this rule, the wolves bare their fangs-- not American wolves, but Saudis, who are willing to sever heads, dismember opponents, and bomb the innocent.

This rule is truly a wolf in wolf's clothing. By blocking a vote on whether America should continue to aid and abet Saudi atrocities, this Congress would remain an obedient lapdog to President Trump's impulses, and not the watchdog for American values.

The Saudi ruthless war in Yemen has created what so many have described as the largest humanitarian disaster on our planet today, and yet it continues. American support for Saudi atrocities is truly a stain on our Nation with which so many of our country members are not familiar.

But without American spare parts, American targeting, American weapons and bombs, and until recently, American refueling, this killing could not occur. My colleague mentioned the school bus. Forty children were murdered in August, and sprawled across the bomb that was next to their bus were words that meant: ``Made in America.'' That is the message that we are sending there. That is where American tax dollars are going.

The Trump administration last week belatedly said it would stop refueling. That is insufficient. If we are to stop Saudi killing, we must stop all of the assistance that they are receiving.

Now, of course, there has been attention on Saudi murders of late in a different area: about one person, about the dismemberment of a legal American resident who was a leading journalist in this city.

Mr. Speaker, after taking the standing Trump approach of denying everything--saying he accepted the lies and the denials of the Saudis--Mr. Trump dodged again by saying, ``I am going to leave . . . it up to Congress.'' And so what is this Congress doing about the Khashoggi atrocity? Absolutely nothing. That is what should have been in this rule, doing something about the sanctions and the disclosure.

Forty of us asked this past month for the administration to brief us on what they knew before Mr. Khashoggi was murdered, and whether they warned him about that, and we have had a deafening silence in response to our request on that, and on cutting off assistance to Yemen.

Even an audio of the gruesome murder of Mr. Khashoggi--we don't know whether it included the sound of the bone saw that the Saudis apparently used to dismember him--but even a murder will not cause some in this leadership to stand up to President Trump and this atrocious regime.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to a Congress with the courage to end support for these crimes, to cease American sales to the Saudis, and to do something to hold Mr. Khashoggi's killers accountable.

But to say, wait until a much-improved new Congress comes into session to do anything about it means that tonight and every day going forward to January 3, more children will be starved; will be victims of cholera; and will be victims of bombings and blockades. When this Congress has the power to do something about it now, we ought to act today by rejecting this rule.

Mr. Speaker, today's sorry's sequel is as phony as the original Republican tax sham. It comes from an administration for whom truth is a stranger, clocked in, by one analysis, at 7\1/2\ lies, on the average, per day. But even for such an administration, this bill is based on a true whopper.

Here we have it from the Executive Office of the President telling us as his official administration policy that for every American family, the average household income will be increased by at least $4,000, annually. Yet today, fewer than 5 percent of American families have gotten a dime increase in their income as a result of this bill. Truly, a giant whopper.

But like the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, that drug companies would bring down their prices, all we have is more misrepresentation today.

Corporate giants who got giant tax breaks gave them back to some of their shareholders and their CEOs, but they didn't increase wages for workers or give more than a handful any compensation as a result of this.

Now, here on election eve, we have a proposal where they are telling the American taxpayers: We promise relief in seven years, which is what this bill does. Families can't put off rising healthcare costs or their other needs for seven years.

But there is one American family who does really well out of this bill. It is the family of Donald J. Trump. They got a special provision written into the bill that this proposal freezes into permanent law that gives them a tax windfall, most likely of millions of dollars.

That is what this bill was all about: helping Donald Trump, his cronies, and allies, not helping the American people.

The first tax bill was a hit-and-run job. With this second bill, Republicans back up and run over working families again. Democrats need to take the wheel and help Americans get some money in their own wallet.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, America does, in fact, face a retirement crisis. Nearly half of Americans approaching retirement years have absolutely no retirement savings. There is not much gold in their golden years.

Four out of 10 Americans in a recent survey indicated that they are living paycheck to paycheck. They are barely making ends meet. They had little or nothing available in reserve.

When they were asked if they could meet a sudden, unexpected $400 medical emergency, 4 out of 10 Americans said they could not even do that.

Those are the individuals who certainly do not have the resources to save enough to set up a standard of living in retirement comparable to what they had before retiring.

So, as usual, our Republican colleagues are masters at naming bills. It is just what they put in the bills that is a problem.

Now, this bill is a good example. This is the Family Savings Act, but whose family gets the savings? Well, if you are out there listening, probably not your family. For families that have little or nothing in savings, this bill does nothing.

Much like the bloated Republican tax scam and its sorry sequel that AARP condemned this very day, this Republican bill is all about helping those at the top and doing little or nothing for those who are struggling to have a golden year in retirement.

There are, in fact, some modest measures that they have got tucked in this bill that I support and that AARP supports. And I agree with AARP that we should encourage more small employers to offer retirement plans. I am all for the little good parts in the bill. It is just the giant omissions that I oppose.

The first of those omissions is the almost half of Americans that they forgot about, that they left out of this bill.

As usual, the second big problem is they haven't got the slightest care about how this bill is paid for. They are going to go out and borrow more money from the Saudis and the Chinese and anybody else we can beg for to pay for the debt in order to pay for this. They don't pay for a penny of it. That is consistent with their approach, the proud success of this past year, adding trillions of dollars to the public debt because they don't care about it anymore. All their budget deficit hawks, they flew south for the winter, and they stayed there.

The people who can't save at the moment for retirement, they are the folks who rely on one of the most important programs and set of programs that this Congress ever approved, and that is, of course, Social Security and Medicare--over Republican objection.

Now everybody seems to be for those programs, but they are jeopardized when you add trillions of additional dollars to our debt, and that is what this bill contributes to. It adds $21 billion in debt. Nearly half of its cost is for what they call ``universal savings accounts.'' They should be better known as universal tax shelters. And they will do little to increase retirement savings. Rather, they will be universally exploited by people who are already saving to get a little bit more tax benefit.

Over the next five years, existing tax incentives--before this bill is ever approved, those that are already in the law--for retirement savings will cost us over $1 trillion. One study found that two-thirds of the benefits of this $1 trillion of tax expenditures goes to the top 20 percent of Americans.

I don't begrudge any of them. One of them is me. One of them is every Member of this Congress. I think we need to encourage Members of Congress and all Americans to save more.

I expect that those of us who are using these tax-advantaged accounts now don't need a great deal of additional incentive to use them to the maximum. What we do need is to help those Americans who couldn't afford that $400 emergency or who have nothing in retirement savings except their Social Security check. It is not that they don't want to save. It is that, if you can't pay $400 for a doctor bill you didn't expect, you are not going to have very much saved when it comes time to retire.

Now, surely this Congress can do more for these families. I must say, I don't really mean this Congress. I mean the one that is coming in January that cares about the retirement crisis we have now, not the one that has shown indifference to half of Americans.

What we get today, instead, is just another tax incentive for shifting retirement savings around.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, to take full advantage of this bill, you need to have about $100,000 in income. If you even look at this bill, as the Joint Committee on Taxation has done, you will see that two out of three Americans are not expected to use it at all because it doesn't help them.

And what about the one-third who will use it? They are the people, like me, like the other Members of Congress, who earn, on average, twice the median income in this country.

So it does help those of us who have been successful, those at the very top who are the wealthiest. It doesn't help the rest of America.

For those with the resources, the Joint Committee on Taxation looked at the huge price tag on this bill, and they said that what we are basically looking at, and I quote it, is it ``derives from taxpayers shifting savings that are allocated to other types of taxable accounts into a universal savings account'', so just moving the money around.

And we now have a study that really shows what a great job these guys have done with reference to this concept. It is a study that shows, for every dollar of additional debt you get--a little bit of a similar program that was studied--you get 1 penny of additional savings. That is the bargain they are offering us today, really. Spend a dollar, borrow a dollar from the Chinese, and you will generate 1 cent of additional savings.

So under this so-called universal tax shelter, the earning returns from their investment portfolio allow them to avoid some capital gains tax, cost the Treasury, but the Republican universe just doesn't include many ordinary Americans.

It is those who don't have retirement savings in tax-advantaged accounts, who rely on Medicare and Social Security, we need to protect that basic framework for retirement for, and you don't protect it by borrowing ourselves into further debt.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, before yielding to Mr. Davis, let me say this is not about lifting all boats; It is about lifting all yachts. And the 40, 50 percent of Americans who have only a leaky rowboat going into retirement don't get a dime out of this bill.

As to the tax bill as a whole, Republicans came out and bragged, the President put it in writing: You will get $4,000 in additional income trickling down to you every year from this corporate tax cut. Now we know that only 4.4 percent of Americans have gotten a dime of additional compensation as a result of this tax bill. If you have got anyone in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, or in Texas who got their $4,000, I hope you will call us, because I am looking for the first person.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis), a distinguished member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), who has been a leader on retirement issues and was one of the sponsors of the original form of this bill, which has changed a good bit, and on other retirement legislation.

I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu), a valued member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, so I will close at this time and initially yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican tax bill has given us trillions of dollars of additional debt, and so, tomorrow, they propose to freeze in some additional provisions that will add hundreds of billions of additional debt to what they have already incurred.

They would depart for the elections, carefully timed with tomorrow's debate, so that the last thing the voter hears is that the Republicans have passed another tax bill.

Of course, none of its provisions will affect any American for 7 years. That is what they have to offer us: freeze in some inefficient provisions that are not really targeted to ordinary American families that have a special provision in there specifically for Donald Trump and other real estate magnates, a provision they hid and tucked in the conference committee and then put in the final law, one special interest provision after another. They want to freeze all of that in and offer the American people the mirage of relief in 7 years.

This bill that they signed into law as their big tax deal will cost this generation and future generations a huge amount of money just paying the interest on the debt that they have achieved, and having done nothing in this Congress to advance retirement security, having done nothing in this Congress to encourage more savings by more Americans.

They come here on the eve of our departure for the elections with this big family savings account bill. It also proposes to borrow more. It has a great new universal savings account in it. The only problem is that two-thirds of Americans won't take advantage of this universal savings account because it offers them no advantage whatsoever.

As usual, those Americans have been excluded from the Republican version of what the universe of Americans really is.

The cost of doing this is not only in terms of new debt, but a very inefficient approach where you pay, as indicated by the study of a similar program, you have $1 lost, $1 cost in this borrowing, and you get 1 penny of additional real savings.

Now, I am amused a little bit to hear my colleagues come and agree with me about the challenge that American families face of not having $400 to meet an emergency medical expense. How in the world are any of those Americans going to benefit in the slightest from this proposal?

It advantages people who have $100,000 or more with the universal savings account. They are not in that category. If they can't afford a $400 medical expense, exactly how much savings do you expect them to have under this bill? A big zero is what we are talking about.

It is a big zero in large measure because, despite this great tax bill they approved, real wages in America have remained stagnant during the Trump administration.

He has not been able to raise real wages because he continues to engage in supporting programs, just like the one before us today, that are aimed at those at the top and think somehow the benefits will trickle down to everyone else.

It is those people who will not benefit from today's legislation, who are excluded from the great universe that Republicans see. It is those people who rely on Social Security and Medicare, which Republicans have proposed changes in, in their budget proposals, have discussed a variety of ways to trim them, that we can't afford them in their current form.

Well, what, precisely, have Republicans accomplished about Medicare in this Congress? Well, they have a rather significant accomplishment that I have to note. As a result of their tax bill, they have reduced the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by 3 years, 3 years taken right off the Medicare trust fund's future as a result of their tax bill--by a variety of independent sources that have evaluated the impact.

Meanwhile, they are using that tax bill and the debt they have accumulated with reference to the amount of money that we have for Pell grants and other student financial assistance, for Medicaid and the role that it plays, and for other vital services saying: We just can't afford them because we borrowed these trillions of dollars from abroad, and we don't have the resources to meet our other needs.

With every tax policy that they propose, Republicans seem to insist on leaving working families behind. And they have the gall then to turn around and tell those same working families: You have to pay for it in interest, in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and other services.

Now, there is another really important point about this, which Mr. Kind addressed, because just like the bill we will take up tomorrow, just like the bill we are taking up right now, just like this huge Republican tax sham, there is much in common. The number one thing in common is that not one official in any of the departments in the Trump administration had the guts to come over and face our committee and answer questions about it.

They did not bring a single Trump administration official to discuss, explain, justify, how any of this conforms with all his ridiculous campaign promises. There was none of that on any of these bills.

They kept their bills in secret until the last minute after having no public hearings, inviting no businesses, no academic experts from around the country. They plopped these bills out and rushed them through just as quickly as possible, so there will be as little consideration as possible.

Then they talk about the desire for bipartisan comity after doing this kind of thing. Well, there are many bipartisan ideas out there that could have been considered. Mr. Kind's proposal is designed to help poor people, working people save for college or retirement, and give them some incentive for that. That is an idea that could have been considered.

Mr. Neal, the ranking member of our committee, has advanced some other important ideas concerning savings to expand the savers credit that would help many of these working families get the savings that they need to prepare for their golden years.

Mr. Larson, another member of our committee, has worked on cutting taxes for many people under Social Security with modest incomes and seeing that those who have been more successful pay the same rate on all their income that those who are not at the top of the economic ladder pay on theirs. He has a plan to ensure that Social Security will be solvent through the end of this century.

Those are the kind of creative proposals that we have advanced, but we can't get a hearing on them. We can't get an opportunity under today's bills or any of these others to offer an amendment to add them. The only way we are going to have an opportunity to address those creative proposals and do something for a universe that we define as including all Americans, not just those perched up comfortably on the top of the economic ladder, the only way we will do that is with a new Congress of caring, concerned people who are willing to listen, regardless of whether they agree to divergent views, and try to come up with a truly American answer to resolve this retirement security problem.

I believe that those Americans who are working out there today, trying to make ends meet, who won't benefit from this bill are worried about the tax breaks that have gone to those up at the top, how they will threaten all that they have worked and paid for in their future, and the callous indifference it shows to their children and their grandchildren, who will be saddled with this Republican debt for decades.

The late Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, a distinguished servant of our State, talked about putting the jam on the lower shelf so that everybody could reach it. Well, this bill puts the jam at the top for the one-third of Americans up there at the top who might use some portion of this bill, but it leaves out the two-thirds who can't reach quite that high.

This bill is not what America needs to achieve retirement savings. In so many ways, Republicans are ignoring the needs of working families.

They are ignoring prescription price gouging, doing nothing about it, and they are ignoring our healthcare needs. In fact, their tax bill actually weakens, significantly, access to healthcare and jeopardizes Americans with higher premiums as a result of a healthcare provision that they snuck into their tax bill.

They show no concern for a living wage for Americans. This bill is just part of that same narrow-mindedness and that same refusal to look at a universe that applies to all Americans. They are leaving families that are struggling to make ends meet behind. They are certainly not letting them reach the jam that they deserve to be able to access, as Senator Yarborough talked about.

Let's reject this bill and look forward to a day, a very hopeful day, for Americans in which all Americans can have their say and we can get a Congress that will resist the injustices of the Trump administration and will reach out to support a better future for our country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge rejection of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, there is just no wonder drug that will cure prescription price gouging. And with many prices for drugs rising at 10 times the rate of inflation, and with an unaffordable drug being 100 percent ineffective for the many that cannot afford it, many Americans are really desperate.

In this Congress, we have another lost year of failing to address prescription price gouging. Now, on election eve, we take this miniscule step forward. A few of the many consumers who have been scrimping to get their medications, could at least find out if by paying cash, they can get a particular prescription at a lower price. No longer will gag provisions deny pharmacists the right to counsel about this issue.

After learning about this problem about two years ago, I consulted with experts, with patient advocates, with pharmacists about these clauses, and asked the CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to prevent this administratively, which they could have done, but they failed to do so.

Finally, months ago this year, I filed two bills as companion legislation to the measures we are considering today by Senators Collins and Stabenow, and was joined by 32 Members of the other house in supporting and sponsoring those measures.

This Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act, the House version of it, was endorsed back in June by the National Community Pharmacists Association, thereafter, by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and by the American Psychiatric Association.

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record their letters of support.

National Community

Pharmacists Association,

June 28, 2018.

Re National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) Support

of H.R. 6143 & 6144.

Hon. Lloyd Doggett,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Doggett: The National Community

Pharmacists Association (NCPA) is writing today in strong

support of the Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act and the

Know the Lowest Price Act of 2018, H.R. 6143 and 6144, two

bills that would ban provisions in contracts between pharmacy

benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmacies (so called ``gag

clauses'') that prohibit pharmacists from being able to

inform patients of cheaper alternatives for their medication.

NCPA represents the interests of America's community

pharmacists, including the owners of more than 22,000

independent community pharmacies. Together, they represent an

$80 billion health care marketplace and employ more than

250,000 individuals on a full or part-time basis.

``Gag clauses'' refer to contract provisions and/or

requirements embedded in lengthy provider manuals that

include overly broad confidentiality requirements, and non-

disparagement clauses, as well as requirements that

pharmacies charge insured patients what the PBM says at point

of sale, leaving pharmacies with little to no ability to

inform patients of actual drug costs. Such provisions have

the effect of chilling a range of pharmacist communications

with patients and others for fear of retaliation by the PBM.

NCPA strongly supports passage of the Patient Right to Know

Drug Prices Act and the Know the Lowest Price Act of 2018 to

help ensure that patients are not being charged inflated

prices for their drugs. Thank you for your leadership in

addressing this issue, and we look forward to working with

you to advance these pieces of legislation.

Sincerely,

Karry K. La Violette,

Senior Vice President of Government

Affairs & Director of the Advocacy Center.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased that finally our House Republican colleagues have agreed to approve this proposal today. With families nationwide concerned about soaring drug prices, this legislation would end a restrictive, anticompetitive, and anticonsumer provision for those who rely on ObamaCare in the marketplace and for group employer ERISA plans.

I must note, however, that of all the many bills I have either introduced or supported from other colleagues dealing with excessive medication costs, this is the most narrow of the proposals out of all of them.

Instead of really saving lives, some may view this as simply a life preserver for those who have ignored prescription price gouging for the past two years. Approving this modest, narrow bill is not a substitute for tackling the pervasive problem of prescription price gouging.

Pharmacists are not the only ones who are, apparently, gagged. Right here in this Congress, some seem to be unable to find their voice and vote for real reform that would lower drug prices when we are outnumbered by two pharmaceutical lobbyists for every Member of this House of Representatives.

Repeated attempts to pass measures that would lower prices have been blocked. Republicans even blocked my amendment to the opioid legislation to authorize the Trump administration to negotiate the price of naloxone, the lifesaving opioid overdose reversal drug whose prices soared by 700 percent.

During the past week, Big Pharma, with considerable help from the Republican majority leader, sought to hitch a ride on this very same opioid legislation to get an unrelated $4 billion gift. It is enough to make you gag. Hopefully, we have got that stopped.

Passage of this bill today is one modest step that we can take, but so much more is needed. That this bill even counts as progress, demonstrates how far we have to go. And while this bill brings some transparency to the pharmacy counter, the transparency which is most needed is comprehensive legislation like the Transparency Drug Pricing Act that I have introduced, to shed some light on where the prices get set. And that is by the manufacturer who hides the whole process through discounts, rebates, and fees.

Now, we all know that President Trump solved the problem with his Rose Garden press conference early in the summer when he announced that prices are going down. But I have yet to find anybody who has benefited from that announcement. And, in fact, the Associated Press just analyzed drug prices since that announcement and they couldn't find any company that had made any significant reduction on prices.

And when questioning the executives of 24 large drug companies, the AP didn't find a single one committed to cutting prices.

Madam Speaker, the attitude was best captured by one pharmaceutical executive who within

the last month said that he had a, ``moral requirement . . . to sell the product for the highest price.''

Today's two minor prescription drugs bills are being passed in this process that is called ``suspension.'' But let's not create any further suspense for families that are in need on their healthcare costs. Let's approve real, comprehensive prescription drug pricing reform in a new Congress that is not indifferent to the needs of American healthcare consumers.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to hear from neighbors in my part of Texas and beyond who are unable to afford their prescription drugs, lifesaving drugs. They are cutting back on necessities, cutting pills in half, or cutting into what little savings they may have.

After seeking administrative action to address this gag order problem with no success, I introduced with Senators Stabenow and Collins here in the House, along with 32 colleagues, a House bill to do what their measures do today.

Despite repeated requests, the House Ways and Means Committee, which enjoys jurisdiction over this matter as a Medicare bill, along with the Commerce Committee, declined to consider them.

This particular bill that we are considering now will allow those Medicare beneficiaries, seniors and individuals with disabilities, to turn to a professional pharmacist to learn if there is information available that, on a particular drug, they might be able to get a less expensive alternative by paying cash.

While pleased that this modest Know the Lowest Price bill will become law, we have had too much aiming low and shooting low in this Congress that has really been indifferent to the overall plight of seniors burdened with exorbitant prescription drug costs.

What a low bar that has been set. Patients want real change on this matter. Yet, we do the least possible to address this problem. We take baby steps when bold steps are required. To borrow from Mark Twain, I believe seniors can recognize the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, like we are getting today.

While this may enable some to learn the lowest available price, I believe what we need to find out about is the highest price that is being extorted in too many cases. The sky seems to be the limit. Whatever can be obtained from someone who is sick or dying seems to be the price point.

We may be able to cure some cancers and diseases--we want to encourage a price that will encourage continued innovation--but it need not come at the levels that are being charged too many people today only because this Congress is unwilling to curb the government monopoly that it has granted.

Pharmaceutical pricing is a tangled knot. There is no one panacea. Every step forward is a good step forward.

I formed a House Prescription Drug Task Force three years ago to begin to look at administrative and legislative steps in how we encourage innovation without being exploited by monopoly prices.

I think there is much more we can do, much more for someone like Bob from San Antonio, who has suffered from crippling arthritis for decades. He has seen the prescription that he relies on skyrocket from about $200 a year to $22,000 in co-payments annually. He finally had to switch to a less expensive drug and lives with the fear that it will not adequately cover his pain, even though it has become too painful to afford it.

Patients like Bob need much more than modest bills. We need a Congress that does not repeatedly cave in to the Big Pharma lobbyists. What is happening this week, this very week, is yet another reminder of the choice that has been made between a special interest and the needs of seniors.

With the active assistance of the Majority Leader, Big Pharma tried to exploit bipartisan opioid legislation and further burden patients with a provision undoing what had been a bipartisan agreement that helped plug the so-called donut hole and lowered patients' out-of- pocket drug spending in Medicare.

Pharma's plan would save them $4 billion, but the costs would have been shifted either to our seniors and individuals with disabilities directly or through the premiums that they pay.

Unable to defend this heist on its merits of flawed and misleading advertisements, and a hoard of lobbyists who have been here to try to get that $4 billion, I hope that we have it stopped. Hopefully, in fact--speak of hope--in a new Congress, we can see some action on what really might make a difference, and that is the ability of Medicare to negotiate for our seniors to get lower prices in much the same way the Veterans Administration does for our veterans.

I have introduced, along with almost 90 sponsors, the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act to harness the purchasing power of the government through the Health and Human Services Secretary. If negotiations fail, the Secretary would use good old American competition to lower them, bringing in generics, bidding, and competition, a real American way to solve what is a serious American problem.

Patients should not have to fight their insurer or a drug company when they need to be fighting their disease. Patients need this Congress to reclaim its voice and to not be gagged any longer. It can no longer let Big Pharma and its agenda define the debate. Instead, we need to end Big Pharma's exploitation of patients in order to get windfall profits.

Mr. Speaker, TrumpCare, that is what we are talking about today.

What is TrumpCare? Well, it is not much care. In fact, it is mainly indifference from people that don't really care or understand the plight of thousands of families across this country working to make ends meet, and suddenly somebody has an accident on the way home from work or suddenly a child is diagnosed with some dreaded disease, and they face, without access to affordable health insurance, a catastrophe.

We know that there are a significant number of American families that have said they couldn't meet a $400 or $500 emergency. Think about what happens to them when they face a $4,000 or a $40,000 healthcare bill. That is what the Affordable Care Act has been all about.

So today we see the chapter in the TrumpCare story that Mr. Roskam and his colleagues are offering for Trump and all of his cohorts. And what is it? It is the 5 percent solution, because we know that health savings accounts have been used by exactly 5 percent of those who earn less than $100,000.

So, as usual, the Trump approach is let's do more for the few, and to heck with the many, the many people who are out there for whom health savings accounts provide little or no protection.

Now, of course, it is a valuable tax shelter for some people who are a little bit more prosperous in our society, and that is fine, but I believe we need to make healthcare accessible to more people.

And then there is the additional problem that Mr. Roskam and his colleagues have decided to pay for their package of bills, $100 billion of bills, by borrowing just a little bit more. After all the trillions of dollars that they have borrowed from the Saudis and the Chinese and people here at home, wherever they can find somebody who will take their IOU, they want to borrow a little more money, $100 billion, almost, to finance this package of bills to help that 5 percent of the families who earn less than $100,000.

I offered an amendment, recognizing that it wouldn't correct all the flaws of TrumpCare, but that it would address one central problem, and that is the problem of preexisting conditions.

What is a preexisting condition? Well, it is whatever an insurance company wants to point to to deny you coverage before the Affordable Care Act.

I do think that our Republican colleagues are afflicted with a very serious preexisting condition. It is called amnesia. They have forgotten what healthcare was like for families before the Affordable Care Act came into existence and prohibited these preexisting conditions not only for those who went to the marketplace, but across the board, to prevent preexisting conditions from being used against someone to deny them coverage or to limit the coverage that they got.

The kind of people whom I came in contact with as we worked on the Affordable Care Act who were determined to have preexisting conditions were a victim of domestic violence, someone who was born with a disability, and someone who had an accident or an illness and found themselves with some lingering effects of that. They would either be denied coverage altogether, or they would find in the fine print of their insurance policy significant limitations on that insurance. The insurance would cover them for everything except what they needed insurance for.

Now, after the Republican attempt--and not just one, but 60 or 70 attempts--to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed in the United States Senate, thanks to the courage of a few there and of the many across this country who said, ``We don't want it repealed,''

now that it has failed, they have devoted the last year to doing everything in the book to try to sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

They won't stabilize health insurance markets. They won't focus on reducing premiums. They won't focus on strengthening and correcting any of the shortcomings within the Affordable Care Act, like the need to rein in the prescription drug price gouging.

So instead of expanding accessible coverage, what they do is to expand a healthcare tax shelter for a few people.

Having done so much harm, they tell us today that they are not advocating junk insurance. Well, let's talk about junk insurance, because I think they are right in the junkyard on it.

President Trump's administration is out there telling the courts that they cannot defend the protections in the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Speaker, they can't defend, and they refuse to defend, the preexisting conditions provisions that protect, in Texas, it is almost half of the population who are said to have some type of preexisting condition.

So the administration won't protect those with preexisting conditions. They are hoping to erode that protection. And when I offered a one-paragraph amendment, Republicans refused it without any decent explanation in our committee to ensure that the preexisting condition provision was in any policy that would be purchased under this plan.

So what you will be left with, as my colleague from California explained, are junk insurance plans. They are the kind that promise great coverage, but down in the fine print of the policy, you don't have coverage when you need it. They are skinny insurance plans that aren't about the size of the person, but the size of the coverage, that it doesn't cover very much. And those kinds of plans are the kind that we will end up having.

We have a saboteur-in-chief, not only when it comes to our military alliances and our friends abroad but, with this President, with reference to healthcare. These bare-bones, junk insurance policies will not get the job done.

I think of the many people whom I represent in central Texas, and I am sure they are not unlike people in the suburbs of Chicago.

They are people like Colleen, who is a bookkeeper. She adopted her son through the foster care system when he was 18 months old. Unknown to her, he had a preexisting condition; and she learned that she had a preexisting condition. And as she said: ``The Affordable Care Act made my family possible.''

I think of people like Theresa in San Antonio, who says that, before the Affordable Care Act, she found herself repeatedly digging out of medical debt because of a preexisting condition.

I think of a constituent who called me during the debate of the Affordable Care Act because her sister could not get coverage for cancer.

Mr. Speaker, her sister could not get coverage. Though she had substantial chemotherapy coverage, it was not enough to cover the full amount of the treatment that she needed.

We cannot go back. These folks would drag us back along with the chief saboteur of healthcare in this country. We don't want to return to the fine print restrictions, to the clever caveats. We need comprehensive coverage.

The Affordable Care Act can be made better, and I believe we are going to have a Congress that will do just that if we defeat this effort.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, in this very troubling week, when these same Republican enablers here in Congress have endangered our national security by failing to confront Donald Trump's surrender to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, today, we again witness their total indifference to another very serious national security concern. Unfortunately, just as their refusal to stand up to Trump's denial of this ongoing Russian aggression won't make it go away as a grave threat to our democracy, neither will their ignoring the national security challenge of climate change eliminate reality.

In recent years, the war, the challenge, that these Republicans have been most willing to fight is the war on reality. They particularly find troubling any scientific fact that conflicts with their last campaign rally or their rigid ideology.

This Administration actually prohibited the Centers for Disease Control from including, in its budget documents to Congress, the terms ``evidence-based'' or ``science-based.'' They don't want to rely on science as fact. They have questioned and harassed scientists across America so much that you have to begin to wonder whether they still believe in gravity.

Across America, we are seeing, with our own eyes, what they refuse to acknowledge: soaring temperatures, severe and erratic records being set in our weather, massive 100-year floods that seem to recur every 100 months, deep freezes, and ravaging hurricanes that dumped 60 inches of rain in one short period of time on the City of Houston.

Often at the same time that these disasters are occurring in other parts of America we see: record droughts, and wildfires destroying thousands of acres, livelihoods, and homes. All across the country, particularly in the southern States, seldom seen diseases, like West Nile virus and Lyme disease, are afflicting more and more of our neighbors.

During the lifetime of my grandchildren, I know that my home State of Texas, America's number one greenhouse gas polluter, is on schedule to become a very different place, with more of the State looking like the Sonoran Desert. At the same time, our coastal areas, like those that stretch all the way to New England, will find themselves submerged and major metropolitan areas subject to serious harm from storm surges.

Meanwhile, we will see, not in the future, but right now, thousands of premature deaths every year because of air pollutants that are associated with carbon emissions.

Mr. Speaker, around the world, the very severe impact of climate change has already been identified as a major contributing factor to the disaster in Syria, conflict in Africa, and what is becoming a growing number of climate refugees. Trump's own Defense Secretary has acknowledged the need to address climate change and the impact on our military.

The Scientific American has reported that climate change presents a significant and direct risk to the U.S. military, its readiness, operations, and strategy.

We must treat this as a national security threat. When you have a security threat, you don't just rely on one weapon. A carbon tax that is revenue neutral, that does not take any new tax revenue than the tax it replaces, is one of the tools that should not be rejected without even having a hearing to evaluate it.

The likelihood of a carbon tax in our future will not be changed by this silly resolution. But as Republicans continue to reject all ways, any ways, of addressing the climate change national security challenge, the future of our planet and our families remains endangered every bit as much as they endanger us by yielding to Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Speaker, Helsinki will be remembered as the place where GOP became shorthand for ``Government of Putin.''

Just as Trump surrenders to Vladimir Putin, these Helsinki congressional Republicans surrender to Trump.

Trump's own intelligence chief, former Senator, lifelong Republican Dan Coats, says ``the warning lights are blinking red again'' on Russian attacks. Yet Helsinki Republicans refuse to act, providing zero funding to the States to protect election integrity today. Their refusal to appropriate a dime for state defense against Russian interference really represents nothing less than unilateral disarmament.

Enough excuses. Enough weakness. Instead of a President with no scruples and a congressional Republican majority with no spine, we need strong leadership, unafraid to protect our borders and unafraid to protect American families from the ongoing Russian aggression against our democracy.

Mr. Speaker, here, the height of hypocrisy, the depth of duplicity. While this administration relentlessly, baselessly, and desperately attacks Federal law enforcement officials--the FBI, the Justice Department, our intelligence agencies--again and again, these same Republicans, so proud of law enforcement in one narrow area today, are silent. They stand by tweet-addicted Trump,

our President who, even this very day, has again denied that Russia poses any threat.

Where is your resolution to defend the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

Where is your resolution to defend NATO, which has been disparaged by this shameful President?

No. What we have today is a shameless, spineless group of Republican congressional enablers who are enabling Trump, who totally ignore those dedicated to defending our borders from Russian aggression.

These Republicans claim that we have so much more to fear from little infants and toddlers who come across our southern border and seek to escape gang and domestic violence and, yet, are torn by ICE from their mothers' embrace, than from a murderous Vladimir Putin.

Of course we need immigration law enforcement and secure borders, but this resolution ignores many wrongs of ICE: hundreds of claims of harassment, sexual harassment, child separation, and an unresponsive bureaucracy. At the same time that they ignore those wrongs, they ignore the wrongs of Trump in impairing other Federal law enforcement.

Trump's own intelligence chief, a lifelong Republican whom he appointed, warns that our democracy is under sustained Russian assault, yet they are silent.

Trump is impotent in the face of Putin. We need to reject this complicity, the Trump child abuse, and the abuse of Federal law enforcement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to respectfully call upon our Republican colleagues to stand up for America by standing up against and rejecting President Donald Trump's surrender to murderous dictator Vladimir Putin.

Putin may well have elected Trump, but Putin is against us all, Democrats and Republicans alike, and he is against our cherished democracy.

Without his congressional Republican enablers, Trump cannot continue to coddle the Russians at the very time that his Director of National Intelligence, lifelong Republican Dan Coats, is warning that we are under sustained Russian attack.

In his embarrassing, fawning praise of Putin, Trump expresses no concern for Putin's military shooting down a civilian airliner four years ago today; Putin's agents poisoning his enemies and jailing his opponents; Putin's invasions of Ukraine and Georgia; and Putin's interference and attacks on our elections, as certified by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Don't await your retirement to stand up and address the truth of Trump's betrayal of our country.

Mr. Speaker, due to flight difficulties out of my control, I missed the June 25th vote on H.R. 299, the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2018, a bill I have long been supportive of. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 289

Mr. Speaker, this Congress once provided a check on excessive executive power. But today, in this House, it is all lapdog and no watchdog. Even terrified toddlers torn from their mother's embrace are not beyond the limit of this Congress.

Until very recently, limitation amendments like those I authored to this bill to protect taxpayers from having funds misused were routinely approved for debate--no more.

Just as Trump undermines our democracy, so too do these House Republicans refusing to permit even the pretense of a fair debate on key national issues.

Having enabled Trump's separation of children from their parents, often with their silence, Republicans have blocked amendments that I and 41 of our colleagues sponsored to prevent our military bases from being converted into internment camps for children and, in some cases, their families.

Our military bases have an important mission. It is to ensure our national security, to ensure the utmost readiness for our troops, who may be called into action in many different parts of the globe at the same time. It is not their job to take care of 20,000 people, as the administration has requested, on two Texas military bases. The function there is a totally different one from that to which we have committed in this defense bill.

These are real people, real children. They are toddlers who have been torn from their parents in places like McAllen, which I once represented; real children who cry themselves to sleep every night, held without their freedom and without their loved ones, while some of my former constituents are shopping right down the street.

My constituents at home now in San Antonio, San Marcos, Lockhart, and Austin care about this. Over 1,000 people have reached out to my office, their hearts breaking for these children.

Trump is truly testing the waters of dehumanization, seeing how many people blink an eye when he calls for suspending due process, guaranteed by our Constitution, for people who don't look like him.

I do believe in a no-tolerance policy. The no-tolerance policy that I support is no tolerance for bigotry, no tolerance for the demonization of foreigners which regularly spews forth from this White House, no tolerance for using cages to hold children as hostages.

No matter how grievous the wrong, how insulting the tweet, my colleagues sit here, idle and silent, silently blocking debate on congressional checks on this authoritarian-loving President who seeks to amass more and more power.

Perhaps what we need in this House is a strong, professional ENT--an ear, nose and throat physician--because Republicans have lost their voice when it comes to standing up to Trump on much of anything. You could say that Trump's got their tongue.

Whatever the reason, they are not there standing up for the children, won't even permit a debate on the issue of whether our military bases should be converted to this perverted purpose.

Mr. Speaker, I will never yield to a President who knows no limits, and we will not yield in raising the issue of these children, their separation, and the detainment of their families indefinitely. We must speak out and use every opportunity afforded in this House to defend their presence and to defend a better policy and the use of our tax dollars for what they were intended, not to detain, indefinitely, these babies.