Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about TikTok, which I think all people here know that we have been having a lot of attention about--a lot of debate, a lot of discussion, and a lot of action by the Supreme Court. But now I think people are getting a little clouded on the path forward.

I want to be clear that, last year, the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok. The law requires that sale to shut down all government back doors by the Chinese or attempts by them to influence the algorithms that could affect U.S. citizens or the U.S. military. It requires that sale to end the Chinese Government's influence over TikTok's content recommendation algorithms. This law also requires that data sharing with the Chinese Government must end.

I was glad to see that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld that law. Why? Because we asked them whether Congress had the ability to act in this national interest and to pass this law, and they upheld it.

Congress and the courts acted for a reason--to address real national security threats to our country and to the American people.

When President Trump issued his 2020 Executive order, he recognized that TikTok collected vast amounts of data on U.S. citizens.

A House resolution, H. Res. 1051, introduced by the leadership of the House Select Committee on China and Congressman Gallagher and Congressman Krishnamoorthi sets out the threat citing from the U.S. Government agencies and from U.S. Government officials.

It points out that in 2020, the Department of Commerce found out that China is building a massive database of American personal information to understand who to target for espionage. And that is of particular concern for us when it is about U.S. military personnel--where they might be, what they might be doing.

It also found that ByteDance had very close ties to the Chinese Government. And in December of 2022, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chris Wray, stated that TikTok's data repository on Americans was in the hands of the Chinese Government. Director Wray testified that China could use TikTok for the influence and operations to control software that could compromise Americans' personal devices.

The Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency testified that one-third of the adult population receives their news from TikTok and one-sixth of American children use it every day. He added that TikTok provides a national platform for information operations and for surveillance.

In further information, the Director of the CIA, William Burns, indicated that ByteDance can use the private data of American TikTok users to shape TikTok content to suit the interests of the Chinese Government. Now, this was most important as it related to a 2023 Rutgers University report which found that TikTok amplifies and demotes content based on the interests of the Chinese Government.

No surprise. If you could have influence, you demote or promote whatever you want to promote.

The Rutgers report found--oh, surprisingly--that the issues of Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square didn't quite have the same level of oomph on TikTok as they did on Instagram, meaning that those posts about those subjects were somehow not as voluminous. It found foreign policy issues disfavored by China and Russia also had fewer hashtags on TikTok-- issues such as a pro-Ukraine stance or a pro-Israel stance. In fact, in one instance, there were 8,000 times more Tiananmen Square hashtags on Instagram than on TikTok.

So if this was all supposed to be about just generous posting by individuals and posting content, why would one platform have, even with the volume of the different platforms, 8,000 times more hashtags? Well, I am sure the Chinese Government doesn't like to talk about Tiananmen Square. I am pretty sure they don't like to talk about the Uighurs, genocide, or other issues.

There were 750 times more pro-Ukraine hashtags on Instagram than on TikTok.

The Deputy National Security Adviser also pointed out that ByteDance has used TikTok to surveil U.S. journalists to identify and retaliate against potential sources. Now, this is a concern to us in the United States. We wouldn't let the Chinese Government own ABC or NBC. Why are we allowing them to influence a source of information about news, particularly when they are retaliating against journalists?

Studies from Cornell University and the University of Vermont found that TikTok promotes a toxic diet culture among teens and young adults, including pro-anorexia content. I can't think of anything more disgusting: identifying teens--which you can see in the Rutgers report that if the teen is identified as at all concerned about these issues, the next thing they do is get a massive amount of data thrown onto them about being pro-anorexia, which, again, is just promoting younger people having less faith in themselves and their body image.

Both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate received classified briefings on this national security threat and what we should do moving forward. Prominent leaders on both sides of the aisle have called out this threat, indicating we need to do something to move forward.

One colleague, Senator Cotton, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been quite clear and said on the floor last week:

TikTok harvests a vast trove of user data, including name,

age, email, address, phone number, credit card number, facial

features, voiceprints, keystrokes, photos, videos, and

viewing habits. This data can make users susceptible to

manipulation and even blackmail, not only today, but also

years from now when users may have become influential persons

in the military, the intelligence community, business, media

and other walks of life.

I agree with Senator Cotton. This is an issue where this kind of collection of information on U.S. citizens drives opportunities for people to manipulate, particularly in the area of the military.

So Senators and Members of Congress want to work with President Trump as he tries to end what is Chinese overinfluence on such an important national security threat.

The good news is the technology is advancing and particularly advancing very rapidly right now. We are starting to see technology that I hope is finally giving us the ability to take some of this control back with algorithms ourselves--as individuals, as U.S. citizens. Maybe you have heard the buzz around agentic AI. Here is what it means in plain language. We now will control the algorithms that billionaires or foreign governments have been using to control us. Agentic AI lets us turn the tables on them.

We will now use AI to take in massive amounts of information from the internet, from all sources, and then apply filters that we want to see, that we choose for ourselves, so that we only get the information we want to see and not what somebody else wants to do with our information.

So I hope the President, as he is considering these issues, will look at this software solution. I don't know that a joint venture with the Chinese is going to rectify this issue about the algorithms. They can't continue to own and influence this process. But U.S. innovation and U.S. ownership can drive us forward and can drive a better experience for our young people.

Believe me, this is an issue about young people. Our youngest citizens of America shouldn't be the source of information--targeted at them--to undermine them, to basically create insecurities in them, and to promote ideas that we do not believe in the United States.

So I hope that the President and I hope our colleagues here will encourage us to resolve this issue. We have given every tool possible. Now, it is time to get this into the hands of U.S. innovators and move forward.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to this deceptively named Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

Tomorrow is the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the decision that guaranteed fundamental rights to choose abortion before that right was stripped away. Now reproductive freedom is under attack in multiple States. Over a dozen States have passed abortion bans, and several pregnant women in Georgia and Texas have died because they could not access safe abortions. In some States, patients don't have access to legal abortion care even after they have been raped. Multiple States are currently suing to restrict access to even medication for abortion.

We don't yet know how the new administration is going to handle Federal protections for pregnant women in medical emergencies. The new administration, yesterday, took down a government website that offered just information about reproductive care. This was one of the top priorities yesterday of this administration on day one--taking down that website.

Instead of working to resolve any of the serious, real challenges, my colleagues are trying to force a vote on something that is completely unnecessary. It is already illegal to kill a child who is born alive in this country. I was a Member of the Senate when we passed, in 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act to ensure that all infants have legal protections.

The so-called Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act, as my colleague from New Hampshire just said, is legislation in search of a problem. It is deliberately misleading and offensive to pregnant people and to their healthcare providers.

It is incredibly heartbreaking--these scenarios--where a baby is born with a fatal diagnosis, and the baby's parents must want to spend those precious moments holding and saying goodbye to their child, but under these extreme ideas, doctors would have to perform aggressive medical care that would only prolong a family's suffering.

We need to honor that these are medical decisions left to the woman, her physician, and to her family. We trust that doctors and nurses know how to carry this out. We want to honor these--not politicians, not lawyers--so I will be voting against this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to do so.

We also need to make sure that here in the Senate, as my colleague said, we are working to lower costs. We need to make sure that they don't try to cut Medicare or food assistance or the neediest of issues for young families who are being impacted. Healthcare in the United States needs to be strengthened; drug costs need to be lowered; and we need to help and protect working families.

I thank my colleagues for being here today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

I rise to join my colleagues and want to thank my colleague, Senator Murray, for her leadership on this important issue over many, many years.

I join my colleagues to say it is time to put partisan politics aside and stay out of family planning issues and leave that up to families in America.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle had an opportunity today to believe that women deserve the chance to start a family through IVF, the miracle for people who have been struggling with fertility challenges.

In 2022, more than 2,000 new babies were born in the State of Washington thanks to IVF. This is something we would like to see every year. But as the Court has struck down important issues and States have gone on various efforts to try to restrict women's access to healthcare and full reproductive care, IVF has even been questioned.

Practically everyone knows someone who overcame the challenge desperate to have a pregnancy and the sadness of

infertility. And that is probably why 86 percent of Americans say that IVF should be legal.

This afternoon, we voted on that right, the Right to IVF Act. That is what we were voting on, a straightforward vote. One of those that would just show the American people, the mainstream of America, that we agree with them. That is all we were trying to do, as people have punted around this very important right that now, because of actions by individual States, no longer seems to be guaranteed.

Yet we all here could have cast a vote saying we wanted to protect it in voting for this act. It was an opportunity for us to ask our colleagues who previously voted against this measure to say that they actually agreed this time on IVF; to show that they mean what they say, not some version of a bill that basically curtails and makes it impossible for somebody to run an IVF organization.

We have no time for that--no time for that. My colleagues' voting history shows that if you didn't support IVF before and you didn't support it today, I am not sure what it is you think you support.

Democrats are trying to guarantee the access, and Republicans are blocking us. Democrats tried to guarantee the right to contraception, which 81 percent of Americans say should be protected, and Republicans blocked us.

We tried to pass a law saying you can't put a woman in jail for trying to leave her State just to get abortion care, and that was blocked. And we tried to pass a law saying that you can't put a healthcare worker in jail for performing abortions in their State where the procedure is legal. Republicans blocked that, too. And today another block of just something very basic--the Right to IVF Act.

So reproductive freedoms of all sorts and family planning is under attack. We had a chance to speak as one voice and to talk about fertility treatments in the United States of America. Instead, families will continue to wonder whether IVF is going to be available in the United States of America. Americans should have the access to these reproductive rights. Americans should have the freedom to decide for themselves when and how to have children. And they should have the freedom to use IVF for their families and to plan to start a family.

This summer, I released a healthcare report, along with my colleagues, that talked about people who lived in red States where they were forcing people to travel to other States just to get healthcare. It was so sad and scary to find out that, basically, almost weekly, someone from Idaho was walking into a facility with a pregnancy complexity, only to be told: I am not going to see you. And then have them flown to a facility in Seattle. What kind of hardship are you putting on people?

Then, with great sadness, I read this article that came out late last night about the death of a young woman from Georgia ``who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat her complications from an abortion pill shows the consequences of [the actions that we passed] Donald Trump's actions.''

This is what we are doing to America. We are leaving reproductive choice up in the air. We are making women travel all over just to get care. And now we are telling Americans we don't even know if we believe in IVF. This nonsense has to stop. This is about families planning. This is about families planning for their future. It is not about politicians putting hardships on patients seeking healthcare and then turning them away and affecting their lives. And in this case, the tragedy of this young woman.

I thank my colleague, Senator Murray, for helping organize us. I ask our colleagues: We can do better than this. They need to do better than this for the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to wish a very happy birthday to Mary Louise Quinby, a wife, mother, grandmother, great- grandmother, and great-great-grandmother, from Ocosta, WA. Mrs. Quinby turned 100 years old on August 26, and she continues to be the driving force within her family, which now consists of 8 children, 30 grandchildren, 56 great-grandchildren, and 5 great-great-grandchildren.

Born August 26, 1924, Mary grew up on a small family farm. In 1942, during World War II, she married her high school sweetheart Robert, and while he served in the Navy, Mary worked as a Rosie the Riveter in a local shop in Aberdeen.

After the war, Mary and Bob settled in Bremerton, where Bob worked in the shipyards as a machinist. In 1948, Mary's uncle, a cranberry grower in Grayland, encouraged her husband and brother Jack to try their hand at farming cranberries. They bought their first bog of two acres from her uncle and moved their small family to Grayland.

During the years after their first cranberry bog purchase and until the early 1970s, they bought about 23 acres of bogs. Mary supported her husband while he worked his second job as a machinist in a local plant by weeding, irrigating, and doing frost protection when necessary.

In the early 1970s, Bob became ill, and they started selling portions of their bogs to their oldest son, Robert P. Quinby. During this time, Mary--mostly by herself--farmed about eight acres. She raised a bumper crop, and it topped the highest yield on that acreage. She never let her husband forget it.

Her husband was the West Coast director for Ocean Spray for many years, during which time Mary played an instrumental role in teaching other farmers about Ocean Spray and cranberry farming.

During all of that time, and through today, her family has remained her top priority, and the legacy of that 1948 decision to become a cranberry farmer has been passed down in her family. Today, two sons, one daughter, and eight grandchildren grow cranberries.

From their first purchase in 1948 of two acres, Mary's descendants have

amassed close to 275 acres in the Grayland area and are busy training the next generations of cranberry owners.

Mary is a shining example of the American dream and beloved by all who know her. Her dedication to her family, her community, and her farms is obvious, and I wish her the happiest of birthdays.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleague, the chair of the Finance Committee, and thank him for his incredible leadership on the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. I can't think of a more critical effort than the leadership role he has played to negotiate legislation that passed the House 357 to 70.

Now, when in this institution do you see such a big and tremendous vote across many different aspects of financial and tax policy that affect Americans? And yet the House has passed it 357 to 70, and somehow our colleagues here don't understand there is that much support behind that legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, on behalf of 140,000 members of the National Association of Home Builders, their very strong support for the Tax Relief for the American Families and Workers Act.

I think that is an important organization that knows and understands how much affordable housing we need in America and how this underlying bill addresses that by building over 200,000 more affordable units in the next 2 years.

It really is a shot in the arm at a time when Americans know that the cost of their housing has gone up because we haven't built enough supply. And as my colleagues know, especially since the downturn of the financial crisis in 2008, that from big cities to actually small towns, the crunch of a lack of a housing supply has meant an increase in costs. That means it hurts the economy overall. Last month, the skyrocketing costs were the largest contributor to the 3 percent rate of inflation.

So that is why we have an opportunity to do something about that tomorrow. We have the opportunity to do something about the rising costs of housing and to pass this legislation that will build more supply and bring down those costs.

Now, I know our colleagues--this is a very bipartisan aspect of the legislation. They know that expanding supply works. A 2019 study by the DC Office of Revenue Analysis found that renters basically saved $177 per month for every 2,100 units built in the city per year. So, literally, you can do the math. When you don't build supply, you are just making everybody else's expenses go up.

So why aren't we building more supply? Well, I can tell you that the low-income housing tax credits are a real achievement in bipartisan efforts to build more supply. It basically is the best tool to build affordable housing. It expands and improves, just as I mentioned from the National Association of Home Builders--``LIHTC is the most successful affordable rental housing production program in U.S. history.''

That is why it is so important that we remember this analysis.

A New York study found that for every 10 percent increase in housing supply, nearby rents decrease by 1 percent. Yet our colleagues don't want to build more supply.

And for LIHTC properties specifically, new data from Moody's Analytics found that, with these low-income housing projects, the renters in the Seattle area saved a remarkable $957 per month compared to the average rents in the region.

Now, I could go on and on with my colleagues about why we got into this position--certainly, the downturn of 2008 and when we stopped building more supply. We did have returning veterans who needed workforce housing. We had workforce housing overall in a community like Seattle, but it doesn't matter. Yakima or Spokane, it is the same dilemma. If you are not building affordable housing, people don't have places to live, and it stymies the economy moving forward. But we have had seniors living longer. We have had other issues that have made the need for housing a national priority.

So we want to hear what our colleagues say about this very important attack on inflation--most of it derived from housing--and study and analysis that says we will lower costs if we just build supply.

Tomorrow, we have a chance to build that supply. I hope my colleagues will join us in passing this legislation and driving down costs for Americans.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the RECORDS on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today, and I congratulate the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for this important legislation that has been passed out of the Judiciary Committee. I encourage him to continue their efforts to hold large social media companies accountable for the way that information is used against American citizens, and I thank him for his good work.

I, too, want to come to the floor today and talk about the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act that I hope my colleagues will advance today on a cloture motion so we can get on this legislation and hopefully speedily pass it through the U.S. Senate.

It has been more than 3 years now where families from all across America have come to the Nation's Capital and said that they have lost children to suicide; they have had children harassed and bullied and had to leave school and move to a different location. They have had the safety and security of their children threatened, as my colleague just mentioned, some of the bullying and activities that take place.

So today is about advancing forward on privacy legislation aimed at protecting our children by giving new tools to the Federal Trade Commission, with new authority to take up this cause and to clearly outline what we in the U.S. Senate think needs to be done today to better protect children.

I mentioned the 3 years and the number of families that have come to the Nation's Capital because they have been here many times and walked away many times discouraged because the same big media platforms have then, after they have left, come here and tried to lobby Members on the fact that they can't accept these ideas.

But today, hopefully we will be victorious in giving a few very particular tools to help us, to help our families, and to help children try to address this growing crisis.

As we have met with many of these families, it was very clear that we needed to give them something that they can fight back with. So two pieces of the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act include two important pieces of legislation from the Commerce Committee.

The first is Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act, led by my colleagues Senator Markey and Senator Cassidy. I want to thank them for their leadership on this important issue. It has really been a long time in coming, particularly with Senator Markey who led on original legislation to protect children under the age of 13 from targeted advertising.

Many people will remember when we tried to say we were going to ban advertising on TV specifically to kids; we have tried to follow that up with the internet. And today, we are taking another step.

The three things that this important legislation does is that it raises that age from 12 to 16 of those kids who will be protected so that they cannot be targeted for advertising and it creates a new knowledge standard. So many of these companies got away with saying, ``Well, you can't prove I knew they were kids. So, I could just keep doing what I'm doing.''

We need more responsibility from the social media companies. And so, we are changing that knowledge standard from actual knowledge, which meant you had to prove--the FTC had to prove--that the company knew that it was actually targeting kids. Monitoring their kids' privacy is a tough task for parents who are trying to raise families, juggle jobs, do all of these things.

So that knowledge standard now has changed to fairly implied based on objective circumstances. So basically, it is saying to these social media companies, you cannot get away with just saying, ``I didn't know.''

You have to do a better job of understanding exactly where these advertisers are coming from, who they are targeting, and if you are helping to target these kids, but we are not going to let you target kids 16 and under. This is such an important issue because spending on digital advertising in the United States is expected to reach $740 billion this year--$740 billion.

It is a massive change in what has been revenue for our newspapers, our broadcasters, media, and news organizations that have all had to live by in a community, making sure that information was accurate, making sure that it was not abusive, or basically trying to increase a response by using more hate speech. No, no, no.

So all that advertising that went to our newspapers and TV stations and it is basically pulling the plug out from under them, is now in this massive online advertising world, in which, yes, there can be a lot of misinformation and a lot of using your own information to target you and to try to increase price.

Hopefully, we will get to legislation--comprehensive privacy legislation--with my colleague Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers at some point in time on this. But what we are seeing is that public health showed that social media platforms earned nearly $11 billion of that $740 billion, $11 billion targeting children.

We know that we don't like this. We know there is no reason for them to do this. We know that it creates perplexing challenges, and that is a staggering amount of money.

So, I so appreciate Senators Markey and Cassidy, for basically giving us a new way to hold these social media companies accountable, saying that you do know that you are targeting these kids and also to basically raise the age to 16 and then allowing both attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission to enforce this legislation.

The second piece that is included here, and both of these bills were passed out of the Commerce Committee, I think almost 2 years ago now. So we are glad and we appreciate Senator Schumer bringing them to the floor. So, we are glad that they are finally seeing floor action.

The kids' online safety bills, by Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn, also very focused on giving parents tools to help fight back from social media companies or just change things that their young teens or parents want to change.

One of my constituents, a young girl from Bellingham, tried to set up her TikTok account to stop showing her videos about eating disorders. They find out, now, derived information about all of us, and if you clicked on anything, they can just take that information and constantly send you data.

In this case, she must have said something, did something, but all they wanted to do was basically continue to harass her with eating disorder videos.

Now, the Presiding Officer, the President, probably remembers we took action in getting a better resolution. We don't want any foreign actors creating malign actions against the United States through a platform, and our Department of Justice has shown that is exactly what is happening in some instances.

Those foreign actors could be pushing, or bots taking over, once that foreign actor has put information out there, basically saying, yes, let's just pummel the heck out of these teenagers with videos that will make them doubt themselves, make them basically second-guess or feel under the scrutiny of their colleagues and friends at school.

This legislation by Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal will hold social media accountable for prioritizing their engagement in keeping kids safe. It requires platforms to use tools so that parents can control features. This helps either the parent or the child go in and change that and say: I don't want to have any of these ads placed towards my children. And it ensures that parents can report harms, and it requires companies to respond to those harms.

Now, my frustration with where we are with the FTC is I am sure the FTC has a big, fat file that has a lot of complaints about what has been done to 12-year-olds online. We are now increasing this to a higher age of up to 16 years old, but we need better enforcement by the FTC to look at these accounts, and

hold these companies accountable, and call them when they have data and information from parents about their not responding to help set up and change these social media accounts so they can better protect their children.

This is such an important piece of legislation before us today. It can't save the lives of people we have already lost, but it can help parents, and it can help all of us as a society rein in some of these controls.

The final piece I want to mention, Mr. President, is Senator Thune's Filter Bubble Transparency Act, which is also included. This is Senator Thune's attempt to try to get at what we call a blackbox algorithm where you don't even know what the algorithm is and what it is doing.

We had testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee by a Facebook whistleblower who basically said that the algorithm that the company chose to use was actually increasing hate speech online. And the reason why is because then it got more viewers and then it sold more advertising.

That was an important witness and whistleblower to come before the committee because it told us that we have to now understand, in a more important way, how much these kinds of ill effects can be targeted toward individuals without us knowing exactly what is going on.

So I think this is an important step, including Senator Thune's language in here on filter bubbles. As I mentioned earlier, we have to do more, we have got to get a national privacy piece of legislation to protect all of us against the misuse of our own personal data by businesses and others who want to do us harm and put a stop to this acceleration at all costs of using our data for some juggernaut industry that probably hopes to reach $1 trillion. But what will it do to us Americans in the meantime?

So I urge my colleagues to take these very prudent steps today to pass these kids' online privacy bills, give parents better tools, give all of us better protection, and upgrade these important aspects to the Federal Trade Commission and to attorneys general so they can be good policemen on the beat.

I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand we have colleagues here and we have a vote, but I wanted to ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes prior to the vote.

Mr. President, yesterday the FTC, in a 4-to-1 decision, took action in a report, an interim staff report, that show that we should all be very concerned about the activities of PBM middlemen. These are the basic people who are supposedly getting discounts for us on drug prices but then actually pocket those discounts.

The final report, which we should be receiving--this interim report we should be receiving today basically says that market concentration and vertical integration are just giving these PBMs too much market power. The point is, are we going to do anything to stop that market power and to help the public who need better transparency on price?

It also says that PBMs are engaging in self-preferencing, meaning that they are steering those rebates back to themselves, and it is affecting pharmacies. It is affecting pharmacies in my State where now in downtown Seattle, you don't have any 24-hour pharmacies anymore, and pharmacy deserts are starting to happen.

The report also shows that PBMs may be using their market shares to force independent pharmacies into unfair contracts--that is what you get when you get a concentration of a market, and then you can basically push other people out of the market--and that PBMs and manufacturers are entering into rebate agreements that may impair or block access to lower cost drugs.

I urge my colleagues to get this report, to review it. I urge our colleagues here to take action on these PBM middlemen. This is a bipartisan effort. My colleague Senator Grassley and I have legislation outlawing some of these practices at the FTC; and our colleagues Senator Crapo and Senator Wyden also have legislation that would help us on PBMs. So I thank my colleagues.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for his dedication and perseverance on these important issues, and I also appreciate his mentioning the dividend concept because, obviously, we want consumers to be kept whole here and to make a transformation that they too want to make. So I thank him for his leadership.

Madam President, I come to the floor today to call attention to the high prices Americans are paying for their prescription medication and the urgent need to pass what is called the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act in the Senate that I have cosponsored along with my colleague from Iowa Senator Grassley.

At the beginning of this decade, the United States spent more on prescription drugs than any other country in the world, reaching an average of $1,432 per person per year.

So 6 out of every 10 adults are currently taking at least one prescription drug. More than a quarter of us take four or more prescriptions. So when drug prices go up, it really does stretch the family budget, cuts into our savings, and it puts us into health challenges if we can't afford those prescriptions.

About one in four residents in my State--the State of Washington-- have either rationed or stopped taking prescription drugs because of costs. Families should not have to make this choice.

One of the factors driving up the price of prescription drugs is pharmacy benefit managers and their profit-driven business model that is not transparent as to the price-setting and is causing pharmacies great harm. Pharmacy benefit managers operate behind the scenes but have a stake in just about every part of the drug distribution chain and exert extraordinary influence in the prices that Americans are paying for their medication.

PBMs decide which lifesaving medications most Americans will have access to through their insurance plans. They decide how much copay will be for prescriptions. They decide how much a pharmacy will be reimbursed for dispensing these drugs and whether the pharmacy will lose money when they fill a prescription.

PBMs don't actually handle or distribute the drugs, but they siphon off the profit at every step in the process, from the drug manufacturers and all the way up to the pharmacy counter. That is because the PBM market, these pharmacy benefit manager middlemen--think of them almost as the insurance company that is setting the price--are extremely consolidated, giving consumers no choice in which PBM they use. Just three PBMs control 80 percent of the market.

Can you imagine anybody controlling 80 percent of the market? But just three of these companies control 80 percent of the market. And, effectively, they have unchecked power on their ability to distort the market and engage in unfair and abusive practices.

So what are we trying to do, Senator Grassley and myself? We are trying to stop those unfair and manipulative practices.

Not only is the PBM market consolidated, but the vertical integration of PBMs, pharmacies, and insurers is worrisome. The three largest PBMs are each part of companies that include insurers and large pharmacies. So this gives them the opportunity to increase their profits by companies steering patients to pharmacies they own and then lowering the reimbursement rates to competing pharmacies.

Americans are feeling this pinch. They are seeing that they have higher drug costs, and they are seeing that PBMs are thriving. The three biggest PBMs are astoundingly profitable. Last year, Optum Rx raked in $116 billion for its owner, United Healthcare Group, contributing about 30 percent of the company's total revenue.

PBMs have leveraged their market power and lack of transparency to benefit themselves at the expense of patients and certainly-- certainly--at the expense of independent pharmacies. They are happy to try to help the pharmacies in their vertical integration but certainly not the independent pharmacies, if you will, trying to put them out of business.

PBMs enrich themselves by manipulating the market for prescription drugs at every turn. We cannot be fooled when the PBM claims to reduce the cost of drugs by negotiating rebates from the drugmakers in charge in exchange for favorable insurance coverage through an insurance company they probably own.

I have been so frustrated by this in the past. It is like our organization--take, for example, King County. Someone comes to them and says: We will negotiate for King County employees a drug benefit, and we will give you a discount. But then they pocket two-thirds of the discount themselves--the PBM. That is what is going on here.

These rebates are part of their manipulative scheme to inflate and extract the value from the prescription drug market.

In a market that is free of this kind of manipulation or competition, you would have drugmakers, and they would be setting the formulary cost. They would help drive down price by having competition.

But we know the market isn't working right when the least expensive version of a drug is the least dispensed. That is right. You can tell how a market functions or if it is a great functioning market because-- why?--when prices are too high and there is supply, people put more supply in the market. But if the least expensive drug isn't being dispensed, that means somebody is trying to artificially keep those costs high.

This happens because PBMs control which drugs are included on a formulary, and they get a bigger cut through a larger rebate and higher copays when more expensive drugs are put on the list. This incentivizes drugmakers to inflate the prices of their drugs to appeal to the PBMs.

Who bears the brunt of all these inflated costs? The American consumer.

Another way PBMs manipulate the market is through abusive practices like spread pricing or clawbacks. Spread pricing is when a PBM reimburses a pharmacy one amount for filling a prescription and then charges the health plan a higher price and keeps the difference.

That is the scheme. That is the scheme of how they are making money. They basically say: Oh, this is the price. And they then charge the plan a higher amount.

This creates two problems: One, neither the pharmacy nor the plan knows what the other paid or was charged. So both parties lack the data on what a true price for the drug is. Second, this practice allows PBMs to squeeze more money out of the supply chain without anyone knowing how much.

They also claw back reimbursements from pharmacies after a claim is settled through direct and indirect remuneration fees, or what I call DIR fees, which have generic effective rates, or GER.

So, for example, an independent pharmacy in Seattle actually had to close because the PBMs said that this independent pharmacy owed $538,000 in reimbursements in a single year from these PBMs. They just came up with a number and said this is how much you owe us. So it is not surprising that independent pharmacies can't stay open with these kinds of tactics.

In just the last 18 months, 83 pharmacies in the State of Washington have closed. These practices have contributed to the creation of pharmacy deserts. In fact, Fortune magazine just wrote a story about this particular problem in the State of Washington.

There are now 86 towns in my State that are more than 10 miles from the nearest pharmacy. That means that roughly 450,000 people in my State live in an area where they have to drive 10 miles just to go to a pharmacy.

And we now rank sixth among all States for poor access to pharmacies. According to the Washington State Pharmacy Association, there are no more 24-hour pharmacies left in the city of Seattle.

So I am very concerned about the number of independent and community pharmacy closures in my State. I am also concerned about how insurance company middlemen and their unfair business practices have contributed to these closures.

Some might ask why hasn't anyone discovered these schemes or done something about it. Well, that is because PBMs shield their practices and profits by claiming that their data that they have is considered proprietary information.

But we must have laws on the books that make sure that the legal, manipulative schemes can help stop these players in the marketplace who have too much of a concentrated power.

PBMs cannot continue to operate in the dark while Americans see their prescription drugs rise and rise year after year. And that is why Senator Grassley and I introduced the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act, to shine light on these harmful practices, increase the transparency, and increase the accountability for pharmacy benefit managers.

The Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act directs the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on unfair and abusive schemes, such as the spread pricing or reimbursement clawbacks. It also mandates transparency for these PBMs and that they submit a report about these activities so that we can understand how they are basically moving other products that are not on the formulary placements. That is exactly how some of these schemes have operated.

It is important to have this help from the Federal Trade Commission. It is their job to stop these unfair practices. It is their job to hold PBMS accountable for manipulation of practices or prices and give the Agency more insight into this marketplace.

We cannot wait any longer to get this legislation passed. My bill has come out of the Commerce Committee with good bipartisan support, and it has bicameral support as well.

So we must keep the momentum going. I hope my colleagues here in the Senate will bring this Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act to the Senate floor when we return. Americans are hurting, and so are our pharmacists.

Our pharmacies themselves are places where information about our prescriptions are held to a high standard. I would hate to see Americans in such a concentrated market that all of our prescription drugs are bought online from one or two big suppliers, and that somehow is our delivery system.

I think pharmacists are a key part of our delivery system. Pharmacies are a key part of communities. And we shouldn't have big, concentrated players manipulating the prices of drugs and putting pharmacies out of business and raising these unbelievable prices on our consumers.

So I thank the President, and I hope our colleagues will consider getting this legislation in front of the Senate when we return.

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

Madam President, I have two 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:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 3960 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 747, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.