Floor Statements

Mr. President, let me join my friend and colleague Senator Kaine. We and some of the folks who are in the Gallery today were not sure if this day would ever come. Even in the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate, occasionally we get things right. And, boy oh boy, this is a day where we get things right on a civil rights basis, on a moral basis, and on a fairness basis.

To our friends who are representatives of some of the six Tribes who are finally going to be granted Federal recognition, we thank you for your patience, your perseverance, and your willingness to work with us and others.

This has become an issue over the last 20-plus years. Democrats and Republicans alike in Virginia have acknowledged the fact that these six Tribes, whose history predates any European settlement in this country, whose history goes back, as Senator Kaine mentioned, where they were recognized by the United Kingdom and recognized by the British Government when they controlled our country--but through a series of circumstances, in many cases abetted by a backwards-looking government earlier in the 20th

century in Virginia that discriminated against these Native Americans in ways that were outrageous, where in many ways records that told of their proud history in our Commonwealth were destroyed after the Civil War in fires and courthouses--these Tribes have persevered.

Today, finally, they are going to be granted Federal recognition and the respect that goes with that Federal recognition, and they will be granted certain additional opportunities in terms of special education, housing grants, affordable healthcare services, and most importantly, the ability to recover important artifacts in their history.

As has been mentioned, this bill has already passed the House. Rob Wittman, a Republican Member, has been a champion.

Senator Kaine and I, both as Governors--in that role of Governor, one of the things that happen every day--every Thanksgiving day, these Tribes come in and, in effect, pay their taxes to the Commonwealth of Virginia. While Virginia has recognized these Tribes for some time, every year when we would have this ceremony--one of the most moving ceremonies that I know I have participated in as Governor, and I think Senator Kaine and Senator Allen, who was also a champion on this issue before us--these Tribes would come in and say: When will the U.S. Government recognize our existence, our history, and our legacy? Well, that wait is finally over.

In a moment, I am going to be asking for unanimous consent, and the long, long wait will come to an end.

As in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Indian Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 984 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I know of no further debate on the measure.

I further ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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

Mr. President, I rise today concerned about the threats to the special counsel's critical investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible and reckless voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Mueller's investigation. At first, these calls came from the fringes of our political discourse--those who refuse to put our country and our security before base political instincts.

Earlier this year, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle were right to push back on these misdirected calls and urge that the special counsel be allowed to do his job without interference. However, in recent weeks, those voices seem to be growing in stridency and in volume. Just this weekend, one major news organization suggested that Special Counsel Mueller could be involved in a coup against the President. One senior adviser at the White House has now outrageously alleged that ``the fix was in against Donald Trump from the beginning.'' Those statements are reckless. They are inappropriate, and they are extremely worrying. They are also at odds with the President's own lawyers who have pledged to cooperate with the special counsel.

Beyond being irresponsible, the seemingly coordinated nature of these claims should alarm us all--particularly since, in recent days, these baseless accusations have been repeated by several Members of the House of Representatives.

I believe it is up to every Member of this institution, Republican or Democratic, to make a clear and unambiguous statement that any attempt by this President to remove Special Counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses in any effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities. These truly are red lines, and we simply cannot allow them to be crossed.

Let's take a moment to remember why Special Counsel Mueller was appointed in the first place and why it remains so critical that he be permitted to finish his job without obstruction.

Recall, last spring, when we were all reeling from a series of confounding actions by this President, beginning with the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey on May 9. Mr. Comey was fired just 2 months after publicly revealing the FBI's ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign and--as we would find out later--after several attempts by this President to improperly influence Director Comey.

Try to put yourself back into those dangerous days. Director Comey's dismissal was met with confusion and widespread condemnation. We needed a stabilizing action from our Nation's law enforcement leadership. We needed some certainty that the facts would be found and brought to light, regardless of what they were.

Eight days after Mr. Comey's firing, Trump appointee and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation into ``any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump'' and ``any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.''

His appointment reassured Americans that there will be a full and thorough law enforcement investigation. The announcement was met with support on both sides of the aisle and received nearly universal praise. In fact, many of the same people who are attacking him today praised Mr. Mueller's appointment just months ago.

Indeed, there is much to praise. The fact is, Robert Mueller has impeccable credentials as a man of the law. He has assembled a team that includes some of the Nation's best investigators, and he is leading the investigation with the professionalism it deserves.

Mr. Mueller is a dedicated Vietnam war veteran and a lifelong Republican, appointed to his current role by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, also a Republican. In fact, all of the major players to date in this investigation--former Director Comey, current FBI Director Rosenstein, and even Attorney General Sessions, who has had to recuse himself--are all Republicans. The charges that some have made that somehow Democratic political bias has crept into this investigation are baseless, given the makeup of the leadership team.

In recent weeks, much has been made of some political opinions expressed by an FBI agent during the election last year. This specious line of argument conveniently ignores the fact that as soon as Mr. Mueller learned about those comments, he immediately removed that agent in question from the investigation. If anything, this incident only adds to Mr. Mueller's credibility as a fair and independent investigator.

I stand here as the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We are in the midst of our own investigation into Russian incursion, and I am proud of the way Chairman Burr and our committee has taken on this very difficult task.

We have made tremendous progress uncovering the facts of Russian interference in our elections. Our committee's work helped expose the dark underbelly of disinformation on many of our social media platforms. We have successfully pressed for the full accounting of Russian cyber efforts to target our State electoral systems, and, despite the initial denials of any Russian contacts during the election, this committee's efforts have helped uncover numerous and troubling high-level engagements between the Trump campaign and Russian affiliates, many of which have only been revealed in recent months.

We have a lot of work to do. Our committee has gone out of its way to ensure continued bipartisan backing for this effort, and I am committed to seeing the effort through. However, it should be very clear that our committee cannot and will not stand as a substitute for Mr. Mueller's investigation.

As Chairman Burr and I have noted on numerous occasions, the FBI is responsible for determining any criminal activities related to this inquiry. As such, Mueller has already moved to indict two individuals and has negotiated two additional guilty pleas. This was an investigative path reserved solely for law enforcement, and it is essential that it be permitted to go on unimpeded.

The country no doubt remains severely divided on the question of the last election. However, the national security threat facing us today should demand that we rise above partisan differences. No matter the political divide, surely each of us--and all Americans--should want to know the truth of what happened during last year's election, and, no doubt, we want to know that as quickly as possible.

The President has long called the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election a witch hunt, and he has done much to discredit the intelligence community's unanimous assessment of Russian interference in our election. The failure of this White House to lead a whole-of-government approach to prevent this type of election interference in the future--either by the Russians or some other adversary--defies understanding. The President's refusal to accept the intelligence community's assessment and his blatant disregard for ensuring that Russia never again infiltrates our election process has been unnerving and cause for significant concern.

In recent days, the President has said he is not considering removing Special Counsel Mueller, but the President's track record on this front is a source of concern. I am certain most of my colleagues believed he wouldn't fire Jim Comey either.

Firing Mr. Mueller, or any other of the top brass involved in this investigation, would not only call into question this administration's commitment to the truth but also to our most basic concept, the rule of law. It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.

In the United States of America, no one--no one--is above the law, not even the President. Congress must make clear to the President that firing the special counsel or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses is unacceptable and would have immediate and significant consequences.

I hope my concerns are unfounded--in many ways, I had hoped I would never have to make this kind of speech--but there are troubling signs. It is critical that all of us, as elected officials and as citizens, speak out against these threats now before it is too late.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, first of all, I thank my friend, the Senator from Rhode Island, for two things--one, for being a constant voice on the need for us to diversify our energy sources and supplies and for recognizing the enormous challenge around climate change.

I come from a State that is not too dissimilar from his in terms of its having a great deal of shoreline. We see the effects of the changing climate each and every day. At high tide, we have parts of the city of Norfolk that have never before flooded that flood on a regular basis.

On a sunny day.

We have a church that has to regularly change its schedule of worship, not because the Lord has asked them to change the schedule of worship but because it floods on a regular basis.

Let me also thank him for his comments about the tax legislation. I share his concern as somebody who feels very strongly that there is a right way and a wrong way to do tax reform. Unfortunately, the product I believe we will be voting on next week, not only the provisions the Senator from Rhode Island talked about, will also add close to $2 trillion to our debt.

In many ways, it does not even take care of the problems we are supposed to solve, in terms of the ability of companies to bring back profits from overseas in a way to reinvest in this country. Frankly, it exacerbates the problem where companies can further hide their profits abroad.

I share his doubt about whether our colleagues will join us in starting anew, but if they would, I would join with them and others in trying to make sure we do tax reform in a fair, balanced way that is fiscally responsible. I thank Senator Whitehouse for his comments.

Mr. President, I stand today to talk about a different subject; that is, to stand in solidarity with over 12,000 of my Virginia constituents who are students, entrepreneurs, members of our military, and individuals who have the distinction of being Dreamers, like the nearly 800,000 Dreamers across our country.

These people, many of them young folks, are worried about facing deportation--not for anything they have done wrong but because the vast majority of these young people were brought to this country as children many years ago. Today, unfortunately, due to no actions of their own, they are caught up in some of the worst of our Nation's politics.

Up until this past September, these young people were living in the United States legally under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program or what has been called DACA. As part of this program, these young people came out of the shadows, paid a fee, went through an extensive background check, and complied with all the other requirements of the DACA Program. Unfortunately, Dreamers and their families are now in a perilous situation because, unfortunately, President Trump ended the DACA Program, literally putting hundreds of thousands of these young people in a state of legal limbo.

Unfortunately, while a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to work through this problem, we hear the Republican leadership has done nothing to provide that permanent solution for these hard-working young Americans. That is who they are, folks who have lived here oftentimes for decades. This is not how the greatest country on Earth should treat anyone, especially these young people who, in most cases, have only one nation they have called home, and that is our country, the United States.

I am not the only one who thinks this. As I mentioned, there are colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have been coming to the floor for weeks making this point. The fact is, more than three-quarters of Americans of all political stripes support a pathway to permanent legal status for Dreamers. Here in the Senate, my friends, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Dick Durbin, have introduced the bipartisan Dream Act and have been actively working toward its passage.

In the Senate and the House, there are enough votes to pass this bipartisan legislation if leadership would only bring it to the floor, and that is just not the case in the Senate. Last week, my friend Congressman Scott Taylor, a fellow Virginian and a Republican, led a bipartisan group of 30 Members in the House again asking the House leadership to find a legislative solution--not next year, not next month but now.

Unfortunately, it seems like folks on the other side of the aisle would rather

treat this as a political issue and a political pawn to be negotiated, probably not even this year but at some future date. By doing so, they leave these young people in a state of limbo and really subject to a great deal of legal uncertainty. For many of these young people, as they cycle out of the program--close to 1,000 a week--even if we come up with a legal solution, their ability to rejoin the program and reclaim their legal status may be extinguished. The truth is, this is not just another political leverage point.

Let me take a moment or two and talk about some of the folks who are affected in my State--folks in my State, folks whom I call real Virginians.

I think about one young student from Northern Virginia, whom I chose as my guest to the President's State of the Union Address a few years ago. I was so impressed with her work ethic and her passion for improving the lives of others that I asked her to serve after that as an intern in my office, where she did great work serving fellow Virginians.

I think about a law student I met recently in Williamsburg who was born in England and brought here when she was just 1 year old. Right now, it is getting close to the holidays. She is probably tucked away in some corner of the library studying for her law school exams. She told me she wanted to get that law degree to help fellow Virginians when she graduates. I say we shouldn't stand in her way.

I think again about a young man I met from Newport News whose mother brought him to the United States when he was just 6 years old. Sadly, his mother passed away before he graduated from high school, but I know when he walked across the stage of that graduation as valedictorian of his class, his mom would have been proud. Hopefully, if this program is renewed when he graduates from Virginia Tech next year with a degree in engineering, he will put those skills to work.

These are just a few examples about the smart, successful, young Virginians who also carry the categorization of being called Dreamers. The truth is, in Virginia, we have a vibrant and growing immigrant community that contributes to all facets of life in the Commonwealth.

While I talk today about Dreamers, I also want to make mention of another program that is caught up in some of these last-minute negotiations, the so-called TPS individuals--oftentimes individuals from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and certain folks who have lived in this country for decades whose legal status is also in jeopardy.

The truth is, whether they are a Dreamer or someone who has been a beneficiary of the TPS Program, the truth is, immigrants in Virginia are all across our community. They are doctors, caretakers, small business owners, high-tech entrepreneurs. Quite honestly, they are also our next-door neighbors. They are motivated, talented individuals who want to help and continue contributing to the Commonwealth of Virginia and to our country.

What we tell them every day that we fail to act, every day that more and more of these young people fall out of eligibility, we tell them, in pretty direct ways, that actually even though they have served, studied, and worked here, that at least some in this Chamber don't really want them here. They would rather urge them to take their talents elsewhere.

As somebody who has been in business longer than I have been in politics, I can state that these young people are an enormous asset, and urging them to leave the Commonwealth or our country is a bad business decision.

As I said, unfortunately, with every day that passes, more and more Dreamers face the very real and terrifying prospect of being oftentimes sent to a country they barely know or may not know at all for an offense they were too young to even know they committed. That is just not right.

It is not right that their lives should hang in the balance as they wait and wait and wait for Congress to solve this problem--a problem that I know, if it were brought to the floor, would receive overwhelming bipartisan support. These young people can't wait any longer and shouldn't wait any longer. It is time to pass the Dream Act right now.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to join other colleagues from both sides of the aisle to talk about this tax debate. We don't do tax reform nearly enough here in the United States. It seems we have taken it on about every 35 years whether we need to or not. But if there is one lesson we have learned from previous tax reform efforts, it is that while they can do a lot of good, they can also do a lot of harm.

I have to start by expressing my extraordinarily deep frustration with the process we have gone through. Today we are considering a bill that was drafted in secret, designed with more gimmicks and loopholes than I have ever seen, and is being rushed through the process without input from all of us on this side of the aisle and without even appropriate analysis of its true financial impact.

In many ways, to quote the President, what got us here is the worst of Washington. If you want to see swamp 101, look at the process of this tax bill. It is a 300-page tax bill that was released on the eve of a holiday weekend, only days before it was marked up in committee. Over a 4-day markup, two significant rewrites of this bill were presented. One consisted of over 100 pages of changes, and a second was released a mere 30 minutes before Members were asked to vote on its myriad of provisions. Now, less than 2 weeks later, we are considering that bill or a variation of it on the Senate floor. We are voting to proceed to the bill later today and then maybe on amendments tomorrow, before we even have any analysis from JCT.

We know that near the end of the debate on the floor, another bill will

magically appear from the majority leader's office without any time for those of us who want to do tax reform to have a chance to genuinely review or analyze its provisions. I believe it makes this process enormously dishonest.

I know my friend from Delaware has just come on. I will speak quickly because I know he will raise some of these same concerns.

One of the things I have been most involved with since I have been here in the Senate is trying to grapple with our Nation's overwhelming debt. We are a country that has run up close to $20 trillion in debt, and both sides--both sides--have been a party to that over the last 70 years.

But what I have heard from colleagues on both sides of the aisle is that when you are in that deep of a hole, you ought to stop digging, and that we need to make sure that if we are going to do tax reform, we do it in a fiscally responsible way.

This legislation is the absolute opposite of any kind of fiscal responsibility under anybody's guideline. It starts with a $1.5 trillion acknowledgement that that money will somehow magically appear through magical growth. But when you peel that away a little bit, it is bad enough that it is not really $1.5 trillion in additional debt that we are adding, the real number is $2.2 trillion. Let me tell you why. Off of the over $1.4 trillion of additional debt that is added, that alone will generate more than $230 billion of additional interest payments over the next decade, raising the cost of the bill from over $1.4 trillion to roughly $1.7 trillion. And then, in an effort that really takes the cake in a place where both sides have been known to use gimmicks, this legislation includes 37 different expiring provisions--provisions that are popular, provisions that a number of my colleagues have said give middle-class tax relief. The interesting thing is, all of these provisions are due to expire in 5 to 6 years, within the 10-year window.

Rather than acknowledging the true costs of the bill, what people have said is, we know what we are going to create. We are going to create a whole new series of fiscal cliffs, in the neighborhood of $500 billion, that the expectation will be that it will become so popular that Congress will go ahead and have to extend these provisions, again, without paying for them.

In terms of gimmicks, don't take my word for it; you only need to listen to the words of the President's own OMB Director, Mick Mulvaney, who recently acknowledged that the tax bill had a lot of gimmicks to it. Well, if we add that over $500 billion and the $230 billion of additional interest and the $1.4 trillion that we start with, what we are talking about today is a $2.2 trillion addition to our debt.

All my friends who for years have stood with me on the floor of this Senate and spoken out against adding this additional burden to our kids and grandkids, I hope they will take a moment and rethink their support for this legislation.

Some have asked: Well, how will this get paid for? I believe there might be some dynamic growth. I believe there might be some addition from some smart tax reform that would add to the growth of our economy but nothing near what this bill assumes. In fact, it is even worse than that in certain ways. Not only will this add over $2 trillion to our debt and deficit, but we have even had the audacity of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Mnuchin, who said that this bill is going to be so good for our economy, it is going to decrease our debt by $1 trillion. Yet there is no responsible budget projection of any economist from left to right that makes any kind of assumption that would make that kind of prediction true at all. And, if we go back and look in recent American history, when you pay for tax cuts with borrowed money, you end up with a pretty bad situation.

Many of my friends on the other side of the aisle like to cite Ronald Reagan. I think President Reagan was a great President, in many ways. President Reagan's 1981 tax cut did provide a short-term stimulus, but then that stimulus ran out and our debt and deficits grew dramatically, and President Reagan himself had to raise taxes in 1982 and 1984.

Likewise, again, President Bush, in 2001, inherited a surplus. He promised to give the magic of tax cuts that would grow our economy. Instead, we ended up with very little job growth and a debt and deficit now that is rapidly approaching the full size of our economy.

When we look at the scoring of the effects of this kind of tax cut, we see that the Tax Policy Center did a dynamic score, saying: How can we build in growth that would come from a tax cut? They said again that this bill would cost $1.5 trillion.

The Penn-Wharton Budget Model--again, an organization that is well respected by both sides of the aisle--did a dynamic score on this legislation as well. Again, they are saying the bill would still cost $1.5 trillion.

Congress's official scorekeeper, the group that we look to for outside advice, the Joint Committee on Taxation--we are rushing this bill through so quickly that we have not even allowed our official scorekeeper to come up with a score.

This is not the way to do a once-in-a-generation tax reform process.

The truth is, when you do a tax cut with borrowed money, in periods similar to where we are right now--relatively full employment--there is no historical precedent at all in which you will see any kind of economic growth.

Again, don't take my word for it. Alan Greenspan, the respected Fed Chair, pointed this out just within the last 2 weeks: Tax cuts paid for with borrowed money do not provide the kind of growth that this budget projects and that this tax reform bill projects.

I could go through a whole litany of other concerns with this legislation. I, for one, believe we do need to do international tax reform. I, for one, believe we need a corporate tax rate that is more competitive. I, for one, believe we need repatriation and we need to bring back tax profits that have gone abroad. But we have seen analyses recently that show that this legislation may actually increase the amount of American jobs that are pushed overseas, for example, because of the average of tax rates in their so-called territorial system, where a company can go ahead and build that factory in a relatively high tax State, move their intellectual property to a tax haven like the Cayman Islands, average out the tax bill combined, and end up paying our country nothing and, at the same time, continue to see job loss around our country.

There are a group of us--close to 17 of us, and many of them are my colleagues who are on the floor today--who came together yesterday and said to our Republican colleagues: Time out for a few minutes. We will work with you to do a responsible tax reform effort. We share many of the same goals. But, unfortunately, the process we are going through here today--to reach some kind of arbitrary Christmas present for the President--is not the way we ought to be doing responsible tax reform.

I hope my colleagues will reconsider. I hope they will take the offer of the 17 of us who said that we will look at corporate tax reform, we will look at lower rates, we will look at repatriation, we will look at ways to make businesses more competitive, and join with us to do this in a way in which we can all be proud. If we are going to do tax reform only once every 30 or 35 years, we sure as heck owe the American people a product that we can all be proud of, not a product that is rushed through with one party only and that, at the end of the day, will leave our kids and grandkids paying the bill for decades to come.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me thank my friend, the Senator from Delaware, for his kind comments. More importantly, I thank him for his good work that he brings to the issue of fiscal responsibility. Before he served here in the Senate, he served as the head of one of the largest counties in Delaware. Whether you serve as a county chairman or as a Governor, you are used to the notion that you have to pay your bills. I very much appreciate his support for this amendment, that of keeping pay-go in place.

Let me also echo that I absolutely support his notion that the American citizens in Puerto Rico deserve not to be forgotten and deserve to receive the same attention we have bestowed upon Americans in Texas or in Florida or in Louisiana or elsewhere around our great country when they were victims of national disasters. I hope the Senator from Delaware gets a chance to submit his amendment.

While Puerto Rico is not receiving sufficient attention, there is another American territory nearby, the U.S. Virgin Islands, that also has those same kinds of challenges. If the Senator gets a chance to submit that amendment, I hope he will include the U.S. Virgin Islands in there as well.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1138, which I filed at the desk.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of my amendment to strike language in this budget resolution that would exempt the $1.5 trillion tax reconciliation instructions from Senate rules that are meant to prevent this body from dramatically increasing our debts and deficits.

I know that everybody is coming back from lunch, and they probably feel pretty good and do not want to get indigestion, but remember, our country is sitting on top of a $20 trillion debt at this point, an accumulation in which both parties have unclean hands.

In the years that I have been in this institution, I have worked with my Republican colleagues on issues that try to address debts and deficits, but there is the notion that we are about to take on a budget resolution this afternoon and start with the premise that the rules that are there to try to protect us from being fiscally irresponsible are going to be blown off at the outset. To say that we are going to start with $1.5 trillion in the hole before we start counting is beyond irresponsible.

I thank my friend, the Senator from Delaware, for joining me in offering this amendment.

I am pleased to yield to my friend, the Senator from Texas, for a question as long as I still get a chance to finish my comments.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his comment.

Let me say where I might agree with some of Senator Cornyn's principles. I believe that we need a more simplified Tax Code. I believe that a goal of our Tax Code ought to put American business on a competitive basis with those of other countries around the world. I believe, as well, that to do that, one of the goals of tax reform ought to be to lower corporate rates. I will point out, though, three quick things so that I may get back to finishing my comments.

One, let's actually look at where America's tax burden stands versus those of other nations that actually have lower corporate tax rates, for example. Out of the 34 OECD nations--35 now--if you were to listen to some folks on this floor, you would think that America must rank at the top of that list, but we are 31 out of 35.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, since I had a few moments and I was trying to give courtesy to answer my colleague, for an additional 5 minutes.

Five minutes to answer the Senator's question and to make my very short statement.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado. During his time in the Senate, he has been an advocate for stronger, more diligent policies with the rogue State of North Korea, and I appreciate very much his comments this morning.

(The remarks of Mr. Warner pertaining to the introduction of S.J. Res. 49 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, I also stand today in solidarity and support of the residents of Texas and Louisiana as they recover from the epic and deadly storms and flooding.

As a former Governor, I know well the devastation and loss brought by natural disasters and the ongoing challenge of helping people rebound and recover. The top obligation of elected officials at the local, State, and Federal levels is to do all we can to keep our people safe and to be present and supportive in helping them get back on their feet after a disaster.

As we work toward dealing with the victims of Harvey, may I also express concern about the coming challenges placed by the next hurricane, Irma. Today or tomorrow, it will hit the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and by the weekend it may make landfall in Florida. So again, my thoughts go out to those potential victims in advance.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak on the issue that has consumed more of my time and energy during my time in the Senate than any other, and that is the state of our Nation's finances. As a member of the Budget Committee and the Finance Committee, I wanted an opportunity to speak about the looming convergence of several important fiscal deadlines.

The government's ability to continue borrowing money, the so-called debt ceiling--which is an oxymoron since the debt ceiling is simply going ahead and authorizing payment for bills that have already been incurred, but more on that later--obviously must be raised this fall, and the budget year runs out on September 30, the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the White House continues to talk about working on comprehensive tax reform this fall, even though, at least to date, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Senate Republicans, are making it pretty clear they are not going to actually do a major tax reform because they are going to have to rely on a more modest approach, an approach that will require only 51 votes. That sounds as though what may end up coming from the majority will be more of a tax cut than tax reform.

In mid-July, President Trump told an interviewer: ``After healthcare, taxes are going to be so easy.''

Well, we will see. Making the numbers work, getting the incentives right, making the appropriate tradeoffs--rather than being as easy as the President says, comprehensive tax reform, last done in 1986, actually is more like solving a Rubik's Cube. How this body chooses to act in the face of these deadlines--the debt ceiling, the end of the budget year, and tax reform--will tell us a lot about the fiscal priorities of the House and Senate leadership and the priorities of the current administration in responsibly addressing America's longstanding fiscal challenges.

Even though we are just back from recess, let me share with you what I believe are some very hard truths.

First, nondefense discretionary spending made up only 16 percent of

our 2016 budget. By contrast, mandatory programs--Social Security and Medicare, in particular--made up 39 percent, and the total is 63 percent because there are other mandatory programs included. On a going-forward basis, Social Security and Medicare will make up 51 percent of spending growth over the next 10 years. Over half of all future spending growth will be on automatic pilot.

The first hard truth is, we cannot dramatically boost military spending, cut taxes, invest in infrastructure, and leave our two largest spending programs--Medicare and Social Security--untouched in any type of fiscally responsible way. That means we will have to make dramatic cuts.

The truth is, there will have to be dramatic cuts. Where will those come from? The nondefense discretionary spending. That means programs for people who work for lower wages or otherwise struggle by--all of those programs will be on the chopping block.

For example, in his fiscal year 2018 budget blueprint, the President proposed eliminating funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission. In my mind, this is the height of hypocrisy. The President did extraordinarily well in the parts of my State that are a part of Appalachia. He promised a renewal for folks who used to work in the coal mines. Yet in his first budget, instead of offering renewal and hope, he slashed one of the most successful, long-term, bipartisan- supported programs, the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has invested millions in communities throughout Appalachia over the years.

The President's same fiscal year 2018 budget completely eliminated a program that helps struggling families heat their homes during the coldest months of winter. Again, all of those cuts come out of nondefense discretionary spending, which, in English, means education, support programs, roads, R&D. All of those programs will be subject to cuts within the current budget fiscal outline.

Here are additional facts. Our national debt is approaching $20 trillion, and debt held by the public as a percentage of the GDP is the highest it has been since we emerged from World War II. The Federal Government spends more money than it collects in revenue. I work in the only place in America where, occasionally, people high-five each other because the deficit on an annual basis got down to $400 or $500 billion. No place in the world would operate with those kinds of economics.

By 2029, every dollar of tax revenue will go to programs, in effect, on automatic spending. Those mandatory programs I mentioned earlier, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are all good programs. But the truth is, if we don't look at those programs, as well, for reform and if we don't understand that we also need to invest in roads, infrastructure, and other support programs, that means by 2029 every dollar we spend on those programs, roads, education, research, and also defense will be borrowed money.

The truth is, we have a very inefficient and outdated tax structure. Let me be the first to acknowledge that and also acknowledge that the goals of tax reform are better efficiency, more transparency. Those are goals I can embrace. It hasn't been updated in more than three decades.

The truth is, on both sides of the aisle there is bipartisan agreement that we need tax reform. I think we can all agree that we have a backward tax system. As a matter of fact, in many ways we have the world's combination of the worst. We have an incredibly complicated tax system with, nominally, on the business side the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Yet if you look at the revenues we collect--and I am not talking about business taxes but individual taxes as well. If you look at the revenues we collect as a percentage of our overall economy, where do you think America lands? If you listen to many, you would think America must be the highest taxed State in the whole world. If you look at the 34 industrial nations that make up the OECD, the United States of America's State, local, and Federal taxes combined are 31st out of 34.

I hear many times from colleagues on the other side of the aisle, complimenting, for example, Germany and other countries around the world on their training and infrastructure. I am not suggesting that we move to their tax systems, but they raise the percentage of their GDP some 5, 6, 7, 8 percent--or more--in taxes than we do. I am not saying that we should duplicate Europe, but if we are going to compare apples to apples, we actually have the world's combination of the worst--the most complicated tax system, yet we raise at the bottom of the barrel in terms of revenue.

Let me be clear. The fact is, there is blame on both sides of the aisle. This $20 trillion of debt did not emerge overnight. This has been growing for 50 years. Both political parties bear plenty of responsibility. The challenge right now is not only our annual deficit, which was the subject of a lot of discussion when our deficit was over $1 billion, but in a sense, even though the deficit is down, what we have to grapple with now is the accumulated debt. So even though there are those of us who may not have been here for decades, we have to bear the responsibility of those who came before us. The accumulated debt in our country is $20 trillion.

Now, we have not felt the full effect of that debt because, since 2009, we have had the advantage of there being record low interest rates, but as we have seen from the Fed and as we have seen from many people on both sides of the aisle who are encouraging the Fed to go ahead and raise interest rates, the days of the luxury of not having to deal with the debt service of our accumulated debt will soon be behind us.

So what does that mean? It means that not ``if'' but ``when'' interest rates go up 1 percent--in financial terms, what is called 100 basis points and, in English, what is called 1 percent--the Federal Government will be charged an additional $160 billion a year in annual interest payments just on that accumulated debt--$160 billion in additional debt service for every 1 point rise in interest rates. If you were to see a spike in interest rates of 3 or 4 or 5 percent, which we saw in earlier times in our country--I do not think that will happen--it would basically bankrupt the Federal Government.

The truth is, even that relatively minor 1-percent increase in the interest rate and the additional $160 billion in debt service comes right off the top. That payment comes before we pay Social Security, before we pay our military, before we pay for roads. That $160 billion is more than we currently spend on the Departments of Education and Homeland Security combined, and that is not an obligation we can avoid paying.

As I mentioned, here is the truth. Fiscal discipline should not depend on who sits in the White House, and fiscal discipline should not depend on who controls Congress. There were many of us who were involved in the so-called Gang of 6, who advocated for the Simpson- Bowles plan a number of years back. It was not perfect, but it would have gotten us out of this challenge.

The truth is, every day, every month, every year we wait to address this structural imbalance, the problem only gets worse. With the tools we have, in plain old balance sheet terms--I have been a business guy longer than I have been in politics--you have to either raise revenue or cut spending, which means the cuts that will have to take place or the reforms that will be required to take place in our entitlement programs or the amount of revenues that will have to be raised will only make it more difficult. As I have said, as to the issue of the deficit and the debt, neither party has clean hands. Frankly, memories in this town are conveniently short.

In the coming weeks, as we head toward the possible convergence of the debt ceiling, government funding, tax reform, and a government shutdown, here is what I have urged my colleagues to pay close attention to.

First, the White House and my Senate colleagues should avoid using rosy scenarios just to make their proposals look fiscally responsible when they are not. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has said--Congress's official scorekeeper, and let me acknowledge again that, no matter who is in charge, everybody likes to blame the CBO, but it is our referee--it expects our GDP growth to average a little above 1.8 percent per year. I hope we can do better, but that is what the referee says. The Trump administration's budget is based on 7 straight

years of 3 percent growth. Now, that is a great aspiration, but any responsible business would not base its assumptions of its budget on a going-forward basis of rejecting our official referee, the CBO, and in effect plucking a number out of the air.

Why do they do it?

Those rosy and unrealistic economic assumptions allow the administration to claim a fictional $3 trillion in additional tax revenue over the next 10 years. That is the differential in 1.2 percent of additional growth in 7 years straight. The administration, in its proposal, then uses this fake revenue to cloak additional tax cuts and spending cuts under the banner of fiscal responsibility. That is wrong and irresponsible, and no responsible organization or business would take those actions.

Second, the administration cannot shift costs to others and then claim it as a savings. Look no further than what the Trump budget does with Federal programs for the poor. Over the next decade, it calls for slashing more than $600 billion from Medicaid, and that does not include the additional cuts to Medicaid that were proposed in its ill- fated healthcare reform. The truth is, Medicaid is a partnership between the Federal Government and the States, and as a former Governor, I am aware of this in real time. So a $600 billion cut at the Federal level has a direct impact on State Medicaid responsibilities. It simply squeezes the balloon, forcing the States to either dramatically up their shares of the cost to Medicaid or dramatically cut back services.

Third, the administration claims that its tax reform plan will pay for itself and stimulate so much economic growth that it will not add to the deficit. This is maybe the most spurious claim of all made by the administration. Here is the basic problem. The truth is, at least what the Trump proposal has put out so far has really very little to do with comprehensive tax reform. Instead, it is a two-page wish list of tax cuts--a wannabe of every interest group that would like to get its special deal in the Tax Code to its advantage. Every time we promised tax cuts would pay for themselves, it has not worked out.

Let's remember that Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cut provided a short- term stimulus, but then deficits ballooned, and President Reagan had to raise taxes in 1982 and 1984. Likewise, President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 provided that quick sugar high, but ultimately they had little impact on economic growth. Instead, the Bush tax cuts produced large deficits into the trillions and trillions of dollars that moved us from a budget surplus on an annual basis, which he inherited, to the point at which, when President Obama came in, the deficits were approaching $1 trillion a year.

Fourth, paying for tax cuts through deficit spending is a really bad idea. It will make reaching any responsible fiscal goal that much more difficult. Also, studies show, tax cuts that add to the deficits are worse for growth over the long term than those that are paid for and actually can reduce growth over time. So any lawmaker who says he supports not paying for tax cuts should also have to explain why he thinks adding to our national debt is a good idea--a national debt that already stands at a record high, a national debt that is already at $20 trillion, a national debt that when interest rates will go up, which they will, will end up sucking out $160 billion a year in additional payments on an annual basis just for a 1-percent increase in interest rates.

Fifth, it would be foolish to try to balance the budget by shortchanging investments that actually strengthen our economy and our competitiveness over the long term. The budget proposals we have seen from the administration and the House Republican leadership takes a meat cleaver to a couple of the key areas that actually government should be invested more in--research and development, education and workforce training, and infrastructure. As a former business guy, as somebody who has invested in more businesses, created public companies, was a venture capitalist for almost two decades, I have looked at businesses, and I have based my willingness to invest on whether they had good plans in terms of investing in their workforces, investing in their plants and equipment, and investing and staying ahead of the competition. For a government, that means, with regard to the workforce, investing in education. When investing in plants and equipment, that means infrastructure. Staying ahead of the competition means investing in research and development.

Let's put it like this. I would never have invested in a business that spends less than 10 percent of its revenues on those critical investments. That is not the way for our country to make responsible investments either. The truth is, the Trump proposals would take our current investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development to way less than 10 percent of our total revenues.

Finally, we can achieve fiscally responsible and bipartisan tax reform, and I actively look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on these reforms. There is no area I have spent more time on, and I think I bring something to the table as both a former Governor and, more importantly, perhaps as somebody who has built businesses for more than two decades.

I also strongly suggest that nothing could help our economy more than a bipartisan agreement on a responsible path to making sure we do not simply salute when our deficit is only $400 billion or $500 billion a year but when we actually start to bring that deficit down.

Those are the challenges that are before us. In many ways, we will start to see the outlines of those challenges this month. I look forward to actually trying to move the ball forward on these very important issues.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to welcome all my colleagues back to the Capitol. Obviously, we have a busy time in front of us.

I would appreciate a moment of personal privilege to thank my colleagues--including the Senator from Colorado--who reached out to me in the wake of the horrible events 4 weeks ago in Charlottesville, VA. I appreciated the messages of support for the Charlottesville community and the bipartisan condemnation of the White nationalists and anti- Semitic activists who chose my State and the home of the author of the Declaration of Independence to show the world their hateful, misguided, and violent beliefs.

I have partnered with my fellow Virginian, Senator Kaine, and with Senator Gardner, Senator Isakson, and others on a bipartisan basis to create a resolution condemning the hatred and violence we saw on display in Charlottesville.

Our resolution condemns the White nationalists and White supremacists, the KKK, and anti-Semitic groups. Our resolution also honors the memory of Heather Heyer and the two Virginia State police officers, Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper Berke Bates, who lost their lives in Charlottesville. Our bipartisan resolution also calls upon the Trump administration to do more than track the recent and distressing increase in these violent discriminatory attacks but to actually counter these efforts with a coordinated response that draws upon all the resources of our Federal Government.

Our Nation is better than the vileness and violence we saw in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12. Our Nation also deserves clear and unequivocal condemnation of racist and discriminatory attacks from our Nation's leaders.

We are introducing the resolution today, and I encourage my colleagues to show their support for the people of Charlottesville and the people of the Commonwealth by cosponsoring this initiative.

Mr. President, I want to welcome all my colleagues back to the Capitol. Obviously, we have a busy time in front of us.

I would appreciate a moment of personal privilege to thank my colleagues--including the Senator from Colorado--who reached out to me in the wake of the horrible events 4 weeks ago in Charlottesville, VA. I appreciated the messages of support for the Charlottesville community and the bipartisan condemnation of the White nationalists and anti- Semitic activists who chose my State and the home of the author of the Declaration of Independence to show the world their hateful, misguided, and violent beliefs.

I have partnered with my fellow Virginian, Senator Kaine, and with Senator Gardner, Senator Isakson, and others on a bipartisan basis to create a resolution condemning the hatred and violence we saw on display in Charlottesville.

Our resolution condemns the White nationalists and White supremacists, the KKK, and anti-Semitic groups. Our resolution also honors the memory of Heather Heyer and the two Virginia State police officers, Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper Berke Bates, who lost their lives in Charlottesville. Our bipartisan resolution also calls upon the Trump administration to do more than track the recent and distressing increase in these violent discriminatory attacks but to actually counter these efforts with a coordinated response that draws upon all the resources of our Federal Government.

Our Nation is better than the vileness and violence we saw in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12. Our Nation also deserves clear and unequivocal condemnation of racist and discriminatory attacks from our Nation's leaders.

We are introducing the resolution today, and I encourage my colleagues to show their support for the people of Charlottesville and the people of the Commonwealth by cosponsoring this initiative.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 222 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, for several years now I have regularly come to this floor to publicly acknowledge the contributions made by our great Federal employees. This is a tradition I inherited from one of our former colleagues, Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware. Senator Kaufman, who had been a longtime staffer himself before he served as a Senator, would come to this floor on a regular basis to acknowledge and celebrate the tireless work and occasional heroics performed by many of our Federal employees. When Senator Kaufmann left this body, I gladly picked up that mantle and since then have come to the floor to draw attention to the extraordinary contributions of many of our Federal workers.

Over the past few years, this recognition has included a Social Security executive who eliminated a claims backlog to more quickly meet the urgent needs of thousands of Social Security recipients with grave terminal illnesses. We have also celebrated the work of a Department of Homeland Security official who saved taxpayers $750 million by streamlining her agency's procurement processes, and we proudly highlighted the work of a group of engineers at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, who, in 2010, designed a capsule that proved to be crucial in saving the lives of 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground.

Too often, our Federal workers are disrespected and demeaned by those who would attempt to use them as scapegoats for all that is allegedly wrong here in Washington. In reality, thousands of our Nation's dedicated civil servants work tirelessly every day to make our government work for and by the people.

Today, I wish to focus for a moment on one such group of outstanding Federal employees--those who work across our Nation's intelligence agencies to keep our Nation safe. Most of these professionals work in anonymity. Many risk their lives far away from the limelight. That is how it should be, for they are sworn to secrecy, even from their families and loved ones.

Over the last decade and a half, our intelligence professionals have increasingly been deployed overseas into war zones and other high- threat environments. Regrettably, some have made the highest sacrifice--laying down their lives for their country.

For their service, the risks they take and the sacrifices they make every day and because they do not hear this nearly enough, let me say ``thank you'' to the intelligence community.

As a Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, I am proud to represent thousands of current and former members of the intelligence community who live, work, or retire in our great State. I am also proud to represent these individuals in my current capacity as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

My colleagues and I on the committee have again submitted a resolution that marks July 26 as ``United States Intelligence Professionals Day.'' It was on that day 70 years ago that President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which laid the foundation for today's U.S. intelligence community. It was earlier in my statement that we passed that resolution. In recent years, our committee has had success, as we try to protect our intelligence community, with greater intelligence sharing and interoperability and because of investments in people and systems.

Many challenges remain--from the constant barrage of leaks to the security of the supply chain, to outdated processes for security clearances. I hope that this year's intelligence authorization bill will begin to address some of these issues.

Yet today it is the people in the intelligence community whom I want to acknowledge--their professionalism, their dedication to duty and country, their silent service, their sacrifices.

The men and women of the Nation's intelligence agencies deserve our respect and our thanks. They do not deserve to be belittled, disrespected, or threatened, and certainly not from their Commander in Chief.

To the men and women of the intelligence community--these great Federal employees--I conclude with this: We, simply, do not say it enough, but thank you for your service. Thank you for your dedication, and thank you for the great work you do--often unheralded.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, first of all, I thank my friend, the Senator from Massachusetts, for her comments today and for her relentless willingness to take on this fight and so many other fights that are so important to our country.

I come to join her call to point out some of the challenges in this legislation but also to make an appeal to my friends on the other side that this does not have to be the way we go. I have been one who has acknowledged for many years that there are challenges in the Affordable Care Act and that there are areas in which there could be common interests in finding solutions, but what we have before us now is a series of ``bad, badder, and baddest'' choices. In effect, we have a series of options that ask: Do we want to pass legislation that would take 16 million Americans off healthcare? Do we want to pass legislation that would take 22 million people off healthcare? Do we want to pass legislation that would take 32 million Americans off health insurance?

What parts of these choices do my Republican colleagues really embrace?

I think that in the 8 years I have been here, I have never seen a series of pieces of legislation that have been so unpopular, even before they are passed, than this litany of options from full repeal to skinny repeal and all of the variations in between.

As has been said by the Senator from Massachusetts and I know by the Senator from Washington State as well, the American people know this. That is why our phones are ringing in our offices and I know in our Senate Republican colleagues' offices. People are saying do not pass this kind of legislation.

I think about the fact that in the last couple of weeks, the parents of a number of children and young adults who have enormous disabilities have come to my office. In Virginia, we run a very skinny Medicaid Program. Frankly, it has not been very generous. Some of the individuals who have come to my office have waited 5, 6 years--one person has waited 10 years--to get a Medicaid waiver. These families, these children, in any of the proposals that have been put forward, would be the first to lose their coverage.

Family after family talked about the fact that, right now, both parents can work because they have a little bit of relief to take care of their disabled young adults in certain cases. In many cases, it is because the young adults can at least find someplace to do some productive work themselves. Yet, if they were to lose the Medicaid waiver, one of the parents would have to stop working, and the child would have to stop his form of employment. Net-net, it would be a loss not only to that family, but it would be a loss to our economy.

I mentioned that I used to be the Governor of Virginia. In 2016, Virginia received about $4 billion in Federal Medicaid funds--51 percent of the State's funding for people covered by Medicaid. As I mentioned, we are ranked one of the skinniest programs in the country. Unfortunately, we rank about 47th, I believe, in terms of our payments. Yet, under any of these proposals that decimate Medicaid, Virginia would be penalized for running an efficient program.

Again, one of the ironies of this is that the States that are the least penalized in the Republican proposals, in terms of the $700 billion-plus of Medicaid cuts, are actually the States that have more generous programs. They are often States that are represented by Democratic Governors. In what way do these proposals help our Republican colleagues or, for that matter, their constituents?

We have heard, as well, that the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Hospital Association, and AARP--a who's who of groups affiliated with healthcare--have come in and pleaded: Please, do not do this, this way--any one of these litany of proposals that we will be dealing with over the next few days.

From what I have heard on an individual basis--and I take enormous pride in the fact that in my time here--and sometimes it has even gotten me crosswise with the ranking member of the HELP Committee--I have tried to reach out on virtually every piece of legislation I have worked on to find a Republican partner. I actually got put in a timeout by a previous leader for doing too much of that.

What I hear from my Republican colleagues is, they do not want to own this. They know, in many ways, that this is walking the plank on what is both bad policy, bad politics, bad for their constituents, but the notion that somehow they have to provide a win for a President who has provided zero leadership before they can take some kind of August recess is literally the worst reasoning I have heard in my 8 years in the Senate as to why to pass a piece of legislation, particularly a piece of legislation that affects one-sixth of our economy. In many ways, it is almost one-third of the people who will be affected by some of these changes.

I think many of us were touched yesterday when we saw Senator McCain, who is an American hero and who himself is having to grapple with enormous healthcare challenges, come back to the floor and, frankly, admonish us appropriately but also say that while he was going to vote to start debate on this bill, the real way we ought to go about doing this is to roll up our sleeves, in a bipartisan fashion, and take this legislation back to where it should start, which is in the HELP Committee, where the Senator from Washington serves, in the Budget Committee, whose chairman is on the floor, and in the Finance Committee. Two of those three committees I have the honor of serving on.

I commit to my Republican colleagues that I will work with them. I have laid out a series of ideas, some of which they have endorsed in terms of there potentially being cheaper options, in terms of selections; the idea, as long as we protect consumers, of allowing insurance policies to be sold across State lines and other ideas in terms of reinsurance that other colleagues have worked on. There are a host of ideas we all agree on. Let's start with that premise, in terms of coming to a solution, not coming up with legislation that is cooked up behind closed doors that even my strongest Republican colleagues have acknowledged they cannot vote on when they only get an hour to look at it.

Think about all of the same criticisms--some of them valid--that were made against the Democrats when we passed the ACA; although I would continue to remind my friends that we had, literally, hundreds of amendments which were Republican amendments that were accepted into that legislation. It was not a perfect process, but let's learn from that and take this advantage right now. Listen to the American public, and let's work together to get this right.

The other item that will come about from any of this Republican legislation put forward, even from the skinniest of their proposals, would dramatically affect those individuals with preexisting conditions. I have three daughters. One of my daughters has juvenile diabetes. She has had it for 18 years. Another daughter has asthma and a very strange set of allergic reactions that have actually caused her to have been hospitalized 38 times in the last 40 months.

I am an extraordinarily lucky individual. I know that both through health insurance and because I had the resources, every time my two children got sick, I could make sure they got the medical attention they deserved. I cannot imagine talking to any Virginia family or Washington family or Wyoming family or Arkansas family who has a child with those same afflictions and trying to explain to them that my kids who have juvenile diabetes, asthma, and allergic reactions--through no fault of their own and that have caused this number of hospitalizations--have a right to healthcare and that their kids who have preexisting conditions do not have that right.

Our country is much better than this. We can figure out a way to get this right, but we are not going to get it right if we continue to have this ploy of one closed-door, cooked-up deal after another that is put forward, with no review and no real attempt to find a common solution.

I do not come to the floor that often, and I do not often talk about the medical needs of my family. This is for the sake of not only my kids who get the coverage they need and deserve but for

all the kids who now get the coverage they did not have prior to the ACA and who have it now. It is the idea that insurance companies cannot discriminate against you because you have preexisting conditions.

Let's see if we can make sure we maintain that commitment. In the greatest country in the world, as Senator McCain so eloquently put it yesterday, let's see if we can work through to a way that makes this body, once again, the greatest deliberative body in the world. Let's see if we can find that common ground that would allow us to put forward legislation that at the end of the day, we would all be proud of. That is a goal worth working on.

My hope is, over the coming days, we will find that common group of Senators who will say we are going to take that path rather than the path we are on right now.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I intend to offer the following motion to H.R. 1628 and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record. The motion is supported by Senators Stabenow, Baldwin, Kaine, Coons, King, Carper, Nelson, and Peters.

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