Floor Statements

Mr. President, before I begin, now that we have returned from the August break, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey. I know the thoughts of everyone in this Chamber are with the thousands of Americans who are waiting to return home and restart their lives. I hope the Senate will act quickly to allow them to do so.

I would also say that we know there is a lot of concern in the Presiding Officer's State about what is yet to come, so we need to get about our business.

Mr. President, tonight I rise to address another issue-- the Trump administration's decision to end the program known as DACA.

DACA provided deportation relief to nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to this country as children. Those kids grew up in America alongside America's children, playing on our Little League teams, running for student government, marching in the school band. Just like America's kids, they showed up to class, they did their homework, and they pushed forward with every expectation of building a future for themselves and for their communities. The only difference between them is that the kids covered by DACA came to America as undocumented immigrants.

Many of these kids didn't even know they didn't have legal status. I know this firsthand because I used to be the Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. It was about ninth grade that children would realize--children who had no country other than the United States as their home--that they didn't have legal status because they had come here through no fault of their own without documented status.

A lot of these kids found out the hard way, applying for jobs that asked for papers they didn't have, applying for financial aid they were ineligible to receive, and coping with the possibility of being ripped away from friends and family at any time. DACA ended that. It stopped it. Nationwide, it protected nearly 800,000 young adults from deportation and gave them lawful presence in the only country they knew to build a future. That is precisely what they have done.

Since DACA was enacted, the young people who enrolled in the program have grown into young adults. They have found jobs. They pay taxes. They have started businesses. They have bought homes. They are raising families.

In Colorado, over 17,000 young people came forward to take the government at its word, to share their information, and to apply for deferred action. Each one of them placed their faith in us to protect them and their families until we came to a long-term solution about their status. Today, President Trump has betrayed that trust. Worse, his decision to rescind DACA betrays the very character of our country.

America does not strip parents from their children. We do not strip brothers from sisters. America does not round up neighbors to send them to places they have not known since they were 2 years old or 6 months old, if they knew them at all. We do not use kids and families as some kind of bargaining chip for legislation. That is not who we are. This decision will not only hurt families and communities, but it will hurt our economy, as 90 percent of DACA recipients work, and 7 in 10 have bachelor's degrees or higher. They pay taxes. Over the next 2 years, ending DACA could force hundreds of thousands of people to lose their jobs. Colorado alone stands to lose over $850 million in economic activity every single year as a result of this rash decision. That is why business leaders all across my State have decried this decision as not only cruel but costly.

President Trump campaigned to strengthen families and our economy. With this decision, he is taking aim at both. Now parents all across America are planning where to send their kids if they are deported. Young professionals worry about what will happen to their mortgages, their car payments, and their student loans if they are fired and

forced to leave. Business owners wonder how they will make up for the hard workers whom they have come to rely on over the years. Once again, President Trump has unleashed needless anxiety and uncertainty across America.

This weekend, I was thinking we would never have been in this position if Congress had acted to fix our broken immigration system to ensure legal status for everybody protected by deferred action. Like the Presiding Officer, I was part of the Gang of 8, which wrote the immigration bill in the Senate. It was four Democrats and four Republicans who worked together over a period of 8 months in a process that I think the American people would be justifiably proud of. For once in Washington, people sat down in a bipartisan way to actually solve the problems that face this country. We were not making trades. We were not holding each other hostage in that room. We knew that securing the border was an important good, and we knew a pathway to citizenship was an important good.

We delivered both to the floor of this Senate. In fact, the bill had very meaningful border security. It is the only bill that has passed either the House or the Senate that has had any border security and internal security as well and, as I mentioned, a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented people who are here, including everybody who is protected by DACA. It was a good bill--I think it was a great bill--and it got 68 votes in the Senate. If the House had done what the American people had wanted us to do, it would have passed our bill, and we would not have had to go through the agony of what the Trump administration is doing to immigrants in this country right now.

I think Congress needs to act swiftly to clean up the damage the administration has unleashed, and that starts with passing the Dream Act. Now is the time for our Republican colleagues to come forward on this important piece of legislation that historically has been supported by Republicans.

Tonight, I thank my colleague from Colorado, Senator Cory Gardner, for doing just that and joining me as a cosponsor of the Dream Act. We have an opportunity to come together as Republicans and Democrats in order to give young people the certainty they deserve and the legal path to stay in the only country they know. This is not about left versus right, although I say that about everything in this place, but in this case it really is true. This is about doing right for the young people who are, in every sense, our fellow Americans.

It is about doing the right thing for people in Colorado, like Marissa Molina. Marissa was 9 years old when her parents took her from Mexico to Colorado. She grew up in Glenwood Springs on the West Slope. She worked hard and planned on going to college until she realized, like so many young people whom I have met, that she was ineligible for in-state tuition because of her legal status, but she was determined to make it work anyway. She cleaned houses with her mom and tutored other students in Spanish. All of that helped, but it was not enough. By her junior year, Marissa's family had little money left, and she nearly had to drop out.

Then DACA went into effect, and Marissa was able to secure Federal student loans and graduate summa cum laude from Fort Lewis College in Durango. Determined to give back, Marissa spent 2 years teaching in my old school district, in the Denver Public Schools. She did not have any background in education, but she wanted to pay it forward by helping other kids achieve.

Like Marissa, Marco Dorado came to Denver when he was just 3 years old. His parents have worked in our community for over two decades in order to provide for him and his three siblings. Marco was the first person in his family to graduate from high school, but after graduating, he could not get a job because he did not have a Social Security card. He could not get a driver's license, and he could not get a student loan--a bright future frozen in place. Marco felt trapped in a system with no way forward.

Then the last President announced DACA in 2012. Marco got his Social Security card, his driver's license, and financial aid to attend the University of Colorado. As he studied for a degree in finance, he worked between classes and interned at our State capitol. There, he learned something about politics, and he was voted student body president by his peers at CU, at the University of Colorado.

In every practical sense there is, Marco is an American. He has no memory of life before America. He grew up in our schools, played alongside our kids, attended our colleges, and has been working to improve this democracy. His two younger brothers and sisters, as is so often the case, were born here.

A decent and compassionate administration would find a way for Marco to stay in the only community he knows. A smart and forward-looking administration would seize on this young man's talent and commitment to our Nation. A wise administration would recognize in Marco and Marissa the best qualities of America--hard work, family, perseverance, and service. Instead--and I regret this--we have the Trump administration, which threatens to rip them from their families, tear them from the communities they have built in Colorado, and deprive our Nation of their obvious and considerable talent.

The administration's decision today has thrown hundreds of thousands of people like Marco and Marissa into needless chaos and fear. For what--to satisfy the smallest fringe of the far right? A majority of the Republicans in my State not only support the Dream Act but support a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented people who are here. Unfortunately, today's decision is just the latest example of the violence this President has done to our country's traditions.

Because of his rhetoric against immigrants, against Muslims, his equivocation about White nationalists, there is a deep unease in this country. I have heard it in townhalls across Colorado. In times like these, it falls on all of us--not just on the people in the Senate--to put our hands on someone else's shoulder and say: I am glad you are here. Thank you for the contribution you have made by working in our fields and in our factories. We are grateful for what you have done for our communities. We are glad you are studying at the University of Denver or CSU or CU. Though we need legislation to undo the administration's actions today, this goes well beyond any law on the books. It goes to who we are as a nation.

Earlier this year, at my home, I hosted five college students who had received protection under the DACA Program. I made them breakfast, and we sat around the backyard to talk. I heard the worries they had that no young person in this country should have to bear, but I also heard an incredible sense of aspiration that any American would recognize-- dreams of finishing college, launching a business, leading a nonprofit, starting a family. That is no surprise because these kids are American in every way that counts, and like young people across the country, they envision a bright future for themselves. We have taught them to do that since they were kids. Now we should let them realize it.

I thank my colleague from Washington for her patience.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I feel sorry for the Presiding Officer. This is the second time in a week he has had to listen to me talk on the floor.

I thank the Senator from Nebraska for her graciousness in letting me go first.

America, the Senate has passed the bill. We passed the bill. Today, the Senate passed the RACE for Children Act as part of the FDA user fee bill.

The RACE Act represents a breakthrough for kids fighting cancer. Each year, over 15,000 children will be diagnosed with the disease; 2,000 will lose their lives.

Across America, pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death for our children. Previously, companies with new treatments for adults studied their potential benefits for kids. Companies exploring medication for adult diabetes, for example, also researched its potential for use in children. This research is vital because it provides critical information to doctors for treating sick children. Specifically, it helps them ensure that the treatments and dosages they prescribe are safe for young bodies. But there was a gap in the law as it existed before we passed this law.

Drug companies with new, precision medicine for adult cancers did not have to study possible value for pediatric cancers. That meant our kids continued to receive older treatments--some from the 1960s--which often had harmful side effects and consequences that can last a lifetime.

At the same time, breakthrough treatments have become available for adults, with better results and fewer harmful effects. While these treatments have great promise for kids, we were not doing enough to explore that potential.

Over the last 20 years, the Food and Drug Administration has approved 190 new cancer treatments for adults but just 3 new treatments for children. The FDA saw that gap, and they asked us to close it. That is precisely what the RACE for Children Act will do. For the first time in the country's history, it would require drug companies to study the potential of promising adult cancer treatments for children, closing this gap in the law and opening the door to promising new treatments for children in need.

Before this bill, thousands of kids in America lacked access to cutting-edge treatments and precision medicine that could have made the difference in their struggle against cancer.

During my time in the Senate, I have seen the anguish of too many parents who learned not only that their child has cancer but that they have little or no options for treatment. This bill will give them more options. It will give them more hope.

For Delaney from Grand Junction, CO, this bill could have been lifesaving. She battled cancer for over 5 years but passed away a year ago when she was out of treatment options. I wish to dedicate our work on this bill to her and to all kids who are bravely battling cancer day in and day out around the world.

We also should dedicate it to everyone who called and wrote and shared their family stories over the past months. This bill would never have passed without their voices. For people interested in keeping the system the same way, it was the voices of these families--in many instances, people who faced horrible tragedies in their lives--who made this possible. Because they engaged in this process, we passed a bill that will give thousands of kids a better chance to beat cancer and reclaim their lives.

America leads the world when it comes to treating cancer. We pioneer the latest and safest treatments. Every American should have access to them, especially our kids, whose bright lives have just begun.

I want to recognize and acknowledge all of the pediatric cancer groups that came together to advance this bill, including pediatric advocates, cancer advocates, and hospitals in Colorado and around the country.

I also want to acknowledge, as always, the great leadership provided by Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and their staff for their work on this and the FDA user fee bill.

Finally, I wish to thank my partner in this work, Senator Rubio, from Florida, for his leadership and passionate advocacy on behalf of our kids.

This bill is a reminder that, when we drop the political fights, we can focus on fights that truly matter, such as the fight against cancer, the fight for better healthcare in this country, and the fight for our kids and their future.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am aware that the time is at an end. I ask unanimous consent for 7 additional minutes.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from New Mexico, my neighbors, for being here.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his statement. As usual, he is pointing the Senate in a direction that we should be headed.

Whether people in my State support the Affordable Care Act or whether they don't, they are dissatisfied with the way our healthcare system works. The Affordable Care Act--or ObamaCare or whatever you want to call it--is just part of our healthcare system. We have Medicare. We have Medicaid. We have hospitals. We have doctors. We have nurses. It all adds up, in America in the 21st century, to a system that is really hard on people and makes it very hard for them to predict their future. It creates situations where they have to make choices that no other people in the industrialized world have to make, about raising their family, about staying in a job--as the Presiding Officer was talking about--that they might not want to stay in for fear they would lose their health insurance.

I thought the Presiding Officer made an excellent point when he said that you don't lose your car insurance when you leave your place of business for another job. Why should you lose your health insurance? Why should you? Why should you have to put up with things in this country that nobody else in the industrialized world has to put up with?

It may be that the debate we are going to have is as binary as the Presiding Officer was saying. Maybe it is a debate about single payer versus what he described as more consumer based. Maybe there is something in between. America has a way of trying to figure those kinds of things out--or at least we have historically.

My colleague from Oregon earlier quoted the famous line, which somebody yelled out to Ben Franklin: What kind of government are you creating, a monarchy or republic? That was the question.

His answer was, as the Senator of Oregon said: ``A republic, if you can keep it''--if you can keep it.

The Founders had extraordinary vision, and they were creating something that had never existed before in the history of humankind-- never existed. You could make an argument about a couple of small principalities or places in Switzerland, and there would be some argument about ancient Rome, but, really, this exercise in self- government had sprung from their imagination and their desire as human beings to govern themselves, to slough off the monarchy that ruled them and ruled others in Europe.

What Ben Franklin said was so important and so wise because he didn't say: ``A republic.'' He said: ``A republic, if you can keep it.''

When they wrote the Constitution, they were creating a mechanism for the American people to resolve their disputes. They were not creating a republic where they believed that everyone would agree with each other. They had vast disagreements. They had disagreements far greater than the ones we have. They had geographic disagreements. They had disagreements about big States and little States. They had disagreements about slavery.

They were able to come together and create a mechanism to resolve our differences. They didn't believe, as some people seem to on talk radio every day, that if you don't agree with the other person that you must be a Communist or you must be some rightwinger. That is not what they believed.

They believed there was a public purpose, that there was public virtue that underlay the work they were trying to do and that we would be able to persist in this Republic only if we kept it--if we kept it.

That is how self-government works. It is not a king telling you what to do. It is not the generation of the Founders telling you what to do. It is doing what you need to do, as the Presiding Officer said, for the sake of people who did their jobs before us but, more importantly, as he said, for the people who are coming after us. Seeing from this perspective, this process is a disgrace. This is why we have a 9- percent approval rating in the U.S. Senate--what has been referred to in past generations as the greatest deliberative body in the world. Those words are spoken mockingly today.

The people I represent, and the people the Presiding Officer represents, are paying a price for this. It has been a long time since I have been in the majority--I am sad to say, but it is true--but there was a time when I would preside, as the Presiding Officer is doing today. A reporter asked me once: What do you think about when you are up there? As John McCain said the other day: We aren't doing anything here. He is right. We are not.

So the reporter said: What are you thinking about?

Do you know what I told him? I said: What I think about is, What is China doing right now, while Democrats and Republicans here had their fight that has nothing to do with the people whom we represent?

We know what China is doing right now. While we don't even have the decency to maintain the assets and infrastructure, the roads and bridges that our parents and grandparents had the decency to build for us--starting on this floor--they are building trains, not just in China but all over Asia, to bind them together in an economic union to come after the United States. What is China doing?

What I deeply regret about this debate is that the end product, whether we pass this bill or if we don't, is not going to improve healthcare for the people I represent. Again, my starting point is that there are people who like the Affordable Care Act and there are people who don't like the Affordable Care Act, but everybody is deeply dissatisfied, as they should be, with the way our healthcare system works. What we should do is abandon this process and, instead, go to committee. Chairman Alexander--he is a Republican--is perfectly capable of running a bipartisan process that could lead us to a place where we actually are making things better for people who live on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, on the Front Range of Colorado, or on the Western Slope of Colorado, who may be Republicans and Democrats, but for whom healthcare is not political. It is about their family and about their future. That is what we should be keeping in mind, instead of just the next election around here. Everybody has lamented that.

I am running out of time, but I remember when the majority leader was not the majority leader. He is a smart person. He came here and said: ``Major legislation is now routinely drafted, not in committee, but in the Majority Leader's conference room and then dropped on the floor with little or no opportunity for members to participate in the amendment process, virtually guaranteeing a fight.''

That is what he said. I am telling those of you with whom I was in townhall meetings 7 years ago, when people were saying: Read the bill, read the bill. The tea party was at the height, bringing pocket Constitutions to my meetings, telling me to be faithful to that process. I say that we should be saying that right now: Be faithful to that constitutional process.

He knew the process wasn't working as it should. What he said was this:

When Democrats couldn't convince any of us--

That is, Republicans--

that [the Affordable Care Act] was worth supporting as

written, they decided to do it on their own and pass it on a

party line vote.

He continued:

It may very well have been the case that on ObamaCare, the

will of the country was not to pass the bill at all. That's

what I would have concluded if Republicans couldn't get a

single Democrat vote for legislation of this magnitude, I'd

have thought, maybe this isn't a great idea.

So I say to the Republicans and Democrats who are here today, maybe it isn't a great idea because they can't even get the Republican votes. They haven't gotten one Democratic vote. They haven't gotten the Republican votes to repeal and replace, even though they have run on this for 8 years. They had to bring the Vice President here to cast the deciding vote because we were tied. What a shame for the Senate not to do its work and to rely on the executive branch to come here and supply that vote.

Every single person in this body knows the President of the United States has no idea or interest in what is in this legislation. Every single person here knows that. So why are we doing it? We are doing it, I guess, to fulfill a campaign promise to repeal ObamaCare. I can understand why there is pressure for people to do that, because they said that over and over, even though I disagree with their characterization of the bill.

I disagree with the facts they presented. I understand that impulse, but I don't understand the impulse of writing a bill in secret--listen to this folks--not having a single committee hearing--not one committee hearing in the Senate. Talk about ``read the bill.'' How about having a bill that is written down on paper so we can read it? Where are my brethren in the tea party who wanted to read the other bill? There was a bill then. There had been a bill for a year and a half.

There is no bill. There is no bill because what they are trying to do is to figure out what they can eke out across the line here. They are calling it a skinny repeal. I don't even know how that satisfies the laugh test, when it comes to the campaign promises that were made around here, but that is not my issue. But we should just stop. We are at 9 percent. This bill, I think, the last time I checked, had a 15- percent approval rating or a 20-percent approval rating. Don't pass that. We have wasted 6 months--not of our time but of the American people's time. I have people all over the State of Colorado who would love to come here and testify at a committee hearing about how healthcare is intersecting with their lives and making their lives difficult or how they are benefiting from certain things. I would love for them to have a chance to come here and testify, but we haven't set up that process. We should. We should stop this.

The American people would be relieved if we would stop this partisanship to get together and work on the committee as we should do and pass something on the floor. What we have forgotten about the Affordable Care Act--even though it didn't have Republican votes, and it should have--is that it had almost 200 Republican amendments adopted as part of the process. I agree with what the majority leader said then. If the process is lousy, the outcome of the bill is likely to be lousy. An important point he made is that it is unlikely to reflect the will of the American people, and when it doesn't, what it is going to mean is that we are just going to continue to seesaw from one election to the next election and we are not going to get a result.

I am willing to settle for 80 percent of what I want, or 70 percent of what I want--I am. I don't think that is an unvirtuous position to have. All these people here are talking all the time about the principle they are standing on. When you scratch at that and look for the content of the idea underneath that principle, there is very seldom anything there. They are often repeating something they heard last night on FOX or MSNBC, but it wouldn't be recognizable to the Founders as a principle. For them, a fundamental principle was that you had to unleash the imagination of people with different sets of experiences and different sets of opinions and from different geographic places in order to do the right thing for this country. That is what we should do today.

I realize the indulgence of the Presiding Officer. I thank him for his kindness.

With that, I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate so much my colleagues being out here on the floor.

We are debating a bill that relates to 16 percent of our gross domestic product, almost 20 percent of our economy.

I wish there were folks on the other side of the aisle who were out here tonight having this debate. I thank my colleague from Minnesota for the point she made.

I want to state that I am really discouraged about where we are in our political system right now, and part of that is because politicians seem to think they can say one thing when they are running for office and do another thing when they get here and that somehow there is not a consequence.

I guess one of the reasons people think there is no consequence is that we have begun to treat edited content--journalism--as though somehow it is inferior to somebody just shooting their mouth off on the internet. We hear the President verbally assaulting journalists who have covered terrorism and who have tried to bring the story in Syria to the United States. Some have lost their lives. The President says they are not covering terrorism; then he attacks them as fake news. He goes to places like Youngstown and gets people to attack CNN or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal--anything that is actually edited content.

I think it is because he thinks, A, he will not withstand the scrutiny of real journalists, but I think, B, he thinks it will help with this anything-goes style of politics, which says you can say one thing in the election and do something else.

I ask for an additional 3 minutes.

I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I just don't think this Republic will work very well if we don't have a free press that is respected and if we don't hold people accountable for their campaign promises.

Here is one of the things Donald Trump said during the campaign about what he was going to produce for the American people with respect to healthcare. He said that it was going to be beautiful, terrific--a beautiful and terrific plan to provide such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it is going to be so easy.

That is what he said, in rally after rally across the United States of America, and a lot of people believed it. He talked about how much he hated the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, whatever you want to call it, and all the reasons why; many of the reasons he talked about were manufactured.

But that doesn't really matter anymore. He is the President. The Republicans are in the majority of the Senate, and the Republicans have a majority of the House. Their characterization--or mischaracterization--of the Affordable Care Act is not the issue anymore; the issue is what are they going to do for people living in the State of Colorado who are dealing with a healthcare system that is not supporting them terribly well. My colleagues heard that right. People who support the Affordable Care Act or oppose it, in my State, are deeply discouraged about the way our healthcare system works. And I think that if the President were keeping his promise, we would see 100 people support the bill because it is actually consistent with what people at home want. They want more transparency when it comes to healthcare. They want more affordability. They want more predictability. That is what they want.

If I set out to write a bill less responsive to that aspiration of the people I represent, who are critics of the Affordable Care Act-- Republicans in my State--I couldn't write a bill less responsive than the one the House of Representatives has passed and the one that was introduced by the majority leader after he wrote it in secret.

It is 8:20 on the night we are going to have this vote, and we haven't seen the bill. After a year and a half of almost countless committee hearings, after adopting almost 200 Republican amendments on the Affordable Care Act, and then going to townhall after townhall, being accused of being a Bolshevik who hadn't read the bill, my question is, Why aren't people being held to that standard tonight? Maybe they are not asking us to read the bill because there is no bill at 8:20 on the night that we are supposed to take away 16 million Americans' healthcare, or 20 million Americans' healthcare--on the night we are supposed to vote for a bill that the Congressional Budget Office says will jack up insurance rates by 20 percent.

They wrote the bill in secret. They didn't have a single hearing in the Senate--not one hearing in the Senate. Now it is 8:20 at night, and there are people in my State who think they are going to lose their health insurance because they might be one of those 16 million people or they might have a kid or a parent who has a preexisting condition, like the thousands of people who have contacted my office. They are terrified, and they are not even on the floor, and they can't read the bill. Read the bill.

Now we are told there is going to be a procedural trick that is going to allow the House of Representatives to just pass this through over the weekend.

That is a shameful way to run the Senate. It is exactly the opposite of what the majority leader promised he would do when he was the minority leader in the Senate. He is the one who said: If you can't get a vote from the other side--if you can't get one vote from the other side--you maybe should acknowledge that the American people aren't behind your bill.

They can't even get all of the Republicans to vote for this. They had to have Mike Pence, who is the Vice President, come here to break a tie. What a disgrace to ask the executive branch to come here and save your bacon because you can't get the votes. And there is not a Democratic vote for this bill tonight because it doesn't meet the test that the minority leader himself had.

I see my colleague from Michigan is here. I will yield the floor by just saying that we should stop this catastrophe. The only thing we know about this catastrophe is if it passes, there will be 16 million people who lose their health insurance and a bunch of rates go up. If we don't do it, that will not happen.

I yield the floor.

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.

Mr. President, I thank the ranking member of the Finance Committee for his leadership not only on this bill but also healthcare over the decades. He knows something about the right way of doing it and the wrong way of doing it, which is partly what brings me to the floor today.

I want to say something that I think will be uncontroversial to the people at home but may be news to some people here, and that is whether you support the Affordable Care Act or whether you don't support the Affordable Care Act, whether you have been a supporter of ObamaCare or whether you are not a supporter of what is called ObamaCare, in general, people are pretty dissatisfied with our healthcare system at home. In general, people are pretty dissatisfied with the rate their insurance goes up. They are pretty dissatisfied with the fact that a lot of people are still uncovered in this country. If they are a senior, they are pretty dissatisfied not just with the idea but with the practice that month after month, people have to cut their medicines in half just to get through the month. They are pretty dissatisfied with the fact that they call an insurance company to make a claim to say ``My child was sick'' and point out that month after month they have paid their premiums only to find that on the day they make that claim, there is someone at that insurance company who has more time than they do to stay on the phone, to keep them on that phone, to deny them their claim. They are pretty dissatisfied about that.

As a whole, I think the American people are dissatisfied by the fact that we spend 16 percent of our gross domestic product, our entire economy, on healthcare when every other industrialized country in the world spends half of that or less than half of that on healthcare and-- this is going to come as news to some people in this Chamber--get better results. We are moving in the wrong direction on too many dimensions when it comes to our healthcare.

I have said all of that as a proponent of the Affordable Care Act. I spent a year and a half in Colorado, in certain places, being called a Bolshevik or a socialist, being accused of advocating for a government takeover of our healthcare system. This was at a time when the tea party was very active, and people would come and say, quite rightly: Read the bill. Read the bill. We need to take our government back.

We tried to do some things to help in that bill. For the first time in the country's history, we tried to say that it wasn't OK to discriminate against people who were sick or have what is called a preexisting condition when they went to buy health insurance. As the Senator from Oregon said, it wasn't OK that if you did get sick when you had insurance and you got something like cancer that an insurance company could just throw you off their rolls because you hit their cap.

We said that we thought it wasn't OK that there were millions of people, many of them children, who didn't have access to primary care; that is, a doctor to be able to give you a checkup and see how you are doing so that you weren't getting treated in the emergency room--the most expensive, least intentional way of running a healthcare system that is imaginable. In fact, I would say that is the Bolshevik way of running a healthcare system: When you are sick, you get to show up at the emergency room, and somebody is going to take care of you. It gives you the results of a Bolshevik system because you are paying more for less of an outcome.

We tried to address some of those things, and that became the Affordable Care Act. That became ObamaCare. That became something that was politicized for 7 years, as the House of Representatives cynically, month after month, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Then the majority of the House went home to their districts and said: We repealed ObamaCare. We voted to repeal ObamaCare.

You didn't repeal it.

No, we voted to repeal it. If you send me back there next week, I will do the

same thing. I will do it the week after that.

Then at some point, people started to say: Well, you keep having the vote on repealing ObamaCare. Why haven't you actually done it?

They said: Well, we didn't have the Senate.

They have had the Senate now for two Congresses.

Well, we didn't have the Presidency.

Now we have the same party in Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. This terrible bill we are considering is not a bill that anybody--that is an exaggeration--virtually anybody in my State supports or has asked for. That is what we have in front of us.

I know somebody else who knew that the American people were dissatisfied with their healthcare system, and that was Donald J. Trump when he was running for President of the United States.

I hope, in particular, the people who voted for the President, as a way of keeping Washington accountable, will remember that he said he was going to provide the American people ``a terrific plan,'' to ``cover everyone at a fraction of the cost.'' The President, when he was running--he still does it--was very fond of talking about--his words--how stupid everybody in Washington was and he knew how to make deals and he was going to come here and make great deals and he was going to cover everybody at a fraction of the price with a terrific plan. That is what he promised the American people. That is what he was peddling when he was running for President. He said: ``Everybody is going to be taken care of much better than you are taken care of now.'' That is what he said. This isn't fake news. This isn't CNN or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or whoever is in the crosshairs. This is what the President said on the campaign trail when he was running because he detected, quite rightly, that the American people are unhappy with the way our healthcare system works--unhappy in the richest country of the world to have a healthcare system where people have to make decisions about their lives and about their children's lives that no one in the industrialized world has to make about their lives or their children's lives--and they wonder why.

I think the diagnosis has a lot to do with what some people have said, which is special interests having a grasp on Washington, DC. That is what the President said he was going to give to the American people. This is what his promise was to the American people. What did we get instead? We have a bill passed by the House that was a massive tax cut for the richest people in America, which, literally, nobody in my townhalls in red or blue parts of my State has ever said is something that would help with their healthcare. Not a single person has said what they want for healthcare is a massive tax cut for people making more than $250,000 a year--not one, not one person.

There is a 25-percent cut to Medicaid in this bill. That was done in the name of, I guess, reforming entitlements. The argument has been made that there are a lot of lazy people who are on Medicaid, and if you cut Medicaid by 25 percent, they will go to work, and they should go to work. Well, there are two issues with that. The first is, it is important to understand who is on Medicaid.

In my State, 50 percent of the people are children. Are they supposed to be at work or can they go to school? Then there are a whole bunch of people on Medicaid--in fact, it is a very large share of the population of Medicaid who have spent their entire life savings down for the privilege of being in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid. Are they supposed to work? Then there are a lot of people--I am ashamed to say this--there are a lot of people in this country who are working one job, two jobs and can't make enough money to buy private insurance in the United States of America. That is a shame. Do they need to get a third or fourth job before we are saying they are not lazy or should we fix this healthcare system so it is more affordable, more predictable, more transparent for American families? Those were the promises the President made. That is the content of the bill with one addition. They slipped in--between that tax cut and that 25-percent cut to Medicaid, which is paying for that tax cut for the wealthiest Americans--what my colleague Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, has described accurately as ObamaCare lite. He is absolutely right about that. If you hate ObamaCare, you will hate ObamaCare lite. If you are looking in a rural part of my State or the country, and you already can't afford insurance because there is no market there and you can't get a subsidy that will help you because you are making too much money, you are going to hate that even more. Wait until they pass the Cruz amendment, which he is calling the freedom amendment--freedom to have to endure something no one else in the industrialized world has to put up with, which is buying lousy insurance that doesn't cover anything. You can create the worst product in the world and make it affordable. That is not hard to do.

We have come a long way from Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms, if we are talking about the freedom of insurance companies to be able to throw you off if you hit the lifetime cap, freedom not to give you insurance if you have a preexisting condition. We have come a long, long way.

Finally, my colleagues are here so I am going to stop. I do want to say one word about the process. The majority leader today announced that he is going to keep the Senate in for 2 weeks in August because they have to finish their work on healthcare or maybe it is 3 weeks in August. I don't care if it is a month. I don't care if they cancel every recess we have between now and the end of the year. I don't care if we work on weekends if it will create a situation where we can actually improve healthcare for the American people. I am glad to stay. In fact, I think we should stay, but, unfortunately, that is not what he is trying to do. What he is trying to do is jam through a bill that is incredibly unpopular with the American people. That is why, until 2 weeks ago, it was a secret. Until two Thursdays ago, it was a secret.

I have to suspect that one reason they want to keep us in August is because they don't want to go home because they were just beaten to death over the July 4th recess because people came out in Republican and Democratic parts of their States and said: Are you out of your minds? This bill has nothing to do with our healthcare. They probably don't want to repeat that in August.

I will close just by saying this, and I said this again to the people who came to my townhalls and were highly critical of the Affordable Care Act and the process: I want to remind you folks that back then-- the Senator from Oregon will remember this--back then, we spent over a year debating that bill here in the Congress. We had countless-- somebody could count them up--but countless committee hearings in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Finance Committee. We had almost 200 amendments that were Republican amendments that were adopted as part of that bill. Everybody remembers, no Republican voted for it, but there were 200 Republican amendments adopted as part of that bill. We have not had a single committee hearing in the Senate about this healthcare bill--not one.

So you can keep us in for 2 weeks or 3 weeks longer in August, but a better idea might be to follow the regular order around this place. Talk about take our country back, take our government back, make it work, have hearings, have witnesses. I can think of 100 Coloradans, off the top of my head, who would like to come here and testify. I would even say 50 of them can be Republicans and 50 of them can be Democrats. Have them come testify what would make healthcare better for them. That is what this should be about: families all across this country who are struggling because of our healthcare system and who need relief from this Congress and who so far aren't getting it.

I will close just by saying, if the President could submit a proposal that actually would meet the criteria he set out when he was running for President--instead of having a bill he couldn't pass with even 51 Republican votes--he would have a bill he could pass with 100 votes here in the Senate, and that is what we should strive to do.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize a dedicated community leader, civil servant, and dear friend, Rosemary E. Rodriguez. She most recently served as my State director and senior adviser. Throughout her life, Rosemary has displayed a genuine and consistent commitment to strengthening our State and our country.

Rosemary began her career as a legal assistant at two of Denver's most prominent law firms. Also, during the early stages of her career, Rosemary began her lifelong commitment to the Latino community as she helped form the Hispanic League, an organization that strives to be a liaison between the non-Hispanic and Hispanic communities. Rosemary began her career in government in 1992, working for Mayor Wellington Webb's administration. She served in several roles during her time with the mayor, such as deputy director of the mayor's Office of Arts, Culture & Film, Denver County clerk and recorder, and director of boards and commissions.

In 2003, she was elected to the Denver City Council. Later, her peers on the council elected her as president. In 2007, she began to work on the Election Assistance Commission. In this capacity, she worked to preserve the integrity of our national elections and increase access to our most fundamental right to vote. She chaired the commission in 2008.

In 2009, Rosemary became an invaluable part of my staff as State director and did a tremendous job representing our office and connecting with communities across Colorado. When I wasn't able to attend an event, I was always confident that Rosemary would convey our team's values and perspectives on any number of issues. I also counted on her advice whether it related to women's issues, immigration reform, or other issues of importance to the Latino community. Most recently, she was elected to the Denver School Board where she continues to serve Colorado's kids.

Due to her dedication to the people of Colorado, Rosemary has received several awards including the Mi Casa Resource Center's Volunteerism Award, the Anti-Defamation League's Passing the Torch Award, and the Denver Public Library's Cesar Chavez Hall of Fame Award.

I have been honored to work with my friend Rosemary for the past 8 years. Her intellect, creativity, and compassion should serve as an example for all those who serve. I wish her the best in her future endeavors, and I fully intend to count on her advice and perspectives for years to come.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I appreciate very much the comments from my colleague from Massachusetts and my colleague from Pennsylvania.

I notice my colleagues from the other side of the aisle are not here tonight to defend this piece of legislation. It doesn't surprise me, given what is in this legislation and given what we have heard over the last week.

The Senator from Massachusetts was explaining what it was we were trying to do when we passed the Affordable Care Act, now years ago. Part of what we were trying to do was to extend coverage to a lot of Americans that didn't have it. In my State of Colorado that meant over 600,000 Coloradans who didn't have it before the Affordable Care Act was passed. Another thing we were trying to do was to say to insurance companies that it is not OK to have as your business practice that you take month after month after month of premiums from people and then when they call on the phone and say: My kid was sick; my kid got struck by lightning; my kid had an accident, to then hold them on the phone as long as possible just as a way of denying their claim. Most people in America are too busy trying to move their family ahead, trying to get by, to stay on the phone all day with an insurance company. While we were at that, we said: It is not fair to deny people insurance in the richest country in the world because they have preexisting conditions. It is not fair that it is a business plan in America to have lifetime caps on people in the richest country in the world who might hit those lifetime caps because they get cancer. It is not fair that in America, the richest country in the world, some seniors have to cut their medicines in half every month just to get through the month and to pay their bills. These were some of the issues that we were trying to address when we passed the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. President, I am from a Western State, like you. I was out all those months in Colorado, having town hall after town hall, not just in Democratic parts of the State but in Republican parts of the State, trying to explain what it was we were trying to do--both to give people better coverage, more predictable coverage, and less costly coverage and also to try to do something to bring down healthcare costs in this country. We succeeded at some of those things. We didn't succeed at others of those things. It was a legitimate attempt at trying to deliver something for the American people that people all over the industrialized world don't have to live with.

Only in this country do people have to make choices about feeding their family and taking care of their kids at the doctor. Only in this country do seniors have to make choices about cutting those pills in half. Only in this country do people have to make choices about paying their rent and taking care of their kids. It doesn't happen in the rest of the industrialized world. Before I hear it from the other side tonight, let me say: Our results are getting worse, not better. For populations across this country, longevity is actually getting shorter, not longer. This is a difficult, complex, but urgent question for our country.

That is what we were trying to do with the Affordable Care Act. Some of it succeeded and some of it didn't. I will talk more about that in a minute.

For 8 years Republicans ran for election after election after election on ObamaCare: ObamaCare is socialism; ObamaCare is a Bolshevik plot to take over the United States; ObamaCare is destroying jobs--just at a time when we were coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. We saw uneven job growth in this country but undeniable job growth over the entire period of time they were saying ObamaCare was destroying the country and destroying our economy.

The recession was at the end of the last administration. The Obama administration saw the largest job increases we have seen in this country since World War II. I know it is inconvenient to believe that or to say that. I know that in corners of the internet where false news really does dominate, people don't believe it, but it is true. I am the first to say there are not enough good jobs, and I am the first to say there are not enough high-paying jobs, but compared to the record we inherited, it was a success, all while we had the Affordable Care Act being implemented, all while we were extending coverage to millions of people in America--many of them children who didn't have adequate coverage before we passed the Affordable Care Act.

It has been called every name in the book, just like President Obama was called every name in the book, and they linked those two things-- healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act, and ObamaCare. That became its name.

Every single attack under the sun was levied on that. Why? Because people really believed it was destroying the healthcare system? Maybe some people did. Because they believed that it was destroying businesses? Maybe some people did. I suspect there was a much more simple reason, and that was to try to win elections.

By the way, while we are on the subject, no matter whether you support the Affordable Care Act--and I support some things about it; there are other parts of it that have been disappointing to me--I think it is fundamentally important for people to understand that the Affordable Care Act is not our healthcare system. It is part of our healthcare system. The regulations that it has placed on insurance providers so that people with preexisting conditions couldn't be denied insurance is part of our system. The fact that it tried to create accountable care organizations so people got better primary care so we would reduce the amount of hospital readmissions from something like 18 percent or 19 percent, which wasted billions of dollars in this country, down to 2 percent or 3 percent, that is healthcare.

But there is a lot of healthcare that has nothing to do with ObamaCare or that has something to do with it but it was not the creation of ObamaCare. There is Medicare and Medicaid. There are doctors. There are nurses. There are patients. There are drug companies. That is our healthcare system, and our healthcare system is a mess. It is a mess. It is a mess. We tried to take this thing and improve it when we passed the Affordable Care Act. Some of it worked; some of it didn't work. Some people would argue we went too far. Some people would say we didn't go enough.

But I can state this. I have been doing those town halls again in Colorado, and what I know is that people feel defeated not by ObamaCare but by the American healthcare system--by our healthcare system, which is less predictable and less affordable than in many countries around the world.

Now President Trump knew this. He is a smart politician. I never thought he was going to win. I never thought he was going to win on a campaign that on so many dimensions was out of step with conventional American political thought, and I was wrong. He won. I don't think he represents a traditional Republican view, and that may be one reason he won. In no sense do I think of Donald Trump as a conservative. I think of him as quite radical in his proposals. I think of him as a reactionary force on a political system that the American people, for whatever reason--some of them are probably good reasons--were losing their patience with.

You cannot deny that the guy, somehow, in the far reaches of Trump Tower, had his finger on the pulse of what was going on in some parts of this country. I don't know if it was because he was a reality TV star or what it was, but one of those things was healthcare. He understood the American people's dissatisfaction with our healthcare system, just as these 7 years and 8 years of Republican campaigns have understood it. Majority Leader McConnell made it clear when we were passing the bill: You own it. You own it. He said in a book later that it was very important to him that the American people were able to demarcate between the Democrats' responsibility for the healthcare system as it was and the Republicans' willingness to take no responsibility for it.

Even though we had hundreds of hours of hearings that lasted more than a year and even though we had--they are not countless--well over 100 Republican amendments that were made in committee and on the floor that were incorporated in the legislation, in the end, not a single Republican voted for the bill.

Maybe that was a principled reason, not just a political reason, because maybe there are some people who have the view in the Republican Party that the Federal Government should not have any increased involvement in their healthcare system. In fact, I have heard some people say the Federal Government should play no role in the healthcare system. Yet whatever the reason, not a single Republican voted for ObamaCare.

The rest of the history writes itself, which is that every premium increase in America, whether it was related to ObamaCare or not, becomes part of ObamaCare. Every drug that gets increased in price becomes ObamaCare, and for everybody who loses his insurance, that is ObamaCare when what is happening is really far more complex than that.

There are very legitimate critiques of ObamaCare, but it is not the same thing as our entire healthcare system. I think it is important to make that point because, whether we are considering the Republicans' proposed bill tonight or someone else's proposed bill tonight, we would have to understand it was not going to fix the whole problem all at once.

People in my State are deeply dissatisfied with our healthcare system. I say that as somebody who voted for the Affordable Care Act. I have said it before. People have tried to make a political issue out of it. They write ads about it: Look, Bennet said the healthcare system is not perfect.

I will go further than that. It is a crying shame that people in this country have to spend their lives wrestling with insurance companies, lying awake, wondering whether their kids are going to be able to get primary care or dental care or cancer care if they get sick. That keeps families up every night in my State, not so much the people who are on Medicare but a lot of other people.

So Candidate Trump saw this unease in the American people, this concern that the American people had with our healthcare system, which I share, and in his campaign--in his very populist campaign for President--he promised to provide ``such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost.'' Those knuckleheads in Washington do not know what they are doing. I am going to deliver you ``such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost.'' That was his promise to the American people. That is what he said he was going to deliver.

He differentiated himself from other Republicans by saying: ``I will never cut Medicare.'' ``I will never cut Medicaid.'' He said: Those other Republicans say they will. I am not going to do that, but I am going to supply better healthcare than you are getting now at a tiny fraction of the cost. He said: ``Everybody is going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now'' with no cuts to Medicare and no cuts to Medicaid.

We had our election, and people voted for this nominee who made not just these promises but many other promises about what he was going to do for our economy based on, I think, largely, a complete fiction about what is actually going on in our country--for that matter, in the world--with respect to our economy. So he won. He did not just win--the Senate is Republican, and the House of Representatives is Republican.

Now, after running elections for 8 years to get rid of that scourge on America, that stain on America, that legislation that has destroyed our economy and destroyed our healthcare system, they wrote a bill. It took them a long time, really, to get it through the House of Representatives, which was shocking, because they had 8 years to figure out what was wrong with the current system and how to address the current system. They tried it once, and they could not even bring it to a vote in the House. They could not even bring it to a vote.

Then, understandably, the people who sent those Republicans to office in the House said: What are you talking about? You said you were going to repeal ObamaCare. You told us all of these terrible things that ObamaCare had done. Your first order of business was to repeal ObamaCare. How dare you not have a vote?

I am glad they said that because people should keep their promises.

I have believed for a long time that people want consistency out of their politicians, that they will put up with inconsistency if you say to them that the facts are different than I thought they were and that is why I changed my view. Yet, in these times of fake news, of the media having the challenges it has, and the rest of the things that ail our system, consistency is not something that a lot of politicians pay attention to. I think they think that is because voters do not pay attention to it, but, in this case, they did. They said: You said you would repeal ObamaCare. You did not just say it once. You said it year, after year, after year, after year. Finally, they then passed a bill in the House. Not a single Democrat voted for it.

We learned from that process, which took place before the Congressional Budget Office had even scored the bill--imagine that. There were all of these people who criticized the Affordable Care Act, and proponents were rushing the bill through. As I said, I think there were 200 Republican amendments adopted. It was a bill that held almost countless committee hearings in the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate HELP Committee. It was a bill that consumed 25 days of legislative process on this floor, a modern record in terms of time. In fact, we had all of that process, and I will come back to this.

Here is what Senator McConnell said about that. After all of that process, he said on this floor, I think, that Americans were ``tired of giant bills negotiated in secret and then rammed through on a party- line vote in the middle of the night.'' Oh, that bill was negotiated completely in public, painfully in public. I used to go home, and people in my townhalls literally had copies of the bill. Do you remember the chant: ``Read the bill. Read the bill''? That is because everybody had the bill.

On the House side, it is important for people to understand that they passed the bill without even getting a score from what is called the Congressional Budget Office. The head of the Congressional Budget Office is appointed by Republicans when the Republicans are in the majority, not by the Democrats. It did not even get a score. We had a score on the Affordable Care Act before we passed the bill. We had a score that every single American could see about what it would cost and what money it would spend, what money it would save, how many people would be added to the insurance rolls. We had that. They did not have the decency to do that in the House.

They should have because--guess what happened--when the score came out, it said that 24 million people would lose their health insurance after

a candidate for President said that you are going to have ``such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost.'' ``Everybody is going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now,'' unless you are one of those 24 million and, I would argue, many of the rest as well. I will come to that.

So they passed that bill, a terrible bill. I think that bill has the lowest approval rating among the American people of any piece of legislation that has existed in the time I have been in the Senate. It is still not as low as the approval rating of this place, which used to be 9 percent, but it is low because people know it does not really address their healthcare problems. It is not a healthcare bill.

Then the President found out what was in the Congressional Budget Office's score, and he had some Republican Senators over to the White House and said: I hope you will not pass a bill like that. That is a mean bill.

That is not my description. That is President Trump's description of the House bill. That is a mean bill.

He said: I want a bill with a little more love in it than that bill out of the Senate.

He has to be disappointed tonight because the Congressional Budget Office's score came back and said that under the Senate's version of the bill--the less mean bill--only 22 million people will lose their health insurance and that far from having better insurance at a lower price, half of the country--literally half the country--is going to pay thousands more in out-of-pocket expenses because of what has become known as TrumpCare.

There are three principal parts to the bill in the Senate and in the bill that has passed the House. There are some differences, but I would say they are differences without a distinction. They are immaterial distinctions. There are three major components to these so-called healthcare bills.

The first is a massive tax cut for the wealthiest people in America. If you are making $200,000 or less in Colorado or in any State in the country, you will not get a penny from this tax cut--not a penny. As my colleague from Pennsylvania said, if you are one of the top 400 taxpayers in America, together, you are going to get $33 billion in tax cuts. That is an average tax cut for each of those 400 Americans of $82.5 million. There is not a person in Colorado at any one of my townhalls who has said to me: Michael, the key to doing a better job with our healthcare and the key to fixing ObamaCare--and I am talking about the critics of ObamaCare. There is not a one who has said to repeal those taxes on the top 1 percent of taxpayers in America at a time when our income inequality has not been greater than in 1928 and at a time when we are collecting in revenue only 18 percent of our gross domestic product and spending 21 percent. Not a single person has stood up in a townhall meeting and said the key to success here is in cutting those taxes. Just to be clear, I should mention that $82.5 million is over a 10-year period. It is about $8.25 million a year.

As Senator Casey, from Pennsylvania, noted, that $33 billion adds up to be the equivalent of what it would cost to pay for the Medicaid of 772,000 people who live in just four States--the entire Medicaid population of four States.

But what they would consume in healthcare to try to support themselves and their family is not $8.5 million a year; it is not $85 million over 10 years; it is, on average, $4,500 a year on healthcare. That is the first part of this bill--a massive tax cut that is not going to benefit anybody in my State who earns below $200,000.

The second element of this bill is a massive cut to Medicaid, which is one of the fundamental safety net programs in this country. The cut, whether you look at the House cut or the Senate cut, is massive. It is about a quarter of the program. It is about $840 billion. And in the Senate bill, the cuts are even deeper than they were in the House bill. I wonder what the President would say about that. The House bill was mean. I bet he would say the Senate bill is cruel because it perpetuates those cuts.

I have heard the rhetoric from politicians in Washington about why it is so important to cut Medicaid. They need to cut Medicaid so they can pay for the tax cuts for people who are so wealthy, most of them probably don't even need to mess around with insurance to pay for their healthcare or their doctors. Now they are going to have another $8.5 billion a year. Now they are going to have another $85 million over 10 years if they want to spend it not on insurance but on whatever else they want to spend it.

So on the one hand, they had to find the money to pay for this tax cut. They found it from some of the poorest Americans there are. How do they justify that? They justify it by painting a picture that says that there are Medicaid recipients all over America who are receiving Medicaid but not working, and therefore we should cut the program because if we cut the program, they will know they have to get a job in order to buy health insurance, and they won't be on the Federal Medicaid Program. They say to go to work, and that is why we can cut this program. Keep people out of that hammock they are lying in instead of working for their healthcare.

What an insult to the almost 50 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries in Colorado who are poor children. Are they supposed to go to work, or can they go to school? And while we are at it, maybe we should think about giving them better schools so they can actually compete in this economy. But are we really going to take away their healthcare?

Then there are a whole bunch of people who have spent down their life savings for the privilege of being in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid. There is not a townhall I have where there aren't sons and daughters or grandsons and granddaughters of people who are in nursing homes paid for by Medicaid after they had to spend their whole life savings down to be there. What a terrible system it is that a family has to be near bankruptcy before we say: We will give you a helping hand. It is a terrible system, but it is what they have. And they can't work. They are in a nursing home. They are in long-term care.

Then there are a whole bunch of people in my State and in other States--and this may be the greatest insult of all--who are working at one job or sometimes at two jobs, and in the richest country in the world, they are working and are getting paid and are not getting paid enough to be off the Medicaid rolls. They are working, and they are still on public assistance. And we are cutting a quarter of the Medicaid Program because people need to go to work.

I am not making this stuff up. I asked Secretary Price, who is the Secretary of HHS, Health and Human Services--he is in charge of the healthcare for this administration--I said: Mr. Secretary, let me take you through the faces of the people in my State who are on Medicaid. And not only did they confirm that that is who is on Medicaid in my State, he said that is the way it looks all over the country.

What an insult to justify a massive tax cut for the richest Americans by taking away poor people's healthcare; by saying they are not working for it, when they are children, when they are in nursing homes, when they are working one and sometimes two jobs in the richest country on the world.

So that is the second part of this healthcare plan--tax cuts for wealthy people and cutting Medicaid for poor people. And in the middle of that is the only thing that could fairly be described as a healthcare plan; it is just a terrible plan.

Senator Paul from Kentucky--one of the more principled people in this Chamber--said it very well when he called it, not politely, ``ObamaCare lite.'' He is absolutely right. If you hate ObamaCare, you are really going to hate ObamaCare lite. It is the same structure, which amazes me because all of the people who said we should repeal ObamaCare are now preserving the very basic structure of how the program worked, but the problem with it is that they have cut the subsidies. They have turned them into tax credits and cut the value of the subsidies. If you think insurance is expensive now in the individual market, wait until you meet ObamaCare lite, in the words of Rand Paul.

So those are the three components of the bill. And it is not surprising to me that for those reasons, Senator McConnell has written this bill in secret. It

is not surprising to me that he hasn't wanted to have a committee hearing. It is not surprising to me that he brought the bill here on the floor last Thursday, then accused people on the other side of not having read the bill and still wants us to act on the bill this Thursday so he can go home before July 4th and say to the American people: We did it. We kept our promise. We repealed ObamaCare. We may have written a terrible piece of legislation that has nothing to do with improving your healthcare, but we repealed ObamaCare. And he is hoping the American people won't notice.

Let me tell you something. The American people are noticing. There is a reason why the House bill has the worst approval rating of any piece of legislation in modern American history. The American people are not stupid.

I was in Frisco, CO, not that long ago, which is a place that everybody should visit from all over the country. There is tremendous skiing, and there is tremendous hiking, wonderful people. And before I had the townhall meeting, I went and visited a healthcare center there that they are justifiably proud of. It turns no one away. It gives phenomenal primary care. It gives phenomenal dental care. They have to figure out every week how to get through, but they always figure out how to get through so that people in Frisco and in the surrounding area have healthcare.

This is not a poor community by American standards. It is a resort community, but there are people who live there year-round. I asked the people who run the clinic: Who are the payers for healthcare in your clinic? Who are they? What pays for healthcare here? And she said: Well, Michael, the Medicaid is 33 percent. That shocked me because if you are in rural Colorado, the Medicaid number is usually a lot higher than that because people don't have access to a lot of resources, and we all know they don't have access to a robust insurance market. Thirty-three percent was Medicaid, 53 percent was uncompensated care, and the rest was private insurance companies that pay for the insurance. That shocked me.

I said: Fifty-three percent is uncompensated care, people with no insurance? How can that be?

She said: These are people in our community who make too much money to be eligible for Medicaid, but they can't afford private insurance.

They are working full time; that is not the problem. They are not even--as I described before in a case where somebody is paying them too little, so they are eligible for Medicaid; their problem is that they are being paid too much, and they are not eligible for Medicaid as a result, but they can't afford private insurance. I think that is an indictment of the Affordable Care Act that I accept as somebody who voted for it. The idea that we would require people in America to buy health insurance and then not have a market that gave them quality health insurance at an affordable price is ridiculous.

I have had people in rural Colorado say to me: Michael, look, why are you requiring me to buy something where there is not enough competition, so the premium is high and the deductible is ridiculous. So it is of no use to my family, and you are requiring me to buy something that is useless to me. We should have more competition to drive down price.

I say: You are 100 percent correct.

And if we had a functioning Congress that wanted to take a bipartisan approach to fixing that problem, we could fix it, and there are probably 15 or 20 other things along those lines. But the Republican healthcare bill--so-called healthcare bill--does none of that. It does none of that.

So to the extent that you don't like ObamaCare because you feel as though your premiums are going up and you are not getting enough for it, as opposed to the millions of people who have gotten insurance as a result of it, some for the first time--to the extent you are worried about that, the House bill makes it worse and the Senate bill makes it worse.

There is a projection in the CBO report that says that at a certain point in time, your premiums might come down under the Republican bill, but the reason for that is because you will be buying lousy insurance. It is not because Donald Trump, as he said to the country, has provided such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost. That is not the reason. It is because they provided terrible healthcare at a fraction of the cost. That is not a benefit to anybody. If an insurance company can put you on lifetime caps, of course they are going to charge you less.

I am all for working together in a bipartisan way to address the issues in our healthcare system that, frankly, go far beyond the Affordable Care Act to make sure people in America don't have to continue to make the choices people all over the world don't have to make about having to stay in a job they hate because they have to keep the insurance or being able to quit a job and do something else because they know the insurance will be there. Nobody else has to make those decisions. And nobody else in the world goes bankrupt because of healthcare, but that is still a problem in America.

I think fundamentally the problem we have here tonight is proponents of this legislation didn't set out to fix our healthcare system; they set out to repeal ObamaCare or the cartoon of ObamaCare they have been running on for the last 8 years. That is what they set out to do. Along the way, they obscured it all so they could have the opportunity to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans--which, for some reason, is an obsession with some people around here--and dramatically cut access to healthcare by poor children.

I know there are people who are hearing this will not believe what I am saying is true. It is true. I hope you will familiarize yourself with the facts. I hope, in particular, people who feel the last bill we considered on this floor didn't get the process it deserved--people who quite rightly wanted to make sure Members of the Senate and the House had actually read the bill, people who wanted to know what it was like to live in a country where your health insurance is uncertain from month to month, where you have to decide between paying the rent, buying the food or being on health insurance; people who are dealing with and whose families are dealing with the effects of this terrible opioid crisis that wasn't even really a gleam in our eye when we passed the Affordable Care Act.

I especially say to people living in rural America how sorry I am that people aren't paying attention to your needs; that your hospitals may be cut because of an ill-considered piece of legislation which has nothing to do with delivering healthcare in rural Colorado or rural America.

We can do so much better than this, but to get to a place, unfortunately, where Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to work together, the first order of business has to be to defeat the bill on the floor. I hope people know this is the week when it is critical to call and let your voices be heard, let people know you expect something better than what we are getting, and that Americans ought to have a healthcare system that is affordable, that is predictable, and that actually creates stability instead of instability for their families.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, on June 5, 2017, the Senate adopted S. Res. 176, a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. I am a cosponsor of this resolution. Unfortunately, I missed the vote due to a delayed flight. If I were in Washington, DC, during the time of this vote, I would have cast my vote in support of this resolution.

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

Mr. President, it is nice to see the Presiding Officer in the Chair. Because he is a student of history, I know it will come as no surprise to my colleague from Colorado that this week marks the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan.

In 1947, Europe was in ruins. After years of war, factories from Manchester to Munich had been bombed out. Railroads laid disfigured from artillery. Farms stood defaced by the tracks of a thousand tanks. Across the continent, Europe's once humming economies stood silent. Over 60 million people had died, including 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.

Here in the United States, we mourned the loss of over 400,000 of our soldiers. We had spent, in today's dollars, nearly $4 trillion to secure that victory in World War II. But to secure the peace, our leaders understood that even more was required of us. Truman's Secretary of State, George Marshall, told the Nation that without a return to ``normal economic health in the world,'' there could be ``no assured peace.'' In other words, if famine and poverty remained unchecked across Europe, unanswered, fascism and communism would soon follow, threatening U.S. interests and global stability at the same time.

So after years of sacrifice--sacrifice that this generation of Americans, thank goodness, has never had to endure--the easy course would have been to withdraw behind the Atlantic and the Pacific, turn our back on the world, and embrace isolation.

Instead, we proposed the Marshall Plan, a bold investment to revive Europe's economies, modernize industry, and expand trade, not only for allies like France and Britain but also for our enemies, Germany and Italy. It was extraordinary that political leaders here once made those decisions. I struggle to think of a time in human history when the victor helped to revive the vanquished with no strings attached, no colonial objective.

As the Marshall Plan made its way through Congress, leaders in Washington made the case to the American people, even standing firm against some who wanted to require European countries to buy only American products with the aid that we gave them. Still in the years to come, American farmers and manufacturers would fill millions of crates of wheat and wood, of sugar and steel to rebuild Europe from the ravages of war.

President Truman understood that, in time, strong European economies would become strong trading partners, strong military allies, and a bulwark of freedom against Soviet expansion. History proved him right, to say the least.

After the Marshall Plan, Western Europe surged back to life as Eastern Europe stagnated behind the Iron Curtain. In the West, production rose and hunger fell. Foes became friends. Bonds across the Atlantic solidified. Investments through the Marshall Plan helped lay the foundation for NATO, the common market, and the European Union.

Few actions in our foreign policy have been as consequential for America's long-term interests, for our national interests, and all at a cost of $150 billion in today's dollars--25 times less than the total cost of World War II

and about 25 times less than what we paid in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As President Truman invested in Europe's recovery, he also helped fashion a new world order from the rubble of war. American leadership forged global institutions to enshrine our interests and values around the world for generations, giving rise to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the entire international system that we have today.

Seventy years ago, President Truman had the vision to think longer term. He had the wisdom to see that what was good for others was often good for us as well. And he had the courage to ask our citizens to lead, to sacrifice, and to believe that even after the second war in a generation, it was still within their power to shape a lasting peace.

Those actions, those qualities are why Truman's Presidency marks one of the finest periods in American foreign policy in the history of our foreign policy. The comparison with what we are seeing today just couldn't be starker.

Under the banner of putting America first, President Trump has undermined our interests at nearly every turn. At a time when China proposes to spend over a trillion dollars to expand its global influence with new railroads from Hungary to Kenya, new bridges and tunnels linking Southeast Asia together, and new electrical plants to power Pakistan, President Trump proposes to slash our foreign assistance advancing U.S. interests around the world. At a time when NATO faces challenges to its east and south, President Trump publicly rebukes the alliance and refuses to reinforce its bedrock principle of collective security.

As the recent terrorist attack unfolded in London, President Trump took to Twitter to promote his political agenda and sow fear in the wake of that attack. In the face of challenges like extremism and instability that demand 40-year strategies like the ones President Truman had in mind, President Trump is conducting his foreign policy 140 characters at a time.

Now, as the world unites to confront the perils of climate change, our President has withdrawn from the landmark Paris Agreement, which we helped forge, in a shameful abdication of America's global leadership. In doing so, the President ignored the voices of millions of Americans and thousands of businesses, urging him--against the arguments that he made--to stay in the agreement for climate reasons, for economic reasons, and for national security reasons as well. By withdrawing from it, the President has turned his back on millions of people across the globe, as well, mostly the poor, who are already on the edge of crisis, who may face drought, displacement, and famine from a warming planet.

America has a strong interest in avoiding that future. Anybody who has seen what has happened since the Arab Spring understands what resulted from a doubling of the price of wheat in Egypt. A wise leader could see that. A President Truman would see that.

Like the Marshall Plan, the Paris Agreement recognized that in the modern world there is no ``over there'' anymore. Today, over there is here, and here is over there, and our President fundamentally doesn't understand it.

He claimed that withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would ``put America first.'' In fact, this move threatens to put America last--last in innovation, last in clean energy, last in science, last in our moral responsibility to hand the next generation a safe and stable planet. That is why States and cities all across the country are making their own commitments to honor the Paris Agreement.

Now it is just us, Nicaragua, and Syria on the other side. That is why towns, cities, and States all across the country are scrambling to fill the void of leadership left by the administration to show the rest of the world that we are serious too.

In my home State of Colorado, we know that we can protect our economy and our climate, that we can grow our economy and protect our climate. We see those as linked together. You can't do one without the other. We developed the first State limits on methane pollution. We passed the first voter-led renewable standard in the entire Nation. We established our own limits on carbon pollution. And in the process, we have created 13,000 renewable energy jobs, with wind jobs alone expected to triple by 2020. On average, those jobs pay a salary of $50,000. We are manufacturing again in our State with the supply chains that come along with it.

What comes with those commonsense regulations? One of the strongest economies in America, the lowest unemployment rate in America, and we see this all across the country. New energy jobs are growing 12 times faster than the overall economy. The President doesn't see any of that.

In a matter of months, from foreign assistance, to global alliances, to terrorism and climate change, the administration has imperiled America's stature with a shortsighted and willfully ignorant agenda that is profoundly out of step with the realities of the world and the interests of the people of the United States.

In a recent op-ed, senior officials from the administration painted the world as no more than an ``arena'' where nations ``compete for advantage.'' They were trying to explain the President's behavior while he was in Europe. That attitude marks a huge departure from generations of American foreign policy. This is not about the Obama administration; this is about a set of traditional American values and approaches to the world that we have had almost since the Nation's founding, and the space the President is creating out there in the world by abandoning those treasured American values gives space to those who seek every single day to undermine the liberal world order that has allowed our country and allies across the globe to succeed.

The President should understand that generations of leaders in the United States have put America first. They have always put America first--not in slogans or stump speeches but in the alliances and institutions we built, the values we champion, the alliances we forged that have given our world 70 years of peace and prosperity. That is a legacy upon which we must build--one that has put America first and has kept America first today and, if we act wisely, I think for decades to come.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, there has been a rare outburst of bipartisanship in the Senate this week. It is somewhat amazing, and I think it should be celebrated because Democrats and Republicans agree that the administration's new budget is a complete disaster. It has fallen with a bipartisan thud here in our Chamber.

I think there is a reason for that. Throughout the campaign and now as President, President Trump has made a lot of promises. He has promised a balanced budget. He has promised no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. He has promised the best healthcare for everyone at the lowest cost. He has promised massive new tax cuts. He has promised a great wall paid for by Mexico.

Skeptics, including myself, have awaited this budget to see the hard choices, the details, and the math that could make sense of those promises. After all of those words--and there were a lot of them--and all of those promises, we now have a budget, and it makes no sense.

Let's walk through a few of the numbers. Every year, our country collects on average about 18 percent of our gross domestic product in taxes--the equivalent of about 18 percent of our gross domestic product in taxes, and every year we spend just over 21 percent of the GDP. That gap is why our national debt continues to grow. Instead of closing the gap, where you have spending here and revenue here--instead of closing that gap, the President's budget proposes further tax cuts, bringing down the share of the GDP we are collecting and increasing defense spending while promising to balance the budget.

Just this morning, President Trump sent his Secretary of the Treasury to Congress to explain how all this adds up. He couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. The only way the math in this budget works, the only way that the gap closes, is by assuming that magically our economy will grow faster than any serious economist in the country predicts and that, as a result of that outside growth, the government would take in an extra $2 trillion in taxes. That is the plan. That is the $2 trillion assumption about the finances of our country and the potential burden of the next generation of Americans, some of whom are sitting here with us today.

Even if you accept that math--which I don't--but even if you accept that math, we have another problem. The administration's budget also proposes massive tax cuts that it claims will not add to our debt because of the same $2 trillion in new tax revenues. As has been pointed out, that is double-counting, plain and simple, the kind that would cause any college freshman in America to fail his or her accounting exam. This would be like depositing the same paycheck at two different banks and claiming that your salary had doubled, then increasing your spending on groceries, travel, housing, and everything else as if it were actually true that your income would be double. You would go broke, and that is what is going to happen here.

It is no wonder that a Republican Congressman said that this budget was like building a house on what he called ``a sandy foundation.'' The administration's only hope of getting this through is if Americans, including some of the President's strongest supporters, ignore the math and ignore the fact that his proposal actually grows our national debt, cuts Social Security, cuts Medicaid, and savages countless programs that protect vulnerable Americans and invest in our future.

On Medicaid in particular, a lot of us are scratching our heads at the math, let alone the real world pain that would result, should this proposal become law.

The healthcare bill, which passed on the floor of the House--and I said about that bill that even if I think about the townhall meetings I have had in Colorado, where people object most strenuously and most strongly to what is called ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act, if you set out to design a bill less responsive to the people in my townhall who opposed ObamaCare--if you set out to draft a bill less responsive, you couldn't do a better job than they did in the House of Representatives.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his work on healthcare because I can actually recognize the concerns of my constituents in his fine work as opposed to what we have seen in the House.

One of the things that are so disturbing about that bill is that they are slashing Medicaid by around $830 billion. That is 20 percent of the Medicaid Program that has been cut in that House budget. This new budget would gut the program by another $600 billion. Combined, that would cut Medicaid nearly in half by 2026--in half. That means millions more Americans. This is why the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office-- told us that 23

million Americans would lose their health insurance as a result of the bill--because it would mean that the minute all of this happened, people would struggle to get quality healthcare services.

In addition to the 23 million who are going to lose it because of the plan the Republican majority passed in the House, in my home State of Colorado--and I do not think it is very different from a lot of places in this regard--half of the people who are on Medicaid are kids. Are they supposed to go to work, or do we want them in school and having the benefit of a healthcare program?

Do we expect seniors in long-term care to go back to work? There are millions of Americans who are living in nursing homes, having spent their entire life savings for the privilege of being in long-term care or in nursing homes that are paid for by Medicaid. What are they supposed to do? Are we going to empty out the nursing homes in the United States?

I think, to some extent or another--I always get into trouble with my staff every time I say this, but I am going to say this again here-- every one of us in this Senate is a conservative if ``conservative'' means to protect the institutions of our government and to think carefully before we leap. There is nothing conservative about this proposal on Medicaid. It is a radical proposal--a 20-percent Medicaid cut. We have not seen anything like that in our history.

What is amazing about this budget is not just that the math does not add up but that its targets are shockingly clear: rural communities, vulnerable Americans, vital investments in our future. This budget slams communities that are already hurting in our economy. Farmers would face a 21-percent cut to the Department of Agriculture, meaning less help to fight erosion, protect water quality, and improve irrigation. The budget eliminates the TIGER Grant Program entirely, which builds roads, bridges, and train stations all across the country. It cuts the maintenance budget for the U.S. Forest Service by over 70 percent, making it harder to maintain the trails and facilities that support rural outdoor economies.

I invite anybody here and I would welcome anybody to come visit Colorado. That is not a hardship; it is a beautiful place. See the condition that our national forests are in and the work that needs to be done and the conditions under which employees of the Forest Service are being asked to do their jobs. It is not right. It is not fair.

This budget eliminates essential air service which helps connect our most remote areas. Besides water, it is probably the most important lifeblood of our rural communities. It cuts assistance to State and volunteer fire departments, exposing our mountain towns to even greater risk. This is a horrible budget for rural America--horrible.

This budget also turns its back on families who are struggling the most. It eliminates support to heat low-income homes through the winter. That is the reason Democrats and Republicans do not support this budget. It cuts safety inspections for coal miners, while devastating support to fight pollution and clean up toxic sites that disproportionately harm poor communities. It cuts assistance to the homeless and community development block grants--ends it--which promote affordable housing and economic development in low-income areas. It slashes food stamps by 25 percent. It is like the Grinch himself wrote this budget. Nearly half of those who benefit from that program are children--poor children.

This budget not only ignores our duty to ensure that kids in poverty do not go hungry, it also fails to invest in their future. This budget cuts education funding by $9 billion. It slashes afterschool and summer programs for low-income children. It cuts funds to help teachers become better teachers. It cuts programs to help students work their way through college.

There is not anybody in America who thinks it is right that we are bankrupting families and students because of the high cost of college, which is something that their parents and grandparents did not have to endure because of choices we made then that we are not making today.

Who in his right mind thinks an answer to that is to cut work-study programs? Yet that is in the budget. It takes aim at our next generation. The budget targets next-generation research and technology that we need in order to compete in the 21st century. It slashes funds to the National Science Foundation.

Do you want a reason as to why Republicans and Democrats do not support this budget--why we have bipartisan opposition for it? It is that it cuts the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, by $8 billion even though its research supported over 330,000 jobs and $60 billion in economic activity just last year. It cuts research for low-cost, clean energy even though experts predict nearly $8 trillion of global investment in renewable energy over the next 25 years. It devastates the Department of Energy's loan program that spurs private investment and pays for itself.

Believe me, I have worked in every level of government. I have been in the private sector, too, and I know there is waste in every level of government. There is waste in the Federal Government. There are programs that make no sense, and there are decisions we make that make no sense. We need to strive every day to become better stewards of taxpayer dollars. I do not think we do a good enough job in this place of oversight, of how taxpayer dollars are being used. Yet this budget does not target waste, and this budget does not target fraud and abuse; it targets who we are as a nation and what we hope for, for the next generation.

In these times, the American dream is not something we can take for granted. It is the product of choices our forbearers have made and choices we have made--choices to invest in the future, to look out for one another and ensure that all Americans have opportunities to make the most of their God-given potential.

Budgets are more than just dollars and cents; they answer important questions about our vision for the future and our values as Americans. In that sense, it is worth considering how this budget would affect the everyday lives of Americans--of the people who come to our townhalls or the people who are too busy working, trying to provide for their families, to be able to go to our townhalls.

If this budget were to pass, a working mom might lose healthcare for herself and have to worry that her aging mother might not be far behind. She might have to cut back hours at work to pick up her kid whose afterschool program was just canceled. Driving home, she will wonder whether her child's weeklong cough has anything to do with the air he is breathing or the water he is drinking or whether that dinner was the last of the groceries for the month even though it is only the 25th.

These are the choices our constituents are going to face, and that is not the future we want. It is not an America we would choose for our kids.

(Mr. BLUNT assumed the Chair.)

I am wrapping up here. I know my colleague from Louisiana is here.

The most expensive thing for us to do is to give up on working people, our kids, and on urban and rural communities that are too often forgotten by people in Washington. That, I am afraid, is what this budget does--it gives up. In a sober analysis on real solutions to our problems and our basic commitment to each other, we are as fellow citizens bound by a common destiny, but this does not meet the test.

I look forward to working with Republicans and Democrats, together, to write a budget that actually reflects the will of the American people. I look forward to working with the Presiding Officer and my colleague from Louisiana, who is doing such good work on healthcare.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here today to speak on a different topic, but before the Senator from Minnesota leaves, I want to thank him for his statement and for his observations, which are dead-on about the need now more than ever to have an independent special counsel take a look at what has happened here. I am very grateful for that, and I believe that is the conclusion others in this Chamber, Republicans and Democrats working together, will reach as well, as they let sink in what has actually transpired over the last 24 hours.

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

Mr. President, as you know, last night President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. He did this in the middle of an active FBI investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign, Trump associates, and the Russian Government. This action should worry every Member of the Senate. I know it worries the people we represent. My office has been flooded with calls since this decision became public. Americans are asking why this firing happened now, why the firing happened at all--and they are right to ask.

Officially, President Trump said the FBI Director's dismissal was necessary to restore the ``public trust and confidence'' in the FBI. That is laughable. Anybody who knows Director Comey or knows the FBI knows that statement is completely false. I had my issues with the decisions that Director Comey had made over the past months. I never called for his removal, but I know that he did not have a negative effect on morale at the Justice Department or in the FBI.

I worked for a Deputy Attorney General of the United States. I am so disappointed in the tone of the letter written by this Deputy Attorney General--we learned this afternoon--at the request of the President of the United States. This is not a letter that came up through the chain at DOJ, but a conversation--as the public reports are tonight--that happened at the White House, where the Deputy Attorney General and the President agreed mutually that it was time for Director Comey to go.

The President, apparently, asked the Deputy Attorney General to put it in writing. Then he wrote a letter, the

type of which I have never seen come from the Deputy Attorney General's office. I worked on reports that we made with the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice. I never saw a report like this before. But what I really find amazing about this decision--and I don't know why the decision was made; I am the first to say that I don't know--is that, having been in the Senate, having worked in the Deputy Attorney General's office at the Department of Justice, that nobody at the White House said to the President: Maybe the best thing to do is not to fire the FBI Director when he is in the middle of an investigation about ties of your campaign to Russia, because maybe that will undermine Americans' confidence in the rule of law, and maybe that will undermine Americans' confidence in this administration and worry people that the FBI isn't treating this fairly. The idea that not a single member of the administration was successful in making that case to the President is really worrisome to me tonight, and it is one of the reasons why people think the answer to why this firing occurred is simply not credible.

President Trump, unlike some, has repeatedly praised Director Comey over the past months. He said he had guts. He said: ``I respect him a lot.'' Now, overnight, based on a completely nonroutine letter written at the request of the President, he has turned 180 degrees.

The American people deserve an explanation for this unprecedented action. They deserve an explanation tonight. They deserved one this afternoon. They know this isn't how our government is supposed to work. I think the reason why people in Colorado and in other parts of the country, I am sure, are concerned is that this dismissal is not the first action the President has taken that raised concerns about his commitment to the rule of law or his commitment to the independent judiciary or to the freedom of the press under the First Amendment when he doesn't like the scrutiny he or his administration are getting from a free press. He does not have a fundamental appreciation for the basic institutions and traditions of this country.

It is a great irony, I think, at this moment in our politics, that the President represents a radical view of American history and American traditions. It is my hope that this Senate--Republicans and Democrats working together--can express together a conservative view of those traditions, a view that says: We need to preserve the sanctity of the rule of law. We need to preserve and elevate the idea that the judicial branch is an independent judiciary, separate from the legislative branch, separate from the executive branch.

The Founders knew that when they wrote the Constitution. One of their biggest concerns was that somehow the judiciary and the executive branch might reach some sort of unholy alliance that would all of a sudden call the rule of law into question.

I think that is why people are worried. They are worried because they remember this President slandered a judge because of his ethnicity and said that he wouldn't be able to decide a case fairly because of where his parents came from. They remember his attacks on the free press, as well, when he doesn't like their reporting, and his resorting to talking about fake news when he doesn't like the reporting.

I have had to talk with so many high school students and middle school students in Colorado over the last 4 or 5 months about this whole question of fake news and what the importance of edited content is to our society and, again, to our commitment to the rule of law--the importance that middle school students and high school students place on edited content and on curated content; their ability to distinguish between something that is science or something that is real, something that is edited versus somebody shooting their mouth off on the internet.

The President has a hard time making that distinction, as well. He has shown little regard for the traditions and norms that our Founders established when they created this separation of powers.

So I say to my colleagues tonight, the Senate must stand firm and speak with one voice--Democrats and Republicans. We now have a vacancy in the FBI Director, and we need to make sure that whoever that is, whoever replaces James Comey, pledges to continue the ongoing investigation and reinforce the FBI's independence from undue influence from the White House. That needs to be nonnegotiable. In my view, that is the least that must happen.

In order for the American people to learn the full truth, the Deputy Attorney General must immediately appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, which, by the way, everybody I know up here believes happened. But the President continues to say: Maybe it was the Chinese; maybe it wasn't the Russians. No intelligence agency in America believes that. No Senator believes that.

The President, who has access to all of that intelligence, is saying: It might not have been the Russians; it might be the Chinese.

We need to know. I am not prejudging the result, but we need to know what these links were, if there were links, between the Trump campaign and the Russian Government. These are serious questions that need answers. I worry a lot about what the President has said about our allies in Europe, what the President has said about NATO, what the President has said about the European Union--none of which serves the national security interests of the United States but is an invitation to the Russians to continue to meddle in elections, not just here but in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe as well. It is hard for me to see how that is in anybody's national security interest, except for the Russians or President Putin.

Our intelligence agencies have been crystal clear to the Members of Congress that the Russian Government tried to influence the 2016 election in President Trump's favor. The American people deserve to know what the truth is. What is the extent of these relationships? It goes to the core of our security. It goes to the heart of our democracy. That is why preserving this investigation's integrity is so vital.

I can tell you that the American people are not going to relent. I understand there will be some time here when people want to collect their thoughts and gather their thoughts. The American people are not going to relent. They are going to want an independent investigation here. For all Americans and, I would say, most of the time, but certainly at moments like this--this is a moment in the course of our politics when they say to us: Partisanship needs to give way to patriotism. This is one of those moments.

I urge every Member of this body, every Member of Congress, to rise above the pressure of the moment and see this not as just another skirmish in our endless and often pathetic feuding but as a test of the resilience of these institutions and of our Republic, a test of whether we as Congress stand for something more than winning praise from our base in a cable news cycle or in the next election or whether we take seriously our oaths to put our institutions, our security, and our country first.

I yield the floor.